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• Acceptable Targets: Intellectuals, or rather, people who think they are intellectuals. Usually appearing without any advanced education, working experience in their field, or anything approaching common sense, the closest the series has to a usual "villain" type are people who believe themselves competent activists, authors, philosophers or educators, who show up to denigrate or swindle the Hills. Perhaps lampshaded, as all these "intelligent" and "progressive" people are unable to find employment or acceptances anywhere except Arlen, Texas, and even there everybody knows how ridiculous they are.
  • Jokes about fictional town Durndle and the people from it are pretty commonplace, as well.
  • A good example of a recurring Acceptable Target would be Anthony Page— the activist / social worker who has: attempted a fruitless investigation into Hank's parenting of Bobby in "Pilot", attempted to implement an ill-thought out Texan workers disability equality program at Strickland Propane that resulted in a druggie have free reign over the place in "Junkie Business", etc.
    • One episode had Hank get a thrown-out back. During this, he attends a Yoga session that helps him, but he dislikes the self-absorbed, skirt chasing Yoga teacher (though softens slightly once he realizes the Yoga is helping). Eventually, the guy in charge of disability finds out about this, and when he reports Hank to court, Hank's defense is that if he wasn't in agonizing pain, he would have punched the Yoga instructor out. This instantly convinces the judges.
  • People who actually do have advanced educations like the archeology professor and Bill's doctor are still often portrayed negatively, so the portrayal as self-important but unqualified may just be another aspect of the treatment of intellectuals, rather than unqualified intellectuals being the target itself.
    • It's worth noting that the doctors in Arlen all seem to be bitter, hostile burnouts who fully expect their patients to have done or are about to do incredibly stupid things and then lie about them...and the show often bears them out in this regard. It may be a subtle bit of Lampshade Hanging.
  • "Bobby is breathing through his mouth - I'm afraid if I feed him, he'll suffocate".
  • Anyone who owns any sort of animal that isn't a dog is considered a freak no matter how much they love their animal or how it's just one example being the deciding point for all types of animals.
• Anvilicious: At least four episodes in the later seasons dealt with eating habits and dieting, mixed in with issues of self-respect and responsibility for one's actions.
  • The Fat and the Furious, where Bill discovers he has a knack for competitive eating, much to the revulsion of some of the neighborhood. Hank supports it because he wants to see an American win the Yellow Mustard Belt for hot dog eating, whereas Dale doesn't stop calling Bill a freak for his endeavors. It turns out Dale is actually trying to spare Bill the humiliation of being called a freak by the public, due to an experience he had as a kid. It turns out Dale is right, because on the day of the competition, Bill realizes his "adoring public" is actually laughing and jeering at him for being a freak.
  • Bill, Bulk, and the Body Buddies, where Bill has to get in shape for an army physical, but gets involved with a bunch of overenthusiastic body builders who handle his exercise regiment for him because he can't, or won't, do it by himself. Bill goes overboard and starts alienating his friends with his new musclebound ego, until he tries lifting too much weight and injures himself in a way that causes his rectum to rupture.
  • Trans-fascism, where Khan and Ted get foods made with transfats banned from Arlen, all the while Hank is arguing that the government shouldn't ban certain types of food and people should take responsibility for their own eating habits. Bill believes that he's free to pig out on anything that's "government approved" because he figures it must be good for him, and slowly becomes more bloated and weaker than he's ever been. Meanwhile, Arlen gets gripped in a war between a lunch truck run by Buck Strickland (carrying all the contraband food items) and one run by a competitor named Rooster. Rooster uses his thugs to force people to eat at his truck, despite the unsanitary conditions causing everyone to get sick.
  • Dia-BILL-ic Shock, where Bill's eating habits finally get the best of him and he collapses twice due to the onset of adult diabetes. Bill can't manage his diet correctly, and then a Jerkass doctor informs him that he should get a wheelchair because he's probably going to lose his legs "sooner or later".
• Base Breaker: Hank, at least for some tropers.
• Big Lipped Alligator Moment: In the episode where Peggy, Minh, and Nancy are all running for head of the school board, Dale arrives at the trailer park to pick up voters for Nancy. The only guy there informs Dale that the voters were already picked up. He then tries to kill Dale for his hat.
