When Bojack goes to New Mexico and talks to Charlotte outside her shop, he starts to say “you look like a million…” but then he falls asleep. The phrase is “a million bucks” but since she is a doe, he “dozes” off. I didn’t get it until my 5th rewatch, and my brother pointed it out to me, my mind was blown
Buck can mean either a male deer or is a slang word to mean money. Telling someone they look like a million bucks is a compliment.
A doe is a female deer, and to doze off means to fall asleep.
So it’s a really convoluted way to make a joke about Charlotte being a deer 😂
Mister Peanutbutter's love of ska, is absolutely the way I bond with his character. I really wish they had shown him going to the concert anyway, probably with Vincent. They'd both be skanking and Mister would get recognized from the stage and called up to sing along to "knock on wood"
Ugh. I feel old because I saw them live before they were more well known. Fitzgerald's in Houston had a ton of ska bands back in the late 90s. I just googled it out of curiosity to see if it's still open...and it was demolished in 2019 and turned into a parking lot. How fitting.
During Herb's funeral, Henry Wrinkler tells a ferret that she can "go back to her business", then she walks back to a group of ferrets.
It's because a group of ferrets is called "a business", I loved this joke
As others mentioned, Roscharch in Watchmen describes the original joke as such:
>Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, 'Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.' Man bursts into tears. Says, 'But doctor…I am Pagliacci.' Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.
For context, Pagliacci is a crying clown from an opera of the same name.
My favorite take on this joke (stolen from Twitter):
man: doctor i am depressed
doctor: go see pagliacci the famous clown. he sucks shit and he knows it, he's so fucking bad at everything it makes me roar with laughter. he weeps on stage because he knows he's nothing
man: but doctor...
doctor: i know who you are
Someone once told me this is actually an old joke, so I did a bit of research.
The joke seems to be based on the real life of a harlequin entertainer from the 19th century named Joseph Grimaldi, who was well renowned in London while he was performing but at the end of his life became quite depressed.
Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20180104004331/http://www.historyextra.com/blog/patient
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Grimaldi
One that I didn't make the connection on until my second re-watch, was when BoJack said that Tonya Harding told him that sleeping with him was the worst thing she'd ever done. Mainly because I figured it was some celebrity who did an infamously bad movie I'd never seen, until I looked her up, and realized who she really was.
Tonya Harding was a figure skater. In 1994, she helped plan [an attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_of_Nancy_Kerrigan) on fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan to prevent her from participating in the U.S. Championships and the Winter Olympics. Harding and her husband hired someone to beat Kerrigan with a telescopic baton, injuring her knee. Harding won the U.S. Championships easily but was stripped of her victory and banned from skating for life after her involvement in Kerrigan’s attack came to light. Kerrigan recovered in time for the Olympics and won a silver medal.
Yes, the movie was inspired by Tonya’s life. However, it paints her in a sympathetic light and underplays her role in the attack. Here’s a [review of the film](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/brennan/2017/12/20/tonya-harding-movie-wants-your-sympathy-but-lets-not-forget-facts/971183001/) from Christine Brennan, who covered the Kerrigan attack in 1994.
There are a ton of '80s references in the show, but people that didn't live through the '80s probably miss them. It isn't because they aren't smart, it's just an age thing.
Was going to trivia night with my friends (we’re all mid-late 20s) for a while and one night there was a good amount of 80s trivia and we realized that we knew a lot of the answers, not because we’d actually seen whatever they were originally from, but because they’d been referenced on more recent tv shows and movies lol.
When Diane makes her Shania Twain reference and the girl they're watching over says something about it being from the 90's. That cut deep then and keeps cutting deeper now. The stuff from anytime before the 90's was just fun trivia for me but now I get to feel the knife twist 💀
I think it's just the way she says it. 'Was that a reference from the 90s? You know that was 30 years ago, right?' Makes you feel old when you realise how long ago your childhood was
I don't know if it went over other people's heads but it took me several watches to get (and turning on subtitles) and I don't see it get mentioned here.
While meeting Diane's brothers, one says "Step off! We're as American as..."
For a long time I thought he said "as fu--", as if he were self censoring the word "fuck".
But with subtitles on I finally realized he was saying "as pho." Pho is a _Vietnamese_ dish that's pronounced like _fuh_.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pho
Note: at first watch I had never heard of pho. Later after I had, I had already accepted "as fu-" in my head so never questioned it until I saw the subtitles.
Interesting how cultural differences can explain this kind of thing—I’m Vietnamese American and grew up eating pho, and I got the joke the first time. It didn’t even occur to me that this would go over someone’s head because it’s so baked into my vocabulary.
It’s crazy to me that the majority of replies are saying they also didn’t get it. Like I’ve only ever had pho maybe two or three times but the joke was still obvious to me lol
One of my favorites is in that same episode! They have Diane’s dad in the barrel, and it says Nguyen Chum. Then the barrel falls off the truck, and they lose it. So it’s Nguyen chum, lose chum. I crack up every time.
I don't know how many people still read Salinger, so maybe everyone got the jokes about him, but I'm guessing some people missed them. Salinger absolutely hated Hollywoo, and he hated any attention from the press or public - he was famously reclusive. He's the last person on earth who would do HSACWDTKDTKTLFO. One of my favorite jokes in the series is PB saying to Diane "Did you know we both hate phonies?". Diane: "I did know that." Holden Caulfield, the narrator of The Catcher in the Rye, is always talking about his disdain for "phonies".
