King Of The Hill / Tropes N to Z

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• Naked Nutter:
  • Dale is tasked with getting a raccoon out of Hank's house after it goes underneath. Dale ends up scratched by the raccoon, leading to fears he might have rabies. Throughout the episode, he goes animalistic and insane (not helped by feeding himself via mushrooms he's found). And towards the end, he's only wearing a hat, his sunglasses, and his underwear.
  • Boomhauer is mistaken for one in "Naked Ambition", after waking up sunburned (and a little hungover) in a float tube that flowed down the stream and into a sewer that ultimately left him stranded in Houston. He wanders through the streets of a strange neighborhood, disoriented, in nothing but a speedo, spewing his usual gibberish, and is picked up by the cops.
• Nasal Trauma: In "Bwah My Nose", Hank suffers a broken nose while practicing for a football game. After surgery, he finds himself more attractive and becomes obsessed with protecting it.
• Nausea Dissonance: In "My Own Private Rodeo", when Dale recounts how he caught his father, Bug, kissing his wife Nancy on their wedding day, his story starts off catching Bill puking in the bathroom, and afterwards, nonchalantly heading straight to the kitchen, where he caught Bug in the act.
• Near-Miss Groin Attack: Hank sits on a magnet to improve his sperm count when Bobby comes in and talks to Hank about how Hank and Peggy are planning to have another child. When Bobby talks to him, he's holding a screwdriver and puts it down after he says his piece. The screwdriver flies to the magnet as Hank reacts and spreads his legs, narrowly missing his crotch.
• Negative Continuity:
  • Cotton's Cadillac was always a different model or bodystyle every time it appeared.
  • In "Hilloween", Bobby mentions Hank made him eat chopped liver. Just one season later in "Love Hurts and So Does Art", when Bobby gets gout, Hank says they've never fed Bobby chopped liver because they're not "ghouls."
  • In "Lady and Gentrification", Hank's coworker Enrique has a quinceañera for his daughter, Inez. This contradicts "Enrique-cilable Differences", where Enrique and his wife are having marital problems and he mentions the kids have moved out of the house.
  • In "Cotton's Plot", Cotton fights to get a burial plot at the Texas State Cemetery and ultimately succeeds. However, in "Serves Me Right for Giving General George S. Patton the Bathroom Key", his ashes are flushed down a toilet General Patton used back in World War I (before pursuing Pancho Villa in Mexico, not while serving in France).
  • The episode "A Rover Runs Through It" portrays Peggy's mother with a completely different appearance, personality, and life to her previous appearances. The episode also claims that Peggy has not spoken with her mother in twenty years. The other "version" of the character appeared in the episode "I Remember Mono", a subplot in a Valentine's Day episode as Bobby's secret admirer, and the plot of the Thanksgiving episode revolved around the Hills trying to get to Peggy's parents' house for Thanksgiving dinner.
  • In "Untitled Blake McCormick Project," it is revealed that John Redcorn had another child, from a woman named Charlene, who was the same age as Joseph. Charlene was initially dating Bill but moves in with John Redcorn at the end of the episode. Neither she nor her and John Redcorn's child are never seen or mentioned again, as if this episode never happened.
  • A minor one, but social worker Anthony from the pilot transferred back to L.A. after being taken off the Hill case, but he reappears in "Junkie Business" to represent Leon, as if he never left town to begin with.
• Never My Fault: Peggy's ego renders her incapable of recognizing she made a mistake or taking responsibility for it:
  • "Death and Texas". A prisoner on death row claims that Peggy was his substitute teacher and wants her to teach him before he's put to death. It's obvious to everyone, except Peggy herself, that his man is clearly in his 40s and is only using her naive belief in her skills as a teacher. He reveals he was indeed lying and used her to smuggle cocaine into his cell. She tells Hank this, but doesn't admit her fault in believing the lies. Instead, she makes Hank out to be the guilty one and makes him help her. In fact, she insists that Hank apologize to her after he saves her.
  • "Goodbye Normal Jeans". When Bobby takes a home-ec class and must wash a cheerleader's uniform for homework, Peggy puts it in the washing machine and dumps bleach on it, then has Bobby push the on button. When the uniform ends up full of holes and Hank's (apparently only) pair of jeans are ruined, Peggy merely states "surgeons make mistakes" and "people die". In other words, she never apologizes.
• New Media Are Evil: Played with. Hank expresses disappointment when all of the violent video games Bobby plays don't affect him, wondering "What's the point?"
• The New Rock & Roll: Referenced in "Father of the Bribe", where the school mistakes a note Connie wrote ("I'm so bored I could kill myself!", which she wrote sarcastically because of how boring class was) for a suicide note, and Principal Moss notes that they want to avoid a double suicide "Dungeons & Dragons thing".
• Nice Guy: Many characters show a sense of decency at some point:
  • Hank is a normal, well-meaning family man.
  • Bobby is a really sweet, kind-hearted, and caring kid.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the episode "Pretty, Pretty Dresses," Hank's misguided attempts to keep Bill from killing himself only make the situation worse (he even yells at Bill for being a burden and abandons him). It's almost a checklist of what not to do when dealing with a suicidal person.
• Nightmare Sequence: "The Man Who Shot Cane Skretteburg" features one.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Bill's jerkass doctor in "Dia-Bill-ic Shock" is an obvious Expy of Dr. House.
  • Bill's cousin Gilbert is very much a modern-day Tennessee Williams.
  • Buck initially appears modeled on Lyndon Johnson (he even holds staff meetings on the toilet), though the resemblance is downplayed in later seasons.
• No Full Name Given: Boomhauer lacks a first name for most of the series, until it's revealed online and in the episode "Uh-Oh, Canada" to be Jeff.
• No Matter How Much I Beg: In "To Kill a Ladybird", Dale goes underneath the house after a raccoon, instructs Hank to put the grate back on, and tells him that no matter how much he begs, to not remove the grate until he's subdued the raccoon. Within only a few seconds, Dale is begging for Hank to remove the grate so he can get out. In an amusing subversion of this, the grate gets loose and the raccoon gets out, fights Ladybird, and runs away. Dale then emerges and says, "I give you one task, and you screw it up!"
• No Periods, Period: Subverted in the episode "Aisle 8A" when Connie is staying with the Hills while her parents are out of town:
  Hank: What's wrong, Connie?
  Connie: Um... (hands Hank a note)
  Hank: Lessee... (reading) "Mr. Hill, I just got my first period." (beat) BWAAHHH!
• No Sense of Personal Space: The B-plot of "Uncool Customer" revolves around a new restaurant that seems to have this as a gimmick. The food is terrific, but they have a rather casual view on customer seating and encourage diners to sit at the large, central table that has no assigned seats (with the justification that "Nobody's a stranger at the Arlen Barn!"). Hank, who places a very high value on his personal space, finds this to be quite a dilemma when he develops a craving for their meatloaf sandwiches.
• No Sympathy: Hank tends to have this as a character trait:
  • This is one of the major snags between Hank and Bobby; not that Hank is trying to be a Jerkass, it's just that the two have such differing personalities, Hank can never understand why he should be sympathetic to Bobby. When Bobby gets a job as a towel manager he's miserable since he's constantly yelled at and insulted by the coach and team, and left doing thankless, ugly gruntwork nobody appreciates, but Hank is just happy Bobby's part of a team and is assured he'll come out of this as a better person. When Bobby inevitably quits, Hank reacts with anger and confusion. In another episode where Bobby is stressed over being part of a Quizbowl team to the point of having a panic attack, Hank is baffled that he could be stressed over something so silly, complaining to his friends that Bobby's life is laughably easy.
  • While Hank isn't unsympathetic to Bill's depression, he tends to regard it as a nuisance rather than a serious issue. When Bill becomes suicidal, Hank waits for him to "snap out of it," and eventually blows up in anger at him.
  • Hank is on the receiving end of this in "Ms. Wakefield," when the titular old woman obsessively tries to die in his house. His friends and neighbors see him as the villain for trying to prevent Ms. Wakefield from breaking into his home for the purpose of dying there.
• No, You: In the pilot:
  Anthony: Mr. Hill, you are out of control!
  Hank: You're outta control, twiggy!
• Non-Residential Residence:
  • In "Megalo Dale", Dale discovers that Chuck Mangione has secretly moved into the local Mega Lo Mart.
  • In "Bill Gathers Moss", Principal Moss is shown living in his office at the school after his wife kicked him out.
• Non Standard Prescription: During marriage counselling, the councilor prescribes Hank and Peggy a motorcycle, because they had been planning on buying a pair of motorcycles and riding around the country together.
• Noodle Incident: In "Hank's Bad Hair Day", Hank's old barber, Jack, is seen gradually going insane throughout the beginning of the episode. After Hank tells Jack that he will no longer be going to his shop during a haircut, Jack walks outside, clotheslines a bicyclist and steals his bike. Bill visits Hank that night and says: "I heard about Jack, I'm really sorry." Hank asks how did he hear about Jack and Bill responds with: "It was on TV, didn't you see the high speed chase?"
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: Not allowed to hit puberty in Bobby's case. He does age a year or two over the course of the series, but he never changes, in spite of being older than Joseph and Connie, both of whom have episodes about them growing up.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Commented by Hank and Kahn in "Westie Side Story" when they both punish Bobby and Connie:
    Hank: You know, Kahn, we may deny our kids completely different desserts, but they both go to bed hungry, and that's what really matters.
  • In "The Perils of Polling", Hank criticizes Luanne for supporting George W. Bush for entirely shallow reasons (she thinks he's handsome and has a nice smile). But when Hank questions his support of Bush due to a weak handshake, Luanne calls him on the fact that he's being just as shallow.
• Not What I Signed on For:
  • Hank in "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Alamo", where the director decides to "reinterpret" history and make the Alamo's most famous figures look like incompetent, drunken, cowardly boobs, much to Hank's dismay.
  • Hank does this to Bobby at times, whenever Bobby expresses an interest in something mildly competitive, to which Hank responds too much and ruins the joy. In one episode, Bobby becomes interested in growing roses, which Hank is against until he learned that there are Rose competitions, at which point he completely muscles Bobby out of the picture and takes over.
  • In "Soldier of Misfortune", despite being a gun club, Mad Dog is the only one who's serious about holding Hank, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer hostage and torturing them for real:
    Earl: Twenty minutes ago, we were talking about ordering a pizza. What happened here?!
• Not What It Looks Like: Many instances, but "Dog Dale Afternoon" really stands out. When Hank, Bill and Boomhauer secretly steal Dale's lawnmower as a prank, Dale becomes increasingly paranoid, but forgets about it when he finds out he has an appointment to spray for silverfish at the community college. Bill sees Dale spraying the bell tower and thinks he has a gun and intends to shoot people (similar to Charles Wittman), and calls the police, then calls Hank and Peggy.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: According to the opening, anyway. Apparently all four regulars didn't have any work that day, allowing them to hang out in the alley most of the day drinking beer and shooting the breeze. This is lampshaded in one episode, when a reality TV show producer watches footage of Hank and the gang drinking beer in front of their fence, and subsequently exclaims "This is not INTERESTING!"
• Obfuscating Disability:
  • Bill is told by a doctor that he has diabetes and will eventually lose his legs to gangrene. In order to prepare, he starts making all his movements in a wheelchair and seems to have forgotten he could actually still use his legs until he was drunk in a bar and stood up, shocking and majorly pissing off the wheelchaired rugby players he had befriended.
  • Inverted in "Lucky's Wedding Suit", when Lucky gets talked out of suing Strickland Propane, and obfuscates not having a disability so his Amoral Attorney can't go through with suing them. When it was just about to fail, Hank gets Dale to "injure" Lucky in the office in the same stunt that caused the actual injury, forcing the lawyer to match Lucky's settlement from Costco.
• Obnoxious In-Laws:
  • Cotton always treats Peggy with contempt and never even addresses her by her name.
  • Minh's Laotian military general father is this to Kahn. Kahn's mother is this to Minh.
  • Inverted with Peggy's family, who get along better with Hank when the Hill family visit the ranch.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Anthony Page. In the pilot, he investigates Hank for child abuse (Bobby got a black eye in baseball) without interviewing the little league coach and gets removed from the case for it. In "Junkie Business", he lets a clearly incompetent druggie take over Strickland Propane because he went into rehab before he was officially fired, and therefore qualified for the Americans with Disabilities Act (and who is only fired when Hank quits and makes the company too small to be covered by the act).
• Obstructive Zealot: Dale, very often.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Hank's reaction when Dale tells him how much of an idiot Jimmy Witchard (who Bobby was working for) is and he realizes that Bobby was right about him being an abusive sociopath.
  • Hank's reaction in "Propane Boom" when he smells a propane leak just before Mega Lo Mart explodes as a result.
  • Trip Larsen's reaction when he was zapped while on the pig grinder and became sane just in time to see where the conveyor belt was taking him.
