BoJack refuses to let Diane publish her book, because it depicts him as a broken man and he believes that nothing good can come from it. With the deadline approaching, he resolves to write his own book and enlists the help of Todd, Sarah Lynn and drugs.
"Downer Ending" contains examples of:
- Art Shift: Many times, during Bojack's drug trip.
- Backmasking: When BoJack sees Todd and Sarah Lynn wearing each other's clothes and speaking with each other's voices, Sarah Lynn says, in Todd's voice, what sounds like some indecipherable gibberish, but it is actually, "I'm talking backwards. Aaron Paul is dead." played in reverse.
- Body Horror: A major case of this occurs when after kissing hallucination Diane, BoJack witnesses her body inflating and multiplying into two.
- Burn Baby Burn: BoJack attempts this twice to Diane's manuscript by tossing it in a trashcan and tossing a match into it. It doesn't work.
- Call-Back:
- BoJack mentions his failed attempts to convince Sarah Lynn to go sober.
- BoJack asks Todd if he still wanted revenge for ruining his rock opera.
- Comically Missing the Point: BoJack decides that drugs should be taken with your friends at home, where its safe. This is the conclusion he draws from them nearly killing each other.
- Deranged Animation: BoJack's drug trip involves quite a lot of this, which includes Diane turning into a hideous monster, BoJack losing his outlines (which he lampshades) before melting into a bunch of colours, and BoJack turning into a sketch and then a stick figure which is erased by a live-action pencil.
- Downer Ending: Discussed. BoJack decides to end his story by taking a dip in the lake one final time before allowing himself to drown. Todd and Sarah Lynn decide to give it a real downer ending by murdering BoJack
- The episode itself ends really darkly with BoJack, near-crying, asking Diane if she thinks he's a good person, followed by a long, painful silence as the giggles of his hallucinated daughter echo in the background.
- Drama Bomb: There's a reason why most of this episode's plot is in the tearjerker page.
- Eye Scream: During hallucination Diane's transformation, her eye inflates out of its socket and pops.
- Fantasy Twist: In BoJack's first attempt to write his biography himself, he imagines his parents acting like they want to spend time with him and giving him treats...but then his father gives him a Dope Slap, and they go back to their usual abusive selves.
- Furry Reminder: When talking with BoJack about the book he's writing, Princess Caroline coughs up a hairball.
- Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": BoJack's first attempt at writing his biography.
BoJack: My parents loved me so much, it was crazy. I remember one Sunday afternoon, my mother said...
Imaginary Beatrice: Your father and I want to spend quality family time together. All the kids at school envy your intelligence and kickball ability. Here's an ice cream sundae/ice cream sandwich/dream-sicle.
- Insane Troll Logic: BoJack and Todd use this to solve both America's gun and drug problem.
BoJack: I know how to solve the drug problem, we'll just take them all, leaving none for the kids!
Todd and Sarah Lynn: BRILLIANT!
- Lampshade Hanging: In the page caption.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: During his trip BoJack notices that all of his "outlines have vanished" when the black line art disappears from his animation.
- Mood Whiplash: While in the middle of tripping, BoJack asks Todd if he wanted to shoot him for ruining his rock opera and Todd responds he's fine with it because he stopped expecting Bojack to do the right thing.
- Mushroom Samba: Almost a third of the episode consists of BoJack, Todd and Sarah Lynn tripping.
- Ridiculous Procrastinator: BoJack manages to spend six hours playing around with fonts, then continues to look for excuses to not write.
- Shout-Out: At one point, BoJack runs through a diner of Mr. Peanutbutter clones who do nothing but say their own name. This is lifted from a scene in Being John Malkovich.
- Diane's transformation into a blobby mass of misplaced body parts is very reminiscent of Tetsuo in AKIRA.
- Subverted Sitcom: During his Mushroom Samba BoJack imagines he's back in the 1990s filming his cheery old family sitcom Horsin' Around. However, the scene quickly turns surreal. BoJack (as the Horse) repeats the line "This is all I am and all I'll ever be" to a cheering studio audience, with Ethan quipping "You said it, old man!" in a disturbing deep voice. Then, four-year-old Sarah Lynn's request for the Horse to make her a "penis butter and vajelly sandwich" elicits audience "awww"s before she transforms into the adult Sarah Lynn screaming the same request at BoJack. Then the whole set falls apart and BoJack faces an elderly Todd asking him which path he'd like to take in the future.
- Title Drop: Todd says this when BoJack ends his story by letting himself drown in a lake.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: BoJack finally comes to from his drug trip lying on the ground in the parking lot outside Bellicans. During the time he was high, he did somehow manage to write some pages on his book and send it to Princess Carolyn. Unfortunately, as Princess Carolyn points, what he sent her was pure gibberish, consisting of 20 pages of erotic Doctor Who Fan Fiction, a recipe for soup, 5 different conspiracy theories about 9/11, and "a bunch of embedded YouTube links that cannot possibly be printed in book form."
- Who's on First?: They spend some time talking about how much Dr. Hu's name sounds like Doctor Who. Somehow nobody but BoJack has ever heard of the show. And yet, after Todd says, "I don't know", somehow, right on cue, Sarah Lynn and Dr. Hu say, "Third base!"
- Writer's Block Montage: Occurs as BoJack tries to write the book himself.
- Writers Have No Sense of Scale: An unusual version, as the "finished" book written by the trio ends up being a bunch of rambling nonsense, including poorly made drawings, erotic Doctor Who fan-fiction, a recipe for soup, at least 10 theories on how 9/11 happened and (handwritten) YouTube links that (as explained by Princess Carolyn) are "impossible to print in a book."