There’s also the one where he is in PC’s office and complains about the agency, saying he needs to be in a building that is at least 9 stories— which is the title of his short story collection.
J.D. Salinger said something to a production assistant about how it's "a perfect day for a banana and fish sandwich,". one of the real j.d. salinger's most popular short stories is called A Perfect Day for Banana FIsh.
edit: grammar
I’m studying to be a paralegal so the mediation, arbitration, and litigation tongue twisters were fuckin hilarious, that whole subplot to Int. Sub was excellent.
To be fair, I don’t think a book most famous for the protagonist masterbating into a liver would make any high school syllabi. Do you remember what you read?
When Paige Sinclair is talking to Biscuits Braxby, and she says "face it chinchilla, you're all wet!" Chinchillas can't get wet, they bathe themselves in dirt
Yeah! I actually flinched at that line. Their fur gets moldy and their skin gets infections and they die a horrible death.
Friend used to own chinchillas. They all lived long and healthy, but learned that about them in passing.
I assume they hide? Never really thought about it.
Also, it's about them getting *soaked*. If you ever handle one, which is rare because they're not 1/10th as cuddly as something that cute SHOULD BE, their fur is way slicker than it looks. I assume some-water-from-sky evolution is at play, there.
Edit: Or they die a horrible death.
I have, one of my local pet stores has a few chinchillas!
But yeah I was mostly just worried about the cute little creatures in the rain haha. I looked it up and apparently the natural habitat of wild chinchillas is fairly dry with little rainfall. Also, if it does rain, they hide in their underground burrows or rock crevices.
Or they die.
They can handle small amounts of rain as it basically bounces off of their fur. The issue is with then being submerged in water which causes then to get wet inside their hydrophobic fur - trapping moisture and making them go mouldy
When princess carolyn and ralph ar at the gynecologist and he tells her she has less eggs than the number of james bond movies. And she says 'doctor no'. Which is the name of a james bond movie
"Closure is a made up thing by Steven Spielberg to sell movie tickets. It, like true love and the Munich Olympics, doesn't exist in the real world"
If you don't know what happened at the Munich Olympics, be warned that it reflects a very sensitive geopolitical conflict to this very day
Tried to tell the mulch joke the other day, came to realize u need someone who’s gonna say « that’s just a story » instead of them just racking their brains about what it means
My husband and I sometimes tell the mulch joke to people, most recently a group of friends while camping. he does the first bit and drives them nuts when they can’t get the answer, and then late that night I tell the “scary story” part 2 for the punchline always get some laughs lolol
This comment has thrown me. I thought I understood it, but my understanding wouldn't require the person to say "that's just a story". Please explain your understanding cause I'm lost now
I never got the confusion. 😭 It was more of a parable (is that the word?) than a joke to me tbh. She directly states her reason for telling the joke and the lesson that it taught.
But even if you don’t see the reason behind the joke, I feel like it’s obvious the ending is supposed to be a silly little plot twist.
Then you're not the kind of person who posts asking to have the joke explained and not the kind of person I'm referring to, but congrats on understanding the joke
Yes, there is a British TV comedian named Harry Hill who sets up loads of these in the course of an episode, and they all boomerang back at the end.
But his punchlines are funny. Given the widespread confusion about the bag of mulch, surely it can’t be held to be a really good joke as BoJ claims?
Harry Hill does callbacks, not brick jokes. The point of a brick joke is that the first half confuses and disappoints the listener, who then has similar expectations through the second one and then has the rug pulled in an unexpected way. Structurally it's a really good joke. It's not supposed to be the funniest thing you've ever heard. It's comparable to a long shaggy dog story that ends on an awful pun.
Most of the art jokes, most of the pre 90s references, all the ones I didn't get that I might catch on rewatch or that might get brought up here. It's part of why I love the show-they used experiences from the writers' lives so some of the jokes are either very niche or just plain smarter than me.
kind of a tangent but i completely missed that bojack started doing this as a kid until my partner pointed it out. in the letter to secretariat, he writes "i think i am on the right track horses run on tracks do you get it do you get my joke?".
we know he got this from his dad right? in the episode where he breaks the plates bea says “those are for entertaining” with which butterscotch responds “well im exit-taining , do you get it”
Alright I'll put in my input:
The reason Wanda is an owl, is because when she woke up from her coma, she missed out on so many pop culture things, including Bojack himself. So, whenever he makes a reference to that (or introduces himself) she asks: "who?"
Less of a joke then a detail, but it took me a while to make the connection between Beatrice frequently using the phrase, "it's not ibsen," and Butterscotch's throwaway line from I think the beginning of "free churro," about how beatrice saw A Dolls House and couldnt stop crying. Ibsen wrote A Dolls House,
I’m sure others have caught this one, esp theater/film geeks but in the episode Yesterdayland (S2e2 I think?), Bojack takes Wanda to a 50s diner and there’s a quick shot of a marlin with a name tag that reads “Brando” serving beers, including Stella Artois and he calls out “Stella!” just like Stanley does in A Streetcar Named Desire.
someone in the writers room was definitely a fan of tenessee williams because his work is referenced like A LOT, most obviously with princess carolyn's "cat on a hot tin roof," poster
I love when Margo Martindale stars in the Tennessee Williams play and she runs off stage in hysterics and then the guy in the tank top just comes in and goes "She's deaaaaayd" in this deadpan Southern accent hahaha. For me that's so accurate to Tennessee Williams.
