Western Animation / South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid

Paramount+ release date: 12/16/2021

Following the events of South Park: Post Covid, Stan and Kyle work with the rest of their friends to finish Kenny's research on time travel so they can go back and stop the pandemic, while Cartman secretly tries to stop them.

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South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid provides examples of:

#-L

• 20 Minutes in the Future: A news report near the beginning of the special confirms that it’s been 38 years since the pandemic began, meaning that it is now 2058.
• Abusive Parents: Stephen and Linda abandoned Butters while he was grounded in his room for sixteen years, which, understandably enough, caused him to go insane. It's unknown if something happened to them when they went to the movies or if they just flat-out left him, though it's likely the latter option given their past history of abuse towards Butters and that they can be seen in Shady Acres in the previous special.
• Act of True Love: To prove his devotion to his wife, Yentl, Cartman complies to Yentl's wishes and helps Stan and Kyle fixes the future, even if it may cost his happiness.
• Alas, Poor Villain: A non-lethal example. Stan and Kyle pity how Cartman turned out, with his new fate as an angry, drunken, homeless man painted in sad light in general due to how he selflessly sacrificed his happy ending in the old timeline so he could help everyone else get theirs.
  Stan: Man, poor Cartman.
  Cartman: (swigs a bottle of whiskey) Fuck you guuuuuys! You can suck mah fucking dick! (notices Stan and Kyle) Fuck you! (flips them the bird)
  Kyle: It's so sad he never did anything with his life.
  Cartman: (continues to flip the bird) Fuck you, Kyyyyyle! Fuck you, Staaaaan! (swigs whiskey bottle)
  Butters: (appears next to Stan & Kyle) Hey, come on, fellas. We can't spend another holiday feeling bad for Eric. There's nothing that could have changed the path he was on.
  Cartman: (notices Butters) FUCK YOU, BUTTERS! (flips him off)
  Butters: (flips him off) FUCK YOU, ERIC! (coldly closes the blinds)
• The Alcoholic: Cartman's new fate in the good timeline: he's become a drunken, homeless bum who rages and insults everyone in his line of sight. Even Stan and Kyle can't help but talk about how sorry they feel for him.
• All for Nothing: Despite Stan and Kyle trying to warn their past selves about their ruining their lives and Cartman murdering Clyde before he could kill Kyle's past self, nothing changed. Kenny still got pissed at the others for their friendship breaking up, became a scientist, went back in time, and the trio still went in after him, not to mention they failed to stop COVID. However, this makes Stan realize that instead of trying to prevent the pandemic from happening altogether, they need to change how they all reacted to it.
• The Aloner: Eric Cartman becomes this in the new timeline. Once everyone, including his friends, severs their ties with Cartman, he ends up completely alone and isolated from people; as a result, he grows up to be a drunk, crazy homeless man who’s extremely miserable. His only method of communicating with the people who used to be associated with him is to angrily curse at them, which certainly doesn’t draw them into wanting to be with him.
• Anti-Villain: Cartman is the Big Bad of this special with his efforts to prevent Stan and Kyle from fixing the future, but it's only because that he's afraid that he'll lose his family if the future changes.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Given that Clyde's refusal to get vaccinated caused a lot of problems in the future and that he tries to kill Kyle in the past, Clyde receives no sympathy when Cartman kills him.
  • Butters invokes this trope when discussing Cartman's future life as a drunken miserable hobo, saying that he deserves this fate for being such a terrible person as a kid. He's not wrong, though tragically there was a small chance for Cartman to become good and the good Cartman sacrificed it to help the others.
• Attention Whore: In the revised future, Cartman still tries to get as much attention as possible, loudly insulting at anyone he sees so they can notice him. However he only manages to get Stan and Kyle's attention while Butters tells the two not to waste their attention on him.
• Back from the Dead: Sharon and Shelly are alive in the good timeline when Stan helps his parents mend their relationship, because he's no longer stressed out to the point of burning down Tegridy Farms in retaliation.
  • Additionally, Kenny wasn't driven to attempt time travel to save the four boys' friendship and is thus still alive and well in the new future.
• Bait-and-Switch: Future Butters/Victor Chaos was built up to be a complete madman, presumably a Mad Scientist or perhaps a Serial Killer. Somewhat subverted because he's only a shady NTF salesman but doubly subverted because they weren't exaggerating how dangerous he was.
