South Park/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about South Park are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

  • Acceptable Targets: Everyone and everything on the planet, at one point or another, has been lampooned on the show, even the show itself.
    • Amazingly, U.S. presidents usually get off fairly lightly, with most jokes about them either being too lighthearted or somewhat flattering (Matt Stone has said that this is because they're "too easy").
    • Though out of everyone they've offended, hippies have gotten a lot of targeting.
    • Season 19 has been one giant Take That to the politically correct/ "progressive" urban culture.
  • Angst? What Angst?:
    • Butters has had a crappy childhood, yet remains irrepressibly optimistic regardless.
    • In recent seasons, Kyle, for some reason, gets short ends of the stick, whether it's being misunderstood by the adults ("The Death Camp of Tolerance", "Cartman's Incredible Gift", "Le Petit Tourette"), nearly die ("Cherokee Hair Tampons", "Cartmanland", "ManBearPig", etc), or ending up in cruel, crazy situations that normally don't happen to children his age ("Sexual Healing", "HumancentiPad"). But once those things pass, he behaves as if it never happened. Continuity? What's that?
      • And then to top it off outed as gay and assumed to be in a relationship with Cartman, who keeps cock-blocking him from Nicole, the new black girl in school to get her together with Token.
    • At the end of "Broadway Bro Down", Sharon is momentarily angry at Randy for participating in the blow jobs conspiracy, but soon gets over it. However, she's not at all angry at him for accidentally killing Shelley's boyfriend.
  • Anvilicious:
    • Ironic, considering its stance on Aesops.
    • Of course, like everything else, they have fun with it. "...yeah, but at least Family Guy doesn't get all preachy and up its own ass with messages!"
  • Ass Pull: Stan's parents getting back together at the end of "Ass Burgers".
    • CRAB PEOPLE.
  • Author's Saving Throw: After the Season 10 finale "Stanley's Cup" proved to be too cruel to be funny for a lot of viewers, Season 11's premier episode "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" picked its targets much more carefully (i.e. it's white men who get humiliated the most for using a racial slur and Cartman gets K.O.ed by a dwarf after laughing at him for the whole episode).
    • Mrs. Garrison managed to offend a lot of transgender people, yet her sexuality was toned down considerably. While Mr. Garrison commited bestiality and tried to solicit sex from both his father and Cartman, Mrs. Garrison only ever had sex with consenting adults. The show's more enlightened attitude towards transgenderism was also shown in "The Cissy", which made a point on the dilemma of public restrooms.
  • Base Breaker: Cartman. There are two types of fans; those who love him for his extreme Jerkass behavior, and those who absolutely hate him for being a Jerkass who commits Moral Event Horizon grade evil acts at least once a season. The creators seem to be aware of this and try to cater to both (the second half via entire episodes dedicated to making Cartman suffer such as when Wendy beats the crap out of him in Season 12).
    • Randy Marsh. Fans either love him to death or want him to go away. Season 23 just adds more fuel to the fire, as he got a pseudo-spin-off that lasted more than half of the season.
      • Any of the adults except for Chef and Liane in general, depending on the episode.
      • Wendy was originally in Scrappy territory, but that changed somewhere in between later seasons and definitely "Breast Cancer Show Ever"
  • Broken Base:
    • Fans argue whether South Park was better as the lighthearted Monty Python-esque sitcom of its early seasons or the darker political satire of its later ones.
    • Male and female fans. Very prominent in Fan Art. However, averted as interaction between them is fairly low.
  • Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: To most who have never seen it, or have only ever seen it in The Nineties, South Park is "that cartoon with all the swearing and fart jokes" in which "Kenny dies Once an Episode." Such people are apparently oblivious to its reputation as one of America's most beloved political and social satires.
  • Crack Pairing: Subverted since many of them are actually canon. For example: Ike and Ms. Stevenson, Satan and Saddam Hussein, Mrs. Garrison and Richard Dawkins.
  • Creator's Pet: Some people think Randy Marsh is becoming this, especially after Season 23.
  • Critical Research Failure:
    • In the episode "Go God Go", a Catholic family scolds Principal Victoria for teaching evolution at her school. The Catholic church supports evolution, and Catholic schools do indeed teach it.
    • In the episode "Pinewood Derby", the Australian Prime Minister is shown to be John Howard. While John Howard was the Prime Minister for quite a while, their PM at the time of the episode was Kevin Rudd. It was still nice to be included anyway.
      • Think of it this way: you could have been Finland.
    • In "W.T.F.", Edge is portrayed with a normal head, rather than the same half-head as other Canadians. Most likely they just didn't realize he was Canadian.
    • In "Chef Aid", Alanis Morissette, who is also Canadian, was also shown with a normal-looking head. Celebrities might just be exempt.
