For the Deconstructed Trope page, go here.
Likewise the many tropes that the show deconstructs, Bojack Horseman also masters the ability of presenting complex characters that do not fit the standard archetypes they're assigned.
- Abusive Parents: The effects of abuse have very clearly caused a lot of harm and self-loathing within the cast.
- The death of Diane's father has zero emotional impact on her: after a youth filled with emotional abuse, Diane has lost all love she could ever have for her father.
- Bojack's own abuse at the hands of Beatrice has also left him with deep scars and resentment. When he is forced to care for a senile Beatrice, he finally lashes out at her by throwing her doll over the balcony. After Beatrice poisons Hollyhock with weight loss supplements, she immediately dumps her in a crappy retirement home.
- Amicable Exes: Good in theory, difficult to maintain in practice.
- Diane is forced to endure her ex Wayne's company when he writes an article on Mr. Peanutbutter for Buzzfeed. This puts a strain on her current relationship since it ends up highlighting and contrasting the many ways PB fails to understand her (and compensates for it) compared to Wayne's synchrony with her tastes (and brings out her worst qualities with his negativity). Once Diane feels he's overstayed his welcome, she discovers Wayne finished the article a long time ago and hung around to try to woo Diane again. Once he leaves, Diane is left to ponder whether her similarities with Wayne means she hasn't changed enough to be with Mr. Peanutbutter.
- A pretty complex take in the case of BoJack's relationship with Princess Carolyn. They start the series as a (dysfunctional) couple who's always having ups and downs. This goes on for a while until Diane comes along. As they both work their issues separately, they both come to the realization that their intimate relationship is toxic and should only deal with each other in a professional level. While capable of being amiable to each other on a limited basis, their relationship is still far from perfect: BoJack gets mad at the level of effort Princess Carolyn puts into work and she loathes his neediness. It's not that they outright hate each other, they just know each other too well to make a good chemistry.
- Butt-Monkey: "Shut up, Todd!", indeed. Todd's status as one of the acceptable targets of the show is usually Played for Laughs, but heaps and heaps of mockery (mostly from BoJack) have caused him to have a pretty low vision of himself, a desire to be part of something important and an Extreme Doormat, to boot.Todd: Look, I know I'm a screw-up and all my ideas are terrible, but with Becca, I was responsible for something. I had a purpose.Todd: I don't know why I always get into these messes. You know, sometimes I feel like my whole life is just a series of loosely-related wacky misadventures.
- Deadpan Snarker: While this is a generally accepted and beloved part of the show, it gets a dark iteration in Beatrice Horseman. She was a very funny woman, but when her marriage began failing she started directing her considerable wit into snarking at her husband, which he responded to in kind. The result? Bojack's parents being absolutely incapable of expressing sincere love or support, but plenty capable of throwing out a witticism that pointed out how lame or insufficient something of his was, even from the time he was very young. Beatrice being a Deadpan Snarker, more than her backstory or her unplanned pregnancy or her sad family life, is what probably did the most damage to Bojack. He could never feel safe around her, and she never expressed real love to him, her own son, and the result is a middle-aged man still desperately looking for true unconditional love to fill the hole she didn't.
- Determinator: Diane refuses to give up on a cause she feels is worthy or compromise her position in any way. This makes her appear rather arrogant and naive. Also, when her ideals clash with the real world, the real world almost always wins, because someone who's committed a heinous act will usually have lots of people that will go down with them, and Hollywoo is more than willing to get its hands dirty to protect itself.
- Fun Personified: Mr. Peanutbutter loves to make the people around him feel good, and to be the life of the party. The trouble is that, rather than do things that people would like, Mr. Peanutbutter frequently does things that he'd assume they'd like. Also, it's never done out of a sense of altruism, but to keep the people in his life from leaving him. This often leads to him making Grand Romantic Gestures to his wife Diane after she's told him multiple times that she doesn't like them. This attitude is probably why his ex-wives divorced him. It causes such a strain in his marriage to Diane that, by the end of the fourth season, they're headed down the same road, finalizing a divorce in Season 5. And then, when Mr. Peanutbutter has a chance to come clean about all of his faults to his new girlfriend Pickles, he asks her to marry him instead, starting the cycle all over again.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Sarah Lynn, besides being a drug addict and overall train wreck of a person, is known for drinking like a sailor. Any kind, all the booze she can drink, every excess is obligatory in any party. Rather than the normal portrayal of her as rough but fun-loving all the same, she comes off as an uncaring, irresponsible wreck who's a clear danger to herself and everyone around her. Besides the desire to engage in as much debauchery as she can do, Sarah Lynn is often doing it out of a sense of emptiness and deep unhappiness in her life, overloading herself with stimuli to numb the pain. This last part has worked a bit too flawlessly; as numb as she has become, she doesn't seem to realize when to stop. The only clue her body is able to give her when it's too much comes late, and she dies.
- Hysterical Woman: Honey Sugarman was a pretty normal mare, married and with children living through The '40s, at least until the day her one and only son Crackerjack left for war and was killed in action. From then onward , Honey was unable to stop thinking about him, blaming herself for everything, a deep feeling that was worsened by her husband not willing to empathize with her due to the values of the time and led her to neglect her only child left, Beatrice. Eventually, during the end of war celebration in Michigan, Honey explodes into a maniac-depressive fit from bottled emotions and causes a severe car crash in which Beatrice was driving. Unable to deal with the grief (and with neither society, husband or anyone willing to lend support or even recommend therapy which didn’t exist back then), Honey ends up getting a lobotomy with her last words to Beatrice being a promise to “never love anyone the way [she] loved Crackerjack”.
