South Park/Tropes A-D: Difference between revisions

** The Osama bin Laden episode is a paean to the classic [[Wartime Cartoon|Wartime Cartoons]], especially Bugs Bunny's.

** In the Coon and Friends trilogy, this is done twice between Cartman and Cthulhu: one, a tribute to [[My Neighbor Totoro]], and the other is a nod to the Chuck Jones cartoon "Feed the Kitty".

* [[Age Inappropriate Dress]]: Mocked in a few episodes, "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset" in particular.

* [[All Asians Are Alike]]: In City Sushi, the City Wok guy tries to get revenge of the owner of City Sushi due to this trope.

*** Then, of course, we have "Imaginationland", whose entire subplot is based entirely around Cartman's obsession with making Kyle suck his balls. Jimmy even points this trope out to him in part 1 of the trilogy.

*** "Cartman in Love" gives us {{spoiler|Cartman telling the new girl, Nicole, that he and Kyle are a gay couple, so that Nicole will be more likely to go out with Token.}} Cartman puts a ton of effort into convincing the town that his lie is true, to the point where it's hard to tell if he's just really committed or playing out some sort of wish-fulfillment exercise.

** Butters. He has been shown crossdressing, he's feminine, innocent, submissive, polite, and fits [[The Twink]] status. While he has shown affection toward girls, it's mostly blocked by his naivety.

* [[Anal Probing]]: Eric Cartman was probed by [[The Greys]] in the [[Pilot]] episode, appropriately titled [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|"Cartman Gets An Anal Probe."]] By "Anal Probe", we mean he eventually grows a satellite out of his bum.

* [[Animal Wrongs Group]]: PETA is so insistent on paralleling vegetarianism with civil rights that they promote [[Interspecies Romance]].

* [[Animation Anatomy Aging]]

* [[Anyone Can Die]]

* [[Apocalyptic Log]]: Parodied in 'Pandemic', as Randy's incessant camcordering of the disaster gets on Sharon's nerves. And it turns out {{spoiler|[[Not With the Safety On You Won't|he didn't have a tape in it]]}}.

** Cartman's formula for gold.

{{quote| '''Stan:''' ''(to Kyle)'' Dude, are you thinking what I'm thinking?<br />

'''Cartman:''' That they should bring back ''[[Chicago Hope (TV)|Chicago Hope]]'' for another season? Totally. }}

** Cartman in the episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die", where he {{spoiler|has Scott's parents killed, grinds their corpses into chili which he then feeds to Scott and causes Scott to cry in front of [[Radiohead|his favorite band]].}} [[No Sympathy|Who then call him a "crybaby".]]

** In ''The Death of Eric Cartman'': "What awaits each person in heaven is eternal bliss, divine rest, and $10,000 cash."

* [[Back for The Dead]]: {{spoiler|Pip is crushed to death}} in "201".

* [[Badass]]: [[Jesus Was Way Cool]].

* [[Bad Bad Acting]]: The live action reenactment sequence in "I Should Have Never Gone Ziplining" uses very deliberately awful, over the top acting by actors about [[Dawson Casting|15 years too old to play 10 year olds]].

* [[Bad Boss]]: Cartman in many episodes. Craig, too, in "South Park is Gay!".

* [[Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work]]:

** South Park is saved from hostile takeover by the Jersey Shore by {{spoiler|''Al-Qaeda''}}.

* [[The Bad Guy Wins]]: The ending of "Stanley's Cup" and "Scott Tenorman Must Die".

* [[Bait and Switch]]: If there is an episode where the preview involves anything that will get a large portion of the fanbase going "Ha ha, they're making fun of X" the actual episode will likely portray X in a much more endearing manner, while those that see it as a cheap, [[Acceptable Targets]] will be the ones on the receiving end of a [[Take That]]. These episodes typically center around [[This Loser Is You|Cartman]] The most recent notable example is ''Poor and Stupid'', with regard to NASCAR and its fanbase.

** "Are you looking at my [[Braces of Orthodontic Overkill|headgear]]?"

** Tom Cruise goes crazy when anyone says that he's packing fudge, even if he is literally packing fudge at the time, wearing a fudge packing uniform in a fudge packing factory.