• Beautiful All Along: Shelly is shown to be quite attractive without her braces. Also doubles as She's All Grown Up since the change in appearance happened in the future where Shelly has become an adult.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In the old timeline Kyle believed that he should have gotten the happiness and family that Cartman obtained because he was morally better than Cartman when they were kids. Kyle would receive the happier life with a family of his own in the new timeline, but is unable to rub his success at Cartman after seeing him hit rock bottom as a lonely drunk hobo, instead feeling sorry for what Cartman has become.
• Being Evil Sucks: The reformed future reveals Cartman's new fate as a result of refusing to change from his evil and bigoted ways and not using his talents for anything beyond petty desires. Cartman winds up homeless and miserable, while his horrible behavior has drove everyone who knew him away from him.
• Beyond Redemption: Butters insists that Cartman can't be saved as there was nothing that could save him from himself. Tragically, he is wrong.
• Big Bad: Eric Cartman is the main antagonist where he tries to prevent Stan and Kyle from changing the past, until he performs a Heel–Face Turn where Clyde then takes over.
• Bittersweet Ending: On one hand, some parts of the Bad Future stuck around regardless, such as COVID-19 still cropping up with new variants, China becoming a major superpower, and NFTs being a mainstream currency. To make matters worse, Cartman sacrifices his own happiness to give everyone a better future while he's stuck as a drunk, homeless loser. On the other hand, everyone else's personal lives are much better, the worst parts of America's future society are more manageable, and COVID-19 is no longer the huge, terrible threat it used to be.
• Bookends:
  • The special begins and ends with the boys planning to blackmail Heather Williams for basketball tickets.
  • Also, the Post-Covid Story Arc begins and ends with Stan returning to South Park in the future.
  • For Season 24 as a whole, it began and ended with Randy making an announcement to the townsfolk.
• Brick Joke: Clyde says that he was told "by an expert" that the COVID vaccine gives people titties on their head. Guess what he tells his past self when he travels back in time.
  Future Clyde: Trust me. I'm an expert.
• Broken Aesop: One of the messages of the special is that Covid was bound to happen and that it's better not to obsess over things out of your control. The problem is that unlike the real world where its origins are debatable and unlikely to pinpoint, South Park has an exact origin, Randy fucking a pangolin. While it's said that he does so in each potential timeline, it doesn't change that, yes, it actually is preventable in this world. The only reason it still happened isn't because of forces beyond people's understanding, but that Randy is too stupid and irresponsible to even consider not doing it.
• The Bus Came Back: After being conspicuously absent from the previous special, Ike Broflovski, Timmy, and Butters all show up. Even Heidi Turner makes a brief appearance, albeit in the past.
• Character Exaggeration: Cartman's new future self serves as one to present-day Cartman.
  • Cartman used to swear a lot as a child and frequently curse people out and flip them off. Future Cartman does nothing but this.
  • Cartman used to be rather gross and unhygienic as a child. His future self is a filthy, filthy hobo.
  • Cartman used to be Brilliant, but Lazy, refusing to apply his talents to other things because they didn't benefit him. Future Cartman did nothing with his life whatsoever.
  • Cartman was often The Friend Nobody Likes in his peer group, Butters was the only one who put up with him (and sometimes, not even then). He did at least love his mother in his own way, but it was mainly because he knew he could easily get what he wanted out of her. In the future, Cartman has no friends at all (or even any family), and Butters, the one person most likely to put up with Cartman's behavior in the past, is now the least sympathetic towards him.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In the first act, the boys were planning on blackmailing a classmate of theirs to give them front row seats at a basketball game before the pandemic suddenly starts. In the final act, their future selves visit that classmate's house and use the same blackmail material to help their past selves go to that basketball game, thereby mending their friendship in the process.
  • The weed that Randy gives Stan before he goes back to the past. Said weed is left by Stan at Past Randy's doorstep, who cultivates, researches, and smokes it to find out that it mellows the hell out of you. In fact, he's so mellowed out that he gives it away for free, leaving everyone in a state of blissful forgiveness as they go around apologizing to each other about how they acted during the pandemic's zenith.
• Co-Dragons: Both Butters and Clyde become this to Cartman, helping them prevent Stan and Kyle from going to the past to change the future.
• Continuity Nod: This is now the second time Cartman has had a happy and successful future life ripped away from him thanks to his future self being involved in a time travel plot.
• Crazy Homeless Person: What Eric Cartman becomes in the new timeline.
• Cyberpunk: While the last special already establishes the future as this, it's even more emphasized here. The military has barricaded the entire town and forced the people there to quarantine for 30-40 years just because one single person is not vaccinated, Alexas are Killer Robots who will attack anyone who doesn't buy their deals, and the setting in general is depicted as being gloomy with frequent downpours.
• Deadly Euphemism: Apparently signing people up for Prime membership involves a brutal beatdown, as shown with Butters.