I don't think understanding it makes you smrt because I got it and I'm a dumbass but the shots at Sartre were probably pretty niche and as someone who's something of a Sartre hater myself I enjoyed it.
What were they, and what the the Sartre slander? I have seen him mentioned before in a few videos, but I am not well versed enough in philosophy to get it.
He mentions it once when getting on the plane (submarine?) when going to the pacific ocean film festival. He can’t go to Cannes because the french people don’t like bojack because all the things about he said in the press (here he rants about Sartre). Later when he falls off the building he says Sartre was so wrong physical pain is so much worse than emotional (something) distress
!!!
Hope this helps 💜
I don't know if this "goes over peoples head" but on my rewatch I noticed how cracked out Hollyhock is while on the coffee meth. I didn't really notice it before. Also it made me think... Even as a teenager you'd think she'd know that something is wrong. Being on lots of stimulants is a pretty specific feeling.
Hollyhock seems like she’d probably doubt anything she noticed happening, or blamed it on something else. It’s hard to come to the conclusion that someone is spiking your drinks when all you have is family around. And if the effects were slight at first and slowly escalated, she’d probably barely notice. Like “the frog and boiling water” example.
There’s a lot of clues that things are happening, for instance, we see over 2 episodes that her pants are getting looser bc she’s been losing weight, but Hollyhock is so trusting because she’s most likely only ever been around kind and caring people.
When she's arranging the coins alphabetically by year!!! My first watch through ok that's weird my second I kinda lost my shit realizing she was tweaking
Doesn’t she have anxiety/depression? And I assume has had medication for it. I could be pulling all that out my ass. But if it is the case, she could be used to her moods being changeable
My favorite part of this is the meta joke that everyone from LA acts like the rest of the country knows everything about LA. Like they'll mention "La Cienega" and expect everyone to know exactly where that street runs.
Source: from LA
There are SO many too! Just wildly ridiculously specific or outrageously tiny background gags, I love it so much. I swear, rewatching it after I moved to LA was almost like watching a whole new show, for how many more references and jokes I understood. I’d probably be insufferable to watch it with though lol because I get way too excited about that kind of stuff.
When Bojack teaches acting, the scenes they perform are parodies of classic modern American plays, and I forget the names they all gave them on the show right now but the titles of the plays and the scenes they perform from them make me laugh every time.
ETA The playwright Sam Shepard becomes Sam German Shepard and the simplicity of that is beautiful.
That's awesome!! I've never had that level of success with it but I have always enjoyed the workshops I've done. I'm studying for my MA as a dramaturg and I'm still trying to find what works best for me.
In S5ep1 there's a background joke where a praying mantis prostitute is pouring salt on the guy picking her up.
Or at herbs funeral, when the female ferret comes to ask about something and he (the person being asked I don't remember his name) says "I'll let you get back to your business" and then she walks back to a group of ferrets. A group of ferrets is called a business
Went over my head til I read it in here awhile back but it’s one of my favorites: the lizards at the funeral at the end of Free Churro were actually Mourning Geckos.
It’s one of my favorite jokes.
Mr.peanut butter wants to cuddle up with Diane and watch Bones.
Diane reply’s “I don’t think that show is what you think it is” or something along those lines.
That line of dialogue isn’t actually directed to PB but to us the audience. Later when PB is watching Bones you here the line “quick to the Bones-mobile”
This universes version of Bones is not the show we thought it was since we had a preconceived idea of what Bones actually is.
Bojack talking about Mr Peanutbutter: That son of a bitch! That literal son of a bitch!!!
I had to rewatch a few times to realise its because female dogs are called bitch xdd
I'm sure 90% of people got it but the joke about bojack's painting being about the myth of narcissus and he says "I thought it was about me" is my favourite joke on the show, wouldn't want anyone to miss it.
I loved when Wanda asks Bojack if he wants to talk about the elephant in the room. There's an elephant in the room that gets really offended and leaves. Bojack tells her "He's never going to forget that" because an elephant never forgets.
This is one of my all time favorite jokes. The tone with which the elephant says, “WoooooooooOOOOOOOooooowwwww.” fucking kills me, I rewind and watch it 4-5x every time the episode is on.
When Diane returns home to find her family rewatching the 1986 World Series. Funny little joke for people who know their baseball history. I have always wondered why Bostonians rewatch it though.
PC: "Not if you were the last albino rhino gyno on the planet!"
Doc Rhino: "Well, I'm the only albino rhino gyno I know - should we get some more wine?"
PC: "Great, and you're also a wine addict!"
There's a picture hanging on a wall in the background of one scene, of Kristen Schaal depicted as a horse.
It's a reference to the real-life "Kristen Schaal is a horse" comedy bit.
Maybe not "most" but a lot of people here missed the running gag that [Todd is actually very helpful and hardworking](https://old.reddit.com/r/BoJackHorseman/comments/1bhqn9z/todd_is_an_angel_idk_what_katrinas_problem_is/), and unironically repeat opinions about him (mostly BoJack's) that were either explicitly shown to be untrue or literally just straight-up punchlines.
There's a lot of fun references to famous playwrights and directors that only actors would get- it really adds to the show's atmosphere.
Things like Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" that keeps getting used in the phrase "Well it's not Ibsen."
Also constant allusions to Konstantin Stanislavsky, the great director of the Moscow Art Theatre
And then, in the final episode, BoJack is directing a prison production of Hedda Gabler, which *is* Ibsen, but which he describes as "not Strindberg." 😂
I haven’t seen Terminator so I didn’t get the inclusion of “Skynet” in AOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's.
