This page covers tropes found in South Park.
Tropes A-D | Tropes E-J | Tropes K-Q | Tropes R-V | Tropes W-Z | YMMV | Shout Outs
Trops with their own pages:
Other tropes:
open/close all folders
W
- Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Randy is an alcoholic manchild constantly getting into crazy schemes, and his son Stan is the Only Sane Man who has to reel him in.
- Wacky Racing: A race inspired by Wacky Races occurs between the competing rideshare companies occurs in "Handicar", complete with Dick Dastardly and Muttley and Neve Campbell as contestants. For bonus points, Campbell is dressed as Penelope Pitstop.
- Walk Into Camera Obstruction:
- "Coon 2: Hindsight" with Mysterion; near the ending as he and Coon and Friends run out of Stan's house after watching the news.
- War Has Never Been So Much Fun: The Vietnam War was actually a lot of fun, and involved water slides.
- Wasteful Wishing: God allows the human race the answer to a single question, and Stan asks him...Why he hasn't gotten his period yet.
- Watching the Sunset: Stan and Kyle are briefly seen doing this in the opening of "The Return of Chef".
- Weaponized Landmark: The Lincoln Memorial gets used as a weapon in "Super Best Friends." Combated with a giant stone John Wilkes Booth to fend it off.
- Weirdness Magnet: It's heavily lampshaded by Craig in "Pandemic" that the town, especially the four boys, always has ridiculous stuff happen.
- Welcomed to the Masquerade: Played with in "Ass Burgers", in which a support group for Asperger's Syndrome that Stan joins turns out to be a society of cynics who think their view of the world as shit is what the world actually is, and what everyone else sees is dubbed as an "illusionary world", which is part of a plot involving aliens or whatever (they're not sure exactly what). They send Stan out on a crazy mission to liberate everyone from the so-called illusion they live in, getting him drunk in order for him to reenter the "illusion". They also claim that Asperger's doesn't exist, because why would it have a name that could easily be made fun of?
- We Should Get Another Tape: Cartman's video of his Boy Band in "Something You Can Do With Your Finger" runs on to a bondage/urine fetish video his mom made.
- Wham Line:
- "Christmas poo? You mean Mr. Hankey?"note
- "I. Can't. Die."note
- Earlier, in the same episode: "Dude, Kenny, ch-chill out."
- "You must now harness and focus your power, Gok-Zerrah. The power of mint and berries, yet with a tasty, satisying crunch."note
- "Get in the car, Stan! Your mom and I are movin' back in together!"note
- Randy: I am Lorde.note
- "Now our critter Christmas can finally happen! Hail Satan! note
- "What do you know about a little girl named... Leslie?"note
- "Does [Leslie] know she's an ad?!" note
- "You're expelled!" -PC Principal to Leslie before punching her face out and killing her. note
- "I. Can't. Die."note
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- During the events of "About Last Night", President Bush, who would've still been the President and therefore present at the White House, isn't even mentioned. An
early draft of the episode had him heroically taking the fall for the theft of the Hope Diamond a la The Dark Knight, but Matt and Trey were tired of Bush jokes and opted to leave him out entirely. - At the end of "201", we never find out how they got rid of Mecha Streisand. The Super Best Friends distract her with a Neil Diamond duet and that's the last we see of her.
- The end of "Skank Hunt" reveals that a majority of the boys at South Park Elementary had girlfriends, but we didn't even know the couples were canon. Granted, some of the girls' boyfriends were Living Props that we haven't seen before, but to make matters worse, some of the major students (such as Kenny, Jimmy and Clyde) were shown heartbroken after receiving breakup notes and it was never revealed who they were dating; they were just shown crying in the hallway with breakup notes scattered all over the place. And considering that the identity of Skankhunt still remains anonymous to everyone at South Park Elementary, it's likely that the girls will never reconcile with the boys and therefore we won't get to see who was dating who.
- The Member Berries were seemingly important in Season 20, with an elderly one proclaiming they would get back the Stormtroopers (as in, the WWII soldiers)... however, since the entire season had to be rewritten on the fly, their role became more and more minimal with every episode, until they turned out irrelevant and basically forgotten about.
- During the events of "About Last Night", President Bush, who would've still been the President and therefore present at the White House, isn't even mentioned. An
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Mint-Berry Crunch, with the combined powers of Mint and Berry with a tasty crunch! Then subverted when he's the one who saves the day.
- What the Hell, Hero?: In "The China Probrem", after Butters accidentally shoots a hostage in the crotch:Cartman: Aw dude, you shot him in the dick.
Butters: Huh?
Cartman: That's not cool Butters. You don't shoot a guy in the dick.
