Original air date: 10/11/2017
Professor Chaos begins spreading lies about Coon and Friends on Facebook.
This episode includes examples of:
- Adults Are Useless:
- The parents blame technology (Facebook in this case) as a bad influence on their kids, despite the fact that they believed false news from it and not knowing the costumed children are in fact their own. Then they act like Moral Guardians by bringing in Zuckerberg, who causes even more chaos in South Park.
- Subverted with Stephen at the end when he travels to Moscow, lectures Vladimir Putin for giving Butters the idea, and then ends up grounding both of them.
- Benevolent Boss: Professor Chaos may be evil, but he treats his employees extremely well, gives them benefits and lots of encouragement.
- Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: The adults response to Mark Zuckerberg annoying them is to call him a "penis". Not a dick or a cock-sucker, but a penis.
- Breaking the Fellowship: In the final scene, an argument breaks out between the members of Coon and Friends over perceived inequalities in the franchise plan that leads to Toolshed, Tupperware, Wonder Tweek, and Mysterion storming out to form their own superhero franchise to rival that of Coon and Friends, which they end up calling themselves the Freedom Pals.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with the scene from the second South Park: The Fractured but Whole trailer where the team splits into two after arguing over the franchise plan, setting up the plot for the game.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Stephen grounds Vladimir Putin.
- Double-Meaning Title: The title refers to the trouble the boys go through to launch their superhero franchise as well as the fact this episode is a prequel to the events depicted in South Park: The Fractured but Whole.
- Dragon-in-Chief: The only reason Professor Chaos was actually a threat this time round was mainly because he had Zuckerberg backing him. Once Coon and Friends take the latter out of the picture, Chaos is left to be grounded by his father.
- Dragon with an Agenda: Zuckerberg is under Professor Chaos' payroll, but he independently messes with the other townsfolk.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite willing to Greenlight everything given to them, Netflix turns down on a show about the Coon and Friends due to the slanderous Facebook stories and refuses to greenlight them until they've had it sorted out.
- Foreshadowing: If you look closely at the Coon and Friends franchise plan on the Coon's chalkboard, you can see that there's a title under Phase 2 that says "Rise of Captain Diabetes", tying in to Scott Malkinson's superhero persona in South Park: The Fractured but Whole, which also means that Scott was also accepted into Coon and Friends sometime before the episode.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Mark Zuckerberg used the excuse that Butters was using free speech by spreading false info, so Cartman and Craig manage to record him later on when he's fighting with the kids, portraying him as a racist.
- Hypocritical Humor: Stephen brings up in the parents' gathering that the children don't have the cognitive ability to discern which of the news are fake or not, despite the fact that the adult parental populace themselves sucked up the false rumors spread against the children.
- Jerkass Has a Point:
- Considering all the trouble Butters caused, this is one of the rare occasions where Stephen is justified in grounding him.
- In one of the rare times Detective Yates actually acts as a Reasonable Authority Figure, he gets the angry South Park mob to calm down by pointing out that they were the ones that got Zuckerberg involved on their lives, and that he can't kill Zuckerberg because he technically hasn't done anything illegal yet.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Butters gets his network shut down and gets grounded by his dad for the trouble he caused.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: At one point, Craig's dad points out that Mark Zuckerberg's voice is "dubbed".
- "Not Illegal" Justification: Butters as Professor Chaos launches an evil scheme to spread chaos by using Facebook to spread misinformation about Coon & Friends and destroy their reputations. Coon & Friends struggle to find a way to stop him since what he's doing technically isn't illegal and beating him up for it is.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: After years of being a pushover, Professor Chaos (a.k.a Butters) hatches a scheme that becomes detrimental to the main characters and isn't easily stopped.
- Oh, Crap!: Butters upon seeing the boys told Stephen and Linda what he's been doing.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: The parents wonder who the kids in costumes are. Tolkien's parents even question that the black kid could be a bad influence on Tolkien, despite their family being the sole Token Minority in South Park.
- Police Are Useless: Sgt. Yates shows no sympathy to the many adults that invited Zuckerberg to town, in spite of the fact that he has basically been breaking into people's homes and stealing stuff. When the police try keeping him out of town, he just walks past them and they do nothing to stop him.
- Political Overcorrectness: Exploited by Coon and Friends. After Zuckerberg beats Jimmy, Tolkien, and Kyle in their fight, Cartman pretends that they were protesters fighting for the rights of their marginalized groups (the handicapped, black people, and Jews) as Craig films it for Facebook Live. Further compounding the issue, a grown man just beat up small kids.
- Pragmatic Villain: Professor Chaos' latest scheme to create chaos via spreading false info on Facebook is perfectly legal, makes him a lot of money and by paying a small fee, he can get Mark Zuckerberg to protect him from being forcefully shutdown.
- Real After All: It appears that just like Mintberry Crunch and Mysterion, Fastpass actually does have the superpowers he claims to have.
