Bojack Horseman / Tropes P to S

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P

• Pac Man Fever: Played for laughs with Decapathon VII which looks like it should be a violent and exciting gore-fest but is actually just a Tetris-esque puzzle game.
• Parents Suck at Matchmaking: Subverted. Beatrice Sugarman initially hates that her entire life has been laid out for her by her father Joseph, who sees her more as a business investment than a daughter. As part of an attempted business partnership with the Creamerman family, he tries to push Beatrice together with their son Corbin. At first, Beatrice hates this and runs after a delinquent named Butterscotch Horseman, the complete opposite of Corbin and the type of person her father would hate, with whom she enjoys a one-night stand and seems to really be attached. Then later, she starts to connect with Corbin and realizes they have a lot in common and that a marriage between them wouldn't be so bad, but unfortunately, she ends up pregnant from the one-night stand and ultimately is forced to marry Butterscotch, whom she increasingly grows to hate.
• Parody Displacement: In-Universe. Hollyhock has never seen Schindler's List, but she's familiar with "Chandler's List," a Friends-inspired parody Matthew Perry did on Saturday Night Live.
• Person as Verb: When BoJack tells one of the women he's slept with to leave his house the next morning.
  BoJack: My memoirist is going to show up soon and I don't need you... what's your name?
  Pam: Pam.
  BoJack: I don't need you Pamming up the place when she gets here!
  • More seriously, he worries he's going to "BoJack things up" with Hollyhock in the context of "screw everything up until she hates me".
• Pet the Dog:
  • Kelsey Jannings has a sharp personality but adores Todd for no reason.
  • Beatrice was critical of BoJack for starring in Horsin' Around in Season 2. When she starts suffering from dementia in Season 4, she can only recognize BoJack on the show, and actually enjoys watching it.
• Phrase Catcher: "Aren't you the horse from Horsin' Around?"
  • Avoided when BoJack meets Charlotte's family, where Penny asks "so who are you again?"
• Pink Is Erotic: In Planned Obsolescence, Todd finally meets his girlfriend, Yolanda Buenaventura's parents but she hasn't come out as asexual to them yet. When Todd arrives at her parents' house, he discovered her parents are sex-obsessed and are esteemed in the erotic arts (her dad is an erotic writer, her mom is a pornographic actress, and her sister is a sex adviser columnist). Fittingly, her family are pink axolotls.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Played With in that they never outright say love, but they come pretty close...
  • Invoked in "Love And/Or Marriage" after Princess Carolyn returns from three blind dates to sign congratulations cards to everyone in VIM Agency with the stock words made by her assistant, Judah. She signs them mechanically until she sees the one meant for Judah. She's genuinely touched he so desperately wants her approval.
    "Dear Judah, you are a wonderful employee. I am very proud of you. Sincerely, _________________."
  • And then in "It's You":
    Princess Carolyn: It's been a pleasure working with you, Judah.
    Judah: I've found it to be an above-average experience. Please forgive me for getting emotional.
  • In "That Went Well", Diane visits BoJack after Sarah Lynn's death, finding him in a really low point and after talking about it, Diane raises his spirits by telling him that contrary to what he now believes, Horsin' Around was an important show in people's life, especially for troubled people growing up....like her. After processing what she has just said, BoJack retorts that she's wasting her time writing tweets for celebrities when she could do much better and then:
    BoJack: And I wish you didn't get so distant after you moved out.
    Diane: I'm sorry.
    BoJack: You know me better than anybody, and you can't not be a part of my life.
  • During BoJack and Sarah Lynn's bender, he ponders over how no one else really knows what they went through. Due to a blackout, the setting changes and we next see him rambling on the same subject to her in a motel room, holding her hand, but looking nowhere near sexual. He tells her that "this... this is love."
• Polyamory: Hollyhock Manheim-Mannheim-Guerrero-Robinson-Zilberschlag-Hsung-Fonzerelli-McQuack was adopted by 8 men in a gay polyamorous relationship.
• Posthumous Character:
  • As of Season two, Herb Kazzaz, who continues to appear in several flashbacks and one Dying Dream.
  • BoJack's father Butterscotch, who has only been seen in flashbacks. The fact he died was revealed in a flashback in Season 4, and Season 5 reveals he died in 2009 from injuries he sustained in a duel with a guy who didn’t like his novel, by tripping and bashing his head on a rock.
  • Everyone in the Sugarman family, which includes Beatrice's parents Joseph and Honey and her older brother Crackerjack, who died in 1944 while fighting in World War II. Beatrice herself dies in Season 5.
  • Sarah Lynn dies in Season Three, although she appears in a flashback the episode after her death, and in season 6.
• Power Dynamics Kink: In a flashback, acclaimed television writer Cuddlywhiskers has a sexual relationship with his assistant Jill Filipowitz (later known as Jill Pill when she becomes a playwright). Jill disobeys his orders by as throwing his bottled water on the floor, Cuddlywhiskers yells at her, and Jill boasts about how she's a "dirty girl" and implores Cuddlywhiskers to come to the bedroom and "punish" her.
• Precision F-Strike: Invoked. The show has a rule of using the word "fuck" exactly once per season for extra magnitude, typically to punctuate the darkest point of a season or BoJack doing irreversible damage to a relationship.^note There's also one offhanded use of the word "cunt" in "Still Broken," which Joelle defends by saying it's "an okay thing to say in England.":
  • In Season 1's "The Telescope", Herb tells BoJack to "get the fuck out of [his] house" after BoJack's Rejected Apology.
  • In Season 2's "Escape from L.A.", Charlotte tells BoJack, "if you ever try to contact me or my family again, I will fucking kill you" after she finds BoJack in bed with her teenage daughter.
  • In Season 3's "It's You", Todd unloads an angry monologue on BoJack on how selfish he is for using his Dark and Troubled Past as an excuse to be reckless with people's emotions, concluding with an exasperated "Fuck, man. What else is there to say?"
  • Played with when Diane discovers that she's pregnant: "Love And/Or Marriage" ends with her screaming "MOTHERFU-!" and "Brrap Brrap Pew Pew" begins with her screaming "-UCKER!".
  • Season 4's subverts it by having the word be spoken, but not necessarily "used." BoJack tells Hollyhock that he wants to look his senile, dying mother in the face and say "Fuck you, mom!", but ultimately decides it isn't worth it and spend their last visit together giving her a happy memory.