• Black Hole Sue: Hank Hill, the universe bends over time and time again to make him right. For example, Bobby becomes a Plus Sized model and is loving it, and Hank is embarrassed and thinks Bobby is going to be made fun of. Then, at the end of the episode after dragging Bobby away, several bullies began pelting the models with donuts, and Bobby said Hank was right.
  • Inverted with in the specific case with Hank's desire to make Bobby potential boyfriend material, in which Bobby does basically nothing Hank recommends in that regard, yet is regarded well romantically by many girls and had a longtime girlfriend who is considered attractive (according to Joseph and Chang Wasanasang), despite Bobby being overweight and of low-social status in school. On the other hand, Joseph is basically the embodiment of what Hank wants Bobby to be like in that regard (an athletic football star who sticks up for himself), yet he does very poorly in attracting girls, Lori seems to be his only real girlfriend the whole series.
  • Certain episodes will have Hank being told he's wrong and treated as the Butt Monkey, even though he's right. When Arlen is threatened by a flood, Hank somehow winds up at the Arlen dam, where the guy who is supposed to be watching the dam has abandonded his post. Hank has to use his best judgment and choose between opening a flood gate in case the cracks in the dam get bigger, thereby flooding South Arlen, or leaving it closed and the dam breaks. Hank opens the flood gate and South Arlen gets flooded. When Hank gets to the flood shelter, everyone finds out that he's "the Arlen Flooder" and chew him out, including the guy who was supposed to be at the dam watching the controls. Hank points this out, but everyone else tells him not to pin it on someone else. This doesn't get better by the episode's end.
• Complaining about Shows You Don't Watch: Many who haven't watched the show seem to figure that's nothing but white trash humor and something similar to Squid Billies. It's not.
• Continuity Porn: The series finale was initially going to be Luanne's wedding. Which explains why the episode's closing scene featured characters from throughout the series who only appeared in one or two episodes attending the wedding.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Now has its own page.
• Crowning Moment of Funny: Now has its own page.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: Now has—you guessed it—its own page.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The theme song by the Refreshments. Seriously, listen to it.
  • "Life in a Northern Town" by the Dream Academy, which appears in the episode "Wings of a Dope." Fittingly, it was originally written as a tribute to a troubled British songwriter who committed suicide.
• Designated Hero: Hank in "Get Your Freak Off". He was so laughably old timey it wasn't funny. Granted it turned out he was right in a sense, he still kinda acted overprotective.
  • Realistically, Hank period. He just as often makes the problem worse as he does pull people out of the mess.
• Designated Villain: If anyone disagrees with or lightly annoys Hank, they are always this.
• Eagleland: Attempting to be Mixed Flavor leaning towards Type 1, but doesn't always get the mix right.
• Family Unfriendly Aesop: A lot of them appear through the series, "Husky Bobby" stands out in particular.
• Fridge Horror: In the episode when Bill gets involved with a bunch of over-enthusiastic body builders in order to get in shape for his army physical, he injures himself after putting on too many weights for a work-out machine. We don't know exactly what injury the machine caused until the end of the episode. The doctor states that Bill had ruptured his rectum, causing his internal systems to become external. Think about that for a minute.
• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: The tragic premature death of Brittany Murphy has turned many of Luanne's moments into this, especially the two-parter where the Megalo-Mart blows up and Luanne is feared to be dead ( she survived, but lost her hair), the final season episodes where Luanne has a child (before her death, Brittany Murphy stated that she wanted to have children in 2010) and the episode where Luanne is visited by the angel of her dead boyfriend, Buckley (not just because of Brittany Murphy's death, but because of the death of her husband five months later).
• Genius Bonus: In one episode where everyone at Strickland Propane is trying to get in on the Americans with Disabilities Act, one employee claims he has a priapism and requires a roomier workstation and a view of Debbie. "Priapism" is a medical term for an erection*
  Specifically, one that doesn't go away as normal
  .
• Good Troi Episode: Peggy gets several: "Peggy's Pageant Fever," "Peggy Hill: The Decline and Fall," "Beer and Loathing," and "Fun with Jane and Jane."
