diff -u b/views/theme/views_views_json_style.theme.inc b/views/theme/views_views_json_style.theme.inc
--- b/views/theme/views_views_json_style.theme.inc
+++ b/views/theme/views_views_json_style.theme.inc
@@ -236,7 +236,7 @@
 }
 
 function template_preprocess_views_views_json_style_autocomplete(&$vars) {
-  // Use simple theme suggestion
+  // Use simple theme suggestion.
   $vars['theme_hook_suggestion'] = 'views_views_json_style_simple';
 
   $view = $vars["view"];
@@ -248,8 +248,9 @@
   $option_defs = $vars['view']->style_plugin->option_definition();
   $bitmasks = $option_defs['encoding']['contains'];
   $bitmask = NULL;
-  foreach($bitmasks as $mask_key => $_bitmask) {
-    if(isset($options[$mask_key]) && $options[$mask_key] && !is_array($options[$mask_key])) {
+  foreach ($bitmasks as $mask_key => $_bitmask) {
+    $mask_options = &$options[$mask_key];
+    if (isset($mask_options) && $mask_options && !is_array($mask_options)) {
       $bitmask = $bitmask | constant($_bitmask['bitmask']);
     }
   }
@@ -257,17 +258,32 @@
 
   $autocomplete = array();
   foreach ($rows as $row) {
-    /* First field is the key and second is the value */
+    // First field is the key and second is the value.
     $k = 0;
     foreach ($row as $field) {
       if ($options["field_output"] == "normal") {
         if (!$field->is_multiple) {
-          $content = $plaintext_output ? strip_tags(html_entity_decode($field->content, ENT_QUOTES)) : $field->content;
-          $content = mb_check_encoding($content, 'UTF-8') ? $content : utf8_encode($content);
+          if ($plaintext_output) {
+            $decoded_content = html_entity_decode($field->content, ENT_QUOTES);
+            $content = strip_tags($decoded_content);
+          }
+          else {
+            $content = $field->content;
+          }
+          if (!mb_check_encoding($content, 'UTF-8')) {
+            $content = utf8_encode($content);
+          }
         }
         else {
           $content = array();
-          foreach ($field->content as $n => $oc) $content[$n] = ($plaintext_output ? strip_tags($oc) : $oc);
+          foreach ($field->content as $n => $oc) {
+            if ($plaintext_output) {
+              $content[$n] = strip_tags($oc);
+            }
+            else {
+              $content[$n] = $oc;
+            }
+          }
         }
       }
       elseif ($options["field_output"] == "raw") {
@@ -276,16 +292,18 @@
         }
         else {
           $content = array();
-          foreach ($field->raw as $n => $oc) $content[$n] = $plaintext_output ? strip_tags($oc) : $oc;
+          foreach ($field->raw as $n => $oc) {
+            $content[$n] = $plaintext_output ? strip_tags($oc) : $oc;
+          }
         }
       }
 
-      // First field is the key
+      // First field is the key.
       if ($k++ == 0) {
         $label = $content;
       }
       else {
-        // Second field is value, so now we can stop
+        // Second field is value, so now we can stop.
         break;
       }
     }