• On Three: In "Peggy Hill: The Decline and Fall", this occurs when Hank, Boomhauer, Bill, Dale, and the doctor try to get Peggy (who's lying on a gurney) into the house. She doesn't fit, so they have to tilt the gurney, on three. There's confusion as to what that means, so Hank sighs and says, "Just lift."
• Once an Episode: Though, not always in this order:
  Hank: Yep.
  Bill: Yep.
  Boomhauer: Mm-hmm.
  Dale: Yep.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Comes up often when Nancy's affair with John Redcorn is involved, as his act of "healing" her "headaches" is used as a euphemism for their relationship which only Dale is oblivious to.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • There were two separate characters named Donna that worked at Strickland Propane. The first Donna was a black woman around Hank's age who never had a speaking role. The second Donna was a Caucasian woman, also the same age as Hank, with a relatively minor role in some episodes. Apparently, Buck has had an affair with a Donna but it's unclear which one. It's possibly the former because she was fired for stealing office supplies.
  • Cotton's various war buddies include two "Brooklyn"s, three "Fatty"s (there was a fourth, but he died during the events that lead to Cotton losing his shins), and at least five "Stinky"s.
• Only Known by Their Nickname:
  • Most of Cotton's war buddies are only known by their nicknames, primarily because the only people who refer to them is Cotton (who likely gave them the nicknames) and Hank (who doesn't know a whole lot about them to begin with).
  • Elroy Kleinschmidt is known as "Lucky". He got his nickname from a lawsuit he filed against Costco for slipping on urine in the restroom.
• Only Sane Employee: Hank at Stickland Propane.
• Only Sane Man: Boomhauer, although Hank sees himself as this.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In "Death and Taxes", Hank realizes something's up with Peggy about halfway through the episode when she A) messes up a meal, and B) responds by actually calling her own intelligence into question.
• Out of Focus:
  • Connie after she breaks up with Bobby.
  • Luanne at various points in the series.
• Out-Gambitted: In "The Substitute Spanish Prisoner", Peggy, of all people, manages to successfully con a tricky bastard of a Con Man into successfully conning an obviously bad con so that he'd put the money in his room safe, which was actually not a room safe, but a safe Peggy had put there. If that plan had failed, Peggy was just going to steal his car.
• Outside/Inside Slur: Kahn's idol, Ted Wassonasong, calls him a banana, after which Kahn tries to get in touch with his Laotian culture.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: Amusingly, Sharona gives herself one in "Wings of the Dope", even though she's trying to one-up Luanne:
  Sharona: Well you are going to fail the hair dye test and flunk out of beauty school, and you'll have to work at the mall at the pretzel place, and we'll all be famous hairdressers and we'll be on the third floor of the mall working on the people's hair who eat pretzels at the pretzel place.
• Pac Man Fever:
  • Averted; Bobby is shown playing a Tomb Raider-style game in "Get Your Freak Off", plays a Dance Dance Revolution-style game in "Returning Japanese", and Hank gets addicted to a Grand Theft Auto clone (based on the 3D games of the series) in "Grand Theft Arlen". All feature visuals on par with the rest of the show.
  • Somewhat played straight in that the show suggests two guys in their early twenties are able to create an entire 3D open world sandbox game with multiplayer, sounds, voice acting, etc. within 24 hours of meeting Hank. Even a mod would take significantly more time than that.
  • When Bobby pretends to be playing a game (to throw his family off the trail) by mashing buttons randomly... on a GAME OVER screen. Justified, however; one can spot that the D-pad and the buttons were swapped.
• Papa Wolf: That boy may not be right but he’s HIS boy I tell you wHat! Hank is usually very good at keeping his temper, but anyone who threatens or abuses Bobby soon learns how dangerous an angry Texan can be. And let's not even consider Peggy, who simply goes overboard with this.
  • Dale (despite not being his true father, but Dale doesn't know that) is also very protective of Joseph.
• Parent-Preferred Suitor: Kahn would very much prefer his daughter Connie date fellow Laotian Chane Wassonasong instead of Bobby. Note that his reasons probably have absolutely nothing to do with race, his dislike of the Hills, or even Chane himself; and everything to do with Chane's father Ted, who Kahn utterly worships and will shamelessly brownnose at every available opportunity. Kahn probably figures that if he can get Chane and Connie together, it will get him closer to Ted. Funnily enough, his wife Minh reveals Kahn himself was not her own father's first choice of husband material for her, so this apparently is a running trend in their family.
• People's Republic of Tyranny: What Laos is (correctly) portrayed as. At one point, Kahn is almost tricked into joining La Résistance against the regime, but wisely decides to back out while he still can.
• Perfectly Cromulent Word:
  Dale: Objection: conjecture. Objecture!
  Hank: THAT IS NOT A WORD!
• Pervy Patdown: In "Lupe's Revenge", a female officer Hank unintentionally seduced pulls him over and doesn't let him go until she can frisk him. Which she uses an an opportunity to grab his butt.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Cotton, despite his cantankerous nature, does have a heart of gold, which he demonstrates on a couple of occasions:
    • Cotton takes the fall for Bobby when the latter accidentally set the church on fire in the church's bathroom by claiming that he was the one who did it.
    • Cotton doesn't have much respect for Peggy. However, when she's learning to walk again, for no apparent reason, Cotton helps rehabilitate Peggy in his own way. It seems like an almost Out-of-Character Moment until Hank explains to Peggy that Cotton had been in the same situation that she was in when the doctors thought that he would never walk again.
  • Bobby's clown professor is really hard on and sarcastic to Bobby, but when he notices that he actually hurt Bobby's feelings, he tries to encourage him (albeit in the wrong way). That said, he still remains the antagonist for the rest of his episode.
  • Dale always insults and mocks Bill openly, except for when he temporarily became a paraplegic from a diabetic shock. He then became most encouraging and supportive.
• Picked Last: In "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Clown", Hank and his friends find a kickball and decide to start playing. When their other family members and neighbors come to join the game, they split into teams. Dale is picked last, even after Connie, a 12-year old girl who wasn't the most athletic person to choose from. Team captain Bill is obviously disappointed at having Dale on his team.
• Pie Eyes: Almost all characters have pupils like this, with Bill and Kahn being the few exceptions.
• Ping Pong Naïveté:
  • Hank about certain issues, like the concept of being transgender. In one episode, he references "the bank teller who is between genders". However, in the episode where he's informed that Peggy's new friend is a crossdresser, he replies, "Now hold on there, that doesn't make any sense!"
  • Hank is frequently shown to be extremely careful with money, yet is for some reason under the impression that the sticker price is the best price possible on a car in "The Accidental Terrorist." In the same episode, he's shocked to see a salesman trick people ("I know you're a salesman, that's why this doesn't make any sense"). However, in "Death Buys a Timeshare", the episode where Cotton buys a timeshare, he is very savvy to various sales tricks.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything:
  • Bill, an Army barber and sergeant, seems to spend relatively little time on base.
  • Even though he is supposed to be a Texas Ranger, Boomhauer is never shown doing his job, what with all the standing around in the alley with the guys and his excessive canoodling.
• Plague of Good Fortune: The subplot of "The Peggy Horror Picture Show" involves Bobby and Joseph trying to prank various people around Arlen, only for them to run into good luck as a result.
• Planet of Steves: Luanne once unwittingly joined an all-woman Cult masquerading as a sorority where all the members were named Jane.
• Platonic Valentine: Bobby wanted to give Joseph a valentine saying, "Hey, hot stuff", with Bobby intending for a simple compliment due to his skateboarding skills, but Hank takes it as something else before he throws it in the trash.
• Playing Catch with the Old Man: "How To Fire a Rifle Without Really Trying" is entirely this trope. Three generations of the Hill men play out their relationships through shooting. ^note Hank giving a pre-teen like Bobby a small-caliber rifle to shoot is not unusual at all in even in today's Texas, let alone the 1990's, however surprising that may be to tropers from other parts of the world. The rifle they use is a sportsman's rifle and a lighter version of a hunting rifle. Such a gun would be viewed as a tool and sporting item, not a weapon, and this would be a common father-son sporting activity to bond over.
  • First, we see Bobby failing at game booths at a fair until he starts doing very well shooting ducks with a BB gun, which makes Hank proud of him.
  • Hank and Bobby bond while shooting, but then we flashback to Cotton being an absolute jerk while teaching Hank to shoot. Cotton's relationship with Hank is perfectly encapsulated in that moment.
  • Bobby and Hank are meant to go to a father-son funshoot tournament. Hank is troubled because he thinks he will damage his relationship with Bobby by letting him down in the tournament.
  • After working out his inadequacies, they go to the tournament. Hank indeed loses the contest by missing a critical shot at the end. Hank thinks he will hurt his improved bond with Bobby, but Bobby is thrilled to share something with his dad and he is very proud of their second-place trophy.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Hank to Luanne when she's coming out of the shower:
  Hank: Bwaaah! Put some pants on, Luanne!
  Luanne: (lifts her shirt up to reveal a pair of Daisy Dukes) I'm wearing shorts, Uncle Hank.
• Plot Allergy: Bobby becomes allergic to Ladybird in "Hank's Choice". Lampshaded by the doctor who makes the diagnosis, who tells Hank that "allergies come and go."
• Poke the Poodle: In "Be True to Your Fool", Bill wants to get stuck in jail because the prisoners treat him better than Dale, Hank, and Boomhauer do. Hank tries to get arrested so he can go apologize. His first two attempts are using a crosswalk when the "Don't Walk" sign is lit, and taking off his shirt in a store; both times he's in full view of policemen, both times they just kind of shrug and don't care. Then he just barely taps a patrol car's rear bumper and gets arrested immediately:
  Police officer: You scratched the bumper sticker from my daughter's school, jackass!
• Police Are Useless:
  • Every time the cops show up, it's to misunderstand things and blame the good guys for something, leaving it to Hank and his friends to solve the problem of the week. Police in Arlen seem bored, lazy, easy to annoy, and overly committed to doing things with instructions even when they turn out to be useless. On the other hand, "High Anxiety" has a Texas Ranger show up to investigate a murder case and he turned out to be very competent and attractive, in contrast to the fat local sheriff who was more focused on getting an arrest than actually finding out who the criminal was.
  • Averted in "Love Hurts, and So Does Art" when a policeman helps Hank get the picture of his colon taken down from the art museum, as the X-rays are considered defamatory to Texas beef, which is considered an offense.
• Political Overcorrectness: In "Tears of an Inflatable Clown", a diversity expert inflicts white guilt (and black guilt, and every other kind of guilt) on Bobby and his classmates, nearly derailing the school fair they were organizing. Thankfully Hank and the others keep the fair going and convince the kids not to beat themselves up over what other people did in the past.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Cotton, who is a war hero.
• Poor Communication Kills: In "Cops and Robert", Hank accidentally steals a man's wallet because he mistakenly thought the man had picked his pocket. When Hank realizes his error, he calls the man up to say that he wants to return the wallet and apologize...only he words it in such a way that it sounds like he's coming to assault and/or kill the guy. The man is waiting for Hank with a baseball bat, and at that point is beyond any further attempts at reasoning.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure:
  • Hank's knowledge of famous people, such as how "Weird Al" Yankovic "blew his brains out in The '80s because no one bought his music" (Yankovic is still alive and still making music parodies), or that Rudy from Rudy died of cancer shortly after the big game (he actually spent ten years pitching the movie to studios afterwards, though this isn't exactly common knowledge).
  • In "The Peggy Horror Picture Show", Peggy tells a Diana Ross impersonator: "If she wasn't dead, I would swear you were the real thing." Like the "Weird Al" example, Diana Ross is still alive, though unlike "Weird Al", she's not in the spotlight much.
• Potty Emergency: In "Beer and Loathing", Hank, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer go all the way into Mexico to get beer when there's none left in Texas. Unfortunately the beer they get is contaminated and causes diarrhea and vomiting, which hits them on the drive back.
  Dale: Step on it, Bill! I don't know which way it's comin' out, but it's comin' out!
• Prank Punishment: "The Wedding of Bobby Hill" has Bobby and Luanne get into a prank war. After Bobby replaces Luanne's birth control pills with children's vitamins, Hank and Peggy get involved. First, Luanne tells Bobby that she has to take those pills to avoid becoming pregnant (conveniently leaving out the part that she also has to have sex) and since she couldn't, Bobby now has to marry her. After the ceremony with Bill officiating, Luanne asks when they're going to reveal the prank. They then tell Luanne that they just discovered that Bill was an ordained minister so the marriage is now legal. They decide to let Bobby and Luanne sort things out before telling them that isn't true.
• The Prankster: All of ZZ Top, but especially Dusty (Hank's cousin) towards Hank in "Hank Gets Dusted". However, after the Jerkass Reality Show producer goes too far, Dusty tells him to back down by pointing out "You've seen what we do to Hank, and we like him!"
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Bobby saying, "That's my purse! I don't know you!" in "Bobby Goes Nuts".