  • Season 5 plays the trend more straight, with Gina saying to BoJack "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" after he nearly chokes her to death due to being high on drugs, and temporarily Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality.
  • Season 6 has a Call-Back to Season 5's usage of the word: Gina's costar tells her "What the fuck is wrong with you?" when Gina has a PTSD-induced freakout on set, marking the first time that BoJack isn't directly involved in dropping an F-bomb at all. It also has an aversion: during the second half of the season, BoJack ends up ruining one relationship and going through a post-mortem of another one that has been gradually ruined throughout the years, but the F-bomb isn't dropped this time.
• Prisoner Performance: In the series finale "Nice While It Lasted", BoJack puts on a low-budget production of Hedda Gabler with his fellow inmates.
• The Production Curse: In-universe, The whole Philbert production could serve as this. Princess Carolyn almost casting Vance Waggoner results in Ana showing the New Mexico tape to Diane, which later culminates in her turning hostile towards BoJack, writing the incident into an episode and later disowning him entirely. And BoJack later gets into an accident on the set which causes him to get addicted to prescribed opioids which later results in him losing sanity and almost strangle his co-star as a result.
• Pun-Based Title: Episodes 9 and 11 of season 1, "Horse Majeur" and "Downer Ending" and episodes 4 and 6 of season 2, "After Party" and "Higher Love".
• Punny Name:
  • A lot of Hollywoo celebrities that are humanoid animals in this show have these names. With the pointed exception of Cameron Crow, who is actually a raven.
  • And a more subtle variation come season 3 — Princess Carolyn's "Vim" is competing with "Vigor".

R

• Race Lift:
  • In-universe example when Naomi Watts (a white blonde) is cast to play Diane (who is Vietnamese-American).
  • A "Species Lift" is done in the same movie with BoJack playing Mr. Peanutbutter and Wallace Shawn playing BoJack.
    • Narrowly averted when they almost got Andrew Garfield to play Secretariat in his planned Biopic (the role of which, of course, ends up going to BoJack).
    • Season 4 has Paul Giamatti playing BoJack in the mini-series Biopic about Sarah Lynn's life.
• Rage Breaking Point: Season Three has Princess Carolyn hit hers when BoJack, after firing her, mentions in passing that he'd talked the decision over with Ana because he respects her opinion — a courtesy that he'd never given to Princess Carolyn in the course of their twenty-three-year relationship, professional or personal.
• Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud:
  • BoJack has a prepared set of cards he wrote for firing Princess Carolyn as his agent. Not only does he read all of the stage directions out loud, but he also gets the pages out of order and mixed up with jokes from a Roast.
  • BoJack does this whole working on Philbert, which Princess Carolyn spins as proof that Philbert does not play by the rules
• Reality Subtext: An odd In-Universe one, as this is a big contributor for why BoJack's script reading for the "Secretariat" movie was as good as it was.
  Script-Reader: When you're out there on that there race-track, what are you running from?
  BoJack as Secretariat: You wanna know the truth? Nothing.
  Script-Reader: Everyone's running from something, sugar.
  BoJack as Secretariat: No, I'm... I'm running from nothing. I'm terrified of nothing. People come up to me, they want my autograph, they want my picture. They think they recognize something in me, and I want to be that person that they think I am, but I'm not. They see a greatness in me, and they mistake it for goodness, but I... I know there's nothing there. As fast as I run, I can't get away from that.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • BoJack tries to give one to a dumb blonde girl who picks on him at a bar one night.
    BoJack: Maybe because you're skinny and maybe 'cause you're pretty you're used to getting away with things, but I want you to know that your actions have an effect on others, and I hate you, and you are a HORRIBLE person! And you not understanding that you're not a horrible person doesn't make you any less of a horrible person!
    Blonde Girl: ...You think I'm pretty?
  • Though not quite as intense (or justified) as later moments, Sara Lynn's towards BoJack in "Prickly Muffin" is pretty nasty:
    Sara Lynn: You sit up here in your little house and feel sorry for yourself? Ugh, guess what BoJay: in order to be a has-been, you actually have to have, y'know, been!
  • In "The Telescope", Herb gives one to BoJack in the form of a Rejected Apology.
    Herb: I'm not gonna give you closure. You don't get that. You have to live with the shitty thing you did for the rest of your life. You have to know that it's never, ever going to be okay! I'm dying! I'm not gonna feel better! And I'm not gonna be your prop so you can feel better! Do you know what it was like for me? I had nobody. Everybody left! I knew all those showbiz phonies would turn on me, sure. But you? I don't care about the job! I did fine! I had a good life, but what I needed then was... a friend. And you abandoned me. And I will never forgive you for that. Now get the fuck out of my house!
  • Right after, BoJack and Herb get into a physical scuffle as BoJack leaves, prompting Herb to lay another, even more bitter one on BoJack.
    Herb: You know what your problem is? You want to think of yourself as the good guy. Well, I know you better than anyone, and I can tell you that you're not. In fact, you'd probably sleep a lot better at night if you just admitted to yourself that you're a selfish goddamn coward who just takes whatever he wants and doesn't give a shit about who he hurts. That's you. That's BoJack Horseman.
  • BoJack's mother Beatrice gives her son one in "Brand New Couch":
    Beatrice: I just wanted to tell you that I know. I know you want to be happy, but you won't be... and I'm sorry.
    BoJack: ...what?
    Beatrice: It's not just you, you know. Your father and I, we, well... you come by it honestly, the ugliness inside you. You were born broken, that's your birthright. And now you can fill your life with projects: your books and your movies and your little girlfriends but... that won't make you whole. You're BoJack Horseman. There's no cure for that.
  • In Season 3's "It's You", Todd gives BoJack one after finding out he slept with Todd's old girlfriend Emily, which shows how fed up he is with BoJack's excuses.
    Todd: Oh great! Of course! Here it comes! You can't keep doing this! You can't keep doing shitty things, and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay! You need to be better!
    BoJack: I know. And I'm sorry, okay? I was drunk and there was all this pressure with the Oscar campaign. But now- now that it's over, I-
    Todd: No! No, BoJack, just stop. You are all the things that are wrong with you. It's not the alcohol, or the drugs, or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career, or when you were a kid. It's you. All right? It's you. (in a tired voice) Fuck, man. What else is there to say?
