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  • Accidental Innuendo: In "Three Days of the Kahndo" when Hank protests crossing the U.S./Mexico border illegally:
    Hank: America is my country and I love her! I wouldn't enter her in any way that's unnatural!
  • Adaptation Displacement: Of a character; Hank Hill is way more well-known than his predecessor Tom Anderson from Judge's previous show, Beavis and Butt-Head, to the point where people (mainly KOTH viewers watching Beavis for the first time, or fans of both) often confuse Tom with Hank, despite them actually being different characters.
  • Adorkable: Hank's excitement over mundane things and general sheepishness gives him a certain awkward charm.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation
    • Hank: Is he really the Only Sane Man, or is he Not So Above It All? It seems that he's mentally stuck in the 1950s, when things seemed simpler, women were at home, children obeyed their parents, and everyone was ostensibly more patriotic and full of morals. Is it just a mental barrier to keep himself grounded and good, unlike his immoral "friends" and co-workers and his own family? Or could it be a coping mechanism for having to put up with his insane father and egomaniac wife and he doesn't like things that challenge his love for simplicity and straightforwardness?
      • A different variation proposes that Hank isn't stuck in the 1950s as much as he has a mental block caused by the traumatic memories of his childhood. He became so used to being beaten down by Cotton in his youth for showing the slightest sign of weakness that Hank, in essence, built a mental fortress around himself, and is afraid of anything "new" or "modern" penetrating this mental fortress out of a subconscious fear of Cotton's retribution.
      • Another interpretation that's gained popularity in recent years is that Hank is autistic. It's fully possible, given the show’s timeframe, as well as Hank's age, that he could be on the spectrum without anyone knowing.
    • Did Cotton really kill fifty men in WWII? Is he exaggerating? Did he even kill anyone? Or is his constant reminding everyone that he killed "fitty men" just a way to cope with his massive PTSD and the fact that he got his shins blown off?
      • Also, is Cotton really just a Jerkass father who's disappointed in his son and only cares about his past glories, or is he a Shell-Shocked Veteran broken from seeing all his friends getting killed horribly, being forced to kill fifty men just as innocent as himself, getting permanently crippled, developing a true romantic relationship with a Japanese nurse before being forced to leave her by the government that he already gave so much to, then being forced to return to a home which had nothing to give him except an impulsive wife who once accidentally defected to China and the glory of a war which destroyed all he held dear?
    • Dale with regards to John and Nancy's affair and Joseph's true parentage: is he really truly oblivious to it all, or has he known about it all along and just didn't say anything about it? And if it is the latter, is it because he's ambivalent to it all (for lack of options, money, Joseph's upbringing, or some other reason), actively screwing with everyone, intentionally playing dumb because he loves his family too much to risk losing them by confronting Nancy, or has he (as this mini-fanfic postulates) been secretly long getting his revenge on John by being such a loving and devoted dad to Joseph, ensuring Joseph will see Dale as his dad and thus deprive John the chance to ever be close to the son he sired? Mike Judge himself hypothesized that Dale probably knows what the truth is deep, deep, deep down and all of the other conspiracy theories he's obsessed with are just a way of keeping himself in denial.
      • There’s one episode where an attractive female exterminator tries to bed Dale, and he has none of it. When he was recounting the story to Nancy, he says something to the effect of “I guess she didn’t know I was married”. In that instance, was he truly that oblivious or was he subtly throwing shade at Nancy?
    • In "Dia-BILL-ic Shock", was Bill actually scared and fatalistic enough to actually think he needed a wheelchair now even though the Dr. Jerk only said that he'd eventually lose his legs to gangrene if he didn't get his diabetes under control, so he might as well get a wheelchair while he has good insurance, OR did Bill knowingly get a wheelchair he didn't need to get sympathy and attention? Both would be equally plausible, given his tendency toward both learned helplessness and attention seeking.
    • In "That's What She Said is Rich really a Jerkass or just using his crude jokes to cover up for his own nervousness about being the new guy at Strickland Propane?
    • Are the various weirdos and Know Nothing Know It Alls that Hank encounters really as strange and clueless as they are presented, or are we seeing the world through Hank's perspective, exaggerating unconventional personalities and unfamiliar (to Hank) worldviews into total loons and quackery?
  • Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Americans Hate Tingle:
    • The show never really caught on in Hungary. As a rule, Animated Shock Comedies are beloved in that country; the more low-brow and vulgar, the better (Family Guy, for example, is extremely popular there). While the Hungarian dub of King of the Hill was loaded with profanity, cultural differences between Hungary and the United States and the show's general laid-back tone prevented the show from becoming a hit.
    • It was also panned in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Those areas are quite secular, casual, modern and left-wing in their values. Viewers there couldn't relate to the traditional, conservative, religious Hill family.
  • Ass Pull:
    • In "Reborn To Be Wild", Hank claims he didn't want Bobby to be with a church group because he didn't want Christianity to be a fad to Bobby when up to then it was clear he didn't want Bobby to be with the group because the teens who were part of the group liked to skate and listen to rock music, and since this was revealed at the end of the episode with absolutely no foreshadowing it comes off like a lazy attempt to make Hank look like the good guy and justify his behavior.