• Precision F-Strike: Peggy manages to deliver this in "Death and Texas", without even using an actual f-bomb:
  "I forgot to add the meat! How could I be so freaking stupid?!"
• Pretty in Mink:
  • In the episode "Snow Job," Luanne is shown standing outside in her normal skimpy outfit and a white fur muff, which probably doesn't do much considering it's cold enough that it has snowed in Texas.
  • In "The Hank's Giving Episode," Luanne wears a white fur jacket.
• Prisoner's Last Meal: Referenced in "Reborn to be Wild" where Bill, Dale, Boomhauer, and Khan are inspired by stories of death row prisoners' last meals and plan a dinner party featuring their own choices of what they would want for their last meal. When the dinner party does happen, everyone, except Bill, bails out for fear that the dinner would indeed be their last meal.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • In one episode, a theory Dale had was actually right. Of course, it's probably pretty rare to find an example of that.
  • Dale's conspiracy paranoia (which he gave up for flag-waving patriotism after discovering that the U.S. government could be right about who killed John F. Kennedy) plays into another episode where he helps Hank get his driver's license corrected by threatening a DMV attendant with going to his superiors, which he correctly lists in order of ascending authority:
    "I am your worst nightmare! I have a three-line phone and absolutely nothing at all to do with my time!"
  • Early in "Death of a Propane Salesman", the following exchange happens:
    Dale: (smugly) That's what they want you to think.
    Arson Investigator: (Matter-of-factly) Sir, we are 'they'.
    Dale jumps back in shock and fear, then runs away.
• Public Service Announcement: Hank gives one during the end credits of "The Perils of Polling" (which aired before the 2000 presidential election):
  Hank: Hello. I'm Hank Hill from TV's King of the Hill.
  Bobby: And I'm Bobby Hill from TV's King of the Hill.
  (...)
  Hank: We're here to remind you to register to vote. So go ahead, fill out your registration card, and you'll be eligible to win these valuable prizes: Freedom, civic pride, and a brand-new president.
  • Boomhauer gave one during the end credits of "Keeping Up With Our Joneses":
  Boomhauer: Y'all listen up, man. This is Boomhauer. This is your lungs on air. This is your lungs on smoke. See the difference, man? It'll stunt your growth all over. End up in a dang old hospital bed like Morton Downey Jr., Robert Downey Jr., or even worse, man. Y'all talk about oral gratification. All that dang, it's gonna give you a low sperm count, man. Give you ear hair, yo. It just ain't no good. (walks off with his latest date)
  • Parodied during the end credits of "Traffic Jam":
  Hank: Hello, I'm Hank Hill.
  Roger: And I'm Roger Sack. Tonight's episode dealt with racial stereotypes, especially the myth that white people do not have butts. As you can see from the man standin' next to me, that's simply not true.
  Hank: Thank you, Roger.
  Roger: It's a damn fine butt.
  Hank: (uncomfortable) Oh, yeah, thank you.
  Roger: That butt is the bomb!
  Hank: Yeah, I think it's time for The X-Files... Now!... GO!
  • In "Serves Me Right for Giving George S. Patton the Bathroom Key":
  Hank: Hello, I'm Hank Hill. Clogged toilets are a serious issue that affects everyone. I'd like to take a moment to give you a few pointers on proper toilet usage so what happened in this episode won't happen to you. First off, items like cotton swabs, chewing gum, cigarettes, and, uh, lady things should not be flushed. The basic rule is, never flush anything down a toilet that doesn't come directly, uh, from you. For tougher clogs, purchase a snake at a local hardware store, or consult your local yellow pages for a certified plumber in your area. If it's a father and son company, request the father. And finally, I want you to know that no pipes were actually damaged in the making of this episode. Thank you.
• Punishment Box: Bobby is put into one of these at a military school. It most assuredly does not break him:
  I've slept on a mattress. I've slept on cement. I'm a mattress guy.

Q-S

• Quote-to-Quote Combat: "Hilloween" parodies this when this conversation happens between Hank and an overzealous priest:
  Judy Harper: "The complacency of fools will destroy them." Proverbs.
  Hank: "Get out of my house!" Exodus.
  • Another example in "Nancy Boys" regarding Nancy's polygamy:
  Peggy: There's an expression I once heard, it goes something like "Two's company, three's a crowd."
  Nancy: Well, I've heard another expression: "The heart wants what it wants." — Woody Allen.
  Peggy: Oh, Nancy, wait! He married his daughter!
• Radish Cure: In the episode "Keeping Up with Our Joneses," Hank makes Bobby smoke a whole carton of cigarettes as punishment for catching him smoking. The plan backfired spectacularly; not only does Bobby end up hooked, but Hank and Peggy fell victim to their own past cigarette habits as well.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Luanne leases a house with others in an attempt to move out of Hank's house. These unbelievably immature assholes don't lift a finger to help, make up a series of one lame excuse after another to avoid paying the rent, and are mind-blowingly rude to everyone. Luanne finally gets even with them by paying all the utility bills and then closing the accounts, figuring that if they want food or water so badly they can pay for it themselves. Then one of the roommates meets Cotton and one of his wartime buddies, Topsy, and calls them Nazis. This particular roommate becomes an Asshole Victim when Cotton and Topsy actually have an awesome moment when they wade in and beat him up.
• Railroad Tracks of Doom: In "Chasing Bobby," Hank's truck stalls on a railroad track. Hank barely makes it out, but the truck is "killed."
• "Rashomon"-Style: How Hank and company burned down the firehouse. Bill, Hank, Boomhauer, and Dale tell their versions of what went wrong. They also have their own interpretations of the other three:
  • Dale's version has himself as being tall and muscular with long-flowing hair (and Hank was dressed as a Drill Sergeant Nasty).
  • Bill's version has himself being a good hundred pounds fatter and completely bald.
  • Boomhauer's version has himself speaking normally, while everyone else speaks with his Verbal Tic.
  • Hank's version pictures the four of them as children, including himself, who all grow to adults once the fire alarm goes off and they get ready for duty.
• Real Award, Fictional Character: Cotton is a heavily decorated World War II vet, with his decorations are slowly revealed throughout his appearances. In "Returning Japanese", his uniform includes the Medal of Honor and American Campaign Medal. In "Cotton Comes Marching Home", his Silver Star is shown in a display case in the Arlen VFW. In Season 12, he shown wearing the third class, Commandeur, of the French Legion of Honour, the highest decoration in France and only awarded to a handful of Americans during the war.
• Real Fake Wedding: A prank war erupts between Bobby (who's twelve) and Luanne (his older cousin). After he replaces her birth control pills with candy, she convinces him that women have to take a birth control pill every day or they get pregnant. Hank and Peggy actually get in on the joke and put on a fake Shotgun Wedding, to Bobby's horror. Then, to teach Luanne a lesson too, they claim that the celebrant, Bill, is actually an ordained minister and their marriage is valid. Also, you supposedly can't get divorced in Texas for at least a year.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: The point of the hunting trip in "The Order of the Straight Arrow".
• Real Men Eat Meat: Hank fervently believes this. On "Hank's Unmentionable Problem," it's implied that Hank is so ignorant (or abhorrent) of vegetables that he orders macaroni and cheese to balance out the meat he ordered at a cafeteria.
• Real Men Hate Sugar: Comically subverted. Dale's "macho" gun club is fond of desserts, with Dale regularly baking macaroons as part of (or possibly his entire) campaign for presidency. His opposition in one election, Mad Dog, is basically a walking macho stereotype and prepared a wide variety of cakes to one-up Dale:
  You're going down, Gribble. And unlike your macaroons, you're staying down!
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • In "The Incredible Hank", Hank shoots down Dale's theory that he's a clone of a warrior from the future, using four bullet points. Dale gets progressively more meek with each point Hank makes.
  • Dale gives one to Bill (and the rest of the Harmonaholics) near the end of "It Ain't Over Till the Fat Neighbor Sings".
  • Kahn receives an absolutely brutal one from his father-in-law in "Pour Some Sugar on Kahn," but instead of getting upset, he concedes it.
• Refuge in Audacity: A lot of the schemes dreamed up by many characters fall into this territory, like Peggy's scam against an Internet con-artist who made her blow her life savings on a fake doctorate.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Seems to be the viewpoint of the both the characters and the writers, if the unfortunate fate of the snake in "SerPUNt" is any indication.
• Repurposed Pop Song: After Big Mountain Fudgecake collapses, John Redcorn repurposes their songs for children and becomes "the Native American Raffi". For example, he rewrites a song about suicide into being about personal hygiene:
  "Wake up, just want to … wash myself, clean my wrists, scrub my brains out …"
• Restaurant-Owning Episode: In the "Hanky Panky" and "High Anxiety" episodes, Peggy takes over running Sugarfoot's Barbecue and adds some "innovations" to the restaurant that prove unpopular with its customers and the owner, Buck Strickland.
• Retcon: This series has had a number of 'em:
  • Peggy's background was rewritten so that she spent most of her early life in Montana, rather than spending her high school years in Arlen. This complicates the episodes where Hank and Peggy are shown as High-School Sweethearts. Not only that but Peggy's mother went from being older-looking version of Peggy, who was a bit critical of her, into a downright mean and verbally abusive bitch who never forgave Peggy for abandoning the family ranch, even after saving it. It also contradicts the episode "I Remember Mono" where she sends Bobby a gift and is all-but stated to be on good terms with Peggy.
  • Luanne's father. In the first episode, Luanne, then aged 18, is dropped off at the Hill residence after her mother stabs her father during a drunken scuffle. In later episodes, it is revealed that he is working on an oil rig just to stay safely away from Luanne's psycho mother, refusing to come back until Hank faxes him her death certificate and even visiting his and Peggy's family for Thanksgiving. All this is chucked out the window when he finally makes an appearance. He's introduced as a manipulative drunken bastard and Hank and Peggy decide to cover up the truth about him to his grown daughter. He claims that Luanne was five when he last saw her. He's a felon out of prison, rather than having been working on an oil rig (he used the "oil rig" story to keep Luanne from knowing that he is a felon). And he looks nothing like his sister Peggy. In an earlier episode, he was described as strongly resembling Peggy but with smaller feet.
  • Hank and his old Arlen High School football teammates challenged the team that they lost against in the state championship to a rematch that they eventually win. This one is made more glaring by the fact that Hank had come to terms with losing the game in an earlier episode.
  • Cotton's second starring episode deals with him going senile. Hank notices that Cotton has gone from being his crazy old self to just plain crazy and Cotton is portrayed as such. The only reason Cotton avoids being institutionalized is by having Didi be his caretaker. However, in all subsequent episodes, Cotton's senility is either toned down or abandoned entirely and Didi eventually divorces him (and is implied to take Good Hank with her, since we don't hear about Good Hank ever again following the divorce).
  • Dale's understanding of John Redcorn's sexuality. In "My Own Private Rodeo", the episode where Dale and Nancy renew their vows, Nancy asks Dale if he is truly OK with his dad being gay. Dale replies, "Why would have a problem with it? John Redcorn's gay and I've been friends with him for years". A later episode, "Untitled Blake McCormick Project", has him send John Redcorn after Bill's new girlfriend Charlene, to break them up, and even calls him a "chick magnet".
  • In his initial appearances, Dale's dad, Bug, appears to be an ordinary guy, looking a lot like his son. In his focus episode "My Own Private Rodeo," Bug is revealed to be a gay rodeo star with no physical, let alone personality resemblance to Dale.
  • Cotton's wartime service, though some of it is heavily implied to be lies and senility like claiming to have been in Münich on April 30 and Okinawa on May 2.
  • It was originally established that Dale's alias, Rusty Shackleford, came from the birth certificate of a child that died in 1953. However, in "Peggy Goes to Pots", it is revealed that the alias actually came from a third grade classmate whom Dale thought had died.^note In reality, he simply moved away. He came back to Arlen to get Dale to sign some paperwork so he could move on with his life.
  • Cotton's funeral. In "Cotton's Plot", he earns a plot in the Texas State Cemetery in recognition of his service and he is later stated to have been buried there. However, in "Serves Me Right for Giving General George S. Patton the Bathroom Key", it's revealed he was cremated with a final request to be flushed down a toilet once used by General Patton. It is also revealed Topsy and the rest of Cotton's platoon were flushed down the same toilet, yet Cotton stated that he scattered Topsy's ashes over a prostitute.
• Reused Character Design: Ms. Stovall is basically a palette swap of one of the first ladies of propane, both seen in "What Happens at the National Propane Gas Convention in Memphis Stays at the National Propane Gas Convention in Memphis."
• The Reveal: The Grand Finale reveals, in a quick shot during the final couple of minutes, what Boomhauer's job is: he's a Texas Ranger.
• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: In "The Perils of Polling", Hank repeatedly plays the tape of George W. Bush shaking a random guy's hand:
  Hank: Look, look: Surprise, then disappointment. Surprise, disappointment. Surprise, disappointment. (etc.)