Butters: But I was just trying to stop him, and you said-
Cartman: [faces him] It doesn't matter, Butters! You never shoot a guy in the dick. Everyone knows that! Shooting a guy in the dick?? That's just, that's just weak. I can't believe you, Butters.- Chef chews out the boys for revealing that his bride-to-be Veronica is a succubus on the night before the wedding (which is true). It doesn't help that they were jealous of her. He forgives them after they send her back to the pits of Hell.
- It's not all that rare that in as soon as season 6, Kyle and especially Stan get called out by their parents or someone else. For example, in "Fun With Veal", the adults call the boys out for "saving" the baby cows from becoming veal. You can't help but side with the kids on this, though, and this is an Author Filibuster based on one of Trey's real-life traits of not eating baby animal meat. And in "The F-Word"note , the school staff calls the boys out for spray-painting "FAGS GET OUT" on a wall to get the annoying Harley riders out of South Park. Mayor McDaniels does this twice, one of them during the call out.
- "All About Mormons" ends with Stan being called out by Gary on being mean to very nice people over something as petty as logical gaps in their religious teachings. Doubles as a Take That Us.
- White Dude, Black Dude: When Cartman wants to form a band in "Christian Rock Hard", he gets Token to play bass because he's black. When Token protests that he doesn't own a bass guitar, Cartman tells him to look in the basement. Sure enough, there's one there. When Token further protests that he's never picked up a bass in his life, Cartman tells him that because he's black, he can play bass. Sure enough, he can.Token: "God dammit..."
- Who's Laughing Now?: Played and subverted with Butters, his own attempts at revenge as Professor Chaos always fail miserably, though he manages to accomplish amazing acts of retribution for his abuse completely by accident (eg. "AWESOME-O", "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs").
- Scott Tenorman pulls this on Cartman in "201" when he reveals that they both shared the same father.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: In "Mysterion Rises" Kenny reveals that he is Cursed with Awesome in that no matter how many times he dies, he is always resurrected. He remembers each death vividly, but no-one else ever does.
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: In the titular song at the very end of "Put It Down" about not being on one's phone while driving, Cartman jumps in and throws a verse about preventing suicide.
- Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Plays out the trope straight and is the main personality trait of Kyle in "A History Channel Thanksgiving" by subverting it; Kyle is shown to be fixated on the thought that the Pilgrims were human, thus he rants about the assumption they are aliens. As the episode progresses, everything Kyle says is a complete sarcastic succession of rants, but they turn out to be the truth; thus the episode escalates to more and more absurd heights to exhibit Kyle's inability to Suspend his Disbelief in the episode he exists in. The trope is wrapped by the end of the episode, as Kyle finally accepts the fact that the Pilgrims are indeed aliens; allowing him to live along in his universe. But is restored to his snarky self when the History Channel suggests that Ghosts might had been a part of the event as well. Because that just goes too far!
- Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: It happens to Satan, of all people, in "Nobody Got Cereal?".
- Wise Beyond Their Years: The four protagonists, despite being only 8-10 years old, are usually smarter and act more mature than most adults. They usually see a problem or approaching danger first and come up with the solution for it in the end.
- A Wizard Did It: In "Sexual Healing"; the government suspects that the origin of sex addiction, is from a malevolent Alien Wizard.
- With Friends Like These...: Cartman and everyone else on the show, especially Kyle.
- Women Are Wiser: Generally speaking, the girls of South Park Elementary are better organized than the boys, produce better things than the boys, recover more quickly when inconvenienced by the boys than the boys do when the girls do the same to them, and are less likely to give in to fads than the boys.
- When the boys' moms make trouble, it's usually not as big of a deal as the kinds of messes their dads get into, except for Cartman, who doesn't have a dad and whose mother has been revealed to have slept with every known male character in town.
- "World's Best" Character: The episode "More Crap" depicts Bono as a competitive asshole who wants to be "number-one" at everything and can't stand being "number-two", because he's actually a number-two.
- Worth It: From "Casa Bonita":Police Officer: Well, kid, you made an entire town panic, you lost all your friends, and now you're going to juvenile hall for a week. Was it worth it?
Cartman: ...Totally.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Subverted in the case of Kenny and Butters quite often, and subverted to a lesser degree with Ike.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Cartman is quite fond of these as a method of manipulating his mother. He, Stan, and Kyle also pull this at least Once per Episode in Season 6, using Kenny's death to garner sympathy from their friends and family.
- Writer on Board: Cartman's mother, Liane, is named after Trey's ex-fiancee, who cheated on him. On the show, Liane is a promiscuous woman who has banged nearly every man in town (along with at least one woman), who is a terrible mother and a naive idiot who enables and coddles her manipulative, sociopathic son. Parker also named an unfaithful horse Liane in his first film, Cannibal! The Musical.