  • The entire Season 4 episode "Stupid Piece of Sh*t" is a voice in BoJack's head giving these to him. The big one comes at the end:
    Mental voice: Talk to your daughter. You're ruining her. You know that, right? No matter what, your poison is already in her. There's nothing you can do.
    BoJack: That's not true!
    Mental voice: Yeah, it is! You stupid piece of shit. You're a real stupid piece of shit, and everywhere you go you destroy people. 'Course your mother never loved you. What'd you expect? That's why Sarah Lynn died! That's why Charlotte will never forgive you! What're you going to do to Hollyhock? What're you going to do, asshole?!
    BoJack: SHUT UP!
• Reboot Snark: BoJack made his money off being the main character of '90's sitcom Horsin' Around, playing a horse who adopts three kids. Several years later, Ethan, the only child actor that didn't keep acting, suddenly wants to develop a revival around him titled Ethan Around (confirmed by the creators to be a reference to Fuller House and Girl Meets World, revivals which both had one of the former child actors parent their own kid/s). BoJack is initially interested but his agent tells him not to do it because a dumb TV show revival won't make him a movie star. After BoJack and Ethan's Horsin' costar Sarah Lynn dies, BoJack does the show anyway but walks off the set. It never gets made.
• Record Needle Scratch: Played straight in "Later" when Vincent arrives at the party to confess his love for Princess Carolyn and played with in "Yesterdayland" when Wanda learns that Alex has also just woken from a thirty-year coma.
  Radio presenter: Whoa! Sorry about that needle skip, folks. Let's start that song again from the beginning.
• Recurring Element: Many.
  • Each season, BoJack loses someone he truly cared about from his past:
    • In Season 1, Herb. BoJack and him were already on bad terms, due to BoJack's betrayal and the fact he never apologized or called during the twenty years that passed in the meantime and goes back to apologize when Herb is in his deathbed. After a nice visit, Herb refuses to forgive BoJack just so when he feels better about himself. After a physical fight between them, what little friendship they had left is destroyed. By season 2, Herb finally dies.
    • In Season 2, Charlotte. He runs away from L.A. to talk with her after almost twenty years, only to then learn that she now has a family and is Happily Married. Even then, he still tries to get closer to her by getting closer to her daughter, this then backfires when she falls in love with him and Charlotte outright rejects him when he finally confesses. This was already bad enough, but then Charlotte caught BoJack and Penny almost having sex, resulting in her threatening to kill him if he ever got near them again.
    • In Season 3, Sarah Lynn. After pushing away all friends he had left, they go together on a huge bender that takes weeks of them getting drunk and using hardcore drugs. This leads them to to an AA meeting where BoJack decides to try and make amends to everybody he hurt during the last year. It ends badly as nobody accepts the apology of a drunken BoJack who keeps getting drunken blackouts. When they finally have a heart to heart with in which they admit they truly love each other due to meeting before fame and before anyone wanting anything from them, Sarah Lynn decides to go back to college and tries again to follow a childhood dream of being an architect, and BoJack takes them to the planetarium so they can see the stars, but by then Sarah Lynn dies sleeping in his arms.
    • In season 4, however, this trend is subverted. It seems that the person BoJack is going to break ties with is his mother, planning to curse her out as soon as she recognizes him. However, when she gets kicked out of her nursing home, he has to house her. After it's revealed that she was putting amphetamines in Hollyhock's coffee that ultimately hospitalized Hollyhock with the blame pinned on BoJack, BoJack decides to have her put in an even worse nursing home and then never see her again. The subversion comes when his mother recognizes him at last, and instead of cutting her off, he creates for her a pleasant image of her childhood summer home. There is also an inversion of the trend in how BoJack gains a relationship this season with Hollyhock and makes sure that it isn't ruined.
    • In season 5, Diane. She finds out about what BoJack did in New Mexico. She tries to get the truth out of him about the incident and when it doesn't happen, she humiliates him out of spite by writing it into Philbert. Later during the premiere party, both her and BoJack get into a fight about his past abusive behaviour which ends with Diane officially breaking ties with BoJack and leaving Philbert. Though it's unknown at the end of Season 5 whether or not BoJack and Diane will be friends again. However season 6 shows that they're still friends, at least until the final episode
    • In season 6, Hollyhock. After learning of what BoJack did to Penny's friends during their prom night from Pete, their relationship is already on the rocks with her being rude and short towards him, however there's still hope that they can mend their relationship. Unfortunately, this hope is quickly dashed after his past comes back to haunt him, namely his role in Sarah Lynn's death being revealed during an interview. This proves to be the final nail in the coffin as Hollyhock ceases all communication and completly cuts ties with him.
  • Season 3 subtly played the theme of family: Diane meets Mr. Peanutbutter's brother and his kids, she gets pregnant, though she decides to have an abortion. In the same episode, Sextina reveals she's pregnant and wants to keep the baby, in a flashback, Princess Carolyn's boss lamented he never got to have a wife or a family, BoJack has to take care of a baby seahorse and turn him back to his father, Rutabaga and his wife have kids and Gecko holds one of the babies, Princess Carolyn talks about her mother and her childhood to BoJack and so on. Doubles as foreshadowing, as the last episode implies BoJack has a daughter he did not know about.
  • Season 4's "Commence Fracking" has a theme of sex across the subplots. The A-plot is BoJack and Hollyhock tracking down all the women BoJack ever slept with (one of whom he has sex with again), the Princess Carolyn plot is about trying to have Ralph get her pregnant to the point of having sex in a cop car, and the Diane/Mr. Peanutbutter plot involves Diane not feeling satisfied until she and Mr. Peanutbutter have angry hate-sex over political disagreements. Note how Todd has almost no lines in this episode.
  • Each season's eleventh episode is the darkest one. The twelfth episodes are lighter but leave a Cliffhanger except season 3 which doubles down on the sadness of the previous episode and leaves a Cliffhanger.
• Red Herring: Season 5 has one in the penultimate episode. BoJack received a ransom note saying "You did a bad thing and I'm going to tell", and the viewers know that Character Actress Margo Martindale survived and is regaining her memory. It turns out to be a promotional stunt for Philbert.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: BoJack acts as blue, with both Todd and Mr. Peanutbutter alternating as his red counterpart.