• Right on Queue: In "Hank Fixes Everything", Lucky, Luanne, and Bobby waiting line for several days to get the first tickets to see Brownsville Station (of "Smokin in the Boy's Room" fame). When the box office opens, not a single person has gotten in line behind them. Then Lucky starts waiting at the door:
  Lucky: "I want to be sure they don't run out of my shirt size, Women's Medium."
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Dale is a comedic, mostly harmless version. The one-shot character Mad Dog provides a straighter example.
• "Risky Business" Dance: Spoofed. Bobby slides in his underwear just as Luanne is watching the scene on TV. Turns out he hasn't seen the movie.
• Road Trip Plot: "Three Days of the Kahn-Do," "Escape from Party Island," "Shins of the Father," "A Beer Can Named Desire," "The Bluegrass Is Always Greener," "Queasy Rider," "Living on Reds, Propane and Vitamin C," and "The Honeymooners."
• Romantic Ride Sharing: In "Queasy Rider", Hank and Peggy get a motorcycle to try and fix their strained marriage. At first, Hank drives with Peggy holding on. When Peggy wants to switch, he makes excuses. Eventually, he reveals he doesn't want to ride in the back because "it just doesn't work that way with biker couples" and the back seat is called the "bitch seat", and they have a fight. By the end, they make up and ride home together with Peggy driving (because Hank's glasses broke). He starts out holding onto her shoulders, but as he grows more comfortable, moves his hands to her waist and holds her closer.
• Rousing Speech: Bobby gives one at the end of "Old Glory", which is more meant to be an apology for taking the credit for Peggy's work on a paper, but ends up being more of a Patriotic Fervor speech:
  Bobby: What has this school taught us about the flag? I say the Pledge of Allegiance every day, but I don't know what it means. I hear "The Star-Spangled Banner" before every football game, but by "Oh say can you see," I'm looking for the guy with the peanuts. But today, I watched a grown man cry while his flag burned. And when I saw how much it meant to him, I realized how much it should have meant to me. So tomorrow, if you're sitting near me in detention, and one of your spitballs comes anywhere near that flag, you better watch your back. Tom Landry rules! (audience cheers)
• Rule of Animation Conservation: The show's very decidedly low-key nature has often begged the question "Why is it even animated to begin with?" While the show rarely has outlandishly "cartoony" situations, some plots do require situations that would either be too dangerous for live actors or involve children and would be inappropriate for them to participate in. There's also comic timing that'd be awkward in live-action, and a large variety of locations and settings that would seriously stretch the budget of a live-action show.
• Rule of Drama: Lampshaded in one episode:
  "Caroline" (Peggy's drag queen friend): HURRY!
  Peggy: Why?
  "Caroline": It's simply more dramatic!
• Rule of Three: In "What Makes Bobby Run":
  Hank: Look, Peggy, Bobby's got Mr. Crackers! Bobby's got Mr. Crackers! Bobby's got Mr. Crackers!
• The Runaway: Bobby is briefly one in "Death of a Propane Salesman" due to overhearing (and misinterpreting) Bill and Dale competing over who would get him after Hank dies.
• Running Gag:
  • Every time Chuck Mangione starts to play a tune on his flugelhorn, he ends up shifting into "Feels So Good" after a few bars. Discussed in "Death of a Propane Salesman", where a therapist suggests it is a coping mechanism after surviving the explosion.
  • Hank usually introducing himself as the assistant manager of Strickland Propane, even if it's irrelevant to the discussion.
  • In earlier seasons, a running gag was for the gang to fail to understand Boomhauer for some reason other than his characteristic incoherence (background noise, speaking legalese, etc).
  • Nancy's years of cheating on Dale with John Redcorn (resulting in Joseph's birth) and Dale continuing to be completely clueless.
• Russian Reversal: In "The Bluegrass is Always Greener", Bobby wrote a joke for Yakov Smirnoff:
  "In America, you put "In God We Trust" on your money. In Russia, we have no money."
• Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times:
  • Hank's seen The Great Santini dozens of times.
  • Bobby claims to know a ton about golfing due to having seen Happy Gilmore fifty times.
• The Scapegoat: Exploited. In "Bobby On Track", Hank makes Bobby complete the 5K run at the school track as punishment for not completing the Fun Run charity race. The track and field coach approaches and is eager to have Bobby on his team, puzzling Hank. It turns out that the coach is using Bobby's lack of ability to motivate the rest of the team. The coach has Bobby substitute for players that misbehave or otherwise fail to achieve to embarrass them, so they try harder to avoid the humiliation of being replaced by Bobby. At first it works, to Hank's dismay, with Bobby seeing himself as a motivator. But when the team gets to the final it works a little too well when a player hyper-extended because he saw the coach talking to Bobby and was afraid he was going to get replaced. The coach has no good athletes to replace him in the relay, until Hank suggests using Bobby. The coach is unhappy because this was a situation where they can't afford to lose an event. The coach tries to motivate Bobby by telling him to imagine himself as a different person, Bobby 2.0; Hank tells Bobby to forget that nonsense, and just try. Bobby understands, and joins the race. At first he loses the lead, but the other runners trip, allowing Bobby to gain the lead. When the other runners catch up to Bobby, he still runs as fast as he can and wins the race.
  • In "A Firefighting We Will Go", Hank and friends join the volunteer fire department, but the firehouse ends up burning down while they're on call. Dale unintentionally started the fire by plugging in a neon Alamo Beer sign with faulty wiring just before they left, but Hank ends up shifting the blame to Chet Elderson, the sign's original owner and a fellow firefighter who had died earlier in the episode. The investigator is fully aware that Elderson loved plugging in the sign in spite of the bad wiring (and he can't understand that Boomhauer is telling the truth and chewing out his friends for scapegoating a dead man), so he accepts Hank's explanation and declines to punish anyone, but still kicks them off the force.
• Scenery Censor:
  • Crops up often in "Sug Night." In Hank's erotic dreams, Nancy's breasts are covered with either a burger or a plate and she's holding a bag of buns over her rear. Not a case of Hand-or-Object Underwear since this is not deliberate covering on anyone's part. Later in the same episode, Hank and Peggy are covered by various objects as part of their grilling, and two nudists are always behind waist-high bushes. One of them has Godiva Hair, the other is perpetually covering herself by holding a volleyball.
  • Near the beginning of "Naked Ambition," Bobby accidentally catches Luanne naked in the shower. When shown from Bobby's side, his head blocks the viewers from seeing anything.
• Scout-Out: The Order of the Straight Arrow. Much to Hank's dismay, the more scout-like survival lessons have been gutted in favor of "safer" activities like "camp-ins" with toy knives and indoor campfires with streamers for flames.
  • Averted in "Flush With Power", when Hank said he made it to Eagle rank in the Scouts.
• Screams Like a Little Girl:
  • Inverted; Hank has a very manly scream, which sounds so ridiculous that it became a Running Gag. "D-WOOOAAAGH!"
  • Played semi-straight with Bobby:
    Hank: I have a surprise for you, but you have to promise not to squeal like a girl. I've decided to let you grow your roses. (cue Bobby squealing like a girl)
  • Hank says as much about Dale: "I don't hear any girlish screams so either Dale's not here yet or he's dead."
  • As if he wasn't enough of a Butt-Monkey already, we also find out Bill has a very high-pitched, unmanly scream.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!:
  • Cotton, although he was probably always like that regardless of his age.
  • Tilly's friends in "Escape From Party Island" are this, the opposite of Nice to the Waiter, and The Load.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Famous!:
  • "Peggy's Fan Fair" featured Randy Travis (played by Randy Travis himself) plagiarizing lyrics to a song that Peggy wrote. Much to her aggravation when she found out about it. At the end of the episode, he claimed that he saved Hank from drowning when in reality, it was the other way around. Hank would've punched him but Peggy stops him, having come to the conclusion that feuding with Randy Travis isn't worth it.
  • "New Cowboy on the Block" had a former Dallas Cowboys player moves into Hank's street. Despite being a horrid neighbor such as teaching Bobby foul sportsmanship, having rowdy parties late in the night, and using pieces of Hank's fence for a bonfire; he uses the fact he used to play for the Cowboys to avoid legal trouble with the police. Even the police tries to pin the blame on Hank when the latter tried to report to the former.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In "Bobby Rae", Bobby brings a bunch of rioting students to Hank to stop them from burning City Hall. He proceeds to "prepare" theme by telling them what's going to happen involving firefighters, chaining themselves to trees, police, and all the stuff they're willing (not really) to go through. This demoralizes them all to leave, especially when Hank starts giving them tips to go read at the library to be better prepared.
• Second Place Is for Losers: Subverted when Hank enters a shooting competition with Bobby, who is glad they did that well in an actual competition.
• Second Prize: In "Dances with Dogs", Bobby gets second in the dog dancing tournament, which he and Peggy are both proud of. Hank ultimately doesn't place, much to his disappointment.
• Sent Off to Work for Relatives:
  • In "Glen Peggy Glen Ross", Connie is desperate to get a summer internship with Peggy because the alternative is spending the summer on a "family fishing boat in Laos" because her father Kahn thinks it will look good on her college applications.
  • At the end of a later episode, Connie's bad girl cousin from LA, Tid Pao (voiced by Lucy Liu) is punished by being sent to work on her Uncle's ranch, who gives her a stern warning upon arrival:
    "I'm last Uncle you got. You screw up here, we send you back with Grandma in Laos!"
• Series Continuity Error: In "Hilloween", Bobby mentions how Hank once made him eat chopped liver. In "Love Hurts and So Does Art", when Bobby gets gout from eating too much chopped liver, Hank mentions they never feed Bobby foods like that.
• Serious Business:
  • Propane and propane accessories. Not in the "be careful around it, it's flammable" way, but in a "insult or disrespect it and I will kick your ass" way. Hank takes this to absurd levels, due to his job (and how seriously he takes it). For example, he calls butane a "bastard gas", he has a beeper specifically for "propane emergencies", and when Peggy and Bobby eat a burger grilled on a charcoal grill, he drags them into the kitchen and makes them pray to God for forgiveness.
  • In "Love Hurts and So Does Art", when an artist embarrasses Hank by putting the latter's colonoscopy that shows his colon clogged by beef up in a museum, the artist is arrested for "defaming beef", which is apparently serious business in Texas. This is probably a reference to a famous case involving Oprah Winfrey.
  • In another episode, Hank describes medium rare as the perfect way to grill a steak. When Bobby asks what they should do if someone wants their steak well done, Hank responds:
    "We ask them politely yet firmly to leave."
  • Football at any level is serious business. This is very much Truth in Television in Texas.
  • In the final episode, Bobby joins a junior college meat grading team and has a lot of fun until he sees the darker side of competition and rivalry. Best emphasized when, at dinner, his teammates see an opposing team and say they should blind them by throwing red pepper flakes in their eyes. Bobby laughs, but when the rest of the team shoots a glare his way, he asks "Wait, you guys are serious?!"
  • Having a masculine haircut. After Hank's barber Jack bleaches Hank's hair (due to dementia), Hank is told by Buck that he can't be paid for the day and has to take the afternoon off to get his hair dyed back to "a boy's color."
  • Hair is always serious business to Bill; despite all his quirks, he's one hell of a barber. In "Hank's Bad Hair Day", Bill offers to cut Hank's hair after his regular barber is forced to retire due to going senile, but Hank declines. Later on Bill tells Hank that the refusal feels like a massive insult ("It's like you're callin me an IDIOT!!") and actively dismisses Peggy's remarks on the matter — which, considering his massive stalker-crush on her, is pretty shocking.
  • Lawn care for Hank. The day Bobby was born Hank bought a whetstone, to be presented to him when he becomes a teenager. The whetstone is for sharpening mower blades, which is what Bobby is to do every Saturday until he has shown himself to be responsible enough to mow the lawn. In other words, a common chore assigned to teenagers is treated as a rite of passage and a privilege that must be earned. Another episode has Hank see Kahn using mowing the lawn as a punishment for Connie and being completely bewildered by it.
  • Beer is worshipped by the guys. Beer is so sacred that it even supersedes the lawn in the Serious Business hierarchy, with Hank saying he wouldn't pour out a beer to extinguish a grass fire. Spitting out beer is to be avoided at all costs, so much so that when someone actually does it, it's for a serious reason. Even that which contains beer, the cooler, is treated with respect. When Cotton blindly drives his Cadillac Car down the alley and nearly kills Bill, Hank's immediate concern is whether or not the cooler was dented.
  • That's Pong, kiddo.
  • Boris is taking this class for the ninth time, and he is almost a clown.
  • Boggle.
• Sexy Flaw: Discussed when Bobby starts growing roses competitively. When Hank notices a flaw on one of his roses, Bobby explains that sometimes a flaw can improve something's attractiveness, comparing the flaw to Kathy Ireland's mole. Hank doesn't see it that way and clips off the flaw. After the rose is damaged during a contest, Hank tries to defend the damage this way. The judges don't see it that way either.