      • There is a definite pattern of showing Canadian celebrities with 'Canadian' heads only when they're in Canada, particularly in episodes based around Canada, like "Royal Pudding" and "Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus". When shown outside the context of the home country, Canadian celebrities do not have Canadian heads. This is probably to aid with recognition more than not doing the research. (When in Canada, the celebrities are referred to by name whenever they appear. This aids in recognition, but would be hard to do at all times in all places.)
    • In "Poor and Stupid", Danica Patrick was shown racing at Sprint Cup level despite being primarily an IRL driver and having only recently gotten into NASCAR in the Nationwide Series, probably because she's one of the most well known NASCAR drivers.
    • Matt and Trey have admitted to basing their Inception-based parody "Insheeption" on a College Humor parody video because they could not obtain a screener copy of the actual movie,[1] meaning that they slammed the movie's alleged incomprehensible nature without having actually watched it.
      • They explain their story better here. Basically, Matt had seen the movie, Trey had not seen the movie, Matt messes up and utters a false confirmation to Trey when viewing the parody.
    • Cartman's anti-hippy strategy is to drive them away with the sound of Death Metal. Instead he puts on "Raining Blood", by Slayer, which is Thrash Metal.
      • There's actual debate among metal circles as to where between the two genres the band actually occupies. Now if he had played Korn or something similar on the system, that would have been a bit of dissonance.
    • "Sixty. That's the number of episodes they made of Punky Brewster before it was cancelled." Actually, there's eighty-eight.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • Most of the show. The trope was taken Up to Eleven in "201" with the final speech. At first, it was stupid because they were censoring it. Then it got kinda funny after awhile because the entire speech was censored. Then you find out that it was censored because Comedy Central chickened out over threats to the network, and now it's not funny anymore.
    • This trope is taken to its logical extreme in the 14th season episode "It's a Jersey Thing". The basic premise is that New Jersey culture is growing and assimilating the rest of the country into itself, and South Park is next. The residents there decide they don't want to be West Jersey, and set up an armed revolt. Where it starts to get crazy is they decide they need help, and after asking and being turned down by California, Japan and whoever else, they decide that in dire situations, it is okay to turn to one's enemies for help. They call Al Qaeda. The audacity of this is lampshaded during the debate over whether this is okay: "What about the families of the victims of 9/11? Their feelings still matter for another ten months, dammit!" Osama bin Laden receives the tape with the request for help, and on it Randy Marsh says he knows bin Laden has seen humanity at its worst, but that something even more horrible is coming. The tape then cuts to the opening credits for The Jersey Shore. Later, during the final battle between South Park and the people from Jersey, they are about to give up when someone joyously points to the sky and announces that Al Qaeda has come... in a fleet of commercial airliners, which proceed to dive into the Jersey crowd and explode. As if that weren't enough, there is a medal ceremony thanking and honoring Bin Laden for his help, complete with kisses on the cheek and sentiments that "We're all just folk", which is interrupted by a commando dropping down from the ceiling and shooting Bin Laden in the head. After a Beat, Randy triumphantly declares, "We got 'im." In effect, by the end of the episode the line has been crossed so many times that we as viewers have essentially lost count and aren't even sure what side of it we're actually on anymore.
    • The aforementioned episode aired roughly seven months before Bin Laden was Killed Off for Real, which makes it Funny Aneurysm Moment or Harsher in Hindsight depending on YMMV.
  • Dude, Not Funny:
    • Any episode, and deliberately so; Parker and Stone refer to themselves as "equal opportunity offenders" and at least one episode will elicit the reaction.
    • A lot of fans feel that the Season 22 premiere, Dead Kids, was this, as school shootings are taken VERY seriously in the US, especially by families whose kids were injured or killed in such shootings.
  • Ear Worm:
    • I'm goin' down to South Park / Gonna have myself a time...
    • "Kyle's Mom Is a Stupid Bitch". In D minor. That is all.
    • You and the Death Lord Cthulhu!
    • WORK, MEXICAN, WORK!
    • "Go Lemmiwinks!/Stop Wikileaks!"
    • "Jackin' it, jackin' it, jackety-jack, spankin' it, jackin' it, spankity-smack..."
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Two Words: Craig Tucker. In the fandom, he is the most popular and liked character after the four main protagonists. Not to mention that he is shipped with practically everyone, him and Tweek being the two most shipped characters after Stan/Kyle, which is the most popular ship in the entire fandom. Yes, Craig/Tweek is even more popular than Cartman/Kyle and Kenny/Kyle.
    • That's because he has the exact traits that make a character really popular: he is a stoical, Deadpan Snarker bad boy, who is implied to be also tall, dark haired and pretty faced.
    • Everyone knows it's Butters! The character was promoted to a major role (after being seen in group shots as a generic student for years) because Matt and Trey found his kindness and innocence heartwarming. Also, they needed a character to fill the absence of Kenny for Season 6, and they wanted to write up scenarios where his father keeps grounding him for ridiculous reasons.