• Red Shirt: Parodied in "The Shot" when Alan, the cable repairman, is roped into taking part in a break-in by the rest of the cast, and everyone keeps saying that "one of them might not come out of this alive". Every time they do, they all stare at him. He is also wearing a red shirt. Bonus points for being a panda. Subverted. He lives.
  Alan: I can't die, I'm endangered!
• Refuge in Audacity: Averted in the show at large, but played straight in-universe when BoJack gives some choice words on Todd's rock opera:
  BoJack: That was, and I don't say this lightly, worse than a hundred September 11ths.
  
  BoJack: Imagine if the Holocaust happened every four years like the Olympics. I would rather that happen than your rock opera.
• Regretful Traitor: BoJack was this to Herb, as he was reluctant to betray his friend and felt terrible about it... but not so reluctant that he wouldn't do it, and not so terrible that he wouldn't continue to ignore Herb for twenty years afterward, until Herb was on his deathbed.
• Rejected Apology: After visiting his old friend Herb, who he had stabbed in the back when he promised to support him when he came out of the closet, BoJack apologizes to him. Herb says he doesn't accept it. BoJack's confused, so Herb clarifies: He's not going to forgive him, he's not going to give him peace of mind, and BoJack is going to have to live with the horrible thing he did for the rest of his life.
• Repeat After Me: In a Running Gag, when custom printing appears, it usually has some instructions that the printer has idiotically left in.
  CONGRATS DIANE AND MR. PEANUT BUTTER
  PEANUT BUTTER IS ONE WORD DON'T WRITE ONE WORD
• The Reveal: Henrietta, the name Beatrice calls BoJack throughout season 4, was the name of Beatrice's maid, who was impregnated by Butterscotch in an extramarital affair. Butterscotch was able to talk Beatrice into asking Henrietta to get an abortion, but she ended up conceding to pay Henrietta's tuition and convincing her to give the baby up for adoption, believing this to be a compromise between Henrietta's desire to have the baby and Beatrice's wish to not let another woman be poisoned by her attachment to Butterscotch. The baby she had grew up to be Hollyhock.
  • On a darker note, BoJack’s second interview with Biscuits Braxby in “Xerox of a Xerox” reveals that Sarah-Lynn did not actually die in the planetarium, but in the hospital, and BoJack had purposely waited 17 minutes before calling 911 in order to cover his role in her death. Had he called for help right away, it’s possible she would’ve survived.
• Revealing Continuity Lapse:
  • Happens when we watch through flashbacks from the perspective of Beatrice Horseman, who is suffering from dementia. Most noticeably, at one point Butterscotch begs Beatrice empty handed to speak to the maid whom he has impregnated, and when he speaks of coming to his wife 'hat in hand' his hands suddenly glitch and a hat appears, as though Beatrice just remembered it was there.
  • Dicussed and subverted in another case, when BoJack recounts a fan coming to him about a scene of Horsin' Around in which a coffee cup can be seen on the counter in shots of The Horse, but not of Ethan, asking whether this was done deliberately by the show's producers to make a profound statement about how even people who take part in the same event together can have entirely different experiences and memories of it. BoJack scoffs - some intern just left the cup there and nobody noticed it - but tells the fan Sure, Why Not anyway.
• Rewatch Bonus: Once we learn who Henrietta is (Beatrice and Butterscotch's maid who Butterscotch got pregnant with Hollyhock), the way Beatrice treats BoJack all season (who she refers to as Henrietta) makes more sense and gains context and even subtext (such as "You're unfit to be a parent, Henrietta).
  • The music video for "Prickly Muffin" in Season 1, episode 3 is partially set in a planetarium - where Sarah Lynn dies in season 3. This is lampshaded in "A Quick One, While He's Away" as Hollyhock's friends watch the music video.
  • At first, it's easy to assume that the baby Jameson's dad is raising is his and his new wife's, but Jameson never actually claims that, referring to it as "the new baby". This is because the new baby is her new baby. Her fury at her boyfriend and her mention of "getting fat" in junior year also make much more sense knowing this reveal.
• Rhyming Names:
  • Courtney Portnoy, celebrity actress. When her name comes up in conversation, assonance and rhyme are comically Exaggerated; as her purported supporters exhort Courtney's tour-de-force performance their wording sort of contorts.
    Princess Carolyn: You know the actress Courtney Portnoy?
    Todd: I think so. She portrayed the formerly portly consort at the seaport resort?
  • Tom Jumbo-Grumbo, news anchorman.
  • Neal McBeal the Navy SEAL.
• Riddle for the Ages: We never get to see the exact contents of Hollyhock's last letter to BoJack, just his reaction.
• Ridiculous Procrastinator: BoJack with his memoir. The first episode mentions that he hasn't written a word, even after being given a year and a half to, and will look for an excuse not to work any time he's shown attempting to. Granted, it's mostly because he's too ashamed to admit how bad his life has been and is only writing it so people will like him again.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The show started out primarily lambasting Hollywood culture in the first place, but was put in a position that allowed it to be really topical as various bombshells came out such as Bill Cosby's and especially studio executive Harvey Weinstein that lead to the #MeToo movement.
  • Hank Hippopopalous' scandal involving his former assistants is very similar to Bill Cosby's own rape allegations, the media and much of the public's (initial) "would not, could not" response to the allegations and the media's unfortunate implications-laden response to Diane and its attempts to brush it off. The major difference was that, while not incarcerated until five years later, it permanently ruined his public image.
  • In the fifth season, BoJack chokes his costar Gina on set while high on painkillers and footage is leaked to the public. When he sees the footage, not having remembered it happening, he is so horrified that he tells her he wants to tell the truth to the media. Gina does not forgive BoJack for the incident, but she demands that he lie about it, stating that this show is her big break and that she is finally getting the recognition she has been seeking for years and she does not want her career ended or overshadowed by his despicable actions, which somewhat echoes the reasons many of the Me Too movement’s victims cited for not coming forward with allegations earlier.