• Sexy Priest:
  • Monsignor Martinez from Los Dias y Las Noches de Monsignor Martinez.
  • Bill sees Reverend Stroup as this. The (perceived) forbidden nature of their relationship is shown to be a necessary part of his interest in her (though she claims in "It Ain't Over 'Til the Fat Neighbor Sings" that she isn't technically bound by chastity.)
• Shoddy Shindig: In "Strangeness on a Train", Peggy plans a Themed Party on a train: a mystery theater train ride with 70's disco theme. Hank is not sure it's such a great idea, especially the disco part, but agrees to make Peggy happy. The mystery is solved in two minutes because ditzy Luanne blabs and Dale screams it for everyone to hear. The actors leave just as the train departs. Then the train caterer announces to Peggy that the refrigeration has gone out and spoiled their dinner as well as melted Peggy's ice-cream birthday cake. They only have cheese-and-cracker snacks. Luanne tries to entertain others with her hand puppets. They've just entered a dry county so they can't serve any alcohol. Everybody is grouching in the dining car because they are bored.
• Shoe Size Angst: A few episodes show Peggy being ashamed of her unusually large feet, which are nearing size 20.
• Shooting Gallery: In "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Alamo", Peggy puts a Flat Stanley cutout into one of these for a series of photos to "teach kids lessons", it then gets shot to pieces.
  • Hank and Bobby practice at one before their father/son shooting competition.
  • Dale's gun club has one (even though they're all crummy shots).
• Shout-Out:
  • Luanne Platter's name is one to the Lu Ann Platter, a combination dish served at a Texas-based restaurant chain called Luby's. Which has a Bland-Name Product Shout-Out in the form of Luly's.
  • Bill's obsessive longing for his ex-wife Lenore can't possibly be anything else except this for Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven.
  • Boomhauer's "disco" outfit in the episode "Strangeness on a Train" makes him look a lot like Robert Garcia.
  • In "Dream Weaver", Dale tries to kill Hank with a forklift. Hank even utters the line from Mystery Science Theater 3000, "He tried to kill me with a forklift."
  • In one episode, Bobby is reading an issue of Unvincible. Aside from the one letter difference, Mark doesn't look any different.
  • Bobby has a doll of Bart Simpson in his room.
  • In "Dog Dale Afternoon", Dale, having been finally driven around the bend by a prank played by his friends, takes refuge at the top of a local clock tower and is mistaken for a sniper.
  • In "The Passion of Dauterive", Bill begins contemplating the meaning of life after the roof collapses on his bed. Boomhauer responds by talking about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
  • Hank's flashback to his childhood Halloween fun has obvious elements of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, such as the music and Boomhauer's ghost costume.
  • Stuart Dooley is an Expy of Butt-Head, while Hank is pretty much Tom Anderson if he were younger, had a son, and sold propane and propane accessories.
  • In "Little Horrors of Shop", Peggy tries to get the students to vote for her as Substitute Teacher of the Year; three votes go to "Lara Croft, whoever the heck that is".
  • "A Fire Fighting We Will Go", where Hank, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer are under investigation for burning down the firehouse, features an amount of slapstick that is excessive by the show's standards, and the show ends with a riff from "Three Blind Mice".
  • In "Yard, She Blows," the neighborhood where Hank goes to buy lawn gnomes was basically traced from photos of Solvang, California.
  • In "Death and Texas", Peggy receives a letter from "Wesley Martin Archer", a reference to director Wes Archer.
  • In "Peggy Makes the Big Leagues", David Kalaiki Alii has a poster in his room of Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager.
  • In "Joust Like a Woman", Dale cites the Prime Directive when telling Hank that he can't help the latter win the joust against King Phillip Motzinger.
  • In "Pigmalion," some background partygoers at the Halloween costume party are recognizably dressed as Batman and the more obscure Hawkman.
  • One of Bobby's classmates from the newer episodes is wearing an Incredibles shirt.
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: In "Six Characters in Search of a House," Peggy's boss Chris Sizemore recites part of a monologue from Pericles, Prince of Tyre, one of Shakespeare's more obscure plays.
  • In "Full Metal Dust Jacket," Dale and Cotton use the Complete Works of Shakespeare as a target for shooting practice.
    Dale: Congratulations Colonel, those hollow point bullets penetrated all the way to the so-called "joyous comedies." As You Like It? I like it plenty!
• Shower of Angst: Dale in "The Trouble with Gribbles", after Nancy leaves him.
• Shower Shy: This happens to Bobby in "The Incredible Hank."
• Shown Their Work:
  • A lot of Texas references are completely accurate, from Big Tex at the state fair, to a Laotian minority population, football (whether it's the NFL or high school) and beef being a big deal, to a Shout-Out to Luly's cafeteria.
  • Murray Hoggarth was the long-time president (okay, not commissioner) of the Texas Propane Gas Association. Hoggarth's business, Action Propane, is the inspiration for Strickland Propane; it's still owned by Hoggarth's wife Wanda.
  • A number of Dale's conspiracy theories (such as his rant about the gold fringe on a U.S. flag indicating an Admiralty Court, and that he's not subject to its jurisdiction) are based on actual, recognized conspiracies. And yes, they are just as nonsensical and untrue in real life.
• Show Within a Show: Los Dias y Las Noches de Monsignor Martinez. Now with its own page.
• Silent Credits: For the most part, the credits to "Fun With Jane and Jane" are like this; it's just a group of emus standing around like Hank, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer do, with no music playing during it.
• Single-Issue Psychology: When he is seeing a psychologist to fix his aim, Hank tries to interpret his problem this way and connects it to Cotton yelling at him as a boy, but the actual psychologist cuts him off and has him do visualization techniques.
• Skewed Priorities: See that Long List of things that are considered Serious Business? Any one of them can lead a character to making stupid, painful decisions. A particular example was when Hank and the Booster Club attempt to keep the aforementioned football star David Kalaiki-Alii out of getting a proper education, and come down on Peggy for actually trying to make sure he studied, just because doing so might limit his chances to play football. Hank and the waffle board are willing to ruin David Kalaiki-Alii's future by letting him coast through high school, despite Peggy failing him for not doing his work. Hank (eventually) changes his stance when he realizes that Peggy made the right decision.
  Hank: Peggy, a hundred years from now, nobody'll know what a hexagon is, but if we go to state? That winds up on the water tower.
  • In "The Final Shinsult," Cotton almost runs over Bill but comes at a complete stop when the car bumps into the cooler's lid, closing it. Hank then points out Cotton could have destroyed the cooler.
• Skintone Sclerae: A few characters, most notably Boomhauer and Cotton.
• Skyward Scream:
  • "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!!!!!"
  • In "Of Mice and Little Green Men", Nancy wonders why God is punishing her. Then she shouts to the sky, "WHY, SUG?!"
  • In "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret Hill," Peggy gives one of these when she dreams that her lack of knowledge about the Catholic faith has damned her students to Hell forever. "I JUST WANTED A FULL-TIME JOB!"
• Slice of Life: A relatively rare Western-animated "adult" example.
• Sliding Scale of Continuity: Mostly Level 3, with earlier seasons leaning further towards Level 4 and later seasons leaning back to Level 2. Major changes to the status quo in the first five seasons include Buckley's death, Luanne quitting beauty school, Didi giving birth to G.H., Luanne moving out of the Hill house, Nancy breaking up with John Redcorn and Joseph going through puberty.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: The show is very mundane and can head in either direction. However, this show does still have a lot of heart and feel-good moments.
• Sliding Scale of Realistic vs. Fantastic: As close to "Mundane" as animation could be.
• Slow Clap: Occurs in "Plastic White Female".
• Small Name, Big Ego: Peggy, to the point where she could have been the Trope Namer had The Mary Tyler Moore Show never existed. And let's not forget Cotton, though part of this also seems to be dementia brought on by his old age - while he did have to be a legitimate badass to survive the injuries he took during World War II and kill fitty men, he also seems to believe he fought on both the Western and Pacific fronts within days of each other and essentially won the war on his own.
• Smarter Than You Look: Lucky has often shown that he's pretty savvy in certain areas, even if he gives off the vibe that he's just … not.
• Smoking Hot Sex:
  • Subverted in "Nancy's Boys"; there's a close-up of Dale smoking and saying, "Oh yeah." The camera cuts back to reveal that he and Nancy still have their clothes on and haven't begun yet.
  • Parodied in another episode, where Dale claims the last time he did this, the bed caught fire.
• Smug Snake: Peggy, in Flanderization the later episodes.
• Snipe Hunt: "Order of the Straight Arrow".
• Soapbox Sadie: Averted with Bobby. He's often just as obnoxious as a straight example, but thankfully never portrayed as being in the right.
• Soap Punishment: In "That's What She Said", Hank washes out the foul mouth of a new employee with soap. Said employee manages to make one last filthy joke before Oh, Crap! sets in.
• Soccer-Hating Americans: Hank disapproves of Bobby's switch from football to soccer, and eventually convinces him to switch back, because real Americans play football.
  Hank: Bobby, I didn't think I'd ever need to tell you this, but I would be a bad parent if I didn't: Soccer was invented by European ladies to keep them busy while their husbands did the cooking.
  [Beat]
  Bobby: Why do you have to hate what you don't understand?
  Hank: [offended] I don't hate you, Bobby!
  Bobby: I meant soccer.
  Hank: Oh. Oh yeah, I hate soccer, yes.
• Spin-Offspring: There was talk of the show being a Beavis and Butt-Head spin-off with Hank being their neighbor, Tom Anderson's son but they couldn't get the copyrights to use the characters.
• Spin the Bottle: Played in "Plastic White Female".
• Spiritual Antithesis: To Beavis and Butt-Head. Whereas Beavis and Butt-Head was a cynical, aggressive work of satire, King of the Hill is a lot more idealistic and restrained in its' social commentary.
• Spiritual Successor: The episode "The Exterminator" could pretty much act as a sequel to Mike Judge's Office Space, given that it also takes place in an oppressive white collar office, skewers the corporate rules and social situations of working in an office, and deals with firing people in the last act.
• Spit Take:
  • Hank plays it straight in "Square Peg" when he spits beer when he hears Peggy yelling "VAGINA!"
  • Two examples in one when Bill, Dale, and Boomhauer do a synchronized spit-take upon discovering that the beer they've been drinking has been tainted:
    Hank: We had bananas and beer, we came home. What else could have made us sick? … Oh my God, the BEER!
    (Bill, Dale, and Boomhauer spit out their beer.)
    Hank: And Peggy knew!
    (Bill does another spit take, apparently having taken another drink of beer he just learned was tainted.)
  • Subverted in "Hilloween" when Peggy tells Hank that Bobby has gone off to Junie Harper's anti-Halloween party, he comes about as close as possible to a spit take before swallowing hard:
    Hank: I came very close to spitting out beer!
    Peggy: I knew you'd be upset.
• Springtime for Hitler: Dale applies for a job at a Hooter's knockoff in order to sue for sexual harassment, only he's hired. Also See Advice Backfire.
• Stab the Scorpion: At the end of "To Kill a Ladybird", Dale was telling Bobby to shoot Ladybird because he thought she was rabid while Hank begged him not to. Bobby fires and Hank with relief thought he missed but he actually was aiming at (and killed) a raccoon that was about to bite Hank from behind.
• Standardized Sitcom Housing: Completely averted. Every house on the show is designed like a real house, which would be a pain to shoot on a live action three camera sitcom.
• Stealth Pun:
  • In "Returning Japanese" Hank calls his half brother Junichiro a crazy bastard. Considering his parents aren't married, it adds a new layer to Hank's term of endearment.
  • Hank Rutherford Hill. HRH. His Royal Highness. KING of the Hill.
• Sting: From "The Perils of Polling":
  Hank: Oh my GOD … his handshake … (three note dramatic sting) it was limp!
• The Stinger:
  • Nearly every episode from the second season on featured a sound clip from earlier in the episode over the "Deedle Dee Productions" logo. It's usually a line that is made funnier due to there being no context, though in some episodes ("The Arrowhead", for example) it's a continuation of what was happening before the credits.
  • The show itself, considering after the series finale, there were still four unaired episodes.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: Inverted in "The Company Man", where Hank is dealing with a client from Boston named Mr. Holloway, who expects everything in Texas to be cowboys and country, meaning Hank has to act stereotypical in order to draw Holloway's attention. Eventually, Hank gets sick of it and tells Holloway off, saying (in effect) "If you want dumbass cowboy antics go with Thatherton, but if you want quality propane stick with Strickland." The guy ends up going with Thatherton.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: In "Life in the Fast Lane, Bobby's Saga", Hank takes Bobby to the Arlen Speedway and shows him the NASCAR pace car behind a velvet rope. Bobby is more impressed by the rope, saying it's "soft and pretty." A few days later when NASCAR arrives; Hank, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer meet Dale Earnhardt by the pace car. The starstruck men start talking about racing but Earnhardt just looks at the rope and says it's "soft and pretty."