• Harsher in Hindsight: Bill's comment form "Peggy's Turtle Song" about how the cute Strange Girl looks "Pro-Choice" in a worried tone. Flash forward to the late 2000s when the republican party is mandating invasive screenings for abortions and generally cutting back on women's health and services.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Depending on your feelings about Hank and Peggy's behavior, Bobby's entire life qualifies as this.
• Idiot Plot: A lot of the episodes aren't possible without Bobby acting like a dumbass. Sometimes he's downright unlikable because of this.
  • This also happens on fairly regular occasion with Hank whose naivety or old fashioned nature will lead him into trouble when he should really know better.
    • One episode in particular involves Peggy Hill accidentally kidnapping a Mexican girl. When she brings her back and everyone acts happy (because the girl had been returned) Peggy assumes that they're praising her. Yes, Peggy does have an incredibly huge ego but even a child knows that correcting a horrible mistake doesn't result in praise.
  • In fact, the entire show seems to run off of the main cast being entirely composed of dumbasses. Dale has even admitted on at least one occasion that if it weren't for Hank, they'd have gotten themselves killed long ago.
    • It's not like Hank's immune. In one episode Bobby develops an allergy to dog dander and it leads to him living in the dog house Hank initially built for Ladybird, at Hank's behest.
• Jerkass Woobie: Peggy can be unbearable at times (especially in later seasons), then there are episodes such as "Strangeness on a Train..."
  • Dale is a an annoying pest, but a faithful husband who was cheated on for all those years.
• Knight of Cerebus: Chip Larson for his insanity making him believe Luanne was the Larson Pork Girl and him thinking he was the prized pig on the labels from implied psychological abuse form his mother. Also the Omega House from "Fun with Jane and Jane" for basically the above and pulling a Karma Houdini.
• Memetic Mutation: Hank Hill sells propane and propane accessories.
  • Wait a minute, I have a wife!
  • For a while, there was a YouTube Poop fad in which the music from the scene in which Hank Listens to Bobby's walkman is replaced with whatever the filmmaker believes to be Acceptable Targets.
  • And, in some circles, there's the catchphrase conglomerate "There's propane in my urethra."
    • Which actually comes from an off-screen parody of KotH from an episode of The Simpsons.
• Moral Event Horizon: Peggy sabotaging Lucky's chance at earning his GED.
  • Hank in "Texas City Twister", when he sends Luanne back to her trailer park home and tells Peggy to go to hell when she confronts him over it.
  • Hank again in "Happy Hanksgiving" when he didn't buy a ticket for Luanna for the thanksgiving trip to Montana. Her father had a day off from his job on a oil rig (later retconned to being in jail) and Hank was adamant in buying tickets for just him, Peggy and Bobby.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • One episode has a scene in which a character is brutally killed by a giant sausage grinder (offscreen, of course). This is played for laughs, though it's lampshaded a couple of times by Peggy.
  • Even worse in that the character in question is voiced by Michael Keaton, aka THE GODDAMN BATMAN!!!!!
  • "Pigmalion", the Larson Pork Products episode. Young woman forced to live out a creepy older man's fantasy. Creepy older man gets turned into a pork product.
  • An earlier example occurs in "Hilloween" where Bobby briefly fears his father working with the devil due to the Strawman evangelical antagonist of the episode. Cue the demonic rendition of a flashback where Hank transforms into a laughing Satan staring into the viewer's soul.
  • "The Texas Skillsaw Massacre": Dale puts his finger in front of a moving blade and it is severed. You can see Dale's severed finger on the table with blood gushing out.
• Out of Focus: Connie post-breakup with Bobby.
• Tear Jerker: Pretty much the entire "Wings of a Dope" episode, in which Buckley's angel comes back, particularly the scene in which he and Luanne bounce on the trampoline after first meeting. Fireflies appear around them and fittingly enough, Dream Academy's "Life in a Northern Town" plays in the background.