• Deconstruction: This episode can serve as one towards Cartman's character in the series. Cartman was a bigoted jerkass who committed appalling acts either for petty reasons, selfish gain, or to humiliate his "friends", and was too lazy to apply his talents for anything else. However, it is shown in the Bad Future that if Cartman chose to forgo these evil tendencies, change his ways, and apply to them to himself, his life would have been much happier and fulfilled. It contrasts with the "good" future where Cartman stayed the same awful person he was a child, none of his selfish, bigoted, petty, and lazy tendencies would help him in his adulthood, while his toxic behavior drove everyone away, leaving Cartman as a drunk and miserable hobo who's all alone and has accomplished nothing in his life.
• Did I Mention It's Christmas?: The story is suddenly revealed to be set around Christmas when Ike is shown trying to get to South Park for Boxing Day (though given the show's version of Canada, Canadian Boxing Day could just as well have been in July).
• Didn't Think This Through: It's eventually revealed that Clyde's "expert" advice on the evils of vaccines came from his future self. Future Clyde never reflects on this.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Cartman starts off the Big Bad before pulling a Heel–Face Turn 3/4ths in where Clyde becomes the Final Boss.
• The Dog Bites Back: While Stan and even Kyle feel bad for the pathetic state Cartman is in the good future, Butters, Cartman's biggest punching bag, dismissively tells them not to waste time feeling bad for Eric again, even snapping back at him when their old dynamic reemerges.
  Cartman: FUCK YOU, BUTTERS!
  Butters: (angrily) FUCK YOU, ERIC! (coldly closes blinds)
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: When Cartman notices Stan and Kyle looking at him with pity, he responds by cursing and flipping them off.
• Dragon Ascendant: Since Clyde didn't see Cartman's Heel–Face Turn, he continues his mission to kill Kyle in the past, replacing Cartman as the Big Bad in the process.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • In the new future, Kyle laments that Cartman never did anything with his life and became the pitiful, alcoholic hobo who yells at people. Unbeknownst to everyone (including Cartman himself), Cartman in the old timeline gave up his best and happiest future so everyone else can have better lives, even resurrecting Kenny, Sharon, and Shelly in the process. Contrary to Butters' opinion that nothing could have saved Cartman from the path he was on, Cartman's wife, Yentl, was the person who saved him in the old timeline. If she had met Cartman in the new timeline, she would have been repulsed by him for his behavior and lack of self-care.
  • Cartman uses very questionable methods to prevent the future from being fixed (much like his younger, bad self) and he does it for selfish reasons. Yet the selfish reasons are the love of his family and the apparently correct belief that in every other future he will be an unloved jerkass. His Heel–Face Turn is triggered by realizing that his good self is turning into his bad self. He helps to fix the future and as a result his family and his good future self never exist and his new future self is not just bad but also a bum.
• Drowning Their Sorrows:
  • Cartman slams hard liquor in the good timeline, even though he never had a problem with substance abuse at any other point in the show, so he's probably trying to invoke this trope.
  • Averted with Stan in the same timeline: his parents forgave each other which means he didn't burn down the farm, Shelly wasn't killed in the fire, Sharon didn't commit suicide out of grief, and Randy hadn't grown resentful of him, thereby avoiding the whole Trauma Conga Line that pushed Stan into embracing his alcoholism in the first place.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Thanks to the weed Future Stan gave his father in the present, people came together to apologize to each other for what they did out of stress over the pandemic. This leads to a future where the cast all have happier lives, except for Cartman.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite Kyle being Cartman’s arch-rival when they were kids, he takes no joy seeing Cartman as a homeless and miserable wreck, instead lamenting that Cartman had never done anything with his life.
• Face Death with Dignity: Cartman's oldest children are aware about the high possibility of disappearing should the future change but accepts this nonetheless, telling Cartman to save the future so that he could prove to Kyle that he's wrong about his assumptions. Averted with Cartman's youngest child who sends Clyde to the past to kill Kyle to prevent the future from changing the future that may result in him being Ret-Gone.
• Face–Heel Turn: In Post Covid and the first half of this episode, Clyde is more of a nuisance than a full-on villain. But after Cartman convinces him to go back in time to kill Kyle's past self, he agrees and can't be forced into stopping when future Kyle tells him that Cartman changed his mind.
• Fate Worse than Death: This is Cartman's fate in the revised future after sacrificing his happy life for the sake of everyone else. Cartman is forced to watch all of his peers live out happy and successful lives and ignore him while he's stuck homeless and miserable. Since Cartman is an Attention Whore who enjoys seeing other people miserable, this fate truly is far worse than any death that Cartman could have possibly received.