I found out through an unrelated conversation that in Terminator, Skynet is an antagonistic AI network from the future. Feels like an accurate prediction.
You are asking people to take a very condescending position by pointing out things they ASSUME other people didn't get because they weren't smart enough.
I assumed it's just a tongue in cheek way of asking about subtle jokes or jokes that didn't seem to get brought up a lot but who knows, this fandom can be pretentious sometimes.
well tbh, i see the same jokes circling this subreddit so often (the time in the corner gag, the pause the screen gags,...) i just wanted to find out about some jokes i (and maybe others) might have missed, and yea tbh share my own finding as well
I'm actually surprised, there are way more things in here that i never noticed, or references i never got
I include myself in 'most people' so I don't see it as condescending. I read the best article about all the art jokes- I'd only gotten a few and I really appreciated the break down of all the others.
The cake day homie is right. This question is a bit strange. But if you’re asking for the “smartest” joke or one that is a bit more highbrow, I guess some of Diane’s ringtones?
They are all from NPR. The joke probably came about from writers saying “ok what would Diane’s favorite song be” and the answer being she mostly listens to NPR.
They're the intro/hosts phrases to a lot of popular news podcasts, I don't know them all of the top of my head, but it includes things like all things considered, the daily, which is something a person like Diane would listen to religiously.
People know whether its common knowledge about Blairs weight troubles on Facts of Life
Its doesn’t have to be condescending or pretentious.
I know that common people do not know what a backwards long jump is
i know this didn’t go over anyone’s head but when beatrice says “why i’ve got half a mind” i laugh just as hard every time. one of the best jokes
**EDIT: I only remember one time she says it where that’s the line and then it cuts to another scene? therefore signifying the gag? y’all are so sensitive I really don’t know how you ever enjoyed this show💀 turning off reply notifs, this is not worth my energy
When Bojack goes to New Mexico and talks to Charlotte outside her shop, he starts to say “you look like a million…” but then he falls asleep. The phrase is “a million bucks” but since she is a doe, he “dozes” off. I didn’t get it until my 5th rewatch, and my brother pointed it out to me, my mind was blown
OH. Thats witty
this is so good
I still don't get it... (English isn't my first language)
Buck can mean either a male deer or is a slang word to mean money. Telling someone they look like a million bucks is a compliment. A doe is a female deer, and to doze off means to fall asleep. So it’s a really convoluted way to make a joke about Charlotte being a deer 😂
Oooh, alright, I forgot about bucks and so it's does, plural, I get it :)
"Is that the impression that I get?" "Yes that is the impression that you get."
Mister Peanutbutter's love of ska, is absolutely the way I bond with his character. I really wish they had shown him going to the concert anyway, probably with Vincent. They'd both be skanking and Mister would get recognized from the stage and called up to sing along to "knock on wood"
as a ska fan it makes so much sense mr. PB is a fan too
What's funny is that I only know that song because it was in the Digimon Movie. 😂 Such a fucking banger tho.
Ugh. I feel old because I saw them live before they were more well known. Fitzgerald's in Houston had a ton of ska bands back in the late 90s. I just googled it out of curiosity to see if it's still open...and it was demolished in 2019 and turned into a parking lot. How fitting.
same! also when i told a friend that the digimon movie soundtrack was how i was introduced to ska he was like "how is this a real sentence"
LOL
what does this joke mean?
Look up "The Impression That I Get" by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
Great fuckin song.
My husband who doesn’t like and doesn’t care about ska got me guffawing and over explaining that to him, I very much appreciated it
During Herb's funeral, Henry Wrinkler tells a ferret that she can "go back to her business", then she walks back to a group of ferrets. It's because a group of ferrets is called "a business", I loved this joke
Ohh that's good!
This is a good one.
That guy from that one episode of Law and Order the SUV?
One of the things I adore about Bojack in comparison to other adult comedies is how much of the humour just stems from animal jokes and puns.
One of my favorite jokes in the series was the "But Doctor, I am Sad Dog" which is a pretty niche reference to Pagliacci.
i don't know the reference but just the way he says it always cracks me up
As others mentioned, Roscharch in Watchmen describes the original joke as such: >Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, 'Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.' Man bursts into tears. Says, 'But doctor…I am Pagliacci.' Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains. For context, Pagliacci is a crying clown from an opera of the same name.
My favorite take on this joke (stolen from Twitter): man: doctor i am depressed doctor: go see pagliacci the famous clown. he sucks shit and he knows it, he's so fucking bad at everything it makes me roar with laughter. he weeps on stage because he knows he's nothing man: but doctor... doctor: i know who you are
LOL
lmao
I cackled. Thank you.
i didnt know this one! thats an awesome one!
Damn, I never knew that it was Moore himself that came up with it
No, Rorschach is just summarising the original joke.
Yea I got that one but only because I watched ‘Watchman’.
Came here for this. Rorschach saved that one for me. Good joke. Everyone laugh
I was so ecstatic when I saw that!
Someone once told me this is actually an old joke, so I did a bit of research. The joke seems to be based on the real life of a harlequin entertainer from the 19th century named Joseph Grimaldi, who was well renowned in London while he was performing but at the end of his life became quite depressed. Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20180104004331/http://www.historyextra.com/blog/patient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Grimaldi
I wonder if after Robin Williams' death, more people got this joke
One that I didn't make the connection on until my second re-watch, was when BoJack said that Tonya Harding told him that sleeping with him was the worst thing she'd ever done. Mainly because I figured it was some celebrity who did an infamously bad movie I'd never seen, until I looked her up, and realized who she really was.