    • Randy has gone from a relatively minor character to a very common character. The creators seem to like Randy for the "standard middle class white dad" guy, which is important in political parodies.
    • Chef for the first few seasons.
    • Rebecca and Mark from "Hooked on Monkey Fonics".
    • The Goth Kids are sure to steal any episode they're in.
    • Characters that only appear in The Movie, like Gregory and Christophe, have fanbases that are equal in size to those of reappearing characters.
    • Same goes for single-episode characters such as Thomas and Bradley.
    • Damien. And Pip for that matter.
    • TIMMY!!!
    • Mysterion became one almost the moment he showed up. Even after being revealed as Kenny, he's STILL one of the most talked about characters. In fact, Mysterion, before he was revealed, was such a major thing, that the South Park creators put out a "Who is Mysterion?" t-shirt.
    • Out of all the main characters, Stan Marsh and Kenny McCormick were the most liked. Stan for being the only normal kid in the entire show, and Kenny for his multiple deaths and his relationship with his little sister.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs" is about this trope. Their intentionally disgusting book is hailed as the greatest piece of literature ever written because everyone who reads it (vomiting uncontrollably the whole way through) creates their own deep and profound symbolism for everything in it.
  • Fair for Its Day: The message of "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" is that just because cosmetic surgery (i.e. sex change) makes you look like something doesn't mean you truly are what the surgery aimed for, and it compares being transgender to Kyle becoming black and his father becoming a dolphin. The episode came out at a time when the general public saw sex change as a joke; the much-later episode "The Cissy" is more sympathetic to the trans community.
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: Very, very frequent, but given the nature of the show, it's safe to assume that it's intentional:
    • "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs" concludes that it's far too easy to read one's own interpretation into books... so we should all stick to television instead.
    • "Ass Burgers" ends with "Sometimes it's best to stick with what you know, so keep doing the same thing forever even if you don't like it anymore."
    • "I'm a Little Bit Country" taught us what truly makes our country great: hypocrisy.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Hooooo boy, Craig/Tweek. They have interacted in the show only once or twice and now they are the second most shipped characters after Stan and Kyle, who are the protagonists, anyway. Talking about ensemble darkhorses, huh?
  • Fanon Discontinuity: A lot of things get this treatment by fans, such as Chef's death and especially Mr. Garrison's sex change.
  • Foe Yay: Kyle and Cartman. An entire subplot of "Imaginationland" was dedicated to Cartman trying to force Kyle into having oral sex with him. Also, in "Smug Alert!", the creators make it clear that Cartman would live a hollow and incomplete life without Kyle around to rip on.
    • Oh, and Cartman's very vocal proclamation of their "relationship" to keep him from getting with the new African-American girl in class.
    • Let's not forget him and Wendy in "Chef Goes Nanners".
  • Freud Was Right: The aesop for "T.M.I.".
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment:
    • Isaac Hayes' death in August 2008 makes his character Chef's hilariously over the top dropped bridge extremely disconcerting.
    • Saddam Hussein's execution since The Movie (1999) makes the climax of the movie feel very different.
    • The episode "201" has a in-universe example when the ginger leader Scott Tenorman reveals that Cartman's father is not only a Denver Bronco, but Scott Tenorman's father he had killed in "Scott Tenorman Must Die".
    • Considering that the Clip Show Parody Episode had a fake clip of Cartman's father being revealed as John Elway, who was a Denver Bronco at the time...
    • In the episode "Douche and Turd", there's PETA terrorists protesting against a cow being the school's mascot. Kyle states that "If we change the mascot, the terrorists win!" Then comes episodes "200" and "201" and their subsequent Bowdlerization at the hands of the network, and... let's just say, the terrorists have won.
    • Every single one of Kenny's deaths throughout the run of the show become this when we find out that Kenny is immortal and hates feeling the pain of dying every time.
    • "Cartman Sucks" had a running gag in the scenes of Butters at the Christian camp where all the sexually-confused boys kill themselves rather than live with trying to change their sexuality. Kinda hurts now, given the rash of LGBT teen suicides that was in the news in 2010.
    • In "Clubhouses", Randy and Sharon briefly separate after a series of arguments. They get back together at the end of the episode. The episode itself is funny... but then along comes "You're Getting Old", which is basically "Clubhouses" Played for Drama.
    • A similar example, the previous season finale "Crème Fraiche" largely revolved around Randy and Sharon's relationship troubles as a result of Randy's antics. Randy's obsession with becoming a celebrity chef in this episode is in fact one of the specific examples Sharon brings up in their final argument.
    • Speaking of "You're Getting Old", a lot of Randy's antics in previous episodes suddenly become depressing after watching this episode when he reveals that all the crazy things he does are weak attempts to pump some excitement into his boring life.