  • The last scene is even more powerful - Buckley bounces on Luanne's trampoline high enough to disappear from her sight, after which she believes he is gone for good and says, "Goodbye, Buckley's angel." She goes back into the house as he returns to Earth, exclaims, "Cool, a new record!" and then, as the song begins to play again, is shown walking off toward the horizon, pulling a halo from his pocket and donning it as the credits begin to roll.
  • The relationship of Bill to the other three main leads. In the headscratcher section its stated they're not really joyed by being his friends and are his friends for the sole purpose of him being a man among men in high school. This might explain how much annoyed they become when he's drunk with power. This becomes sad if you consider that his relationship to Leonore became so toxic it shattered his mind and made any significant rise to power give him an inflated ego.
  • A big bit in the second part of the "Returning Japanese" two-parter. When Cotton's old flame regales the story of Cotton's son. In her tone of voice, it sounds like she holds him accountable for her life that is now. In the end though she forgives him with exact tone of voice.
• Took A Level In Jerk Ass: Everyone in the cast.
• The Scrappy: A lot of people seem to really dislike Peggy, especially in the later seasons after her personality changed.
  • Not many people like Lucky either.
  • Bobby can be this, especially since the woman voicing him can be screechingly annoying. Another would be Kahn and Mihn Soupanuisphone due to Flanderization into calling every person they know redneck or hillbilly like it was a Verbal Tick.
  • Spoiler: In "Strangeness On a Train", Peggy has her birthday party as part of a murder-mystery party on a train. Dale (who enjoys seeing the disaster that Peggy's birthday parties inevitably become) shouts out the identity of the killer when Luanne accidentally reveals it.
• Seasonal Rot: Season 7 marked the point where the balance of comedy and character was upset, with comedy overtaking character which led to Flanderization, a halt in character development and more formulaic storytelling. However, while the focus was changed the show was still very funny which is how despite this it remained consistently entertaining. So whether this is averted or played straight is entirely YMMV.
• Strawman Has a Point: Happens alot throughout the series.
• Squick: During the episode when Peggy is the substitute sex ed teacher, she's discussing with her friends their respective experiences in learning about the birds and the bees. Basically, they're all very repressed, and think that what was good for them is good enough for their kids. Since they themselves grew up not knowing the proper names for "your ding dong and your woohoo". One mentions a book her mom gave her, The Loveliness of Women, which was nothing but pictures of flowers. Peggy discredits the book as "worthless". One of Peggy's friends mentions that she got something out of it: whenever her husband crawls over her at night and "does his business", she just lies back and thinks about those flowers.
  Peggy: Oh Bonnie. You poor, poor woman.
• Unfortunate Implications: In the episode where Connie joins the wrestling team, they have to "find a way out of hurting her" when she faces Bobby instead of actually competing.
  • The problem lies more in Bobby not beating up a girl or getting beat by a girl.
    • Actually, the coach (admittedly a sexist Jerkass) was wanting to get back at Peggy for subverting his authority, so he placed Bobby and Connie (who Peggy had to fight for to be allowed on the team) against each other in try-outs. Either way, Peggy was going to lose. At least until Bobby and Connie decided not to wrestle at all.
  • "Uh-Oh Canada" has the conservative christian leads (plus Kahn) espouse beliefs that America is all around better than Canada (Represented here by strawmen that could be just anyone from any episode with no difference). Essentially its all the streotypes of conservative texans towards foreigners.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: By the second season, 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 whenever they're offscreen.
• Values Dissonance: The series has a mostly conservative christian main cast, the things they do or say that come off as strongly this or Unfortunate Implications. A good example is Hank's reliance on "traditional values" when it comes to sports and how he views Peggy not really earning money like he does at work.
• We're Still Relevant, Dammit: The MySpace-centric episode. In 2008.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Hank, repeatedly. Probably the worst is running away in fear when John Redcorn has a complete and total emotional meltdown over his lack of connection to his son, closely followed by his actions causing Bill to have a psychotic breakdown.
  • And when he pulls Bill out of a support group that's actually doing him good.
• The Woobie: Bill is fat, pathetic, and probably smells, which is exactly why you can't help but feel great pity for him.
  • At least until he Crosses the Line Twice. We've seen Bill act like a stalker more than once.