*** He gets another one in "The Poor Kid". Don't mess with his little sister.

** If you don't want to piss off Mr. Mackey, don't take a dump in the urinal. Or ruin the tooth decay play he worked on for six years. Or touch any part of the overwhelming trash and paper hoard that suddenly materialized in his traditionally clean office.

* [[Bratty Half Pint]]: Most of the boys early on Cartman being most obvious.

** Then there is Ike, who runs away to Somalia because he was already bored with life. He's about 4 years old.

* [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]: "This is just like when we got our money back for ''Baseketball''."

* [[Breakout Character]]: Butters, Randy and Jimmy.

** In [[The Movie]], the boys use the promise of [[I Was Told There Would Be Cake|punch and pie]] to get other kids to join [[La Résistance]]. Way later, in "Super Best Friends", a Blaintologist hands out pamphlets for the Blaintology cult during a David Blaine performance. [http://www.spscriptorium.com/Season5/BlaineWorkshop.jpg Guess what the pamphlet promises?]

** In "Jared Has Aides", Cartman pretends to be Butters and gets his parents angry by swearing at them over the phone. Later at the end of the episode, Butters' parents come to [[Abusive Parents|beat the stuffing out of him]]. Butters later refers to this very incident in "AWESOM-O", including somehow-realized knowledge of the setup.

** In "The biggest Douche in the Universe" Stan insults John Edwards, telling him he nominates him [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|biggest douche in the universe.]]

** The entire plot of "AWESOME-O" is pretty much this. When Cartman disguises himself as a cardboard robot to trick Butters into unveiling his most personal secrets, he mentions Cartman's perhant for bullying him and how he recorded a particularly embarrassing incident where he [[Cross Dresser|dresses like Britney spears]] and plays with a life-size Justin Timberlake cutout. He [[Oh Crap|threatens to unveil this video should he ever find himself victim of yet another one of his pranks]], thus forcing Eric to do everything in his power to keep Butters from discovering his current one. At the end of the episode, Cartman invariably performs [[Toilet Humour|something you normally wouldn't expect from a non-biological lifeform]] and [[The Reveal|blows his cover]], right in front of Butters. [[Humiliation Conga|You can probably guess what happens next]].

He knew that only by going to the forest could he--<br />

''(Stan finally gives in and leaves the house.)'' }}

** Several episodes and [[The Movie]] reference or, God forgive, portray zoophilia [[Played for Laughs|for comic effect]].

** In a strange variation, Cartman attempts to train a pony to bite Scott Tenorman's penis off. He builds an effigy of his enemy, and attaches a hotdog to represent the pe--well, you can picture it. Cartman is dismayed when, instead of biting the hotdog, the horse fellates it. It becomes a [[Funny Background Event]] while Cartman has a conversation with Jimbo and Ned.

* [[Came Back Strong]]: Parodied when Cartman throws himself off a roof and wakes up from a coma in the hospital, and the cops who have the [[Idiot Ball]] believe he has precognition. Kyle later does the same thing at the end of the episode so people will believe him about the serial killer and Cartman. Eerily, the lights flicker violently when he gets frustrated.

* [[Came Back Wrong]]: When Butters fakes his death, his dad buries the mutilated pig remains he thinks is Butters in an Indian burial ground - when Butters goes back home his parents assume this is what's happened, and chain him up in the basement.

** All Canadian anatomy and technology is shown to be rather, uh, odd. Terrance and Phillip seem to have square testicles—yes we've [[Refuge in Vulgarity|seen them]] on screen. Canadian automobiles are shown to have square wheels.

* [[The Can Kicked Him]]: The fate of {{spoiler|Clyde's mom}} in "Reverse Cowgirl."

* [[The Cast Showoff]]: Trey Parker. So very much. Pick an episode and it will usually have him singing or it will have something spoken or written in Japanese (for those who don't know, Trey Parker is the lead singer of the band, DVDA, and majored in Japanese in college)

* [[Catapult Nightmare]]: ''South Park'' loves this trope.

** They also toyed with the "They killed Kenny" line a lot; one of the best was when it became a version of "Marco! Polo!" to let Stan find Kyle in "Super Best Friends". Then there was the "I found a penny!" bit from "Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls".

** Butters is always saying things like "Gee whiz fellas, mah parents'll be awful sore" and "Ah figure ah'll get grounded for sure" in a piping Southern accent.