    • "You're Getting Old" also does this to "Prehistoric Ice Man". A plot point in that episode was that Stan and Kyle's friendship becomes strained, and both decide to make Cartman their new best friend.
    • In "Die Hippie, Die", lots of jokes are made about Chef dying first on the dangerous mission because he's the black guy and (in a lot of horror and action movies) the black man is the first to go. He doesn't, but this was the last episode Issac Hayes recorded new dialogue for. The very next episode Chef plays a major role in is "The Return of Chef", where, sure enough, he ends up dead (made worse by the fact that Chef's voice actor, Isaac Hayes, did die in 2008).
    • The entire plot of "Cartoon Wars" became a Funny Aneurysm Moment upon the "201" debacle. Let's recap: a network, set to air an animated series with a Muhammad joke, steps in at the last minute and censors all references to Muhammad. Say, does this remind you of anything?
    • At the end of "Professor Chaos", we are abruptly asked, "Which of these six South Park residents was killed, and will never be seen again?" Since this is a parody of cliffhanger endings, the answer is immediately given as Ms. Choksondik. Besides her, the suspects were the Mayor, Officer Barbrady, Jimbo, Mr. Garrison, and... Chef. Guess who died four seasons later?
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
    • The German-speaking fandom is the second largest after the English-speaking fandom. It has become so popular that the channel it airs on has started to show the newest episode 10 days after their US debut in English with subtitles not only giving German viewers the chance to see it earlier (until it has been properly dubbed) but also get a chance to hear the original voices and untranslated jokes.
    • The considerable Latin American fandom.
    • And of course, the Japanese fanbase. It's not as big as it was around Season 7, but it's still loyal and responsible for some of the anime-style fanart. Japanese South Park fans also tend to love Happy Tree Friends.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • In-universe example: in the episode "Cartman Joins NAMBLA" the boys are playing a board game called "Investigative Reports With Bill Kurtis". Cartman gives Kyle an AIDS card in the game and the other characters are horrified by this. Years later, the episode "Tonsil Trouble" had Cartman actually giving Kyle AIDS.
    • The episode "HumancentiPad" is now this because the episode satirizes Apple, and Steve Jobs, who died five months after the episode aired.
    • Those that didn't see Chef's death as humorous likely had this reaction.
    • “Butters’ Very Own Episode”. In this episode, Butters’ parents think they accidentally killed him (well, technically they think his mother has, his father is trying to protect her) and to cover up this supposed accidental crime, they claim Butters was murdered by “some Puerto Rican guy”. Everyone buys it (it’s rare to find a resident of South Park who isn’t a victim) and the Chrises are quickly contacted by John and Patsy Ramsey, Congressman Gary Condit, and O.J. Simpsons, who all claimed they were in legal jeopardy due to crimes committed by “some Puerto Rican guy”, and they form a group striving to clear their names. This media circus goes so far that the FBI places “some Puerto Rican guy” on their Top 10 Most Wanted List. Of course, Butters is not dead, and when he turns up alive, he convinces his parents to come clean, and when they do so, blatantly accusing the other members of the now-disbanded club of murder and framing an innocent ethnic group. However, years later, evidence would be found clearing both the Ramses and Condit of the crimes they had been accused of. This is one of the post-movie episodes that Matt and Trey have expressed regret for, and one of the few they made a public apology for - sadly, Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer before they could do so.
    • "Jared Has Aides" fits this Trope for the opposite reason “Butters’ Very Own Episode” does. This was aired before Jared Fogle's illegal sex offender crimes were exposed, making a story about him confusing "aides" with a term for the HIV virus (portraying him as a misunderstood hero) much less funny when viewed afterwards.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: Big Gay Al was ousted from the Boy Scouts for being gay, but didn't hold it against them and stated that they shouldn't be forced to accept him against their will. In 2015, the Scouts finally allowed gay people to be scout leaders.
  • He Panned It, Now He Sucks:
    • Some fans didn't like that they made fun of Inception (or rather, a parody of it).
    • The big controversy came when they ripped off a College Humor skit down to individual lines, and admitted that they had not watched the movie before parodying it.
      • They had watched the movie before parodying it. They used the College Humor video as the basis for their parody because, since the movie was still in theaters, they couldn't get a copy of it to rewatch for themselves while writing the episode.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • In "Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls", Cartman describes independent movies as being about "gay cowboys eating pudding". 7 years later, Brokeback Mountain fills 2/3rds of that criteria. Parker and Stone even said in an interview "if there's any pudding eating, we will sue."
    • In "The Passion of the Jew", Mel Gibson is portrayed as a raving lunatic who loves torture. The recent tapes to his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva makes this exaggeration even funnier.