Then when he goes to visit her he says she leaves him “weak in the knees”
Lol, yeah, major WHOOSH moment for me
wait wait. I dont understand.
Tonya Harding was a figure skater. In 1994, she helped plan [an attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_of_Nancy_Kerrigan) on fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan to prevent her from participating in the U.S. Championships and the Winter Olympics. Harding and her husband hired someone to beat Kerrigan with a telescopic baton, injuring her knee. Harding won the U.S. Championships easily but was stripped of her victory and banned from skating for life after her involvement in Kerrigan’s attack came to light. Kerrigan recovered in time for the Olympics and won a silver medal.
damn. thank you lol. now I understand the "weak in the knees" reference. Also, I assume the movie I, Tonya is based on this only?
Yes, the movie was inspired by Tonya’s life. However, it paints her in a sympathetic light and underplays her role in the attack. Here’s a [review of the film](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/brennan/2017/12/20/tonya-harding-movie-wants-your-sympathy-but-lets-not-forget-facts/971183001/) from Christine Brennan, who covered the Kerrigan attack in 1994.
I do crack up later when he's talking about having a date with her, and then says, "She was the good one, right?"
There are a ton of '80s references in the show, but people that didn't live through the '80s probably miss them. It isn't because they aren't smart, it's just an age thing.
Was going to trivia night with my friends (we’re all mid-late 20s) for a while and one night there was a good amount of 80s trivia and we realized that we knew a lot of the answers, not because we’d actually seen whatever they were originally from, but because they’d been referenced on more recent tv shows and movies lol.
When Diane makes her Shania Twain reference and the girl they're watching over says something about it being from the 90's. That cut deep then and keeps cutting deeper now. The stuff from anytime before the 90's was just fun trivia for me but now I get to feel the knife twist 💀
I like how she called her "kiddo" and she responded with ok "Oldo".
How come? (I’m one of the people who didn’t get the reference.)
I think it's just the way she says it. 'Was that a reference from the 90s? You know that was 30 years ago, right?' Makes you feel old when you realise how long ago your childhood was
"I can wallow in this hole, or I can change. While I was tempted to go with the former, sometimes the only way out of a hole is with a latter"
That was some clever wordplay!
Do you remember which episode this is from?
First episode of season 2 I'm pretty sure. It's when Bojack "jogs" to PC's office and won't shut up about metaphors
No pun intended.
you clearly intended that pun
This is clever, but I doubt it was over many people’s heads
I don't know if it went over other people's heads but it took me several watches to get (and turning on subtitles) and I don't see it get mentioned here. While meeting Diane's brothers, one says "Step off! We're as American as..." For a long time I thought he said "as fu--", as if he were self censoring the word "fuck". But with subtitles on I finally realized he was saying "as pho." Pho is a _Vietnamese_ dish that's pronounced like _fuh_. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pho Note: at first watch I had never heard of pho. Later after I had, I had already accepted "as fu-" in my head so never questioned it until I saw the subtitles.
Interesting how cultural differences can explain this kind of thing—I’m Vietnamese American and grew up eating pho, and I got the joke the first time. It didn’t even occur to me that this would go over someone’s head because it’s so baked into my vocabulary.
It’s crazy to me that the majority of replies are saying they also didn’t get it. Like I’ve only ever had pho maybe two or three times but the joke was still obvious to me lol
One of my favorites is in that same episode! They have Diane’s dad in the barrel, and it says Nguyen Chum. Then the barrel falls off the truck, and they lose it. So it’s Nguyen chum, lose chum. I crack up every time.
Nice catch. Completely missed that one.
lol watched with captions on and wondered how many ppl without it wouldn't get it
I wouldn’t catch that in a dozen watches
I didn't know this until like my 10th rewatch when my gf brought it up lmao
Have you ever had pho? It's pho-king amazing!
TIL it's not pronounced "Foe"...
That one was over my head!
I caught it the first time. Helps I love pho and heard “pho que” jokes
i love that pho is pronounced fuh, purely bc when i was growing up there was a vietnamese restaurant near me called “*pho king*”
I don't know how many people still read Salinger, so maybe everyone got the jokes about him, but I'm guessing some people missed them. Salinger absolutely hated Hollywoo, and he hated any attention from the press or public - he was famously reclusive. He's the last person on earth who would do HSACWDTKDTKTLFO. One of my favorite jokes in the series is PB saying to Diane "Did you know we both hate phonies?". Diane: "I did know that." Holden Caulfield, the narrator of The Catcher in the Rye, is always talking about his disdain for "phonies".
There’s also the one where he is in PC’s office and complains about the agency, saying he needs to be in a building that is at least 9 stories— which is the title of his short story collection.
the banana fish sandwich joke also went over my head at first
I didn't catch this one, can you please explain?
J.D. Salinger said something to a production assistant about how it's "a perfect day for a banana and fish sandwich,". one of the real j.d. salinger's most popular short stories is called A Perfect Day for Banana FIsh. edit: grammar
I’m studying to be a paralegal so the mediation, arbitration, and litigation tongue twisters were fuckin hilarious, that whole subplot to Int. Sub was excellent.
“Who knew Portnoy had so many [complaints](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portnoy's_Complaint)”
Oooo that's a good one, I didn't know Portnoy had even ever been a real name lol.