    • Boomhauer's profession is revealed in the final episode: he's apparently a Texas Ranger. This is clearly something that the crew pulled out of their ass at the last minute to make Boomhauer look badass, as there is absolutely no evidence in the series that suggests Boomhauer has any ties to the industry in question, and several plots could have been avoided (or at least shortened significantly) had he stepped in and used his position. To add to this, an early episode had him mumble something about being on worker's comp, possibly explaining why he was often home in his hot tub, or out and about during the day.
    • "Lucky's Wedding Suit" was initially envisioned as the Series Finale. In the original ending of this episode, the series would have been revealed to have taken place in the span of one year (10 seasons in 12 months). This would have contradicted the multiple Christmas episodes throughout the series run. And to complicate things even further, the ending would have included two cases of Discontinuity Nod, with Hank telling Bill, he imagined himself "stealing a Tank" and "Hank being born in New York."
  • Award Snub: "Chasing Bobby" was up for an Emmy in 2001, and is one of the best episodes of the series. It lost to The Simpsons episode "HOMR" (which, while one of the better latter-day episodes of The Simpsons' many felt still didn't measure up to KOTH's offering).
  • Awesome Music:
    • The show's iconic theme song "Yahoos & Triangles" by The Refreshments.
    • There's quite an array of great songs used throughout the series, both diegetic and non-diegetic, across several different genres.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Really, just about all the characters in the show are either this or straight-up Scrappies. Bobby, Luanne, Connie, and Boomhauer seem to be the only characters that are almost universally liked/tolerated by the fans. Stand-outs include:
    • Hank himself. There's no denying he's a stick in the mud, but whether that's funny or annoying is up for debate. His fans like him for his strong morals, work ethic and sympathetic moments while his detractors can't stand how painfully old-fashioned and stubborn he can be and consider him to be a Designated Hero.
    • Cotton. On one side, there are the fans who love how hilariously over-the-top he is in his lack of manners; on the other side, there are the fans who hate how much of an abusive, misogynistic and racist Jerkass he is.
    • Dale. Most people agree that he is the funniest character on the show. However, there's a non-inconsequential percentage who find him to be an annoying, dangerous idiot and a Toxic Friend Influence. And there are some who believe that these statements aren't mutually exclusive.
    • Bill is either liked for being a lovable loser who's occasionally capable of greatness or hated for being a pathetic sad-sack who can't let go of his past failings.
    • Peggy. There is no denying she's the textbook definition for Small Name, Big Ego, but whether that's funny and makes her sympathetic (considering it's a clear cover-up for her massive insecurities) or just makes her plain annoying and insufferable is still a hotly debated topic with fans.
    • Many longtime fans hate Lucky due to viewing him as an unnecessary character who ruined Luanne's character arc. However, modern viewers consider him one of the (if not the) most likable characters on the show due to being an honest and down-to-earth man in contrast to Peggy.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • When Peggy, Minh, and Nancy are running for a position on the school board, Dale goes to a trailer park to pick up voters for Nancy, only to find out from a man fixing a satellite dish that Peggy abducted them before Dale arrived. The man then says Dale has a nice hat and attacks him, causing Dale to flee in terror.
    • In "Peggy's Pageant Fever", after her makeover, the scene switches to Bill washing his car and singing out of tune to Bachman-Turner Overdrive's 'Takin' Care of Business". Bill stops and stares blankly when Peggy passes by in Buck Strickland's car.
  • Broken Base: Are Dale's buddies (especially the otherwise honest Hank) good or bad friends for keeping his wife's affair a secret from him? Some fans see the affair as something between the Gribbles and thus Hank and co. have no business telling Dale. Meanwhile, other fans cannot fathom anyone keeping such a big secret from one of their closest friends for so many years.
  • Can't Un-Hear It: A meta-example. The main reason why Bobby never hit puberty in the 13 years that King of the Hill aired is because the crew had grown too attached to Pamela Adlon and didn't want to have to replace her with a male actor (or another voice actress who can do pubescent boy voices better than Adlon can) as they had done with Brittany Murphy when Joseph underwent puberty.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • In "Life In The Fast Lane, Bobby's Saga" where Bobby works down at the racetrack for an abusive and dimwitted boss, Hank spends a majority the plot unaware of what a selfish idiot Bobby is working for, assuming Bobby's complaints are just a result of his standard laziness. When he finally sees the man force Bobby to cross the racetrack while race cars are speeding by, he chases him down and literally kicks his ass for several minutes straight.
    • In "Bobby Goes Nuts", after being bullied and beaten up by Chane Wassanasong several times, it's satisfying seeing Bobby kick Chane in the crotch so hard that it leaves him on the ground wincing in pain.
    • In "And They Call It Bobby Love", Bobby eats an entire 72 oz. steak to get back at his vegetarian girlfriend after she callously dumps him.
    • Despite Rooster being a slimy business rival of Buck's, it was very satisfying to see him and his gang beat the shit out of Ted Wassanasong in "Trans-Fascism".