    • "At least it doesn't get all preachy and up its own ass with messages, you know?": Once a burn on South Park‍'‍s descent into being more political than funny, it can now be applied to South Park‍'‍s biggest rival Family Guy (ironically, that line was used in favor of Family Guy being a better show than South Park). It can also, to a lesser extent, be applied to The Simpsons, but these days,[when?] The Simpsons has turned into a Sketch Comedy show in sitcom's clothing.
    • In "The Coon", while Mysterion is fighting Professor Chaos, there is a moment where he gets knocked down for a few moments, and the crowd of people watching think he's dead. Fast forward to the episode "Mysterion Rises", where we find out that Mysterion is Kenny, and is unable to die.
    • Remember the episode "Make Love, not Warcraft", wherein Butters said he prefers playing "Hello Kitty Island Adventure"? About that...
    • Also, in "Whale Whores", (which aired on October 28, 2009), Cartman does a cover of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" on Rock Band, which is odd, given that "Poker Face" (both the original and Cartman's cover) did not appear in the game until nearly five months later, when it became a downloadable song!
      • This is made either funnier or way less funny when you consider that the buzz created by the song appearing in South Park Rock Band was a major factor in Harmonix calling Lady Gaga about song rights (which is why Cartman's cover was available at the same time).
    • In The Movie, the censored version of Terrance and Phillip: Asses of Fire is 1 minute long, because the original was so vulgar. A couple years later, an edited, 2 minute family friendly version of Freddy Got Fingered was released on VHS/DVD as a joke.
    • Osama Bin Laden being shot in the head by US soldiers on multiple occasions (namely the Season 5 episode "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants" and the Season 14 episode "It's a Jersey Thing") becomes funnier now that bin Laden's death (and how he died) has become a reality.
    • A meta example: two years before the episode "Ass Burgers" ever came into existence, there's a fanfic with the exact same title, but with a different plot that has an OC who has Aspergers'.
    • "Chinpokemon". This epsiode aired in 1999 was described as "perhaps the most devastating parody of the seemingly endless pop culture craziness of forced Japan fads", the fad in question here is a lampoon of Pokémon that is a Market-Based Title with the merchandise intended to brainwash children so they join the Japanese army. The plot is foiled when Chinpokemon becomes a victim of the It's Popular, Now It Sucks phenomenon. Which as of 23 years later, has not happened to the product it was a parody of in the least. Of course, the producers can be forgiven, they were far from the only folks at the time who thought Pokémon was a flash-in-the-pan fad.
  • Hypocritical Fandom: Like other animated shows, South Park uses Stock Footage to save time and money, especially considering that this show is produced on a low low budget. It is hilarious, however, when some South Park fans complain at other budget shows/movies when they also reuse animation cells for the same reasons.
  • I Am Not Shazam: "In this scene, Mohammed hands a football helmet to Family Guy." Nice one, Comedy Central.
  • Idiot Plot: All of them.
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks: Some fans say they liked the show better back in its early days when Moral Guardians condemned the show and concerned parents who had cable (or access to a VCR or a DVD player) banned it from their households. Now that it is Comedy Central's highest rated show and widely popular, some people don't like it anymore.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Scott Tenorman. After Cartman killed his parents and tricked him into eating them, one can't help but show sympathy for him. Even though he was a bully and became a psychopathic villain afterwards as a result of this, he did care a lot about his parents. And to add insult to injury, Radiohead mock Scott Tenorman for being a baby, just as Cartman had planned.
    • A big YMMV, but Cartman in "HumancentiPad".
      • Cartman does occasionally get subtle moments of sympathetic spotlight, usually under realization of how lonely his monsterous behavior makes him. Every now and then, the boys will do something cruel to him without his usual provokation as well. Naturally, it comes off as somewhat petty compared to what he does in retaliation, but still...
        • In the earliest episodes, I remember him getting bullied by the Stan and Kyle a lot (without provocation), so I really felt for him then. Now? Not so much.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of people consider each episode a set up for horribly, horribly mutilating that poor kid in the parka, and lose interest immediately after the blood smears begin to dry.
    • They've probably been really disappointed for the last decade or so.
  • Like You Would Really Do It: Inverted. Kenny made such a habit of dying in every episode that now that they've more or less abandoned the gag, when they want to make the audience think someone's going to die, they stick Kenny in the situation to reinforce the possibility.
  • Love to Hate: Cartman is one of the most popular and iconic cartoon characters ever, even if - especially because - he is a a bigoted, selfish, spoiled sociopath.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Eric Cartman bringing his A game in "Scott Tenorman Must Die".
  • Memetic Badass: "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" from The Movie.
    • Coming soon to the Food Network: "What Would Brian Boitano Make?"
      • Even better? The logo has the word "do" scribbled out with the word "make" underneath in marker.
  • Memetic Mutation
    • Step 1: Watch South Park.
      • Step 2: ?????
      • Step 3: PROFIT!
    • DEY TERK ER JEEEERBS.