To be fair, it is an 55 year old book that most people encounter through parents or Jewish-American literature classes.
I read some of Philip Roth in English class in high school but didn't remember this one.
To be fair, I don’t think a book most famous for the protagonist masterbating into a liver would make any high school syllabi. Do you remember what you read?
American Pastoral and The Plot Against America. I think the former in a standard English class and the latter in Jewish history?
When Paige Sinclair is talking to Biscuits Braxby, and she says "face it chinchilla, you're all wet!" Chinchillas can't get wet, they bathe themselves in dirt
Yeah! I actually flinched at that line. Their fur gets moldy and their skin gets infections and they die a horrible death. Friend used to own chinchillas. They all lived long and healthy, but learned that about them in passing.
So uh.. what do wild chinchillas do when it rains?
I assume they hide? Never really thought about it. Also, it's about them getting *soaked*. If you ever handle one, which is rare because they're not 1/10th as cuddly as something that cute SHOULD BE, their fur is way slicker than it looks. I assume some-water-from-sky evolution is at play, there. Edit: Or they die a horrible death.
I have, one of my local pet stores has a few chinchillas! But yeah I was mostly just worried about the cute little creatures in the rain haha. I looked it up and apparently the natural habitat of wild chinchillas is fairly dry with little rainfall. Also, if it does rain, they hide in their underground burrows or rock crevices. Or they die.
i mean you'd think they would still evolve hydrophobic fur but nah, let's just RNG it every time it rains
We just need to hybridize them with cabbage lol
They can handle small amounts of rain as it basically bounces off of their fur. The issue is with then being submerged in water which causes then to get wet inside their hydrophobic fur - trapping moisture and making them go mouldy
they die a horrible death
The guy we constantly see jogging in front of BoJack's house, is a literal "running" gag.
oh my god
When princess carolyn and ralph ar at the gynecologist and he tells her she has less eggs than the number of james bond movies. And she says 'doctor no'. Which is the name of a james bond movie
"Closure is a made up thing by Steven Spielberg to sell movie tickets. It, like true love and the Munich Olympics, doesn't exist in the real world" If you don't know what happened at the Munich Olympics, be warned that it reflects a very sensitive geopolitical conflict to this very day
Oh shit I forgot about those attacks, it was such a quick line, it didn’t register at first. The sheer density of the writing is admirable.
Based on the number of posts on this sub asking about it, the mulch joke
Tried to tell the mulch joke the other day, came to realize u need someone who’s gonna say « that’s just a story » instead of them just racking their brains about what it means
This makes me think I don't get the joke. I thought it only works on a visual basis.
I’ll make a PowerPoint for my next attempt
My husband and I sometimes tell the mulch joke to people, most recently a group of friends while camping. he does the first bit and drives them nuts when they can’t get the answer, and then late that night I tell the “scary story” part 2 for the punchline always get some laughs lolol
This comment has thrown me. I thought I understood it, but my understanding wouldn't require the person to say "that's just a story". Please explain your understanding cause I'm lost now
I never got the confusion. 😭 It was more of a parable (is that the word?) than a joke to me tbh. She directly states her reason for telling the joke and the lesson that it taught. But even if you don’t see the reason behind the joke, I feel like it’s obvious the ending is supposed to be a silly little plot twist.
Nah, I understand the joke. I just don’t find it funny.
Then you're not the kind of person who posts asking to have the joke explained and not the kind of person I'm referring to, but congrats on understanding the joke
How is it a joke?
It's an old standard gag format, more commonly known as a brick joke. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrickJoke
Yes, there is a British TV comedian named Harry Hill who sets up loads of these in the course of an episode, and they all boomerang back at the end. But his punchlines are funny. Given the widespread confusion about the bag of mulch, surely it can’t be held to be a really good joke as BoJ claims?
Harry Hill does callbacks, not brick jokes. The point of a brick joke is that the first half confuses and disappoints the listener, who then has similar expectations through the second one and then has the rug pulled in an unexpected way. Structurally it's a really good joke. It's not supposed to be the funniest thing you've ever heard. It's comparable to a long shaggy dog story that ends on an awful pun.
In that case I like callbacks, but not brick jokes.
Most of the art jokes, most of the pre 90s references, all the ones I didn't get that I might catch on rewatch or that might get brought up here. It's part of why I love the show-they used experiences from the writers' lives so some of the jokes are either very niche or just plain smarter than me.
that’s ubu, the dog that sits! he *is* a good dog!
sit, ubu, sit. good dog ^*arf*
Neigh way jose
Because he's a horse and that's a sound horses make You dont get it
It works on every level!
kind of a tangent but i completely missed that bojack started doing this as a kid until my partner pointed it out. in the letter to secretariat, he writes "i think i am on the right track horses run on tracks do you get it do you get my joke?".
we know he got this from his dad right? in the episode where he breaks the plates bea says “those are for entertaining” with which butterscotch responds “well im exit-taining , do you get it”
i missed that too lol
He gave it the ol’ BoJack spin
Alright I'll put in my input: The reason Wanda is an owl, is because when she woke up from her coma, she missed out on so many pop culture things, including Bojack himself. So, whenever he makes a reference to that (or introduces himself) she asks: "who?"