• Straw Misogynist: Cotton, most definitely. Coach Kleethammer, with his constant claims that girls can't play sports.
• Strawman Political: A number of the one-off smug Northerners who make appearances in Arlen, usually voiced by David Herman. Like Hank's new boss who fired the truck drivers, or the disability advocate.
• Stripping the Scarecrow: In "Yankee Hankee," Hank gets left nearly naked in the courtyard of the Alamo. He ends up having to take clothes off a Davy Crockett mannequin, before wondering why he bothered putting on the raccoon hat.
• "Stuck at the Airport" Plot: "Happy Hank's Giving" has this happening to the Hills, the Gribbles and the Souphaniousinphones, along with Bill, Boomhauer and John Redcorn over Thanksgiving (which involves the destruction of Hank's propane-smoked turkey when a bomb-sniffing dog barks at his luggage). After everyone misses their flights, the families and friends eventually settle for eating dinner at the airport with whatever they can scrape together.
• Suddenly Speaking: Debbie Grund, who previously appeared on the show but was not given any lines, has some dialog in "Hanky Panky".
• Sunglasses at Night: Dale who almost always wears them 24/7.
• Suicide as Comedy: Bill in "Pretty Pretty Dresses." He even tries to slam his own head in a drawer, kill himself using an electric oven, and is kept from shooting himself by Dale threatening him with a gun.
• Suicide Watch: In the episode "Pretty, Pretty Dresses", Bill becomes suicidal as the approaching Christmas season reminds him of his ex-wife Lenore. This prompts Hank and his other friends to take turns watching over him to make sure he doesn't kill himself, including one memorable scene of Dale threatening him at gun point.
• Superficial Suggestion Box: A variation. When Peggy takes over Sugarfoot's BBQ, she immediately calls a meeting to discuss her upcoming changes to the restaurant, justifying them with slips from a locked suggestion box she obviously wrote herself. The cook points out that the suggestion box might work better if it actually had a slot in it.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: "How to Fire a Rifle Without Really Trying". It ends with Hank missing the final shot in the father/son shooting competition. At first it looks like a Downer Ending because Hank let down Bobby (who was a better shot) but Bobby's ecstatic that they won second place and wants to compete again next year.
  Bobby: (runs up holding certificate) We did it, Dad! Second place in a real Father-Son tournament. Can I put it on my wall? We were so good out there. We should always be shooting. This is the best day ever! You're the best dad ever. I'm the best son ever.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The end of "Cops and Roberts" has Hank finally get Barry Rollins to calm down so he can explain that he mistakenly took the guy's wallet and the whole thing was just a simple misunderstanding, which he apologizes for. Of course, that doesn't mean Hank is cool with he and his friends being chased down and attacked with a baseball bat:
  Officer Brown: Sir, will you be pressing charges?
  Hank: Well, hell yeah!
  • In "Life: A Loser's Manual", Dale builds the guard tower he always wanted (despite repeated denial for permission from the proper authorities), he makes sure to do so without actually violating any codes by building it just slightly under-spec and doesn't build a foundation for it. The authority Kahn calls on him pauses at the last part and asks Dale if he's a complete idiot for building such a large structure without a foundation to hold it in place...and the moment Dale leans against it the entire thin tips over and crushes his shed.
  • In "Peggy Makes the Big Leagues" David 'The Flyin Hawaiian' Kalaiki-ali'i is the quintessential Dumb Jock whose talent for earning his school trophies make teachers overlook his academic failures and let him pass without actually learning anything. When they try to get compel Peggy to let him pass, the booster club and his mom set up his room to make him look like he's mentally challenged. It works, but when David comes home and finds out what they did and have been doing the entire time he's been playing ball, he's rightfully insulted that everybody especially his own mother thinks he's stupid. David resolves to study and earn good grades.
  • In "Keeping Up with Our Joneses", Hank finds out Bobby and Joseph have been smoking and he attempts the Radish Cure on Bobby; making him smoke an entire carton of cigarettes. Bobby vomits before he can finish the last pack and gains a crippling addiction to nicotine as a result. Hank and Peggy also end up relapsing into their old smoking habits because of this. When Hank tells a support group what he did? They react with complete and utter horror and throw him out.
  • In "You Gotta Believe (In Moderation)", after learning that the middle-school Baseball Team has been dissolved due to a lack of funds, Hank and his softball team decide to play against "The Ace of Diamonds and his Jewels," a Harlem Globetrotters-style comedy baseball team consisting of former Major-League Baseball players; because they always donate the proceeds of the game to a charity of the host's choice. Hank somehow gets the idea in his head that Ace would appreciate it if he and his team actually played to win (exploiting the fact that Ace's team only has three players). Ace realizes what Hank is doing and responds in kind. The result is that Ace wins in an extremely un-entertaining 83-1 blowout. He also keeps the proceeds from the ticket sales as opposed to donating them because the boring game drove off the crowds, and Ace is extremely dependent on selling merchandise to make money.
  • Various episodes have shown the effects of what an unhealthy diet can do to someone. In "Hank’s Unmentionable Problem" Hank becomes constipated due to his low-fiber, high meat diet and almost needs surgery to fix it. Tied with this is "Love Hurts and So Does Art", where Bobby develops gout from eating a high amount of processed deli meats. In "Dia-Bill-Ic Shock", Bill's love of junk food causes him to develop adult onset diabetes.
  • In Just Another Manic Kahn-Day, when they finally get Kahn's medication for him, everyone waits intently until he tells them that the meds aren't an instant fix to his moodswings. Sure enough, he goes through another manic episode before he stabilizes.
  • In Dale Be Not Proud, Dale is rightfully upset that Hank gave away his kidney to sick child because he was under the impression that NHRA John Force was going to need it; it doesn't help that the doctors basically guilt trip Hank into signing on it. Sure Dale's reaction to it is more "unique" to most, but given that it's his organ, no one can really blame him. It helps that Dale meets the ill kid and graciously makes a "trade" with him for the kidney.
• Surrounded by Idiots: This is what Hank believes.
  • Kahn feels he is this as well, (usually) including Hank in the above.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: From "Hank's Got the Willies":
  Willie Nelson: Hey I know you; you're the kid who rakes my yard.
  Bobby: No, I'm the kid who hit you in the head.
  Willie: With a rake?
  Bobby: No, with a golf club.
  Willie: You've been raking my yard with a golf club? I want my quarter back!

T-V

• The Tag: Occasionally done, usually with Hank giving the viewer a humorous disclaimer.
• Take a Third Option:
  • In "Bobby Slam", Connie and Bobby have to wrestle each other for the last spot on the team, but each has too much to lose. So they take Refuge in Audacity and stage a full-on WWF style chair throwing extravaganza so that they'll both be kicked off, but be hailed as heroes by the other students.
  • In "Won't You Pimai Neighbor?", when Bobby is thought to be the Lama, he uses the third option of "Pick anything you see on this rug", and he picks Connie, whose reflection he could see in the mirror.
  • In "Movin' On Up", Luanne moves out of the Hills' den, but ends up with a bunch of lazy jerkass roommates who won't pay their share of the bills and call her a Nazi whenever she tries to exert any authority. Given the choice between putting up with them or admitting defeat and moving back with the Hills, she closes the house's accounts, meaning the roommates can't sponge off of her for power, heat, water or phone lines anymore, while living in the yard with a hidden stash of food at the bottom of the pool.
  • In "Lupe's Revenge", Peggy's poor grasp of the Spanish language results in her accidentally kidnapping a young girl during a field trip to Mexico. Hank knows they can prove her innocence, but is worried about crushing Peggy's feelings by outright telling her that her Spanish sucks. The solution he finds: have Peggy testify herself, in Spanish; the judge realizes that she didn't know what she was doing and declares her innocent, while Peggy remains convinced that her impassioned plea won him over.
• Take That!: Dale does not think Julia Roberts is attractive. In "The Trouble with Gribbles":
  Dale: A horse is a horse, of course of course.
• Tan Lines: Hank, Dale, and Bill in hot weather.
• Teen Hater: In the episode "The Man Who Shot Cane Skretteburg", Hank, Bill, Dale, and Boomhauer are outmatched by a group of cruel teenage boys in a game of paintball, the boys previously having ambushed Bobby and Joseph. The boys capture and "execute" Hank and the guys, leading him to have nightmares of being shot. During his rematch with the boys, Hank and the guys begin taking observational notes on teenagers. In the aftermath, Hank concludes an agreement with Bill's previous statement that "teenagers are cruel".
• Temporary Blindness: Hank, after witnessing his mother and her boyfriend having sex, temporarily goes blind in "The Unbearable Blindness of Laying".
• Tempting Fate: In "Bobby Goes Nuts," when the guys hear about Bobby kicking Hank in the groin:
  Bill: I wish I had a son to kick me in the nuts.
  (Dale obliges him)
  Dale: (sips his beer) Be Careful What You Wish For.
• That Came Out Wrong: In their addiction support group, Bobby mentions that he's been an addict since his dad "let" him smoke a whole carton, to horrified reactions. Hank tries to correct him, in that he "made" him smoke them, neglecting to mention it was a punishment for smoking at all, to even more horrified reactions.
• That's What I Call "X"!: "Traffic Jam" has: "BAM! Now THAT'S what I call general haberdashery!"
• That's What She Said: The plot to the title of the same name; a new employee at Strickland Propane, voiced by Ben Stiller, frequently replies to people with this catchphrase. At first, everyone thinks he's hilarious, but soon they begin to feel uncomfortable because every time they open their mouth, they fear he will turn whatever they say into a Double Entendre.
  Hank: Don't you wish we could still say words like "meat", and "tool", and "unit", without someone turning it into something foul? Those are our words. I say let's take 'em back!
  • At the end of the episode, after they finally get rid of him, they do indeed take their words back and talk about a grill deliberately using as many of them as humanly possible since they couldn't before with him around.
    Hank: Okay, team, gather round. I'm going to tell you about the new improvements on the Vogner 2800 Series. The first thing is that it'll smoke your meat, and it's got a nice big rack for your buns.
    Enrique: Or... wieners!
    Hank: Or wieners. Why not?
• That Was Objectionable: When Dale has a restraining order put on Hank after he accidentally saws off Dale's finger:
  Dale: Objection: conjecture. Objecture!
  Hank: THAT IS NOT A WORD!
• The Theme Park Version: In "The Company Man", Hank has to do business with a pushy Bostonian who seems to think Texas is/should be this. In order to keep his business, Hank tries to conform to the man's beliefs, making himself an Extreme Doormat (as Peggy points out). After a heart-to-heart with a stripper, Hank finally tells the man off, who goes to Thatherton Fuels to get what he wants. However, in the deleted scene from the DVD version, his wife, who was kept by Peggy's company, is the actual owner of the business and decides to go with Strickland Propane.
  • In "Harlottown", the new city manager Vance wants to use Arlen's history of being one of the most notorious brothels in Texas as a way to bring in tourist dollars. However, he goes a bit too far when he does things like reveal his plan to convert an old soldier-and-sailors home into a museum of prostitution (complete with an erotic bakery and a gentleman's reading room) and have Arlen become the home of the Texas Adult Video Awards. Hank and Peggy realize that instead of learning from its past like Peggy wanted, Arlen is becoming a Disneyland for pornography. They, along with a former adult film star, appeal to the townspeople attending the awards show and ask if this is what they want their kids to learn.
  Hank: We have a choice to make. Which version of Arlen do we want? The uncut, x-rated one with shocking footage? Or the PG one that's grown-up but still appropriate for kids?
• Themed Party: In "Strangeness on a Train", Peggy plans her birthday party on a train: a murder mystery theatre train ride combined with 70's disco theme. Hank is not sure it's such a great idea, especially the disco part, but agrees with it to make Peggy happy. Their friends show up in their disco outfits, as well as most of the actors (but those have also costumes for their roles in the play). The party goes terribly wrong in so many directions. For instance, the train toilet ends up clogged with an Andy Warhol wig and Elton John sunglasses.
• Thinly-Veiled Dub Country Change: The Québécois dub did this to this one of all series, changing the setting from Texas to small-town Quebec (Ste-Irène)... despite the fact that the setting is almost always referenced as being warm, the times snow actually does pop up (which often tends to be a light coating at most), it's treated as a major crisis in universe, and the plots and setting being very steeped in Texan culture (the characters are all obsessed with football and barbecues).
• 13th Birthday Milestone: In the episode "I Don't Want to Wait for Our Lives to Be Over, I Want to Know Right Now, Will It Be... Sorry. Do Do Doo Do Do, Do Do Doo Do Do, Do Do Doo Do Do, Doo..." (a title parodying the Paula Cole song "I Don't Want to Wait", famously known as the theme song for Dawson's Creek), Bobby's 13th birthday is coming up and he expresses annoyance over everyone still treating him like a little kid after Joseph has returned from a vacation and grown six inches over the summer.