    • DERP! Originally used to refer specifically to anything Matt and Trey considered bad comedy (e.g. slapstick, "wacky antics", Rob Schneider), this one has taken on a life of its own to the point of becoming regularly used internet slang generally meaning "stupid" in some form or another, and has also spawned the expanded forms "herpderp" and "herpaderp".
    • I'm not your friend, guy! He's not your guy, buddy! I'm not your buddy, friend!
    • Oh, the tears of unfathomable sadness!
    • You're a towel!
      • You wanna get high?
    • The 'Cartman Voice' is instantly recognisable, as are many of his catchphrases.
      • "Screw you guys, I'm going home!"
      • "Respect my authoritah!!"
    • Oh my god, they Killed Kenny!
      • You Bastards!
    • X makes me a sad panda.
    • I'm sorry, I thought this was America!
  • Misaimed Fandom: Yeah, there are people out there who actually agree that "gingers have no souls". And act on it.
    • Like his spiritual forebear Archie Bunker, there is a Vocal Minority of Cartman's fanbase who completely miss the satire inherent in his racist, misogynistic, anti-semitic rants.
    • Likewise, there are those who fail to recognize that the show employs stereotypes (racial, sexual, regional, national, religious, etc) for the purpose of mocking them, rather than endorsing them.
    • The "Nice" Meme. It was meant to mock society's Double Standard on Statutory Rape, but there are now guys who use it completely unironically.
  • Moe: Butters.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Most people label "Scott Tenorman Must Die" as either Cartman's Moment of Awesome or this trope. Sometimes both. Cartman pretty much lives on the far side of it these days.
      • Cartman crossed it even sooner in "Cherokee Hair Tampons" where he refused to donate his kidney to Kyle unless he got paid ten million dollars. Stan even responds by telling him that he is going to hell when he dies.
    • The episode "201" made it even worse.
    • Somehow, going Up to Eleven when Cartman allies with Cthulhu. Sends his friends to another dimension, destroys synagogues and San Fransisco, and massacres innocent people at Burning Man. All the while thinking he's 'doing good'.
    • Don't forget when Stephen Stotch sent Butters to live with Paris Hilton.
    • Some may consider Wendy arranging the murder of Ms. Ellen out of jealousy as such.
    • While Kenny is for the most part a Woobie with a few perverted traits, "Cartman Joins NAMBLA" would arguably be the moment when he crosses the moral event horizon. He spends the majority of the episode trying to kill his unborn brother (which turns out to be him being reborn after getting killed for the 52nd time), horribly injuring his dad in the process (though he did try to stop his dad from drinking the abortion pill-cocoa-vodka cocktail, Kenny didn't count on Stuart getting hurt on the John Denver ride, and Stuart going into the room with the three-dozen naked pedophiles was an accident), out of sheer jealousy.
    • Gerald Broflovski crosses it in "Major Boobage" by proposing a bill to ban cats in South Park.
    • Sheila Broflovski crosses it one too many times to count again in The Movie, first when she starts a war with Canada which includes an Inferred Holocaust of Canadian-Americans (which would include her own adopted son), and then when she murders Terrance and Phillip and by extension triggers The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Narm Charm: Mr. Adler reminiscing about his dead fiancee. The flashbacks are funny, but his pain sure isn't.
  • Nausea Fuel: The opening scene in "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina". Right before Mr. Garrison's operation begins, the doctor says, "I think if more people could just see a sex-change operation, they would know how perfectly natural it is." That tells you right there that Discretion Shots are not coming anytime soon. The rest of the sequence has the process described—and shown—in detail, complete with Art Shifts to live action (in actuality, the live-action shots are of a dog neutering rather than a sex change, but that doesn't make it any better for the viewer).
    • In "Poor and Stupid", Cartman DRINKS tons of Vagisil in a store. *shudder*
  • Never Live It Down: Sheila Broflovski has mellowed out considerably over the years, becoming one of the saner, more rational parents in South Park. Yet most fans still see her as the villainous Knight Templar Parent she was in The Movie.
  • No Problem With Licensed Games:
    • The 2014 RPG South Park: The Stick of Truth was widely received as not only the best South Park game to date, but a decent game in its own right, though it's fairly short.
    • 2009's South Park Let's Go! Tower Defense was also generally well received.
    • The 2017 game South Park: The Fractured but Whole, which serves as a sequel to Stick of Truth, is also loved by fans, though to a slightly lesser extent.
  • Non Sequitur Scene:
    • The Jew robot invasion in the episode "Fishsticks". Which was, of course, the entire damn point.
    • The opening scene of "Spookyfish", where a scary alien touches down on South Park, and ends up getting squished by the school bus because it's very tiny.