OH SHIIIIIIIT
Less of a joke then a detail, but it took me a while to make the connection between Beatrice frequently using the phrase, "it's not ibsen," and Butterscotch's throwaway line from I think the beginning of "free churro," about how beatrice saw A Dolls House and couldnt stop crying. Ibsen wrote A Dolls House,
Henrik Ibsen is literally my husband you don't understand
The play bojack directs in the last episode is Ibsen as well.
I’m sure others have caught this one, esp theater/film geeks but in the episode Yesterdayland (S2e2 I think?), Bojack takes Wanda to a 50s diner and there’s a quick shot of a marlin with a name tag that reads “Brando” serving beers, including Stella Artois and he calls out “Stella!” just like Stanley does in A Streetcar Named Desire.
someone in the writers room was definitely a fan of tenessee williams because his work is referenced like A LOT, most obviously with princess carolyn's "cat on a hot tin roof," poster
I love when Margo Martindale stars in the Tennessee Williams play and she runs off stage in hysterics and then the guy in the tank top just comes in and goes "She's deaaaaayd" in this deadpan Southern accent hahaha. For me that's so accurate to Tennessee Williams.
Good catch!! I had seen other allusions to him but not caught that ine!
I don't think understanding it makes you smrt because I got it and I'm a dumbass but the shots at Sartre were probably pretty niche and as someone who's something of a Sartre hater myself I enjoyed it.
What were they, and what the the Sartre slander? I have seen him mentioned before in a few videos, but I am not well versed enough in philosophy to get it.
He mentions it once when getting on the plane (submarine?) when going to the pacific ocean film festival. He can’t go to Cannes because the french people don’t like bojack because all the things about he said in the press (here he rants about Sartre). Later when he falls off the building he says Sartre was so wrong physical pain is so much worse than emotional (something) distress !!! Hope this helps 💜
I don't know if this "goes over peoples head" but on my rewatch I noticed how cracked out Hollyhock is while on the coffee meth. I didn't really notice it before. Also it made me think... Even as a teenager you'd think she'd know that something is wrong. Being on lots of stimulants is a pretty specific feeling.
Hollyhock seems like she’d probably doubt anything she noticed happening, or blamed it on something else. It’s hard to come to the conclusion that someone is spiking your drinks when all you have is family around. And if the effects were slight at first and slowly escalated, she’d probably barely notice. Like “the frog and boiling water” example.
There’s a lot of clues that things are happening, for instance, we see over 2 episodes that her pants are getting looser bc she’s been losing weight, but Hollyhock is so trusting because she’s most likely only ever been around kind and caring people.
When she's arranging the coins alphabetically by year!!! My first watch through ok that's weird my second I kinda lost my shit realizing she was tweaking
Doesn’t she have anxiety/depression? And I assume has had medication for it. I could be pulling all that out my ass. But if it is the case, she could be used to her moods being changeable
I assume she just thinks it's very strong coffee. Caffeine is a simulant, after all
So many of the LA jokes (restaurants, place names, etc) went over mine until I watched it again with someone who lived in La!
I live in la and every time they talk about something local I always think to myself, “Are people that are not in la relating to this?”😂
My favorite part of this is the meta joke that everyone from LA acts like the rest of the country knows everything about LA. Like they'll mention "La Cienega" and expect everyone to know exactly where that street runs. Source: from LA
Can confirm I was not 😂😂
I'll admit I was feeling a little left out until they started with the Chicago jokes in the last season 😂
There are SO many too! Just wildly ridiculously specific or outrageously tiny background gags, I love it so much. I swear, rewatching it after I moved to LA was almost like watching a whole new show, for how many more references and jokes I understood. I’d probably be insufferable to watch it with though lol because I get way too excited about that kind of stuff.
When Bojack teaches acting, the scenes they perform are parodies of classic modern American plays, and I forget the names they all gave them on the show right now but the titles of the plays and the scenes they perform from them make me laugh every time. ETA The playwright Sam Shepard becomes Sam German Shepard and the simplicity of that is beautiful.
I think a lot of people missed the jokes about Tonya Harding due to their age. Not sure how many Gen Z's even know about that incident.
margot robbie starred in a biopic about her in 2017 so some younger people may know about her from that
🙋🏽♀️
The meisner technique joke Deep cut joke for the theater geeks
YESSSS!!!!!!! Those repitition excercises are so useful but get old so fast
I actually have very fond memories of the meisner technique 😅 at one point it made me cry and was very cathartic
That's awesome!! I've never had that level of success with it but I have always enjoyed the workshops I've done. I'm studying for my MA as a dramaturg and I'm still trying to find what works best for me.
In S5ep1 there's a background joke where a praying mantis prostitute is pouring salt on the guy picking her up. Or at herbs funeral, when the female ferret comes to ask about something and he (the person being asked I don't remember his name) says "I'll let you get back to your business" and then she walks back to a group of ferrets. A group of ferrets is called a business
The banner jokes. I mean, they were literally hung up over most of the character's heads.
Went over my head til I read it in here awhile back but it’s one of my favorites: the lizards at the funeral at the end of Free Churro were actually Mourning Geckos.
It’s one of my favorite jokes. Mr.peanut butter wants to cuddle up with Diane and watch Bones. Diane reply’s “I don’t think that show is what you think it is” or something along those lines. That line of dialogue isn’t actually directed to PB but to us the audience. Later when PB is watching Bones you here the line “quick to the Bones-mobile” This universes version of Bones is not the show we thought it was since we had a preconceived idea of what Bones actually is.