X
- Xanatos Gambit: Cartman pulls one off in "The Red Badge of Gayness" (the one with "S'more-flavored Schnapps") - He makes a bet with the others that he can make it so the south won the civil war, and the agreed stake in the bet is, the loser(s) have to act as the winners' slaves. When he loses the bet, he (successfully) argues that he can't be a slave because the South losing the civil war resulted in the abolition of slavery.
- X Must Not Win: Kyle's feud with Cartman is usually justified given the latter's highly malicious intent. However, even in petty wars, Kyle takes a sometimes disturbing extra mile to make sure Cartman's plans go up in smoke. eg. In "Douche and Turd" he and Cartman create opposing school mascots, with Kyle using increasingly manipulative methods to get people to vote against Cartman's candidate. Similarly, a lot of Cartman's intentions are built around making Kyle lose.Butters: Whoa, you sure seem with it, Eric. You must have some... ih-inspiration.
Cartman: Yes, the tears of Kyle Broflovski when he loses his ten dollars to me.- To add onto the Cartman example, there are plenty of occasions Cartman comes out with amazing success and fame due to a bet with Kyle, but brushes it all off because he didn't win the bet in particular. In "Christian Rock Hard" for example, Cartman bets Kyle he can make a Platinum album before him. Cartman succeeds in making a highly successful Christian rock band, gaining enormous popularity and wealth. However once he finds out that Christian "Platinum" albums are called "Myrrh" instead (thus technically losing his bet with Kyle) he flies into a rage in public, destroying the band's career.
- And for more Cartman, in "Fat Butt and Pancake Head", Cartman pretends he (or his hand, at least) is Jennifer Lopez. "Ms. Lopez" creates a hit album, gets affectionate with Ben Affleck, and enjoys the wealth and fame of celebrity life via Xanatos Speed Chess. The reason is to make Kyle admit the possibility that the hand is an independent living being from Cartman and calls the whole thing off when Kyle makes even the tiniest admission. (In "200", the hand is proven to be an actual separate entity.)
- Xylophone Gag: Played surprisingly straight, albeit with a ukulele.
- Setting off a bunch of Chekhov's Boomerangs in the process.
Y
- Yandere:
- Wendy in "Tom's Rhinoplasty" gets the schoolteacher killed just because Stan had a crush on her.
- You Are Grounded!: Used very often. There are over a hundred references to being grounded over the course of the series. Butters is a a victim of the majority of the groundings, as his personality has made him the most fun character for the writers to do this to. "Grounded Vindaloop" has an astonishing 24 references towards being grounded - 24 over the course of 21 minutes! That episode alone is the reason for the high level of groundings, as well as eclipsing the combined total of the feature film and the earlier episode, "The Ungroundable". Malcolm in the Middle could barely reach 6-7 references towards the grounding over the course of any one episode, and South Park basically quadrupled that in one episode.
- You Meddling Kids: In "Weight Gain 4000", Mr. Garrison says this as Mr. Hat after trying to assassinate Kathie Lee Gifford.
- In "Child Abduction Is Not Funny", the ghost of human kindness is actually a child abducter who nearly gets Tweak. The cops show up and he says "I would've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling policemen".
- You Must Be This Tall to Ride: Cartman takes it to the extremes in "Cartmanland", forbidding anyone else from entering the park so he could enjoy the rides as often as he like, with no lines to wait in. However, his disregard for the park's other needs results in him letting in more and more people.
- Your Head A-Splode: A juror's head explodes after hearing a complement to the Chewbacca Defense in "Chef Aid".
- Kenny's death at the "Plane'arium" in "Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods".
- The future guns in "Go God Go". They fire a dart into the target that, after a few seconds, causes their head to explode.
- Cartman's reaction to KFC's closing down in "Medicinal Fried Chicken", combined with a Big "NO!". Also a
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment (his head is back to normal the next time he's seen, and the explosion is never mentioned since). - Tay Zonday's head explodes after the "Dramatic Chipmunk" stares him down during while waiting with other YouTube superstars in "Canada on Strike". Complete with dramatic music and everything. He manages to blow the critter's head off with his gun before he croaks.
- You Say Tomato: The planetarium manager in "Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods" has a rare disorder that doesn't allow him to pronounce the t in "planetarium", although he seems to have no problem pronouncing it elsewhere. The way he says the word is somewhere between "Planet Arium" with a slight pause between the words and "plane'arium" with a glottal stop.
- When Mr. Garrison tries to scare all the "rich" people out of town in "Here Comes the Neighborhood", the "richers" scream when they see their neighbors in ghost sheets and say: "South Park is hainted!"
- When Al Gore shows up looking for "ManBearPig", a Running Gag has him pronouncing "serious"/"seriously" as "serial".
- South Park: The Stick of Truth subtitles reveal that it's actually "cereal".