  • Another incident that BoJack choking Gina on the set of Philbert was based on was possibly the Hostility on the Set that transpired in Bohemian Rhapsody. It was said that the former director Bryan Singer had assaulted Rami Malek (the voice of Flip), who was also an up and coming actor in his late 30's like Gina. It's possible that Rami may have had similar reasons like Gina for not talking about it that much otherwise like her fears, his acting career would be overshadowed by the controversies surrounding the film
  • Women begin to come forward with their allegations against the sex robot Todd built to satisfy Emily and executive of What Time Is It Right Now.com, Henry Fondle.
  • In the sixth season, BoJack's culpability in Sarah Lynn's death along with numerous other bad behavior coming to light completely ruin his public reputation, and several lawsuits ruin his financial stability. He is convinced to sign over his royalty rights to Horsin Around because they are almost worthless now and a future release (a heavily edited version that removes him entirely from the show) will have no chance if people think he is still making money from it. This is similar to what happened to The Cosby Show, as it was canceled from syndication channels and a planned Blu-ray release once Cosby's legal problems started mounting.
• The Rival: Vanessa Gekko is Princess Carolyn's. Mr. Peanutbutter is BoJack's but it's mostly one-sided since the former considers the latter his friend, however they did engage in many petty competitions in order to impress Diane in "Our A Story is a D Story."
• Rock Bottom: By the end of Season 3, BoJack has alienated nearly everyone who cares about him.
  • BoJack discusses and ultimately rejects the concept altogether in his (first) interview with Biscuits Braxby:
  Bojack: I’ve had a lot of what I thought were rock bottoms only to discover another, rockier bottom underneath…eventually I decided to stop waiting for something to change me. I had to make a change myself.
• Rousing Speech: At the end of "Out to Sea", the jogger stands over a wheezing, out-of-breath BoJack to deliver the season's inspirational final lines:
  Jogger: It gets easier.
  BoJack: ...huh?
  Jogger: Every day, it gets a little easier.
  BoJack: ...Yeah?
  Jogger: But you gotta do it every day. That's the hard part. But it does get easier.
  (The jogger runs off)
  BoJack: ...Okay.
• Rule of Funny: Though the show typically subverts the standard sitcom formula, every now and then they'll play it dead straight for the fun of it.
  • Season 2's "Chickens" has BoJack convinced that a helpful tow-man will be along any second, and will be happy to settle for an autograph in exchange for his help. Kelsey calls him out on this, only to have the tower pull up and recognize both BoJack and her, requesting a couple autographs in exchange for his help.
  • One of Todd's wacky hijinks stands out as this, when his clown-dentist employees get infected with rabies, that he then exploits to start another business. It's so comically outlandish that it's never considered or mentioned by anyone, including reviewers and the fans as the dangerous, cruel, criminally negligent act in the same way that much of BoJack's grounded, more realistic but often less destructive immorality does.
  • Todd leaving the prison during the jailbreak in the middle of Season 1 is completely ignored from that moment on.
• Rule of Symbolism: There's a lot of drowning symbolism in this series: notable examples include BoJack's painting in his office, his falling into the pool in his intro, and Sarah Lynn's painting of Hamlet's Ophelia.
• Running Gag:
  • Honeydew melon being positioned as "a garbage fruit".
  • Several episodes per season feature a character relaying information as an elaborate tongue twister. One example:
    "I would love to take down Hippopopalous and finally topple the acropolis of monstrous hypocrisy that ensconces us."
  • Any time someone has a banner, T-shirt, or other announcement made for an event, their instructions are printed on it too.
    Banner for Diane's birthday: Happy Birthday Diane and use a pretty font.
  • Season Two introduces a poor bird whose only role is to get slammed by doors opening, causing a flurry of feathers to appear.
  • Whenever there's a flashback to an earlier decade, there will always be blatant reminders of the era: a pan across the city, with store names being topical remarks about the time period; a stereotypical-sounding pop/rock song of the era, with lyrics reminding the viewer of the era; and the characters repeatedly declaring what year it is and making references to things that were popular in that particular year or decade.
    Radio Host: Good morning, Hollywood! It's a beautiful sunny morning in 2007!
    Princess Carolyn: Oh my God, 2007? Is that what time it is? I gotta get my Uggs on and get to work!
  • Each season, Diane's ringtone is played by a different personality from NPR: Ira Glass in season one, Sarah Koenig in season two, Terry Gross (with Jonathan Lethem) in season three, and Robert Siegel (with Audie Cornish) in season four.
  • BoJack's skill at tying ropes out of bedsheets keeps coming up in season six.
• Ruritania: The war-torn totalitarian nation of Cordovia.

S

• Sanity Slippage Song: "Don't Stop Dancing" from Season 5 describes BoJack's state of mind rather well.
• Santa Ambiguity: In "Sabrina's Christmas Wish", Todd asks if Santa exists after watching a Santa-centered episode of "Horsin' Around" and BoJack replies that they were on cocaine.
• Santa's Existence Clause: In the "Horsin' Around" Christmas special, BoJack tries to get Sabrina to believe in Santa Claus, telling her that he'll bring her anything she wants. Unfortunately, what Sabrina wants is her dead parents back. BoJack struggles to let her down easily without destroying her belief in Christmas. On Christmas morning, Sabrina finds a letter under the tree supposedly written by her parents, but this isn't enough for her. After she storms off, BoJack is forced to tell her that Santa isn't real, but what Santa represents is still something worth believing in. At the end of the episode, BoJack reveals that he didn't write the letter and neither did the other kids. The special ends with a familiar jolly laugh. (Todd needs to have this plot point explained to him.)
• Satire and Switch: As part of the Decon-Recon Switch, the series began as a darker take on sitcom tropes from the beginning, with the Hollywoo(d) satire being fairly standard, lax and somewhat derivative, making it seem like another regular adult cartoon back when it premiered in 2014. Halfway the 1st season, the show switched gears from general satire to dramatic character study, with the refocus toward the damaged Hollywoo(d) characters coloring the satire moving forward, making it sharper and more vicious.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: One of the Netflix extras has BoJack trying out for other Netflix roles. One of them has him auditioning for Orange Is the New Black, only to leave when he finds that the role he's auditioning for is for the Larry story.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Famous!: Provides the quote. In the episode Chickens, BoJack is able to help his friends via his fame.
• Self-Deprecation: Terminally ill Herb invites BoJack and Diane inside:
  "Please, come in. You're letting out the cancer."
