The series centers on the Hills, an American family who live in the fictional city of Arlen, Texas, as well as their neighbors, co-workers, relatives, classmates, friends, and acquaintances.

The show's realistic approach seeks humor in the conventional and mundane aspects of everyday life, such as blue-collar workers, family conflicts, and the trials of puberty.

Its celebrity guest stars include Texas Governor Ann Richards, Chuck Mangione, Tom Petty, Alan Rickman, Michael Keaton, Johnny Depp, and numerous country music artists.

On January 18, 2022, Judge and Daniels announced the forming of a new company called Bandera Entertainment, with a revival of King of the Hill being one of several series in development.

His wife Peggy Hill, née Platter (Kathy Najimy), a native of Montana, is a substitute Spanish teacher, though she has a poor grasp of the language.

Peggy also finds employment and avocation as a freelance newspaper columnist for The Arlen Bystander as well as a Boggle champion, a notary public, a softball pitcher, and a real estate agent.

Luanne attends beauty school and hosts a Christian-themed puppet show for a local cable access TV station.

Luanne engages in a relationship with and marries Elroy "Lucky" Kleinschmidt (Tom Petty), a snaggle-toothed layabout who lives on the settlements he has earned from a frivolous lawsuit.

Hank has a healthy relationship with his mother, Tilly (Tammy Wynette, later Beth Grant and K Callan), a kind woman who lives in Arizona.

In contrast, Hank has a strained relationship with his father, Cotton Hill (Toby Huss), a cantankerous World War II veteran who lost his shins to Japanese machine gun fire and verbally abused Tilly during their marriage, leading to their divorce.

Known as the "Billdozer" in his high school football glory days, Bill is now overweight, bald, and clinically depressed, still struggling to get over his divorce with his ex-wife Lenore.

Boomhauer (Judge), who also lives in the Hill's neighborhood, is a slim womanizer whose fast, non-fluent, and jumbled speech can be hard to understand for the audience despite being easily understood by his friends and most other characters.

Kahn—who fled poverty in Laos to become a successful systems analyst in America—is often at odds with his neighbors, believing them to be "hillbillies" and "rednecks" due to their lower socioeconomic status (despite evidence to the contrary).

It documents the Hills' day-to-day-lives in the small Texas town of Arlen, exploring themes such as parent-child relationships, friendship, loyalty, and justice.

[4] In early 1995, during the successful first run of Beavis and Butt-Head on MTV, Mike Judge decided to create another animated series, this one set in a small Texas town based on an amalgamation of Dallas suburbs, including Garland, where he had lived, and Richardson.

[4][5] Daniels rewrote the pilot script and created important characters who did not appear in Judge's first draft, including Luanne and Cotton.

Daniels also reworked some of the supporting characters (whom the pair characterized as originally having been generic, "snaggle-toothed hillbillies"), such as making Dale Gribble a conspiracy theorist.

[7] While Judge's writing tended to emphasize political humor, specifically the clash of Hank Hill's social conservatism and interlopers' liberalism, Daniels focused on character development to provide an emotional context for the series' numerous cultural conflicts.

[7] Bless the Harts, an animated series created for Fox, loosely shares a universe with King of the Hill, and features the Mega-Lo-Mart in the show.

[24] In January 2022, Judge and Daniels announced the forming of a new company called Bandera Entertainment, with a revival of King of the Hill being one of several series in development.

When he opens his can of beer, the playback speed increases greatly and depicts other main and secondary characters carrying out various daily activities around them in a time-lapse.

King of the Hill is set in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas, an amalgamation of numerous Dallas–Fort Worth suburbs including Garland, Richardson, Arlington and Allen.

[38] Time magazine praised the authentic portrayal as the "most acutely observed, realistic sitcom about regional American life bar none".

[40] Diane Holloway at the Chicago Tribune considered it the "most Texan television series since Dallas", and praised the show's "sly sense of humor and subversive sensibility.

"[41] At the Los Angeles Times, writer Howard Rosenberg suggested that the show "totes a few smiles, but [there's] little to bowl you over, and it takes a spell getting used to.

[43] Its consensus reads, "King of the Hill's mild yet extremely funny depiction of small-town Texas life is refreshingly worlds away from conventional prime-time animation.

[44][45] In 2007, James Poniewozik included it on Time's list of the 100 Greatest TV Shows, writing: "The most acutely observed, realistic sitcom about regional American life bar none, this animated series is a lot like its protagonist, Texas propane salesman Hank Hill: it isn't flashy, never gets a lot of attention, but does its job year in and year out... Mike Judge makes Hank Hill funny in his pained Boy Scout rectitude without making him a figure of fun for it, and with its canvas of mega-stores and Laotian yuppies, the show sees modern America's fine detail like an electron microscope.

"[49] A 2016 reappraisal from The Atlantic dubbed it the "last bipartisan TV comedy", with writer Bert Clere noting the program "imbued all of its characters with a rich humanity that made their foibles deeply sympathetic.

[88] The characters also appeared in a crossover game, Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards, which features not only King of the Hill, but also Family Guy, American Dad!, Futurama, Bob's Burgers, and (as of September 2022) Archer.

[89] They are also playable characters in a 2022 racing game, Warped Kart Racers, also featuring Family Guy and American Dad!, as well as Solar Opposites.