- Reality Subtext: The entire episode is not only a jab at the franchising of the Marvel and DC cinematic universes, but also serves as a prelude to South Park: The Fractured but Whole game that is set to release in the week after this episode aired.
- Refuge in Audacity: After finding out Butters was the one spreading the fake stories, Stephen drags him to Moscow and where he actually manages to ground both Butters and Vladimir Putin himself.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Cartman makes a reference to Harvey Weinstein less than a week after his years of sexual misconduct was revealed.
- Rule of Three: In three different scenes, when Zuckerberg shows up acting out, one character is bewildered at his presence and another points out that it's Mark Zuckerberg.
- Running Gag: Throughout the episode, people insist on pronouncing the word "style" as "shtoyle" when bragging about their fighting techniques.
- Second-Act Breakup:
- At the end of the episode, Toolshed (Stan), Mysterion (Kenny), Tupperware (Tolkien), and Wonder Tweek (guess who) leave Coon and Friends when they've had enough of how the Coon only gives some superheroes preferential treatment while the others are left out.
- Wonder Tweek and Super Craig have a more personal version, since they became an actual couple following Tweek X Craig. In the game, both of them treat the split like a bitter divorce, sniping at each other constantly and fighting for 'custody' of their shared property.
- Shout-Out:
- The intro of the episode where Jimmy tells the other Coon and Friends Fastpass' origin story is (appropriately) done in the same style as the opening title and narration scenes in The Flash (2014).
- Professor Chaos' plan to spread false rumors against the heroes is very in-character for the character he's a stand-in for. This creates a schism between the heroes but later ends up uniting together against a much-greater foe, which is exactly the plot point of Captain America: Civil War and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
- Single-Season Country: Moscow is covered in snow during Butters' visit.
- Spiritual Successor: This episode is one to Season 17's Black Friday trilogy of episodes in that it's a direct tie-in to a South Park video game that the creators were heavily involved with its creation — in Season 17's case, it's South Park: The Stick of Truth, while in this case, it's South Park: The Fractured but Whole.
- Stupid Evil: Professor Chaos plans to ruin Coon & Friends' franchise plan despite the fact that it includes Chaos getting his own movie. Even if he personally thinks that villain-led films like Suicide Squad are bad, those films still make a lot of money.
- Stylistic Suck: Zuckerberg's dialogue not matching his lips and sounding bad is done in homage to anime from the 60's.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Spreading false info, while completely immoral and unethical, is nevertheless indeed considered to be completely legal under the First Amendment and beating someone up because they said bad things about you isn't (although this of course doesn't stop some people from still doing it anyway), so Coon & Friends can't stop Chaos's scheme just by punching him.
- It kicks in again later on in that while Chaos is legally in the clear, it's still something that can get him in trouble with his parents. So when Coon and Friends just tell his dad what's going on, Stephen grounds Butters for spreading lies on the internet through Facebook.
- Take That!:
- The main plot takes jabs on the massive universe-building popularized by the Marvel Cinematic Universe: its Cash-Cow Franchise status, the phases, who gets the origin stories, the Netflix shows, and who only gets to be second fiddle. And how the DC Extended Universe struggles to keep up.
- The clickbait headlines and news that plague Facebook and social media and the over-exaggerated response it triggers to the public, whether true or not. Even the Harvey Weinstein scandal was brought up.
- Mark Zuckerberg is depicted as a trash-talking troll who "blocks" out any South Park citizen who raises a discourse similar to how celebrities tend to block out accounts that heckle, even if some of those comments are valid critiques. This also goes twofold for non-celeb social media too, since the most go-to counter-attack to a heated argument is to block. The blocker may claim victory by "stopping" the heckler, while the heckler also claims victory since his argument was responded to with a block.
- We get this little tidbit early on:Stan: ... We have movies planned for the bad guy.
Butters: You mean like Suicide Squad?
Stan: Yes!
Butters: Suicide Squad sucked. - It's repeatedly said that Netflix will make any show suggested to them which a jab on how a lot of Netflix's greenlit "original shows" failed miserably
, including the then-recent (and fandom-reviled) Death Note (2017).
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Mark Zuckerberg's role in the episode in a nutshell as he rudely barges into random people's homes and acts like their stuff is his.
- Took a Level in Badass: After years of being a Harmless Villain, Professor Chaos finally pulls off a scheme that produces a lot of trouble and isn't easily stopped. Also overlaps with Took a Level in Jerkass, since he's Butters' Superpowered Evil Side.
- Uncanny Valley: There's just something... off about Mark Zuckerberg. He has a paler complexion than the townsfolk, has a strangely synthetic filter effect on his voice, and his speech doesn't sync up with his lip movements.
- You Are Grounded!: Stephen grounds Butters yet again when he finds out his son was the one spreading lies and false rumors on Facebook, justifying Butters' punishment this time. Oddly enough, Stephen also grounds Vladimir Putin for giving him the idea in the first place, which is a reference towards Russia's ostensible interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election.