  • On a meta note, Garry Marshall, a director known for hacky, clichéd, overly sentimental movies plays Abe, a director who turns Secretariat into a hacky, clichéd, overly sentimental movie.
  • Sarah Lynn believing that Diane's character is just "Asian Daria, with the glasses and the jacket, and her whole 'blah' thing."
  • Cuddlywhiskers showing up in the middle of "That's Too Much, Man!" and explaining that it was a poor choice to use "a disjointed blackout structure with the one flashback in the middle" as a structure for the episode.
  • "Commence Fracking" attempts to set up another long flashback sequence to 1999 akin to those in "The Telescope" and "The BoJack Horseman Show" only for Hollyhock to stop it by saying "I don't need a long story, just get to the point". If you look at the buildings in the background, the traditional Reference Overdosed humor is replaced◊ with generic messages like "It's another flashback!" and "Relevant billboard".
• Severely Specialized Store: "Halloween in January".
• Sex with the Ex:
  • BoJack and Princess Carolyn engage in this early on but move on quickly.
  • BoJack, again, with the president of his fan club, who he is only visiting to get more information on who Hollyhock’s mother might be
  • After their divorce, Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter do this twice.
• Sexy Sweater Girl: In the 1940s flashbacks, Joseph Sugarman says that he has to compliment his secretary on her tight sweaters.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Wanda tells a joke that at first glance seems to be this. In the joke, contractor's story ends with him at the edge of insanity, with the only relief being getting rid of the bag of munch. Not only is his story not given a proper conclusion, the joke in itself fails to get a punchline, as BoJack notes. Until the next one...
• Shallow News Site Satire: For much of season four and five, Diane works at GirlCroosh, a Buzzfeed-type women's interest website founded by hotel heiress Stefani Stilton. Its office is constantly portrayed as hip and fun, if alienating to Diane (lots of yoga and other amenities, colorful furniture, girl power mottos splashed across the walls), and its content runs Diane's social justice articles alongside various listicles and articles comparing the Hemsworth brothers' penises. Stefani pressures Diane to write less about her topics of interest and more about "croosh-worthy" content that generates revenue. Later, it's bought out by a big corporation and rebranded, which finally causes Diane to leave.
• Ship Tease:
  • BoJack and Diane have this early in the show, with some of it returning in season 4. Notably, season 4 shows them having grown to be very comfortable in each other's presence and conversing more easily than with anyone else, meanwhile, Diane continues to have marital problems with Mr. Peanutbutter. It remains to be seen if her and BoJack's Ship Tease is leading to anything.
  • Comes back in season five after Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter get divorced. Diane and BoJack get drunk at his house and she notes how strange it is that this is the first time they’ve both been single at the same time and they could kiss now. Though she quickly backtracks, calling the thought and BoJack “gross”, though she doesn’t seem to mean it.
  • Seems to ultimately be sinking with Season 6, however, as Diane gets together with a Nice Guy... named Guy, who makes her very happy and BoJack himself is excited for her.
• Show Within a Show: Horsin' Around, Mr. Peanutbutter's House, Excess Hollywoo, and MSNBSea.
• Sibling Yin-Yang/Polar Opposite Twins: Mr. Peanutbutter's House featured two twin sisters: Zelda and Zoe who were adopted by the titular dog. Zelda was a happy-go-lucky extrovert while Zoe was a cynical introvert. Their character traits spawn an in-universe meme: "Are you a Zelda or a Zoe?"
• Signs of Disrepair: After the "D" from the iconic Hollywood sign is stolen (and later destroyed), the region is renamed "Hollywoo".
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: BoJack barely hides his contempt for Mr. Peanutbutter, but despite himself they also form something of Vitriolic Best Buds due to Mr. Peanutbutter's refusal to admit anything is wrong.
  • Tom Jumbo-Grumbo and Randy of MSNBSea have this dynamic, though Tom immediately sets it aside when Randy collapses in Season 4.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss:
  • Between BoJack and his publicist, Ana, in Season 3, as it started out by having him fire her — which only served to turn her on because nobody asserts themselves with her.
  • In Season 4, this is how Mr. Peanutbutter and Diane resolve their increasingly loud arguments – by having hot, passionate sex right after screaming at each other.
• Sleeper Hit: The show filmed in the fifth season "Philbert" shows the Troubled Production every step of the way, and is hard to determine if it's supposed to be Stylistic Suck or Stealth Parody, and few have any real hope in the end result. The show ends up a critical smash, and quickly renewed for a second season.
• Sliding Scale of Parent-Shaming in Fiction: BoJack's parents are routinely shown to be abusive towards him or neglectful at best, and while BoJack is shown not to be Hollyhock's father, BoJack isn't exactly the greatest father figure to the young women in his life either. Some of the "advice" he gave to Sarah Lynn during their time on Horsin' Around could easily explain facets of her character.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: BoJack Horseman is cynically optimistic. It has a lot of heart-wrenching moments that are hard to get through but provides enough insightfulness to help its message is such a conflicting and difficult world to deal with. The show's ultimate message is that love and happiness are attainable, but not easily.
  • Series creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg considers the show an optimistic series as it is showcases a hopeful look at how people can push through the muck and ultimately change for the better in every attempt to improve themselves despite the brutal reality they face that can revert them back to their old, unhappy ways.
  • Each season switches back and forth between darker and lighter. Season 5 does get Darker and Edgier than the surprisingly more colorful season 4 but it still keeps its balance in understanding the harshness of reality but keeping in the hopefulness and heartwarming moments of life.
• Slow Clap: Quentin Tarantulino, being a tarantula, is able to start and escalate one on his own.
• Small Name, Big Ego: BoJack shifts between thinking he's a great actor who's just misunderstood to outright loathing himself.
• Smooth-Talking Talent Agent:
  • Princess Carolyn is a determined Hollywood agent (and later manager) who always has the right pep talk to get clients on her side and sometimes sacrifices morality for monetary pursuit. She does have a heart though, especially for on/off boyfriend/client BoJack, and later episodes establish that she's so focused on her career because she went through hell to get where she is today.
  • Vanessa Gekko and Rutabaga Rabinowitz are Princess Carolyn's rival agents who strategically work through an entire company to get their client the dream projects.
• Snap Back: Averted, as the overall show is about BoJack learning to keep responsibilities and live with the consequences of his actions.