• Fauxshadowing: At the start they said they would need aluminum foil to go back in time but there isn't any aluminum left after the 2021 Supply Chain Crisis, good thing they're about to have an encounter with Professor Chaos, right? Nope.
• Final Boss: Clyde becomes the final antagonist that Stan, Kyle, and Cartman must face before they can change the future.
• Freudian Threat: Cartman threatens to rip Butters' balls off with his bare hands if he doesn't help him.
• Fun with Acronyms: Cartman and Scott's anti-time travel group is initially called Foundation Against Time Travel, before being changed to Foundation to Intercede Time Travel, when Kevin points out that the former spells "FATT" and the latter spells "FITT".
• Future Loser: Exaggerated with Cartman in the new future. This Cartman is a homeless, friendless, alcoholic mess who does nothing but drink and scream obscenities at everyone in the same vicinity as him. He even wears the exact same clothes from his childhood. Made even more pronounced by the fact that literally everyone else who survived the pandemic had a successful future (including Butters and Kenny).
• Go Mad from the Isolation:
  • After the pandemic ended, Butters was left grounded in his room by his parents, who then abandoned him for sixteen years and caused him to turn into an insane NFT scammer after only having the Internet for social interaction. Averted in the new future, as he is happy in his new job as a restaurant waiter (who just became manager) and with his sanity still intact and still being friends with the other main characters except for Cartman.
  • Downplayed with Cartman, since he was already Ax-Crazy as a kid, but he at least was a calculating manipulator and schemer who held the Sanity Ball on occasion. However, once his friends and everyone else decide to cut ties with him and avoid him at all costs, Cartman loses what sanity he used to have as a result of the complete lack of human contact to supplement his Attention Whore nature, and in the process, he becomes a drunk homeless madman with no trace of the manipulative and scheming tendencies that he use to have, with his only method of communication being cursing people.
• Graying Morality: The conflict between Kyle and Cartman becomes morally grayer as adults compared to when they were children. As kids, it's clear that Kyle was an Only Sane Man who always tried to do the right thing and had far higher morals than Cartman who committed atrocities out of pettiness or self-interest, especially towards Kyle. When they became adults, however, Kyle wanted to fix the future but for selfish reasons because he was miserable and jealous when Cartman got the happier life, while Cartman wants to prevent the future from being fixed, but for more sympathetic reasons in that he's afraid he'll lose his family if the future is changed. Then Cartman decides to help Kyle fix the future where, despite Cartman being the more selfless of the two, Cartman loses his happy life and becomes miserable while Kyle gets the happier life.
• Grew a Spine: Butters apparently grew one during his adulthood in the revised timeline, where he breaks off from his submissive role towards Cartman and cusses back at him when Cartman tries flipping him off, all while being unsympathetic towards Cartman's current predicament.
• Happiness in Minimum Wage: Butters is a simple waiter whose been promoted to manager in the fixed timeline, instead of a wealthy and infamous Snake Oil Salesman. That said this is still treated as Butters good future over his previous life because he still retains his sanity, maintains his friendships with almost everyone, and actually enjoys doing his job.
• Happy Ending: The revised timeline is the closest the show may ever get to a proper happy ending. The heroes all grow up to have successful and happy lives, everyone who was previously dead is alive this time, the town is moving towards a positive direction, and the one person who has a terrible ending (Cartman) is the one who is truly deserving of such a fate.
• Hated by All:
  • Clyde becomes this after continuing to cause problems for everyone by constantly announcing that he's unvaccinated. Even Cartman, who recruited Clyde to kill Kyle, can barely stand him and no one care that Cartman decides to kill Clyde.
  • In the revised future, Cartman becomes so hated that everyone had cut ties with him, leaving him to rot alone as a homeless and miserable drunk. While Stan and Kyle do feel sorry for Cartman, it's more that they feel bad about his situation and even then they are unable to say anything positive about Cartman nor do they admit to liking him. Even Butters has come to despise Cartman to the point that, unlike Stan and Kyle, he doesn't feel bad for him, simply cursing back at him
• The Heavy: Clyde's refusal to get vaccinated is a huge driving force in the plot, since everyone in South Park is forced to be quarantined for 30 years as a result. He also willingly offers to travel back in time to kill past Kyle, making him the Final Boss.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Cartman is initially opposed to Stan going back to the past to change the future since it means that his loving family will get erased in the process, and it actually stresses him out to the point where he relapses into some of his violent, angry childhood behaviour. But he's quickly convinced by his wife's horror at his actions to let Stan complete his mission, showing that, contrary to what Kyle suspected, Cartman has indeed become a better person.