  • Character Perception Evolution: Lucky, despite being voiced by Tom Petty, was initially considered to be The Scrappy of the show and received a lot of hate due to being a contributing factor to the show's Negative Continuity and very little else. The reasons being that his relationship with Luanne (combined with Luanne's Flanderization) turned her into the exact kind of person she didn't want to be in the earlier seasons; his lazy lifestyle which Hank, for some reason, mostly tolerates despite being established as treating hard work and effort seriously; the fact that he took Texas stereotypes up to eleven despite earlier seasons making a point of showing that such stereotypes aren't always accurate; and his greater importance in the show's last legs despite contributing very little to the plot and not being particularly funny. However, over the years, many new viewers who watch the show have found themselves fond of Lucky due to being the most consistently nice character while the rest of the cast became a bit of a jerk, with many fans praising him for being an honest, down-to-earth man with integrity that treated Luanne with the love and maturity she deserved. Nowadays, while he's still a Base-Breaking Character, he is considerably more popular than he was before, with many fans saying they find him more likable than Peggy.
  • Common Knowledge: Contrary to popular belief, the show never aired on Fox Kids. However, there were several cross-promotions for it on the Fox Kids block.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • During the Season 2 finale "Propane Boom", Mega Lo Mart explodes with Hank, Luanne, and Buckley inside as the citizens of Arlen run screaming and look on in horror. Absolutely mortifying. But it's Boomhauer who calls 911, and of course, the operator can't understand a word he says.
    • In "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret Hill", Peggy's nightmare of inadvertently damning kids to Hell is horrifying, but Hank fueling the flames with propane then laughing evil is hilarious.
      Hank: That's a clean-burning Hell, I tell you hwat!
    • Bill's suicide attempts wouldn't be nearly as funny if he wasn't so bad at it.
    • In "Happy Hank's Giving", Dale asks John Redcorn if he or his people celebrate Thanksgiving. John replies "We did. Once."
  • Designated Evil: Anything that falls outside of Hank's narrow worldview or otherwise offends his sensibilities is always regarded as being in the wrong. A good example of this is any episode where Bobby does something that Hank disapproves ofnote , with the possible exception of the final episode where Bobby proves that he's a genius with analyzing flaws in beef cuts.
  • Diagnosed by the Audience: It's never outright stated, but Hank displays a lot of signs that he may be autistic. Difficulty with social interactions? Check. All-absorbing interest in certain topics? Check. Hyperfocus? Check. Desire for sameness? Big check.
  • Do Not Do This Cool Thing: In "Luanne Virgin 2.0":
    Luanne: Your virginity is in danger now! You need to sign this abstinence pledge card before you discover how wonderful sex feels!
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Dale gets this due to his jerky, paranoid behavior towards Hank.
  • Ethnic Scrappy: Kahn and Minh both fall here. While they just barely avoid being walking Asian stereotypes, they are both obnoxious jerkasses who take utter pleasure in being jerks towards their neighbors, including referring to them as "rednecks" in a derogatory sense. While they do have some redeeming qualities (such as genuinely caring for Connie and Minh's gradual developing friendship with the other ladies in the cast), said good aspects of them are overshadowed by their flaws. One episode in the series had Kahn not only sexually harass Hank (all because Hank could see Kahn through Kahn's bathroom window), but also he and Minh would break into Hank's house, raid the fridge, mess with the furniture, and it's implied they would have sex there as well all the while mocking Hank and Peggy. There's being a jerk, and then there's blatantly breaking the law just for the sick amusement of it.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • King of the Hill fans tend not to be very fond of Family Guy. Branching off from the Family Guy rivalry, fans tend to dislike The Cleveland Show a lot more than the former since a big reason for the series' cancellation in 2009 was to make way for the debut of The Cleveland Show. It doesn't help that when Comedy Central snatched the rights to both shows from [adult swim], the network frequently screwed over reruns of the show by dumping them to the ridiculous hours of the morning or night and eventually dropped it from the network a year later, while The Cleveland Show was Adored by the Network.
    • There's also a rivalry, with, of all shows, Dragon Ball Super, due to it replacing [adult swim]'s King of the Hill reruns. It should be noted that this isn't specifically Super's fault, as Adult Swim was losing the rights to the show anyway.
  • Fanon Discontinuity:
    • The four Post-Script Season episodes ("The Honeymooners", "Bill Gathers Moss", "When Joseph Met Lori, and Made Out with Her in the Janitor's Closet" and "Just Another Manic-Kahn Day") aren't well-loved by the fandom, and tend to be ignored in favor of what many consider the true finale, "To Sirloin With Love" (which it actually is, whether or not you want to acknowledge the four leftover episodes, as it was the final episode written and produced and it ends the way it began: with Hank and Bobby being father and son, despite their differences)note .
    • Some fans don't consider "A Rover Runs Through It" or "Life: A Loser's Manual" as canon because these were later episodes that messed with early established canon in the series that fans preferred. The former changed Peggy's backstory from her spending her childhood in Montana and moving to Arlen before high school and being high school sweethearts with Hank to now growing up entirely in Montana and leaving as an adult to escape her abusive mother who still lives there (previous episodes had also established Peggy's mother living in Arlen as well). The latter is disliked because it retcons the series-wide backstory of Luanne's father working in an oil rig to escape from his violently abusive ex-wife Leanne, to being in prison and just as much of a lowlife as Leanne was. The events from these episodes aren't ever mentioned later in the series, making it fairly easy for fans to forget about them.