** The episode "You Got Fucked in the Ass" as well, usually switched to "You Got F'd in the A" or just "You Got...".

** Also, in the newspaper's TV sections, "Make Love, Not Warcraft" became just "World of Warcraft", and "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy" had the word "Bangs" removed, making the title just "Miss Teacher ... a Boy".

* [[Cephalothorax]]: The "girl born without a midsection" on the Maury Povich show.

* [[Cerebus Retcon]]: {{spoiler|Kenny's recurring deaths}} and {{spoiler|the explanation behind the subsequent [[Snap Back|Snap Backs]] given in "Cartman Joins NAMBLA"}} are given a '''dark''' twist in "Mysterion Rises".

** You know all those wacky activities that Randy hilariously takes as [[Serious Business]]? Well, it turns out.... {{spoiler|that Randy was trying to distract himself from the fact that he's unhappy with his life.}}

** It might have always been there but "Cash For Gold" revealed that {{spoiler|Stan's grandpa has Alzheimer's disease, making him calling Stan "Billy" all those times a little less funny}}.

** [[Cerebus Rollercoaster]]

* [[Character As Himself]]: In the movie, the end credits read, "And Saddam Hussein as Himself" in the "Cast" section, though the voice was actually done by Matt Stone.

** Cartman has developed both ways. At first he was just a spoiled brat who got worse and worse. He evolved into a [[Manipulative Bastard]] capable of rounding up a lynch mob with a stirring speech, and rose to the point where the writers had trouble thinking up how to top himself. "Tsst" suggests an attempt to take him back down to sane levels. He's still spoiled, selfish and agressively dominant, but a few of the demons have been exorcised.

** "1%" appears to have furthered this development.

** Kyle went from your average [[Pet the Dog|occasionally-caring-occasionally-kind]] young boy to a cross between [[The Paragon]] and [[The Conscience]] (except when it comes to [[Arch Enemy|Cartman]])

** Cartman went from a cross between [[Bratty Half Pint]] and [[Jerkass]] to [[Enfant Terrible|a complete psychopath]].

*** And that change may be [[Justified Trope|justified]] as him trying to live his life to the fullest, because he dies all the time, and really has no reason to avoid potentially life-threatening activities. Could also be considered [[Fridge Brilliance]].

**** That and the fact that the creators have stated that the "Kenny dying every episode" trope had gotten stale and/or they had reached the point where they had trouble thinking of original deaths (almost) every episode. This was one of the reasons for [[Mood Whiplash|the episode "Kenny Dies"]].

* [[Circumcision Angst]]: Subverted: Kyle thinks they're going to cut off his brother's penis!

* [[City of Adventure|Town of Adventure]]

* [[Clip Show]]: Spoofed in "City On the Edge of Forever", in which all the flashbacks are incorrect and all inexplicably end with the characters involved eating ice cream.

** "Now that's what I call [[A Worldwide Punomenon|a sticky situation!]]"

* [[Closer to Earth]]: Initially subverted, with most of the female residents often being twice as obnoxious as the males ([[Characterization Marches On|it's hard to believe that Randy Marsh was actually the more laid back of the two earlier on]]). Played more straight in later episodes where even the more obnoxious females such as Wendy and Sheila are far less shrill and prone to [[Idiot Ball|Idiot Balls]]. [[Adults Are Useless|Of course for most of the adult characters, this is about only as "Closer To Earth" as Jupiter is to Pluto]] (and naturally all female celebrities are free game).

** Played pretty straight with Sharon. Paired with her husband they're pretty much the stereotypical "Woman smart, man stupid" sitcom couple.

* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: Anyone from Canada of course. Butters and Cartman seem to be shifting more towards this trope as of recently too.

** Also, Randy Marsh (Stan's father).

*** "Ow, my nipples! They hurt when I twist them!"

** Hell, Parker and Stone are Cloudcuckoolanders ''themselves''. Seriously, many of the plots to these episodes simply have to be seen to be believed.

** Cluster S Bomb in "It Hits The Fan."

*** Also contains a Cluster F Bomb of a different sort, in regards to Mr. Garrison.

** "Do The Handicapped Go to Hell?" "Probably."

** "Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut." "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut."

* [[Crush Parade]]: [[They Killed Kenny|Kenny's first ever death]] on ''[[South Park]]'' sees him blasted onto a road by an alien raygun, trampled by a herd of stampeding cows, and the killing blow comes when he's run over by Officer Barbrady's police cruiser. After that, his body is eaten by rats.