    • The end of the episode "The Tooth Fairy's Tats 2000": Kyle spends the entire episode questioning his existence after Cartman learns that the Tooth Fairy is make-believe. Eventually, Kyle somehow manages to vanish, but seconds later he comes back in a Mushroom Samba and summons the Half-Chicken Half-Squirrel.
    • The one scene in "The Succubus" where the boys wait for Chef at the bus stop. When nightfall comes, Kenny is on the ground, eaten by rats, and the next morning, he's fine.
    • The joke spoken by Cartman as the boys walk to the Super Adventure Club in "The Return of Chef" totally takes the cake.

Cartman: Hey you guys, you know what you call a Jewish woman's boobs? *beat* Jewbs.

    • The ending of "The Poor Kid" had a giant reptilian bird thing tearing the roof of the school, and then eats Kenny, which was his first and only death in Season 15. This was happening while Cartman was trash-talking Kenny about his poorness.
    • The ending of "Butterballs", while set up by a recurring line earlier in the episode, still makes absolutely no sense whatsoever in relation to the episode's plot.
  • Older Than They Think: Chef was fighting zombies with dual-wielded chainsaws over a decade before Zombieland.
    • Seasons 18 and 19 have received praise for their season-long story-arcs and tighter continuity. Season 6 of the show shared a lot of these elements, mostly focusing on the reprecussions of Kenny's death from the season prior.
  • Periphery Demographic: The show is extremely popular with Yaoi Fangirls on Fanfiction.net and Deviant ART. Blame all the Ho Yay and interesting characters.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: Style (Stan/Kyle), Creek (Craig/Tweek), Kyman (Kyle/Cartman), K2 (Kyle/Kenny), Crenny (Craig/Kenny), Bunny (Butters/Kenny), Candy (Cartman/Wendy) and many, many more.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: All video games thus far based on the series have been met with, shall we say, less-than-stellar reception. However, the upcoming South Park RPG for Xbox360 and Play Station 3 (the first retail home console South Park game since the PS 1 era) may yet buck this trend, given the involvement of respectable developer Obsidian Entertainment, relatively generous development time, and extensive supervision from Trey and Matt.
  • The Scrappy: Earlier on, Wendy wasn't that popular. Somewhere between the early seasons and "Breast Cancer Show Ever", that changed.
  • Seasonal Rot:
    • Season 17 is considered this due to its short length and large amount of lackluster topical episodes.
    • Season 23 is considered this by a lot of fans; mainly because of the Tegridy Weed subplot going on for seven episodes (the first six consecutive episodes plus the season finale) and Randy being a Karma Houdini.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Discussed in the commentaries: The first few episodes of the show were very controversial when they first aired, but look rather tame nowadays. Even the foul language is more heavily bleeped than it would need to be today.
  • Self Fanservice: Well, fan art usually portrays South Park characters rather differently.
  • Shallow Parody: Parodied mercilessly in "Cartoon Wars", specifically as relating to pop-culture references on Family Guy.
    • Played straight again in "Insheeption", which parodies Inception using College Humor as research instead of the film itself.
    • And yet again in "You're Getting Old", in which Stan and his friends watch the trailer for Jack And Jill. The actual trailer hadn't even came out yet at the time the episode aired, so all Matt and Trey had to go by were the title and the fact that Adam Sandler stars as both characters.
    • The Game of Thrones parody had many jokes rely on the series having a lot of dicks everywhere. The show rarely depicts full male nudity, with the appearances of nude women far outnumbering the appearances of nude men throughout its run.
  • So Bad It's Good: The Bowdlerised mess that is "201".
  • Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: The only thing that stopped the episode "Britney's New Look" from being South Park's answer to "Homer vs. Dignity" was the anvil.
    • Jimmy and Timmy exist to show that disabled people are human too, with all their ambitions and negative attributes displayed alongside their handicaps.
  • Strawman Political: Isn't averse to pulling out strawmen every once in a while. More cynical viewers might argue that their entire method of political commentary typically involves pitting various strawmen against each other before settling on a Golden Mean Fallacy.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Played deliberately in the "You're Getting Old"/"Ass Burgers", after an enormous number of life changes occur as a result of him maturing (including his parents divorcing and Kyle and Cartman becoming friends and business partners), Stan is just coming to appreciate the new directions in his life and new possibilities there are. Cue a stack of Reset Buttons reverting everything back to normal, much to his despair.
  • Toy Ship: Many, most canonically Stan and Wendy.
  • Unacceptable Targets: Muhammad. Parker and Stone went for lampooning the fact that he's not an acceptable target, instead—particularly because 5 years before the Muhammad taboo entered the limelight, he had been depicted with no repercussion. "201", the second episode of their 200th anniversary two-parter, had all mentions of Muhammad's name censored by the network, along with the "I learned something today" speeches at the end (which didn't even mention Muhammad). Comedy Central went so far as pulling it from ever airing again - they won't even let it be streamed on the show's official website. You can find it here, but its being a TV rip means the bleeps are still in place.
