King of the Hill is unusual for giving flatter characters new aspects, then focusing too hard on them, thus creating the sense of Flanderization at the same time as they get Character Development.
- Protagonist Hank Hill goes back and forth, as his characterization depends on the writer. According to this article
, some of the writing staff (including creator Mike Judge) consider Hank the Only Sane Man who has a slight but open preference for the Good Old Ways, but others like a Flanderized version of him who is so uptight and resistant to change that in "Get Your Freak Off", he comes off as more Amish than the Amish. Oddly, both of these characterizations are departures from his portrayal in the series pilot, where Hank was polite but short-tempered (to the point that his other catchphrase was "I'm gonna kick your ass!"), while the mainline series portrays him as a near pushover who, in spite of that, is still not afraid to draw the line whenever necessary. Some feel that Hank increasingly became an Author Tract starting around the ninth season, to the point of being far less able to learn lessons and admit to his mistakes than he was before. - Peggy started out as reasonably competent but somewhat overconfident, only to be Flanderized into a total egomaniac who boasts about her "high" I.Q. and falls well short of that mark. In particular, her Spanish language abilities devolve from "basically fine, but occasionally mispronounces words for comedic effect" to "so idiotic she accidentally 'kidnaps' a Mexican girl by misunderstanding every word she says." The writers made a nominal attempt to fix this in "Peggy's Fan Fair", also giving Hank an opportunity to call her out, but her egomania was also ramped up and never made it back down. She also picked up a propensity to take innumerable odd jobs; it made sense in small quantities in earlier episodes (she's a substitute teacher married to a blue-collar worker, so she has extra time and possibly a need for extra money), but her Flanderized version has gone through more jobs than Homer Simpson.
- Bobby started out as a late bloomer but otherwise an ordinary kid: he was immature and impressionable, but in some ways wiser than his straightlaced family. His immaturity and impressionability eventually became the entirety of his character. He also went from a kid who regularly watched and played sports (football, baseball, soccer, wrestling) to being so bad at and ignorant of sports that Hank has to explain to him what a first down is (it's Texas, he should know this).
- Luanne went through as well. She started out as a dim bulb who grew up in a trailer park, but was a competent Wrench Wench who was going to community college to break free of her redneck roots. Not too long after, she suffered her first flanderization and Took a Level in Dumbass (while this is often blamed on Lucky, she got dumber years before Lucky's introduction; the episode in Season 8 where she decides to drop out of college and become a hairstylist after all, effectively reverting five years of character development, is a particularly notable earlier example). Then her second flanderization happened and she fell in love with and married Lucky and now she's basically Lucky's wife.
- Joseph Gribble started out as an average kid, just a little more intelligent and athletic than Bobby. Then he hit puberty and became a bit awkward as he adjusted to his new body. Then he got Flanderized and not only became more awkward, but inexplicably became so dumb that he wouldn't have been out of place in Beavis and Butt-Head.
- John Redcorn went back and forth. He started out as a one-note Chick Magnet (who's having sex with Dale's wife), but developed into a New Age healer with hidden musical depths. But when it became funny for his lyrics to be influenced by random mood swings, he was Flanderized into a total crybaby with no emotional control. It doesn't help that much of his character development was
later undone by the writers; several episodes are devoted to Redcorn's ending his affair with Nancy, making friends with Dale and making peace with his distant but friendly relationship with Joseph, only for him to try to rekindle things with Nancy and resume inserting himself into Joseph's life. - Dale Gribble started out as a rather paranoid Conspiracy Theorist who was weird and annoying, but generally benign and harmlessnote and with occasional Hidden Depths such as being a good father to Joseph and a generally competent exterminator. Most of his conspiracies in the early years were fairly typical views for a conspiracy theorist to hold, i.e. global warming being a government plot and the internet being used by the government to gather secrets about random people. After a few seasons, he turned into a completely psychotic idiot who would be so afraid of some weird, outlandish danger, he would put himself and everyone around him in real danger. Lampshaded in one episode, where Dale admits that if not for Hank, he would have gotten himself killed long ago.
