BoJack Horseman: The one joke you likely missed in season 4

BoJack Horseman, the animated series on Netflix about a talking horse (*guy doing a Twitter thread voice* but actually about depression), is known for subtle background jokes and masterful puns. The sheer density of comedy material rewards viewers who go back and re-watch episodes multiple times, and it’s inspired an active fan community sharing new finds — one creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg is very well aware of.

“Generally, from what I’ve seen, I’ve been delighted to find, for the first three seasons, that just about everything we put down got picked up by someone,” he told EW. “I’d be surprised if someone picked up all of it — even I don’t pick up all of it. Sometimes someone will point out a reference that I didn’t get that one of the writers put into the script and it went through, or one of the background designers referenced some real thing that I’d never heard of, so that’s cool for me. But everything that I’m aware of, I think has been picked up.”

RELATED: The 64 Best Lines From BoJack Horseman Season 4

So perhaps it’s because season 4 has only been released for a week and there hasn’t been enough time for obsessive analysis that Bob-Waksberg says there is one joke he thinks may have gone under the radar so far.

The first episode of BoJack Horseman‘s new season very noticeably contains almost no BoJack Horseman. The show’s protagonist doesn’t even appear on screen until the episode’s final seconds, and only then it’s to decline a phone call. Instead, the episode opens with a flashback to Mr. Peanutbutter’s ’90s sitcom — a copycat of BoJack’s — and a man on the set saying the line, “So you said let’s do the show about the horse — but this time without the horse.”

“I will say, I haven’t noticed anybody make the connection,” Bob-Waksberg said about the episode’s opening line and the episode’s lack of BoJack. “Maybe it’s not even worth mentioning because it’s so obvious or maybe it just hasn’t connected, but I was proud of that and I had not seen anybody point that out yet.”

So consider it… pointed out.