• So Bad, It's Good: In-universe, Emily tells BoJack how she loves "The BoJack Horseman Show" because of how bad it is and repeatedly affirms that she enjoys it ironically and not sincerely, to BoJack's frustration.
• The Sociopath: While the show's themes (depression, happiness, life, fame, futility, cruelty) and its characters thrive on White-and-Grey Morality at best (rarely) and Grey-and-Grey Morality at worst (mostly), quite a lot fits the criteria to the point of occasionally shifting its stance to Black-and-Gray Morality.
  • Hank Hippopopalous, a stand-in for Bill Cosby, David Letterman and every Hollywood scumbag with godhood delusion and narcissism, has an affable vibe and calm demeanor toward everyone which doesn't stop him from revealing in private how stuck in his own orbit he is. Even then, that's just the tip of his depravity with his mask covering a complete lack of regard toward anyone not in his circle of connections or whoever dares stand in his way. It can go further with his well-webbed self denial of his cruel actions even if he's quite conscious about the pain he causes: long as he has a career, he can do as he pleases and no one else has to get hurt...if they stay in line and don't threaten his livehood. Mostly a high-functioning case, Hank's nastier side can show up when there are people who aren't buying into his personal truth in which he'll resort to give them a warning through thin-veiled threats and personally parading his victim as a coated good gesture.
  • Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale zig-zags through this profile, as she would do, really: She meets most of the criteria to qualify, except she's far too calculating and cautious to count. Her hysterical fits and desire for cheap thrills, even with how she intentionally screws up every mission she has just for the sake of seeing violence erupt, does see her tip-toe through the edges. There's also her twisted sense of empathy and "warrior" honor. Plus, she's hilarious.
  • The father and son of the chicken slaughterhouse Gentle Farms (chicken themselves) have their own takes: the patriarch is superficially charming, has a good sense of acceptable behavior and has no qualms over his farm's business, grooming his kid to follow his every command and carry on the family business, even in shooting trespassers. The son, a budding example, has normalized this and sees nothing wrong with this behavior, even if he sometimes questions if it's good or moral to do so.
  • Joseph Sugarman, patriarch of the Sugarman family, Beatrice's father, Butterscotch's boss and BoJack's grandfather, is the living embodiment of the Standard '50s Father; that is, a complete evisceration of the trope: his deep belief in old-fashioned values has made him devoid of any sort of empathy for his family, describing emotions as "woman's feelings" and happy that he may suppress his. This is not going into how easily he shown to be willing to harm his family and abuse them emotionally and physically if he deemed necessary or to keep them safe (e.g. his wife Honey's lobotomy, conditioning Beatrice to occupy a woman's place in society and destroying her psyche in any way he could, giving Bea reasons to harm her son BoJack turning him into the screwed-up horse seen in the present.)
  • Jeremiah Whitewhale spends his days buying up every company he can, to the point that he's managed to buy out Disney of all companies. He then treats his workers horrendously, executing one and leaving his body on a warehouse floor for taking too many breaks. He openly laughs at the thought of anybody stopping him, managing to buy enough politicians to legalize murder committed by rich people. In fact, he encourages people to spotlight his atrocities, because his shareholders are also sociopaths and it convinces them that he'll do anything for profit.
• Species Surname:
  • BoJack Horseman and Pinky Penguin.
  • Subverted with Vanessa Gekko who is a human and Cameron Crow who is a raven, plus Matthew Fox (a wolf) and Scott Wolf (a fox).
  • Played with: Neal McBeal is a seal who's in the navy, making him a "navy seal". (It also rhymes.)
  • While he doesn't have the word "cat" in his name, Officer Meow Meow Fuzzyface's name heavily implies what species he is.
  • Vincent Adultman is male and human, but he's no adult (also, that's not his real name).
• Speed Sex: BoJack's total lack of staying power is something of a running gag.
• Spiritual Successor: The Nostalgia Critic argued it could be one for Duckman with similar themes and even a similar name.
• Stage Mom:
  • Sarah Lynn had an extreme one.
    Sarah's Mother: Sweetheart, Mommy didn't do what Mommy did to that "Star Search" producer so that you could be an architect.
  • And BoJack wasn't fit to help Sarah Lynn due to his having experienced this trope with his own mother, even if it was to a lesser degree.
    Beatrice Horseman: You want your mommy to love you? Then you go out there, and you do the only thing you're good for, which is singing the god-damned lollipop song!
• Standard Snippet: "Pictures At An Exhibition — Promenade" plays during Princess Carolyn's Imagine Spot when she imagines living in one of the paintings at the discount art store.
• Start My Own: During Season 2, Princess Carolyn and Rutabaga plan on leaving Vigor and starting their own agency. Then when their affair collapses, Rutabaga signing everything to Princess is used against him as she shuts him out of the company.
• Start of Darkness: Diane implies that BoJack's troubles come at least partially from his own parents, that play a sort of Greater-Scope Villain through the first seasons. Beatrice mentions in season 2 that the bad things BoJack goes through aren't exclusive of him, and that the Horseman family is virtually cursed. This is expanded in "The Old Sugarman Place" and "Time's Arrow" in season 4, which shows the story that led to Beatrice and Butterscotch's bitterness and resentment towards BoJack, particularly Beatrice's past and her own Abusive Parents, with her brother's death causing her mother to go insane and get lobotomized by her father and a series of events that left her traumatized including getting scarlet fever. An accidental pregnancy causes them to run away together and marry but they grow resentful of each other and dump their bitterness on BoJack.
• Status Quo Is God: Deconstructed as part of the show's primary theme, and the concept of Negative Continuity is functionally non-existent. There is a lot of continuity from episode to episode (various damages to BoJack's house remain for most of the season before getting repaired) and relationships change and evolve over time, but despite how monumental some events get some changes are reversed to keep the general structure of the show. It also deconstructs the way this trope normally works in sitcoms, by showing how miserable and frustrating it can actually be to live a life where major changes never stick and you have to keep relearning the same lessons.
  • Todd becomes a millionaire, but accidentally tips his entire fortune at a restaurant just a short while later.
  • BoJack's depression: happiness is fleeting for him, and so despite his many successes, he will always return to being miserable. Truth in Television, unfortunately.