  • Fountain of Memes: Hank Hill, as evidenced by the Memetic Mutation section below, as well as Gilbert.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
    • It was very popular in the UK. Even more popular than the likes of The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy. This is likely due to the fact that the UK is one of the more conservative countries in the developed world.
    • The show has become a bonafide Cult Classic in Japan despite only having one season officially dubbed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the way Hank's obsession with propane resonates with the Japanese work ethic, and the general Values Resonance of the series' tongue-in-cheek satire of the stubborn conservative traditionalism shared by both Texas and Japan. Amusingly, the series is a major flashpoint of the Subbing vs. Dubbing debate in Japan.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • In "Hilloween", Junie Harper tries to smugly quote the Bible ("The complacency of fools shall destroy them. Proverbs."), Hank counters with "Get out of my house! Exodus." While it may sound like an intentional misquoting just to get Junie out of the house (or a flimsy excuse to make "Exodus" into a pun on "exit"), that line is more-or-less in the Bible. In Exodus 10:28, the Pharaoh says this to Moses as he banishes him from his home and demands to never see his face again.
    • In "Junkie Business", where everyone at Strickland Propane is trying to get in on the Americans with Disabilities Act after a drug addict's addiction is diagnosed as a disease, one employee claims he has priapism and requires a roomier workstation and a view of Debbie. "Priapism" is the medical term for an erection that doesn't go down or soft, even after intercourse or masturbation.
    • Bobby's clown school persona "Tartuffe the Spry Wonder Dog" takes its name from a Molière play.
    • There are numerous references to the works of Tennessee Williams over the course of the show, most notably Bill's cousin Gilbert (pronounced Zheel-Bear) being a parody of him.
    • In the episode where Bobby joins a "Wiccan" club, they say that their group name is the Coven of Artemis. A suitably occult-sounding name, but there's more to it: in addition to being the Greek goddess of the Moon, forests, and hunting, Artemis was also the goddess of chastity. Every member of the Coven is a stereotypical basement-dwelling post-adolescent loser who's clearly never had sex.
    • In the episode that explores Kahn's manic depression, Dale talks about how he and the energized Kahn studied the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations and were planning to study McKinley's murder. A student of history would know that William McKinley's is one where the ruling, that he had been murdered by an anarchist who acted alone, is considered to be plausible and non-controversial by most historians.
  • Growing the Beard: While the first two seasons aren’t bad by any stretch, the show really hits its stride by Season 3. The casts voices became more or less what we know them for today, giving them much more range. Hank's personality mellowed out significantly, the occasional surreality was dialed back and more episodes focused primarily or partially on the cast outside the Hill residence. The "Propane Boom" two-parter arguably kicked off this growth by having Buckley Killed Off for Real to shake up the status quo.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • There is a not-so-untrue Urban Legend about an episode and a Columbine survivor who was hiding during the shooting and wrote a love note she intended to give to a friend after realizing how close she was to dying, but the friend turned out to be one of the perpetrators. "Wings of the Dope," the episode with Buckley's angel, aired two weeks later and watching it helped the girl realize she didn't need permission or approval from anyone to mourn her loss (or the loss of what could have been had she spoken up sooner). In the episode, when Hank is tired of everyone talking about the angel and tries to get Luanne away from him, he says:
      Hank: I'm sure with his help you'll do just fine. You'll pass the test and he'll have finished his good deed and there'll be no need for him to come back to Earth again. And if you do see Buckley's angel again, it will actually be an evil angel of death.
    • Carl Moss faking a heart attack to avoid casting the deciding vote in the Powderpuff episode. His voice actor Dennis Burkley died from a heart attack in 2013.
    • In "That's What She Said"note , Hank's co-worker makes inappropriate jokes and remarks in the workplace, much to Hank's chagrin. The episode, which aired in 2004, might be a little cringy to watch now in light of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement which both deal with sexual harassment and toxic workplaces.
    • In "Hillenium", Hank's hallucination of Tom Landry tells him that the year 2000 would be good "for both of us". The line became a bit uncomfortable when Tom Landry died just two months after it aired, on February 12th, 2000.
    • "Snow Job" plays up characters' panic for comedy when a minor snowstorm passes through Arlen, with the stress of managing the resulting propane demand landing Buck in the hospital. In 2021, a series of snowstorms crossing the state of Texas would lead to the biggest energy crisis in the state's history.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • In the Season 1 episode, "Hank's Unmentionable Problem" note , Peggy has a nightmare where Hank dies from complications of his constipation and his father flushes his son's casket down the toilet-cum-grave. Around thirteen seasons later, Cotton dies (after being burned on a flat-top grill at a Benihana-style Japanese restaurant and eating shrimp, which he's allergic to) and requests that his ashes be flushed in a bar toilet once used by General George S. Patton (even though an early episode revealed that Cotton was supposed to be buried at a veteran's cemetery).
    • An early promo for the show has a sing-along that starts with the line "Hank Hill's a family guy." The very next year, another animated show would premiere on Fox that would become more closely associated with that term.
    • In an episode made during the campaign trail of the 2000 election:
      Hank: Governor Bush needs every vote he can get or they won't call it a landslide [win].note 
    • In one episode, Bobby suggests he stand next to Hank at a function and pretend to sign everything Hank says. At Nelson Mandela's funeral, the sign language interpreter was faking the entire time.