* [[The Cuckoolander Was Right]]: In "Reverse Cowgirl" {{spoiler|Butters admits he thought the correct way to sit on the toilet was to sit inward so you can rest your reading material on the top and reach the handle without having to look down. Near the end John Harrington's ghost confirms that this is how he intended it to be used}}.

** And "Over Logging".

* [[Cute Is Evil]]: The Woodland Christmas Critters

* [[Darker and Edgier]]: Pre-Season 5, the show was really silly and amusing. But once we get to the season of uncensored cursing, Cartman {{spoiler|killing two people and grinding them up into chili}}, brainwashing Earth Day cults, life-threatening hemorrhoids, genetically-engineered towels, and butt-faced people, sooner or later, you'll realize that the show has gotten a near-complete overhaul.

** [[The Movie|"Bigger, Longer & Uncut"]]. Whenever it airs on T.V., it's always uncensored. On Comedy Central, it airs very late in the evening.

** "Sixty. That's the number of episodes they made of ''[[Punky Brewster]]'' before it was cancelled." Actually, there's eighty-eight.

* [[Did You Just Have Tea With Cthulhu|Did You Just Make Friends With Cthulhu?]]: Cartman did.

* [[Dinky Drivers]]: Occurs with Stan and Kenny in the episode "Towelie".

* [[Discriminate and Switch]]

** A more meta-example would be the sex-change episode. Okay, we understand that Trey and Matt think that it's wrong but...did they have to have ''Mr. Garrison'' as the primary example? It's the equivalent of having Satan pop out of the ground and say how much he loves a political party!

** How about the one involving the OTHER Scott, [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|Scott the Dick]], of the Terrance and Philip fame? Scott, disliking fart jokes is completely reasonable, but is it really enough to validate wishing cancer upon someone, letting Saddam Hussein and his army into Canada in hopes that they'd repeatedly shoot and then decapitate Terrance and Phillip, and then trying to get the people you hate to sacrifice themselves in a suicide bomb attack to fix something you screwed up?

** "Pandemic". The Department of Homeland Security takes every Peruvian flute band they can find and takes them away to Miami where they plan to make them spend the rest of their lives. Why? For the sole reason that they find them annoying. {{spoiler|That is what it seems like, until Part 2, when we find out that the Peruvian flute bands were the key to keeping some monstrous guinea pigs from causing massive destruction. The DMS did that ''knowing full well what would happen''.}}

** In "T.M.I.," a psychiatrist tries to purposely antagonize Cartman by hurling fat jokes and insults at him to test how he deals with anger. Cartman does not respond with the usual emotional reaction one might expect. Rather, he {{spoiler|uses an iPhone to produce fake evidence that the psychiatrist was involved with a teenager online. The psychiatrist's wife calls the psychiatrist and kills herself over the phone.}}

* [[Dodgeball Is Hell]]: Pip becomes a Dodgeball savant when he gets pissed off over people calling him French.

* [[Does Not Like Shoes]]: Kyle's character in ''[[World of Warcraft]]''.

* [[Dogged Nice Guy]]: Both Kyle and Token in "Cartman Finds Love".

* [[The Dog Bites Back]]: Butters occasionally gets back at Cartman and/or his relatives for their abuse of him, for ex. "AWESOM-O", "The Ungroundable" and "Cash for Gold".

* [[Don't Explain the Joke]]: Subverted. In ''Fishsticks'', the [[Punny Name|fishsticks]] joke becomes funnier when, upon Cartman repeating the joke to Clyde and delivering the punchline, Butters runs up and explains the joke.

{{quote| Butters: You said you like to put fish sticks <ref>"fish dicks"</ref> in your mouth, {{spoiler|that makes you a gay fish}}!}}

* [[Double Standard]]: Spoofed quite a few times.

** Most recent example: It's not okay to show Mohammed even if he's just standing there looking normal, yet it's okay to show Buddha snorting coke and Jesus watching Internet porn.

[[Category:South Park (Animation)]]

[[Category:Tropes A-D]]