  • At Beatrice Horseman's funeral BoJack mentions that being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold is extremely difficult and depressing, as you can never tell if your apologies will be accepted and it requires you to make that effort on a regular basis. He also refers to an episode of "Horsin' Around" where a Season Finale had one of the orphans with a chance to reunite with their birth mother, he bemoans that such a Happy Ending would be impossible because the show was still ongoing and it HAD to become a Downer Ending since "There's always more show."
• Stealth Pun: After she quits Vigor with Rutabaga, Princess Carolyn starts VIM, making the two talent agencies VIM and Vigor.
  • This comes back in Season 4, when Charlie Witherspoon tells PC about how he wanted to merge the two agencies into one agency called… Vimgor.
  • Tina, the bear nurse, could also be known as a Care Bear.
  • Princess Carolyn grew up in a household where her mother (and subsequently herself) worked as maids - making them housecats.
  • Most if not all handiwork jobs are being performed by bees and ants. They're literal worker bees and worker ants.
• Stimulant Speedtalk: One episode sees BoJack, Todd, and Sarah Lynn take a lot of drugs, including cocaine, in order to try and bang out BoJack's memoirs ahead of a deadline. They spend much of the night rambling on about whatever is on their minds instead, and by the end of the night, the resulting memoir includes five different, contradictory theories about September 11, twenty pages of erotic Doctor Who fanfiction, and a recipe for soup.
• Stock Scream: A Wilhelm Scream is heard in the first episode when a Penguin Publishing employee jumps out of a window.
  • A rare non-human example happens in "Time's Arrow" when Beatrice vomits on Corbyn Creamerman (who is a goat) he lets out an infamous goat scream.
• Straight Gay: Herb. The discovery of his sexuality led to him being blacklisted.
• Strictly Formula: Not the episodes themselves, but each season follows a strict pattern of events:
  1. A season-long arc is established;
  2. Things go mostly okay for several episodes;
  3. Then the tenth episode sets up something monumental.
  4. In the 11th episode, BoJack will do something utterly horrid, ending with him at his emotional lowest, only to get a little bit of hope back by the end of the twelfth episode.
  5. All of the smaller plot threads wrap up, with new ones being set up for the next season.
  6. Somewhere in the middle of it all is a single F-Bomb for when BoJack ruins a relationship beyond repair.
  • Season 4 surprisingly bucks the trend. Episode 11 is largely a dementia-triggered flashback to various parts of Beatrice's life, showing the events that turned her into the bitter woman that contributed so heavily to BoJack's trauma; at the very end, she becomes lucid enough to recognize her son again, but instead of chewing her out like he'd wanted to, BoJack chooses to comfort her instead. Throughout the season, BoJack shows signs of character development, slowly patching up his relationships with the rest of the main cast and even performing some genuinely selfless actions. He doesn't even wreck any new ones this time around. The big incident is really only his fault through negligence, with someone else actively behind it; the victim also doesn't blame him for what happened and is willing to remain friends afterwards. Finally, the Precision F-Strike is used offhandedly when BoJack is planning something that doesn't end up happening.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • The Horsin' Around Christmas Special throws in every lame pun, gimmick and sitcom plot device imaginable. And it is hilarious!
  • There's also the BoJack Horseman website. It is, put lightly, a horribly outdated eyesore filled with self-complimentary lies, parodying amateur-created sites that were found on Geocities and Angelfire. Since it is supposed to have been made by BoJack in-character, however, it fits.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: When Princess Carolyn is on a (bad) date with an albino rhinoceros who is also a gynecologist.
  Princess Carolyn: Not if you were the last albino rhino gyno on Earth!
  Date: Well, I'm the only albino rhino gyno I know. Should we get some wine?
  Princess Carolyn: Oh great, you're also a wine addict.
• Sunglasses at Night: Officer Meow-Meow Fuzzyface in "Chickens" in order to pull a Horatio-esque one-liner. Lampshaded by Todd.
  Todd: Why was he wearing sunglasses at night?
• Superior Successor: BoJack, flaws aside, often comes across as this compared to his other peers.
  • To Secretariat. Low as he can fall, BoJack just refuses to be kicked to the ground and simply take the easy way out and keeps trying to see any kind of silver lining, unlike his hero who allowed his bottled emotions to drain him out of any will to live.
  • To the whole Sugarman/Horseman family:
    • Beatrice's horrid childhood, rebellious young life and subsequent lack of wealth left her jaded, volatile and self-serving without any concern toward those around her other than the injustices she endured as a result of giving all of herself to her son without any regards for personal choices. BoJack does have a sense of dissatisfaction about the way his life headed and has caused many clusterfucks worthy of being lynched, but has enough sense to know how damaging these are. Recently, he's gotten better at acknowledging his mistakes and mending them, something Beatrice could never figure out how to do.
    • Butterscotch's sense of idealism was broken by being cast out of the life he thought was promised him: the Beat generation dismissed his ideas and his sense of hurt pride made him an uncompromising man whose prose never got better as a result. BoJack has a desire to achieve greatness but has had enough experiences to know how unfulfilled hanging on to aspirations leave you, so he's learned to curb those flights of fancy.
    • Honey Sugarman's feisty and fun-loving nature was traded with her future grandson's depression and mood-swings caused by her son CrackerJack's death. Eventually, such despair consumed her to the point where she agreed to a lobotomy to live in ignorant bliss away from pain. BoJack due to living in the modern era has access to help and while not willing to go to therapy has shown a bigger commitment to fixing himself.
    • Joseph Sugarman, BoJack's grandparent, was a kind, accessible person...at least for the time of 1940. Still, the inability to understand deeper emotions or any sort of nuance from anyone made him a horribly pragmatic person. With the condonation from society, Joseph drifted into outright abuse toward his family through a warped sense of righteousness. BoJack is abrasive, unapologetic and brutally honest, which makes society dismiss his more noble qualities. Nevertheless, BoJack shows a keen understanding of his friends and loved ones' psyche and when push come to shove, he can be there for them.
• Suspiciously Apropos Music: "Keep Drivin'" from Season 3.
  Don't go back to the restaurant, Princess Carolyn
  Just keep drivin' away.
• Symbolic Serene Submersion: BoJack falling into his pool and floating powerlessly to the bottom is a constant of the show's opening, symbolizing his feelings of disconnectedness, loneliness, and personal struggles.

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