    • "Hank's on Board" frames the predicament of Hank and his buddies jumping off their boat without lowering the ladder as a silly example of just how dumb Hank's friends can get. Almost exactly one year later, the film Adrift (2006) would take the exact same plot and play it with a completely straight face. It went just as well as you'd expect.
    • In "Chasing Bobby," Peggy keeps annoying Hank by reminding him that she saw him crying at a movie, which Hank either denies or tries to downplay. Mike Judge would later do a variation on this when he revived Beavis and Butt-Head with the episode "Crying", where Butt-Head thinks he sees Beavis crying (he just sniffed an onion) and teases him about it for the literal rest of their lives.
    • In "Of Mice And Little Green Men", Dale thinks an alien impregnated Nancy and made Joseph. Hank snaps him out of it, saying "Any alien can inject space juice and be a father, but it takes a real man to be a dad", which more or less summarizes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
    • In "Pour Some Sugar On Kahn", the scene where Minh's father, General Gum, tries to tell Kahn put music on his watch ("DRAG AND DROP!!!"), only stopping when Kahn reminds him he has an ordinary analog watch, has gotten even funnier thanks to the rise of smartwatches.
    • Roger "Booda" Sack was originally voiced by Chris Rock in a guest role, but was voiced in all subsequent appearances by Phil Lamarr once he became a recurring character. This isn't the last time that Phil Lamarr would play an animated character originally voiced by Chris Rock.
    • Before meeting Michiko again in "Returning Japanese", Cotton uses shoe polish as a substitute for hair dye to make himself look younger, and it starts leaking off the top of his head. Nowadays, it's hard to watch this scene and not think of Rudy Giuliani’s hair dye malfunction during a press conference in 2020.
    • "Suite Smell of Success" has the Texas Longhorns play against the Nebraska Cornhuskers in the Big 12 Championship only to lose. The two teams would play each other over a month after the original airing, with the Longhorns actually winning against the Huskers in a close game, though the game was in Austin and neither made it to the actual conference championship game. Then two years later both Texas and Nebraska played each other in the Big 12 Championship (albeit in Arlington instead of Houston) with the Longhorns winning the game and being selected to play in the national championship.
    • The scene where a group of hippies pray to the sun in "Phish and Wildlife" is quite amusing if you happen to be a Dark Souls fan.
      Bill: So, the sun is God?
      Hippie: Yes.
      Bill: *delighted* Wow!
  • Informed Wrongness: In "De-Kahnstructing Henry", we're supposed to believe Hank was responsible for Kahn getting fired because he told Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer details about a top-secret project which Kahn had shared with him. But Kahn signed a non-disclosure agreement and then showed an outsider, under false pretenses (claiming they needed propane when the building doesn't use any), just to show up his neighbor with the expectation Hank would tell people. Kahn was sworn to secrecy and was rightfully fired for breaking it.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • The one-shot character Barry Rollins from the episode "Cops and Roberts". He is shown as being non-confrontational yet Hank thought he stole his wallet (when really he left it at home), and decides to take it back. Rollins declares that he is tired of being the victim and chases after the group with a baseball bat, viewing himself as a Vigilante Man.
    • Cotton is a racist, sexist, loud, obnoxious man who is largely the reason Hank is so messed up, but consider that he lost a lot of friends in World War II, became permanently disfigured during said war, and genuinely fell in love with his nurse Michiko but was forced to go back to America without her. He then returned to a country that was hostile towards him and other veterans, and he, like his old war buddies, became a bitter old shell of his former self, eventually becoming the last survivor. His bitterness is at least semi-understandable after all that.
    • Hank qualifies at times. He's a painfully old-fashioned hardass, but growing up with a loud, obnoxious, misogynistic and racist madman like Cotton has not done him any good over the years. His friends, boss and wife are crazy and while he tries to be a good parent to Bobby, he often finds himself unable to connect with his son at times. Heck, the only living thing he can easily show love to is his dog Ladybird; showing love to other people (including his family) on the other hand is extremely hard for him.
      • If you also believe he's on the autism spectrum, then Hank wouldn't have been able to get any of the help he needed (and he most likely would never have even gotten a diagnosis even after the series' end).
    • Even Peggy counts. She's highly egotistical and frequently insensitive, but considering how her mom treated her, it's a wonder she hasn't ended up worse. She is also shown to be riddled with insecurities (which her ego is a clear coping mechanism for), feels out of touch when it comes to trends and wishes her husband was a bit more romantic.
    • Kahn is often this in the episodes that focus on him. He suffers from manic depression, has a Jerkass father-in-law who views him as less than nothing and is ostracized by his fellow Laotians for "becoming too white". Is there any wonder why he is so high-strung and anti-social? Despite all the hostility between the two, Kahn has admitted on more than one occasion that he considers Hank his best friend.