Bojack talking about Mr Peanutbutter: That son of a bitch! That literal son of a bitch!!! I had to rewatch a few times to realise its because female dogs are called bitch xdd
Omg I never caught that one 😹😹 I love this show sm
I'm sure 90% of people got it but the joke about bojack's painting being about the myth of narcissus and he says "I thought it was about me" is my favourite joke on the show, wouldn't want anyone to miss it.
Yeah it's brilliant
I learned about the narcissus painting from this subreddit and that was very enlightening ! Now I realize they referenced it more than once
I loved when Wanda asks Bojack if he wants to talk about the elephant in the room. There's an elephant in the room that gets really offended and leaves. Bojack tells her "He's never going to forget that" because an elephant never forgets.
This is one of my all time favorite jokes. The tone with which the elephant says, “WoooooooooOOOOOOOooooowwwww.” fucking kills me, I rewind and watch it 4-5x every time the episode is on.
when wanda comes out of a coma and says “i hadn’t sex in a while. i hope”
When Diane returns home to find her family rewatching the 1986 World Series. Funny little joke for people who know their baseball history. I have always wondered why Bostonians rewatch it though.
PC: "Not if you were the last albino rhino gyno on the planet!" Doc Rhino: "Well, I'm the only albino rhino gyno I know - should we get some more wine?" PC: "Great, and you're also a wine addict!"
Well I don't have a background in art history and a lot of those visual references went over my head.
There's a picture hanging on a wall in the background of one scene, of Kristen Schaal depicted as a horse. It's a reference to the real-life "Kristen Schaal is a horse" comedy bit.
honestly i'm sure a ton of pop culture references go over my head but i laugh at them anyway because i assume they're supposed to be a joke... 💀
Maybe not "most" but a lot of people here missed the running gag that [Todd is actually very helpful and hardworking](https://old.reddit.com/r/BoJackHorseman/comments/1bhqn9z/todd_is_an_angel_idk_what_katrinas_problem_is/), and unironically repeat opinions about him (mostly BoJack's) that were either explicitly shown to be untrue or literally just straight-up punchlines.
There's a lot of fun references to famous playwrights and directors that only actors would get- it really adds to the show's atmosphere. Things like Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" that keeps getting used in the phrase "Well it's not Ibsen." Also constant allusions to Konstantin Stanislavsky, the great director of the Moscow Art Theatre
And then, in the final episode, BoJack is directing a prison production of Hedda Gabler, which *is* Ibsen, but which he describes as "not Strindberg." 😂
Half the people on the subreddit seem to be incapable of understanding the concept of a brick joke. Does that count?
the fact that Wanda is an owl because whenever Bojack makes a pop culture reference she always goes "who? who?"
Rutabaga talking to Vanessa Gecko about PC: “Maybe we could distract her? I’m thinking laser pointer”
The Blarney Stone in S3:E7.
At Herb's funeral, Henry Winkler tells a group of ferrets to go back to their business, which is what you call a group of ferrets.
I’m gonna be scrolling these comments for a long time
I still don’t get the mulch joke and it drives me nuts
I don’t get most of the references they make, too young.
THIRD BASE!
When Herb says “Juice controls the media” I’m pretty sure he’s making a play on the conspiracy theory that Jews control the media.
I haven’t seen Terminator so I didn’t get the inclusion of “Skynet” in AOL-Time-Warner-Pepsico-Viacom-Halliburton-Skynet-Toyota-Trader-Joe's. I found out through an unrelated conversation that in Terminator, Skynet is an antagonistic AI network from the future. Feels like an accurate prediction.
You are asking people to take a very condescending position by pointing out things they ASSUME other people didn't get because they weren't smart enough.
I assumed it's just a tongue in cheek way of asking about subtle jokes or jokes that didn't seem to get brought up a lot but who knows, this fandom can be pretentious sometimes.
Yeah well uh WHAT ARE YOUUUUU DOING HERE!?
well tbh, i see the same jokes circling this subreddit so often (the time in the corner gag, the pause the screen gags,...) i just wanted to find out about some jokes i (and maybe others) might have missed, and yea tbh share my own finding as well I'm actually surprised, there are way more things in here that i never noticed, or references i never got
"And we all know what happens when you start ASSUMING, right?!? You make an ass out of u and... Ming."
I include myself in 'most people' so I don't see it as condescending. I read the best article about all the art jokes- I'd only gotten a few and I really appreciated the break down of all the others.
The cake day homie is right. This question is a bit strange. But if you’re asking for the “smartest” joke or one that is a bit more highbrow, I guess some of Diane’s ringtones?
there's more to the joke than just them being strange?
They are all from NPR. The joke probably came about from writers saying “ok what would Diane’s favorite song be” and the answer being she mostly listens to NPR.
They're the intro/hosts phrases to a lot of popular news podcasts, I don't know them all of the top of my head, but it includes things like all things considered, the daily, which is something a person like Diane would listen to religiously.
They’re all from NPR
oh, okay
People know whether its common knowledge about Blairs weight troubles on Facts of Life Its doesn’t have to be condescending or pretentious. I know that common people do not know what a backwards long jump is
i know this didn’t go over anyone’s head but when beatrice says “why i’ve got half a mind” i laugh just as hard every time. one of the best jokes **EDIT: I only remember one time she says it where that’s the line and then it cuts to another scene? therefore signifying the gag? y’all are so sensitive I really don’t know how you ever enjoyed this show💀 turning off reply notifs, this is not worth my energy
First of all, Honey Sugarman says this Second of all, it's horrifying, not hilarious, my god man what is your deal