- Intrepid Reporter: Paige Sinclair is dedicated to getting to the bottom of whatever story she's currently on the scent of and won't stop until she's exposed every misdeed of the scoundrel she's pursuing. The energy she brings to this pursuit makes her come across as invasive and annoying to the people she's interviewing, she's completely open about being entirely self-motivated, grumbles the moment she loses the spotlight and is entirely fine with selectively presenting facts to support her case. While her initial article is disastrous for it's subject it quickly gets overshadowed by a more in-depth interview more reachable by modern consumers. Furthermore, all the damage done to Bojack's reputation as a result of these events is forgotten by the public inside of two years, with the only lasting damage being financial (from a semi-related lawsuit) and driving away every close friend he had.
- Iron Lady: Princess Carolyn, Vanessa Gekko, Angela Diaz, and Amanda Hannity are capable women on their own right and have ways of handling themselves, but each has issues: PC can’t find a way to separate private and professional life since her work is her life, making her very miserable and self-conceited; Vanessa has an implied good personal life, but she is backstabbing and unpleasant when in work mode; Angela Diaz has to put up a cold, detached, and manipulative front to survive in a misogynistic profession; and Amanda is the top editor at Manatee Fair, but can just as easily subjugate to the Powers That Be if it will affect her livelihood, even if it’d be immoral to do so. The show also makes the point that once these women become players in the system, they’re forced to become part of the same system and rules that oppressed and blocked their paths in the first place. Only women like Diane and Stefani manage to get some leverage and that’s because they work independent of the system (which Stefani only manages because she's independently wealthy).
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As BoJack noted during his mother's funeral, sitcom characters tend be really mean to their friends and family but do big acts of kindness to show that they do care about the people around them. However, he points out that in real life a person needs to be consistently good in order to maintain a healthy relationship with their loved ones. A normally mean person doing occasional large acts of kindness isn't enough to offset the negativity they regularly spew out towards everyone around them or make up for bad deeds the mean one committed. After all, why should people choose to be around someone who does terrible things most the time and good things occasionally versus someone who doesn't do terrible things at all? BoJack uses his relationship with Todd as an example, as Bojack rescuing him from cultists wasn't enough to earn forgiveness for his previous actions nor was it enough to keep their relationship from falling apart a season later.
- One of the Kids: Bojack has an uncanny ability to bond with younger characters because of his own mental immaturity. However, this makes him much more susceptible to screw up around those younger characters instead of behaving as a responsible adult should. "Escape From L.A." just drives this home; he's still his usual self, but by interacting with people closer to his emotional age (a.k.a. teenagers) he comes off less as a lovable loser and more as a creepy, pathetic old man who (intentionally or not) looks like he's trying to take advantage of them.
- Standard '50s Father:
- Joseph Sugarman, Bojack's maternal grandfather, has a mind for old fashioned values, sense of responsibility and fondness for white suits. Similar to Clay Puppington, this façade makes it much harder for society or himself to realize he's a sociopath with a very possessive definition of "love". Not that it would matter; however terrible his actions may be, society would brand them as "Tough Love" or "necessary" and he's not gonna start doing any soul searching anytime soon, lest someone confuse this as "womanly emotions".
- Butterscotch is a prime example of what happens when a pseudo-liberal feels betrayed by his ideals and idols and makes a turnaround to "conservative" values out of spite. Contrasting Joseph, his coat, pipe and old-fashioned statements don't do a lot to hide how much of an asshole he is and he's not going to sugarcoat it either, giving harsh advice to BoJack about "life's struggles" and "being a REAL man'', regardless of how much he is an example of a weak, cowardly and jaded Former Teen Rebel.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: BoJack's a jerk and an abrasive individual, and that's exactly how people see him. Thing is, he's not happy at what he does or how he behaves and is often resentful of the actions he has taken to reach the place he is in, often turning that hate onto others... Causing the very actions he himself hates. Also, unlike a simple Hand Wave of his behavior, his arc shows in detail the kind of emotional damage a person would have to endure to behave the way he does and how that still won't excuse any of his behavior to the people in his life, his friends especially.
- Uptown Girl: Beatrice Sugarman was born and raised in the upper class, wealthy, but part of a dysfunctional and constricting family, namely a misogynistic father trying to marry her off with a good business partner. At her debutante party, Beatrice meets Butterscotch Horseman, an everyday aspiring writer from the lower class. The two hit it off instantly, and Beatrice doesn't have to worry about keeping up appearances with him. They have a romantic night which results in Beatrice's pregnancy and, knowing she can't marry a wealthy husband with a child born of wedlock, she goes to Butterscotch. The two of them reconcile and look forward to a bright, happy future with their child, with Butterscotch planning to finish his book so that they can all live a happy life. Instead, as soon as Bojack is born, everything falls apart. Taking care of their son leaves Beatrice and Butterscotch sleepless and grouchy. Their marriage falls apart day by day. They remain married, but they hate each other, and spend almost every single moment together antagonizing and belittling the other. The toxic household affects their son Bojack on many levels, which they know, but ignore. It culminates in Butterscotch getting their housemaid, Henrietta, pregnant with a baby that Beatrice all but begs her to give up for adoption just so she doesn't end up doing what she did.