    • Rick from "That's What She Said" is a lurid jackass, but his main motivation was that he was afraid he wouldn't fit in at Strickland and thought his dirty jokes were helping the others to like him more. He probably wouldn't have gone as far as he did had the others (sans Hank) not egged him on. Of course, he quickly loses any sympathetic qualities once he starts crossing the line into inappropriate touching and refusing to stop even when he's clearly making everyone else uncomfortable, and by the end of the episode, his firing is more than justified.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Chris Sizemore is the "brilliant and charismatic" owner of Sizemore Realties, a successful real estate company where he employs clever but underhanded techniques to sell houses. When Peggy writes a hit piece on him, he has her fired from her job as a journalist only to hire her himself. After Peggy tries to prove herself by doing a TV interview because Sizemore didn't seem to value her as a member of the team, he fires her. However, when Peggy shows the initiative to start selling houses on her own, Sizemore tells her that he won't report her for selling without a license if she joins his team again as a proper realtor. This seems to all have been a part of his plan to motivate her into his greatest asset, and continues in his next appearance where he shows his willingness to pit his employees against one another if it will improve their performance. In his final appearance, Sizemore displays his acting chops and manages to convince Peggy to sell her own house after seeing the large sum that his client was willing to spend on it.
  • Memetic Molester: Bill's gay cousin Gilbert admits to being a "creeper" and certainly lives up to it (seen more on the episode "Blood and Sauce" rather than "A Beer Can Named Desire").
  • Memetic Mutation: Has its own page.
  • Memetic Psychopath: Hank's angry outbursts are easily taken out of context and there exists many memes and YouTube edits — and even a montage from the show in "The Texas Skillsaw Massacre" — that make him look like a raging, physically abusive lunatic.
  • Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
    • The series began as a jab at Southern, Bible-thumping, redneck, middle-class Americans. However, the show soon became a smash hit with that exact demographic. After the first season, the show became less 'look at this dumb white guy' and more 'laugh along with this hard-working father and his loving family' (albeit with some jokes here and there at their expense).
    • The show also pulled this off in the opposite direction as well. In spite of the fact that the show would often skewer liberals and progressives, the show ended up becoming very popular with those very same demographics. Partially because of the show's explicit or implicit condemnations of some of the more negative aspects of American conservatism, and also because the views of many of the liberal and progressive characters that they show used to take potshots as those values were so over-the-top that all but the most extreme left-wing liberals thought that the characters were taking it too far.
    • There's also Kahn Souphanousinphone, Hank's obnoxious Laotian neighbor and his family. He has a lot of Asian-American fans despite being a mostly-unlikable jerk (and being voiced by a white actor) because his focus episodes deal with issues that Asian-Americans deal with in Real Life, such as model minority stereotyping and the unreasonable expectations that go with it, plus being one of the few portrayals in American media that avoids Interchangeable Asian Cultures, albeit barely.
  • Misaimed Fandom: In a sense, the show owes its existence to this; originally, the show was actually about poking fun of rural Southerners like Hank and his friends. Except those people actually loved the show, helped by the lack of perceived "malice" in what the show did. So, it retooled itself to cater more to that fan-base.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Cotton crosses it in "The Father, the Son and J.C." when he attacks Jimmy Carter and threatens to shoot him in the head with a nail gun. If Cotton didn't cross it then, he most certainly did in "An Officer and a Gentle Boy" with his horrific treatment of Bobby at the boot camp he was attending in an effort to "toughen him up" and break his spirit. It includes making him rake leaves with a fork, forcing him to eat rotten backwash, and placing him on top of a large ice cube ("Anything cracks if you freeze it long enough!"). When all that fails, Cotton locks him up in an isolated cell for 3 days, with no food or water. That was straight-up cruel and heartless, well-intentioned or not.
    • Luanne's mother, Leanne, crosses it when she attempts to stab her daughter's boyfriend to death with a fork. Then she feigns apology to Peggy and attacks her when her guard is down.
    • Buck Strickland, when he frames Hank for Debbie's murder because he thought his own wife was the real culprit (she wasn't) and wanted to deflect attention. What makes this especially disgusting is that Hank had just saved his marriage AND his business in the previous episode.
    • Connie's cousin from Los Angeles, Tid Pao, crosses it by not only tricking Bobby into making meth as part of a science fair project to pay back the street gang she stole from, but she abandons him to take the fall when she discovers a police officer is the judge. Thankfully, she gets what she deserves sent to Wisconsin to live with Kahn's brother who's a farmer and warns her that he's her last chance or she gets sent back to her grandma in Laos.
    • Luanne's father, Hoyt Platter, for persuading Lucky to take the fall for him after he steals money from a restaurant's cash registernote . He's also willing to sell out Luanne's whole family — including Luanne herself — if it means he won't go back to jail. Seriously, what is wrong with Luanne's parents?
    • Principal Moss crosses it when, after years of cutting corners and doing the bare minimum, he learns that his school's test scores are in the toilet and he could potentially get fired if he doesn't do anything about them. His solution is blatant Loophole Abuse. He takes the lowest-scoring kids in the school and has them declared "Special-Needs Students" so that they won't have to take any standardized tests, thus bringing the school's average up so that he can keep his job. He ends up getting suspended once the school board catches on.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: Anytime the mild-mannered Hank says he's going to kick some ass, because it's always directed at someone who deserves it.
  • Nausea Fuel:
    • Bobby drops an apple Brown Betty right next to a pile of fresh horse crap, then scoops it back into the pan and serves it to Kix Brooks, who ends up contracting severe food poisoning.