    • It's the Same, Now It Sucks: "201" is on the Season 14 DVD/Blu-Ray release, but since Comedy Central refused to clear the original uncut version of the episode for home video release, it remains censored—despite every other episode on the set going uncensored ("200" even has every use of Muhammad's name unbleeped). At the time it happened, Margaret Wente of The Globe and Mail went as far as to say that the censorship of "201" could be "the lowest point in the history of American TV." To account for this discrepancy, there is a disclaimer on the set that the episode is the version that aired on TV, and it includes the following statement from Matt and Trey:

In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park, we have never done a show that we couldn't stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn't some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle's customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn't mention Muhammad at all, but it got bleeped too.

    • The "I learned something today" speeches at the end were censored not because they mentioned Muhammad, but because they summed up the aesop of the story: advocating freedom of speech for any topic, as well as criticize anyone that would not allow such a thing. Basically, the characters explicitly spelled out a moral that the network spent the majority of running time obviously going against. In other words, Comedy Central deemed themselves an unacceptable target and censored that part of the episode for that reason. Either that or someone at Standards and Practices had a sense of humor.
    • Before the Muhammad controversies, there was "Trapped in the Closet", which mocked both Scientology as a phony religion extorting money and Tom Cruise for being in the closet. Neither may seem like unacceptable targets, but both have a history of suing/threatening to sue anyone for doing that. Notably, when "Trapped in the Closet" was to be rerun weeks later, it was pulled last-minute and replaced with "Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls". The network publicly claimed this was done as a tribute to Chef, as Hayes had recently left the show. However, concurrently, there was word that Cruise threatened Paramount/Viacom not to do promotional work for the third Mission: Impossible movie if the episode was ever rerun. While that may not be true, it's noteworthy that after said movie had a luckluster American box office, "Trapped in the Closet" returned to the rerun schedule.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: Butters, Kenny, and Cartman, within the dynamics of the main characters; but according to Craig, Stan and Kyle are also disliked by the town at large.
  • The Untwist: "Stanley's Cup". The boys lose. The kid dies. Did anyone not see this coming?
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The updated title sequence (mentioned above), which was made by acclaimed titling house Imaginary Forces.
    • "Make Love, Not Warcraft" was really raised up by the in-game segments, which were animated by Blizzard themselves.
  • We're Still Relevant, Dammit!: Most cartoons take too long to make to be truly topical, while this show takes days, making it a major aversion to this trope. The one time they were beaten to the punch (regarding Glenn Beck's challenges to the White House) was because just days before the episode aired Jon Stewart on The Daily Show had done a similar razing, which some people argued was more vicious and/or funny.
    • The Facebook episode "You Have 0 Friends" comes off as this, as a result of Trey Parker's reluctance to get into Facebook.
    • "Faith Hilling" pokes fun at this, though even that episode may not age as well as others given the subject matter.
    • "Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers", which talked about emo kids five years too late.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: Yes, it is an animated series. And yes, the protagonists are children. But it contains way too much graphic violence, raunchy language, sex, swearing and other mature content to be seen by young kids. Which hasn't stopped it from finding a huge and adoring audience among teens and preteens. In fact, that's probably a large part of why it has.
  • The Woobie: Butters' personality is enough to melt even the hardest of hearts. The fact that his parents take all of their problems out on him makes him this.
    • Even though Butters is the TRUE Butt Monkey in the show, he gets over the pain he suffers. Kyle, unfortunately, doesn't get over it as fast, and has taken more pain than Butters, and in wider varieties. To name several examples, he had kidney failure, had a hemorrhoid that nearly killed him, almost died at a tolerance camp, his dreams of playing basketball were crushed, he was taken away to San Francisco, got mauled by ManBearPig (he survives), convinced that he was the ugliest kid in school (he wasn't, long story), accused of hoarding drugs (cat pee), labeled a "sex addict" along with Butters (Irony), lost a bunch of friends on Facebook, and developed a crush on Heidi Turner, only to lose her back to Cartman. He even cries when the second-to-last one happens. Aww...
    • Although not as much as Kyle, Stan would also be a Woobie at times. Seasons 7 and onward made it more and more prominent as time went on.
    • "I don't think I'm a happy person. Every night I fall asleep to the sounds of my own screams... And every morning I wake up to the sounds of my own screams. Do you think I'm a happy person?"
    • Kip Drordy.
    • In the Coon and Friends trilogy, Kenny/Mysterion has been revealed to be one.
    • Mr. Mackey in "Ike's Wee Wee".
    • Britney Spears in "Britney's New Look".
    • Clyde in "Reverse Cowgirl".
    • Satan in The Movie, arguably.
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  1. ↑ Though why they couldn't just, say, watch it in the theater well before the episode aired, it's difficult to say.
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