• Through a Face Full of Fur: In "Death of a Propane Salesman (Part 2)", at the funeral, Dale opens a casket and looks into it as a part of uncovering one of his conspiracy theories involving Mega Lo Mart and insurance fraud. The sight of the corpse causes him to turn pale and he throws up.
• Throwing Out the Script: Played with:
  Bobby: (rehearsing) I rehearsed a speech on the way over here, but I'm throwing it out, because nothing says I'm sorry like "I'm sorry."
• Title, Please!: The episode titles don't appear onscreen.
• Toilet Humor:
  • The pilot episode where Hank is mistaken for a child abuser (after Bobby gets a black eye during a baseball game and rumors spread of Hank losing his temper with a Mega Lo Mart clerk) had Hank listening to a "Funny Phone Jerks" audio recording, which consists of farting noises (he mistook it for some music Bobby was listening to).
  • "Hank's Unmentionable Problem", which is about Hank's severe case of constipation. The final scene where Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" plays after Hank finally poops is a highlight.
  • "The Company Man" has Buck Strickland giving Hank an assignment while he's on the toilet.
  • In one episode, Peggy says, "Hope in one hand, poop in the other, and see which fills up first."
  • Dale, in "Beer and Loathing", after drinking some tainted beer: "I don't know which way it's coming out, but it's coming out!"
  • "Flush With Power" is all about toilets that don't flush efficiently, with the town council members having to use the john in the last act.
  • "Kidney Boy and Hamster Girl: A Love Story" has a subplot with a port-a-potty being put in the neighborhood, which culminates in it collapsing and revealing to the rest of the guys Hank doing his business.
  • In "That's What She Said", the new Strickland employee makes several fart jokes along with his sexual innuendos. Peggy also mentions how her students always ask her what the Spanish word for "poop" is and Bobby attempts to get revenge on a bully by placing fake poop on his desk chair.
  • "Business is Picking Up" is all about Bobby getting a job cleaning pet poop from people's yards and Hank's and Peggy's discomfort with it.
  • In "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Clown", Bobby resorts to entertaining the class talent show with fart jokes and a whoopee cushion after his jester act failed.
  • "I Never Promised You an Organic Garden" had a B-plot of Dale trying to gather bat feces to use as an organic fertilizer.
• Token Houseguest: The show centers on Hank, his wife Peggy, and his son Bobby. They are later joined by Luanne, Peggy's niece, who has left her alcoholic mother. Luanne subsequently becomes one of the show's main characters and a frequent annoyance to Hank.
• Token Minority: In an interesting variation, Hank is invited to join a country club because Ted Wassonasong is concerned that its all-Asian membership looks bad.
• Tongue on the Flagpole: In "Snow Job", when it starts snowing, Peggy says, "Nobody lick any flagpoles!"
• Tonight, Someone Dies:
  • The Mega Lo Mart explosion and the shooting cliffhangers both were advertised as this. Fox actually spoofed this with the Mega Lo Mart explosion cliffhanger, which left four characters — Hank, Luanne, Buckley, and Chuck Mangione — unaccounted for, one of whom viewers were told would die. Over the summer, Fox ran a series of commercials in which their execs threatened to kill off Hank unless he agreed to let the show be retooled and moved to Los Angeles (where it would be renamed "King of the Hollywood Hills"). Eventually, Hank got ahold of some compromising photos of Fox executives and they agreed to let him stay in Texas without killing him off. In the end, Buckley was the one who died.
  • Hank's co-worker and Buck Strickland's mistress Debbie dies. She accidentally kills herself with a shotgun while attempting to hide in a dumpster, lying in wait to murder Buck.
• Took A Level In Jerk Ass: Everyone in the cast does something genuinely selfish or rude throughout the series:
  • Depending on the Writer, Kahn. He's a downright jerkass during the earlier seasons, yet sometimes in the later seasons, he seems to genuinely want to help or be friends with everyone else, just is too stubborn (though an episode from season 13 reveals that Kahn's jerkass ways stem from the side effects of the medication he has to take for his bipolar disorder). Minh is a bit better at it than he is, though.
  • Dale invokes this in "The Trouble with Gribbles", where he is attempting to sue the Manitoba Tabacco Company on the premise that they ruined his wife's skin. When they try to bug him to expose him, Dale counter-bluffs them by acting as an emotionally abusive husband to Nancy. It doesn't end well, and nearly costs him his marriage.
• Town with a Dark Secret: In "Harlottown", it's revealed that Arlen started off as the most notorious brothel in all of Texas. It started off as a watering hole on the Chisholm Trail. Some enterprising women invested in a tent and a cot and Harlottown was born. It used to be called Harlen because people were in so much of a rush to come, they were too tired to say "Harlottown". Famous visitors included President Garfield, the Texas Rangers, the 1884 Notre Dame football team and Mark Twain. Eventually, the prostitutes pooled all their money together and they turned Harlottown into a prosperous town and some of them even started their own legitimate business while others became involved in politics.
  • Hank, being a closed-minded conservative, thinks it's horrific to learn that Arlen started off as a whore house. However, he later came to respect the town's "founding mothers" since they became honest legitimate people once they found the chance to quit.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Bobby sure loves his fruit pies.
  • Hank is quite fond of burgers and steak.
  • Played with whenever it comes to grilling; no matter what kind of food it is, if it's made on a charcoal grill, Hank will not only refuse to eat it, but lecture whoever is within the vicinity about how it's essentially toxic waste. Of course, Hank doesn't like any method of cooking food that doesn't use propane (he felt extremely betrayed upon finding an electric stove in Buck's house), but he seems to hold a special hatred of charcoal. An entire episode centred around Peggy and Bobby trying charcoal-grilled food for the first time and finding it so delicious they're addicted to it, sneak out of the house every night to secretly grill with charcoal, and have to hide evidence of their activities from Hank.
• True Companions: Hank, Dale, Bill and Boomhauer for sure. No matter how much of a creepy loser Bill is or how much of an untrustworthy idiot Dale is the four will always be best friends. Even when Hank, Dale and Bill stole Boomhauer's beloved car, accidentally destroyed it after a joyride and lied about it for 20 years, Boomhauer told Bobby he'd only be mad at them for two weeks, maybe three. Hank was then reduced to one week after Bobby told Boomhauer that Hank always quotes him.
• Twofer Token Minority:
  • When Dale is being opposed for Gun Club President, he laments that his opponent has "already got the black vote — Earl — and the gay vote — Earl."
  • Buck is told that he isn't allowed to fire a drug-addicted employee because he is in rehab, which makes his addiction legally classified as a disability, and it's illegal for a business of his size to fire an employee based on their race, sexual orientation, disability, weight, etc. Buck then utters this line in his frustration:
    Buck: Hell, I'd kill for a big, fat, black, blind, deaf, gay guy if he would just get some damn work done around here!
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife:
  • Cotton is a short, stocky, grumpy old misogynist whose face looks like a roadmap, and yet he's married to the much younger, shapely, buxomly Didi.
  • Lucky the middle-aged redneck wed the stunning young Luanne.
  • Dale isn't particularly ugly, but he's still a scrawny, balding weirdo married to the shapely blonde Nancy.
  • Kahn is more average-looking than ugly (and he's sometimes drawn with an impressive physique) but Minh is said to be attractive by several characters.
  • Ted Wasonasong is pencil-thin and has an unflattering combover, while his wife is rather pretty. Maybe it's the money...
• Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000: In "Grand Theft Arlen", Hank gets addicted to a Grand Theft Auto clone programmed by local college students and featuring a badass version of himself as the hero. Somewhat subverted in that the game lets the player be a "good guy", which is how Hank plays it, rather than just being a straight-up criminal.
• Un-Cancelled: After spending its last few seasons being constantly victimized by sports preemptions and schedule changes, Season 11 was finally announced as being the last, with Luanne's wedding being the series finale. It was unexpectedly picked up for two additional seasons, however, when Fox decided to revamp its animation lineup in the Fall of 2007, but was later cancelled for good at the end of Season 13, leaving four unaired episodes to debut in syndication.
• Underdogs Never Lose:
  • Averted in "How to Fire a Rifle Without Really Trying". The episode concerns Hank overcoming his problems with firing a rifle. However, even when he manages to get it together during the shooting tournament, he still loses on the final shot. However, it's still a happy ending because Bobby's thrilled that he and Hank got second place and wants to compete again next year.
  • Averted in "Hank's Back Story", where Hank loses the mower racing competition. He's content that he placed high enough to compete again next year, and that Dale, his rival in the race, also lost.
• Under the Mistletoe: Brought up during one episode:
  Hank: Now I don't want to name names, but due to last year's unfortunate "kissing incident", Mistletoe is banned from this year's Christmas party. (glares at Bill)
  Bill: Peppermint Schnapps makes me sloppy.
• The Unfavorite:
  • Hank was this to Cotton even before G.H. was born.
  • To a lesser extent, Hank glaringly prefers Ladybird to Bobby, though he does love Bobby. For what it's worth, Hank also makes it no secret he views his niece Luanne as a burden.
• The Unfair Sex: This is subverted concerning Dale and Nancy's relationship. Her cheating on him is played for laughs rather than to make Dale look like a bad husband. In fact, he's usually portrayed pretty sympathetically as far as this issue goes. It gets brought up in the episode "Night and Deity" where Nancy thinks Dale is flirty with a female exterminator and Nancy is afraid that he will cheat. Dale mentions that he never had any problems with Nancy spending so much time with John Redcorn.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • In "Care-Takin' Care of Business," Hank and company help restore the football field behind Smitty; the senile caretaker of the field, who is an absolute mess and shouldn't be doing any more fieldwork. Smitty never once realizes they helped, but he eventually becomes irate when he starts Stealing the Credit from them and proclaiming that he's the best there is (he is shit).
  • Hank uses the American way to get his temporary obnoxious Canadian neighbor out of jail by sacrificing his "kegerator" to pay the defense attorney to get him out. What does the guy do after reuniting with his family whom acted more civil and apologized to the Hills? Boast that Canada is better than America. Despite this, Hank feels he did the right thing.
  • The entire HCJC meat team and their manager is this. After being hijacked by their rivals (for having thrown pepper flakes in their eyes the previous night), Bobby is the only one to show up and does every event flawlessly without their help. Once they finally arrive to the event, they all kick Bobby aside without thanking him for holding things down singlehandedly. And they still would have lost the competition, if hadn't Bobby hadn't decided to step in when they ignore a fatal flaw on the meaty carcass. Bobby still gets no credit for this last minute save.
• Unishment: In "An Officer and a Gentle Boy", Bobby is able to withstand all of Cotton's punishments, including sitting on a block of ice, eating the mixed-up leftovers of cafeteria food, and having to sit in a tiny cell for days.
• The Unintelligible: Boomhauer. This is lampshaded several times. For example:
  • In the pilot, after the child services investigator asks Dale (who tells him Hank does not abuse Bobby), he talks to Boomhauer, who complains about Ladybird barking, so the social services investigator slowly backs away.
  • Played with in an episode where Boomhauer has a flashback: Hank, Dale, and Bill all talk like him, while he talks normally.
  • Played with again in an episode where Boomhauer falls asleep in an inner tube and floats all the way to Houston; the locals don't understand him and he's committed to a mental hospital.
  • Hank will often say "Boomhauer, I can't understand a word you just said", attributing the lack of intelligibility to interference, like loud music or the echoes of a cave.
  • Subverted on the episode "The Bluegrass is Always Greener", where Boomhauer's singing voice is actually coherent. And sounds just like Vince Gill.
  • When Boomhauer makes an impassioned (and barely intelligible) plea to Dale to surrender to the police before they use force against him, Dale responds "Boomhauer, if I ever heard anyone reading from a script, that was it."
  • In "Propane Boom", the episode where the Mega Lo Mart explodes, Boomhauer gets on the phone to call 911 and the operator tells him she can't understand what he's saying, urging him to speak more slowly, which he does and it's just as unintelligible as whenever he speaks normally.
• Unreliable Narrator: Certain elements of Cotton's story regarding his experiences in World War II, as well as his medical history, are rather questionable.
• The Unreveal: Boomhauer's first name, Jeff, isn't revealed until near the end of the series, but was mentioned on various websites years prior.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: By Season 2, everybody takes turns being this. It's hard to feel bad for Hank when his problems are often caused by his own naivete or even flat-out ignorance, or Peggy when her problems are caused by her ego, or the rest of the cast, who apparently juggle Idiot Balls or make JerkAss decisions.
• Van in Black: Invoked and subverted in "Dale to the Chief". Dale expects an FBI agent to arrive in a black Chevy Suburban. Instead, the agent arrives in a green Ford Taurus. Dale still assumed it's a Suburban:
  Dale: Whoa. A black Suburban. The new models are much smaller and greener than last year's.
• Vanity License Plate:
  • Boomhauer has one, "MSSALLY", for his 1965 Mustang, after the Wilson Pickett song.
  • Kahn has "KINGKAHN" on his van which is either a pun on King Kong or a sign of his snobby narcissism.