    • In "Grand Theft Arlen", Peggy reveals she dropped a pancake on the floor and instead of throwing it out, she put it on a plate and randomly distributed it among her, Hank and Bobby in what she calls "Pancake Roulette".
    • The monkey biting the head off a rat in "Hank's Cowboy Movie".
    • In a deleted scene from "Meet the Manger Babies", some kids are shown eating big gobs of cut hair.
  • Never Live It Down: Hank's hatred for charcoal has only been mentioned a handful of times, but thanks to Memetic Mutation, you'd swear that charcoal's mere existence was Hank's Berserk Button.
  • Periphery Demographic: With otaku, of all people. It's not uncommon to find crossover fan-art of this show and popular anime franchises.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
  • Seasonal Rot: Much like The Simpsons, it's not known exactly when the show went downhill (if it went downhill at all), but Season 9 is usually the point in which the show's quality started to fade, due to weak/bad episodes (starting with the senseless retconning of Peggy Hill's past in "A Rover Runs Through It"note  and Luanne falling for Lucky the redneck on "Care-Takin' Care of Business", along with the show zig-zagging between siding with Hank even when he wasn't being reasonable or having everyone suddenly refuse to believe anything Hank says whenever he's accused of something bad). Season 10, which consisted mostly of holdovers from Season 9's production cycle, was criticized for similar reasons, although the series is said to have recovered somewhat afterwards. However, unlike the seasonal rot of The Simpsons and Family Guy, this show was still a somewhat enjoyable experience to watch in its later years - which, naturally, meant it was the one Fox caught onto and did something about.
  • Signature Scene: Hank giving Jimmy Wichard a Literal Ass-Kicking in "Life in the Fast Lane", one of the rare times Hank actively ACTS on his threat of kicking someone's ass.
  • So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus of the show at worst (at least when it premiered). It's not as wild, gross, and outrageous as The Simpsons, Family Guy, or even Judge's own Beavis and Butthead and a lot of people do dismiss it as being boring (even Mike Reiss of The Simpsons stated that he'd only write for the show if he wanted to be unfunny). However, for people who don't care much for the constant subversive humor of those three shows or want something a bit more subtle, then King of the Hill is their show.
    • A majority of the later episodes also feel like this: not entirely terrible, but not memorable or funny enough to stay with you.
  • Spiritual Successor: KOTH has its own spiritual successor (and, no, it's not The Goode Family): Bless the Harts, which is also set in the South (North Carolina rather than Texas). The producers of Bless the Harts stated they got permission from the producers of KOTH to use certain elements from KOTH to create a Shared Universe, such as Mega-Lo Mart.
  • Squick: In the episode "Hank's Dirty Laundry", it’s implied that Fernanda Valley, the star of the film Cuffs and Collars, was starring in pornographic films while she was still a minor.Explanation 
  • Stoic Woobie: Hank Hill expresses zero emotion throughout the entire series. However, he refuses to show any emotion at all because he fears that bad things will happen to him if he ever feels a moment of happiness in his life like when he seriously injured his ankle during the final game of a high school football season. As a result, Hank grows disconnected with acting normal and always seeks enjoyment in activities that nobody else enjoys. His life only gets worse due to being Surrounded by Idiots.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song:
    • "Hilloween" features a sound-alike to the Peanuts theme during the flashback scenes.
    • "The Man Who Shot Cane Skretteburg" features a sound-alike to the theme from The Great Escape.
  • Take That, Scrappy!: Any episode where Peggy gets herself into a serious conflict and is usually called out on her stupidity or arrogance. Examples include "Peggy's Fan Fair", "The Substitute Spanish Prisoner"note , and especially "Peggy Goes to Pots"note .
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: "Of Mice and Little Green Men" starts with Hank and Dale finding out they have more in common with each others' son. However, this is discarded by Dale coming to believe that Joseph was fathered by an alien.
  • Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Many of the characters look a bit too realistic. Moreso in the very early episodes (particularly the first season, before the art style was polished) and to a lesser extent in the very late episodes as well (the crisp digital HD look can be a bit unnerving for such a deliberately rough artstyle).
  • Unintentional Period Piece: "Lost in MySpace" from 2008 focuses on MySpace as the primary social media platform, without any mention of other platforms, when MySpace was still at its height but just approaching the precipice of being overtaken by Facebook in the next couple of months.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: As bad as Cotton Hill can be, it's hard not to feel sorry for him when you realize the story behind just what made him such an asshole. He was drafted in World War II and shipped off to the Pacific where an attack blew off his shins which had his feet being sewn to his knees. During his recovery in a Japanese POW camp, he fell in love with a nurse and they had a relationship until they were literally pulled away from each other. Cue literal decades of cynicism and bitterness that cost him two marriages, several friendships, relationships with all three of his sons, and a very exaggerated and horrific accident that winds up leading to his death.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
    • It can be pretty hard to feel sorry for Bill considering how creepy he gets with his lack of any internal filter and how he's shown to be stalking Peggy on more than one occasion. Especially when he was put in charge of a flood shelter, where most of what he does is abuse his power and actually keeps everyone in after the flood ends until Hank convinces him otherwise. But he made the people feel happy, so that's apparently the important part and the residents looking up to him is treated as a good thing. The way that the show never really allows him to develop or grow out of this and only makes it last an episode if he does show signs of character development doesn't help, since as a result he'll show a sympathetic side and work his way into something one episode then suddenly go back to being a creep the next.
    • Peggy. While her default characteristics wouldn't qualify her, the problem is that the writers had a nasty habit of making her play with the Conflict Ball and Idiot Ball, to the serious detriment of her family and especially Hank. She had some episodes that could arguably redeem her, but they were too uncommon to have that effect.
    • Hank as well. He's supposed to be the Only Sane Man, but his painfully old fashioned attitude and resistance to "new" things can make him come off as close-minded and stubborn. This is especially true in the later seasons, when the show becomes less inclined to acknowledge his mistakes.
    • Tilly, Hank's mother, is portrayed as a woman who had nothing but abuse thrown at her by Cotton but she's not that much better than he is in some regards. She's perfectly content to let her ex-husband and friends bully her son but gets upset when Hank doesn't stand up to Cotton for her (and yet she turns the other cheek toward Cotton) and she cheated on her nice boyfriend with a man she marries after only knowing him for a few weeks. Basically, the narrative paints Cotton in the wrong properly for his abuse toward Hank but lets Tilly be a passive aggressive hypocrite as well as someone who makes rather poor choices like selling her house to buy an RV when neither she nor her husband know how to operate it. And she even justifies her bad decisions by saying she's "having fun" and "enjoying life."
  • Values Dissonance: "What Makes Bobby Run?". With schools and society in general taking a much firmer stance on bullying and hazing now than in 2001, the episode's lambasting of Bobby for not submitting to a beating from an entire marching band definitely wouldn't fly today.
  • Values Resonance: This show has aged remarkably well in many aspects. In some ways? It was actually well ahead of its time:
    • "Leanne's Saga" depicts female-on-male abuse - and it does not treat it as funny. It's one of the first shows to actually do this period. It even touches upon the stigma that male victims of abuse face. Even twenty years after this episode was produced, the message is still relevant.
    • "That's What She Said" also manages to be relevant well into The New '20s. It showcases that innuendo laden jokes are in fact a form of harassment as well, why people are likely to keep their mouths shut about them, and even accurately showcases the stigma male victims of male-on-male sexual harassment still face.
    • In a similiar vein, there's the sexual harassment Luanne faces as a drink girl from a group of male golfers in "Jon Vitti Presents: Return to La Grunta", and the aftermath of Hank being humped by a dolphin at the resort. Luanne starts blaming herself for being harassed, saying it was her fault she'd been groped for 'taking the putt in the first place'. Hank tries to convince her to report the men, but him refusing to talk about the dolphin incident makes her believe she should just ignore her harassment as well. She then goes to work wearing baggy clothing and large glasses, as 'looking pretty in public is asking for trouble'. Both Luanne and Hank are also triggered by various things regarding their trauma, and Hank eventually admits to Peggy what happened, saying, "I thought ignoring it would make it better but it just made it worse... for everyone. You know, I've never said this about anything before... but it feels good to talk about it." Afterwards, as he tells the guys about it ("I don't know what I'm going to do but it starts with not lying about what happened. It's the dolphin who ought to be ashamed of himself."), they laugh at him... until Bill starts sobbing and admits it happened to him too— twice. At the end of the episode, when Hank witnesses Luanne still being harassed (despite dressing 'unattractively'), he grabs the ring leader by the ass (as he had spanked Luanne) and drags him to the dolphin tank, dumping him in the water with the 'frisky' dolphin Hank was attacked by previously. Luanne then regains her confidence and sheds the baggy clothing, saying that she wasn't afraid anymore, and she's going to dress how she wants no matter what. While some of Hank's side is Played for Laughs, it's still a very relevant commentary on rape culture and its consequences, especially post the #MeToo movement gaining traction.
      Hank: You think you can touch anyone you want anywhere you want? You think it's okay because no one says it's not?
  • The Woobie:
    • Although he's usually the designated Butt-Monkey, there have been a few times where Bill's misery wasn't portrayed as all that funny. The best/worst example being "Pretty, Pretty Dresses," where he starts dressing up as his ex Lenore because his loneliness during the Christmas season drove him suicidally insane.
    • Luanne came from a dysfunctional family, failed several times at doing what she loved (cosmetology), her on-again-off-again boyfriend died in a freak accident, her father is in jail for life as a three-strike felon, and to top it all off, she isn't very smart and suffers insecurity and falls into bad crowds because of it.
    • Kevin, a one-episode character from "Luanne Gets Lucky." He spends most of his screentime getting scared by Peggy/Luanne or threatened by Elvin and Muddaubber (Lucky's friends). This reaches its peak when he comes close to being beaten by the latter two (and he's only fifteen) if not for Lucky coming in just in time.
    • It's hard not to feel a little bad for Dale in "The Exterminator"; he went from doing something he loves (exterminating) to working in an office doing things he hates, where he's not allowed to wear his trademark sunglasses and cap. Plus, being the newbie, he has no set lunch schedule (one day, for example, he had his lunch moved to 4 PM because of a scheduling conflict).

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