• Varying Competency Alibi: In "Lupe's Revenge", Peggy accidentally kidnaps a Mexican girl while taking her class on a field trip to Mexico and gets arrested. At the trial, Hank convinces the court to let her testify in Spanish, knowing she'd never pass up a chance to demonstrate her "fluency". The jury concludes that her grasp on the language is so bad, the incident had to have been a misunderstanding, and she's declared not guilty.
• Verbal Business Card: Hank will often introduce himself as "Hank Hill, Strickland Propane." or "Hank Hill, Assistant Manager [of] Strickland Propane." even when he's not at work or the people he's being introduced to have nothing to do with the propane industry.
• Verbal Tic:
  • I'll tell you what, that dang ol' Boomhauer, man.
  • Joe Jack saying "Honey".
  • Nancy saying "Sug":
    "Oh, sugar! I'm out of sugar, sug."
• Very Special Episode:
  • "Keeping Up With Our Joneses," complete with a funny PSA at the end with Boomhauer holding up a clean white air filter for his car engine next to a greasy black one and compares them to "your lungs on air" and "your lungs on smoke," respectively. Even with his garbled speech, he manages to make the dangers clear: "Dang ol' ear hair, mang, low sperm count."
  • "Death of a Propane Salesman" deals with the effects the Mega Lo Mart explosion had on Hank and Luanne. Hank is afraid of propane and in denial of the problem, while Luanne's grief over Buckley's death and the loss of her hair has manifested itself in the form of anger at the general injustice of the world.
  • "Return to La Grunta," about sexual harassment and assault. Bonus points because Hank, a male, goes through it too.
  • "That's What She Said" deals with the stigma against men reporting sexual harassment, although the harassment in that episode comes from incessant unwelcome sexual jokes.
  • "My Own Private Rodeo" was nominated for a Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Award for its portrayal of Dale coming to terms with his dad being gay. It aired in 2001 - two years before Lawrence v. Texas made it legal to be gay in the state and across the country.
  • "Aisle 8A" and "I Don't Want to Wait..." deal with concerns about puberty. The former deals with Connie's first period and Bobby struggling with being a late bloomer and being treated like a child, while the latter deals with Joseph lamenting about being an early bloomer.
• Vice City: Arlen used to be a giant, city-sized brothel (Harlot Town -> Harloton -> Arlen).
  • It got dangerously close to becoming one again thanks to a councilman wanting to cash in on Arlen's controversial history. Peggy was originally on board with the original plan of opening a heritage museum but the councilman revamped it into a "Museum of Prostitution" featuring such amenities like an erotic bakery and a "gentlemen's reading room". Then Arlen got the attention of the adult film industry and made it their new venue to hold their annual adult video award show. This resulted in Hank and Peggy protesting these changes to avoid their beloved community becoming smutty.
  "Arlen, Come up and see us sometime."
• Viewer Gender Confusion: invoked Gale, Debbie's roommate. When he is charged Debbie's murder and his arrest is shown on TV, Luanne believes that he is a woman because of his name and appearance. Even after Hank corrects her, she still thinks that Gale's a woman.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: For such a down-to-earth slice of life cartoon, KOTH has had some nasty villains.
  • Trip Larson from "Pigmalion" is a controlling, emotionally abusive, and completely psychotic pork mogul who forces Luanne to conform to his standards of perfection before trying to kill her when she refuses.
  • The sorority from "Fun With Jane and Jane" is a disturbingly realistic depiction of a cult: they force their members to dress exactly the same and change their names to Jane, deprive their members of proper food or bathroom breaks, forcibly sever their group members' ties with family and the outside world, strictly punish those who even think of breaking their rules, and eventually send off their newly-brainwashed members into a life of slavery on a jam-and-jelly farm. The lead Jane also displays an eerie knack for manipulation, convincing Luanne and Peggy to join by appealing to the former's desire for friendship and the latter's ego within seconds of meeting them.
  • Mad Dog is a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic who, unlike Dale, is totally humorless, scarily competent, and unashamedly evil to the point where he comes within a hair's breadth of successfully murdering Dale and his friends.
• Vocal Evolution: Dale and Bill both were initially given lower voices, Dale's voice actor has even admitted that his performance in the earlier seasons was based on Jack Nicholson. Both characters' voices got higher in subsequent seasons as the voice actors gave them more range. Hank originally had a more forceful voice but it gradually softened a bit.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: In "The Buck Stops Here", Bobby has to wait in the alley while Buck gambles inside. A woman begins to vomit from having drunk too much alcohol, though it's not shown in graphic detail:
  Man: You all emptied out, Carla? (resumes kissing her)
  Bobby: Oh GOD!

W-Z

• Wannabe Diss: Bobby, when getting interested in Tarot reading, joins a group of losers claiming to be genuine wizards or … something. When he sees that these idiots are ineffectual dorks that have likely been emotionally broken due to being picked on and are just throwing together a bunch of crap they likely saw in Dungeons & Dragons, he tells them that even he wants to kick their asses.
• War Hero: Cotton Hill is a World War II veteran who killed 50 men and lost his shins to a Japanese gunner. He's been awarded both the Silver Star and the Medal of Honor.
• Warrior Poet: Minh's father General Gum considers himself one. When his poetry is actually heard, though...
  "We must not forget, yet we cannot remember/Death be not proud?/Then who?"
• "Wash Me" Graffiti: In the episode "Dog Dale Afternoon", Dale borrows Hank's lawn mower and abuses it— going to a burger joint's drive-thru and filling it with soda instead of gas. Hank and Bobby find the mower in a not-so-great part of town, and when Hank sees "Wash me" written on it, he hurriedly tries to cover it from Bobby's sight.
• Wedding Episode:
  • "Lucky's Wedding Suit" features the long awaited marriage between Luanne and Lucky, with Hank and company trying to help Lucky find a way to pay for Luanne's lavish wedding plans.
  • "The Wedding Of Bobby Hill" becomes this when Peggy and Hank attempt to teach Bobby and Luanne a lesson as a result of an escalating prank war. There's even a faux bachelor party for Bobby.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy:
  • Hank. He constantly seeks his father's admiration (or at least his respect), but Cotton is a jaded World War II veteran who has absolutely no regard (and just barely a little love) for Hank, going so far to name his new baby son "Good Hank":
    "I gots mah shins blowed off by a Japan man's machine gun, so don't crying to me about your problems!"
  • Bobby, Hank's son, has it rough. But compared to his grandfather, Hank is far easier to please.
    "Bobby, if you weren't my son, I'd hug you."
  • Female variation with Peggy and her mom. Even saving her family's Montana ranch is not enough to impress her mother, though, so Peggy just gives up on trying.
  • When Cotton's confronted by Hank after he runs off to Las Vegas to avoid raising G.H., Cotton admits that Hank is a better father than he ever was in the most insulting manner possible:
    "You made Bobby! All I made was you!"
  • Kahn is this to his father-in-law, who apparently worked for several dictators in the past, calls Kahn a "descendant of fishermen," and generally has no respect for him.
  • Minh can't seem to get any respect from Kahn's mother. The difference between Kahn and Minh is that Minh doesn't care if Laohma respects her, she just doesn't want to deal with her. Laohma's insistence to show Minh how to do housework "the right way" comes more from her being a professional homemaker than wanting to show Minh up. Kahn is constantly trying to prove himself to Minh's dad, whereas Minh and Laohma are more than happy to stay out of each other's way. For that matter, Kahn does nothing to stop his mom from criticizing Minh, nor does he seem to care, whereas Minh is very bothered by how her dad treats Kahn and tries to make him stop.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Not only do Cotton's wife, Didi, and infant son, Good Hank, not appear at his deathbed, they aren't even mentioned (though it is implied that Didi divorced Cotton and took Good Hank with her). In the episode "Daletech", Cotton finishes an argument with Didi with "Fine, call your lawyer!" before Didi speeds off and Cotton informing the Hill family Didi has "gone to visit her folks" and telling the family he doesn't know when she will be back, suggesting Didi divorced him and moved away. Didi does show up, in a new Cadillac (having remarried less than a year after Cotton's death) to give Hank some of Cotton's possessions and will in "Serves Me Right for Giving General Goerge S. Patton the Bathroom Key", including a final wish to flush his ashes down the toilet Patton used during WWI, which contradicts his earlier securing of a burial plot in a veteran's cemetery.
  • This happens to Kahn's mother, who in "Maid in Arlen" is in a relationship with Bill. She is mentioned in the next episode, but never appears again.
  • This has happened quite a few times: in "Pretty, Pretty Dresses", Bill gets a pet iguana whom he names Lenore, in "Returning Japanese" Luanne buys another bloodhound whom is presumably male after she thinks she's killed Ladybird, and in "I'm with Cupid", Bobby gets a new girlfriend named Debby, but none of these characters are ever seen again.
  • One of John Redcorn's old flings and his newly discovered daughter end up moving into his trailer with him in "Untitled Blake McCormick Project". They are never seen or mentioned again.
• The Whitest Black Guy: Kahn is accused of being the whitest Asian guy in the episode "Orange You Sad I Did Say Banana?" when Ted calls him a banana.^note A pejorative term used to refer to Asians who live a "white" lifestyle, i.e. "yellow on the outside, white on the inside." So, he tries to avert this by restyling his entire life to get more in touch with his ancestry. After finding he doesn't enjoy his new lifestyle, he comes to terms with himself and accepts he should just be happy with who he is, and enjoy what he likes:
  Kahn: "If you want someone to play round of golf, give me call! If you want someone to feel guilty about the way they choose to live, call someone else."
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: It's established that Arlen is in Texas. Where in Texas is a matter of debate. According to the show, it's about a hundred miles from Dallas, about a hundred miles from Houston, close enough to the Texas border with Mexico for day trips to be possible, four hours from Port Aransas (three-hour drive plus hour-long ferry ride), in a high school football district with Killeen and Belton, and in some proximity to San Marcos. It also has a high Mexican population, is located close enough to West Texas for it not to be too far of a drive away, was built along the Chisholm Trail, and is very near an army base. One YouTuber concluded from all of this information that Arlen is probably located somewhere in very close proximity to Killeen and Fort Cavazos.
• Whole-Plot Reference: "Nine Pretty Darn Angry Men" is a parody of 12 Angry Men, the difference being a focus group instead of a jury deliberation.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: Peggy, scoffing at Steinbeck during a performance of Of Mice and Men.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?:
  • Bobby, as viewed by Hank:
  That boy ain't right.
  • A few episodes showed Bobby having a similar attitude towards Hank. Wishing his dad was cooler, had more money, was more open-minded, etc.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Discussed. When Bobby is planning on stealing a rival school's mascot (an armadillo), he asks Dale if he could pump poison into the school to render the mascot's guards unconscious. Dale points out that the amount of poison needed would kill an armadillo. Plus the kids probably wouldn't wake up.
• Win Her a Prize: A Gender-Inverted example in "Chasing Bobby" with Connie winning a claw machine prize for Bobby.
  *Bobby and Connie walk into the movie theater lobby with Bobby ecstatically holding a stuffed animal.*
  Bobby: And they say nobody beats the claw machine!
  Hank: That's great, son. Now give it to Connie.
  Bobby: No, she won it for me.
• Women Are Wiser: Inverted with Hank and Peggy, though played straight for Kahn & Minh and Dale & Nancy.
• Word Salad: Hank actually accuses Dale of this at the beginning of "Dale to the Chief" after one of his characteristic conspiracy-theorist ramblings:
  Hank: Did you mean for all those words to come out together or did they just fall out randomly?
• The Worst Seat in the House: In "Suite Smells of Excess", Hank, his son, and a few of their friends attend the Texas-Nebreska game. They buy absurdly expensive seats that turn out to be in the bloodiest of the nosebleed section, but through some good luck they end up in a luxury suite by the end of the game.
• Wrench Wench: Luanne was bad in beauty school and the community college, but she was good with a wrench. In early episodes, the men in the alley would move out of the way and let her fix cars.
• Wrote the Book: Crossed with Metaphorgotten:
  Storekeeper: This fella never went to school. He grew up in the hills, but he wrote the book on homemade bait. 'Course it's just a bunch of scribbles 'cause he never went to school.
• Xanatos Gambit: By Peggy, of all people. After getting conned, she hatches up a scheme with all the other victims to get their money back. They trick the conman into bringing the money to a motel where they've set up a phony gambling hall. If he keeps betting, it's rigged so that he'll lose it all. If he tries to leave with the money, they have several other ways of stealing it back from him.
• X Days Since: In the beginning of “Father of the Bribe”, the sign outside the school reads “48 Hours Without a Dress Code Violation.”
• Yank the Dog's Chain: This usually happens to Bill whenever anything positive happens to him, thanks to Status Quo Is God. This is especially true if it involves women in any way.
• Your Mom: In "Traffic Jam," Roger "Booda" Sack launches into a series of these against Hank's mom when Hank tells Sack that his mother didn't raise him right. Also Hank's urethra.

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