• Heel Realization: Upon seeing Yentl become horrified by his actions, Cartman realizes the type of person that he's regressing to, leading him to help Stan and Kyle fix the future.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Shockingly, Cartman becomes convinced (after some initial resistance) to sacrifice his own happiness in the Bad Future so that everyone else's lives have a chance to be better in the new timeline.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Cartman's youngest son sends Clyde back in time so he can kill Kyle, setting off the chain of events that lead to him being Ret-Gone'd. Fittingly in the good future Kyle has two kids who resemble Cartman's oldest kids but he's nowhere to be seen.
• Hourglass Plot:
  • In the complete opposite of what their relationships with Cartman were like when they were kids, Kyle in the new timeline takes pity on Cartman for becoming a homeless addict while Butters has no sympathy for him and tells the others to forget about him.
  • The lives of Stan and Kyle are the switched with Cartman in the revised timeline with Stan being a happy successful man and Kyle having a family of his own, while Cartman is the one who ends up becoming a lonely and miserable alcoholic.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Eric Cartman went from being a devious Manipulative Bastard in his childhood who got away with everything by having the happiest life amongst his peers, to being a drunk and miserable hobo who screams at those who are more successful than him while having absolutely nothing and nobody in his life.
• Ignored Expert: Stan and Kyle don't listen to the asylum director's warnings about how dangerous Victor Chaos is and have even less reason to believe him when Victor Chaos turns out to be Butters. But as they find out later, Butters is kept under tight security for a very good reason.
• Impossible Thief: Victor's ability to sell people on NFTs is treated as a mix of this and Noodle Incident. Once he starts talking, it takes at most half an hour before people have lost nearly everything, either buying the NFT from him or having it all sold or repossessed with no explanation as to how things escalated to that point other than what the victim spent it on.
• Innocently Insensitive: Randy laments that, with his weed gone, he’s leaving nothing behind in the world. He’s saying this to his son, Stan, who is understandably annoyed.
• Insult of Endearment: Shelly in the new timeline calls Stan a turd like she used to do when they were younger, but nonetheless was happy to see him.
• Irony:
  • Somewhat depressingly, Cartman in the new timeline is the only one to end up with a terrible life, despite his Bad Future counterpart arguably sacrificing the most by allowing Stan to fix the timeline.
  • Butters was usually the one kid who was willing to give Cartman sympathy and the benefit of doubt thanks to his naive optimism. It's only after the show's revelation that Cartman is in fact redeemable that Butters finally cuts all ties with him, deeming him Beyond Redemption and swaying the others from taking pity on him. Meanwhile, Kyle, who originally held Cartman in deep contempt for most of the series, contrasts Butters by being sympathetic to his situation.
• It's All About Me: Future Kyle tries to convince Present Kyle to reconcile with the rest of the boys because he's miserable in the future while Cartman is happy.
• Jaded Washout: Not only does Eric Cartman take Stan's previous role as the bitter and miserable alcoholic in the resided future but he also becomes a homeless bum who’s done nothing with his life beyond angrily cursing at people, a far cry from the manipulative Child Prodigy and happy family man he once was during his childhood and original timeline respectively.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While it seems like Randy was trying to stop the others from time traveling for selfish reasons, it turns out that he was right about it being impossible to stop COVID from happening.
• Jerkass Realization: Kyle continues to believe Cartman's Heel–Faith Turn was just to mess with him and takes his slip back to evil as confirmation, until his wife begs him not to let Kyle turn him into someone he's not.
  Kyle: Okay, hold on, I’m not the bad guy here.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Stephen and Linda seemed to have completely gotten away with abandoning Butters as a child, as well as all the abuse they put him through before that, as they were previously shown at the retirement home.
  • Randy is forgiven by his family and has a decent life despite the abuse he put his family through and all the other destruction he caused.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: In the new future, Cartman is a lonely, miserable, alcoholic bum instead of a happy rabbi with a beautiful wife and three kids. Even Butters thinks he deserves it.
• Karmic Jackpot: In the revised future, Stan is a successful Chief Master Sergeant in the U.S. Space Force, Shelly, Sharon, and Randy are all alive and happy, Kyle has his own family full of children who consider Stan as their Honorary Uncle, Kenny makes it as a Nobel laureate, and Butters is a restaurant waiter who recently got promoted to manager.
• Karmic Shunning: In the revised future, everyone has gotten sick of Cartman's crap and cut him out of their lives, not bothering to help him despite the fact that he's a homeless alcoholic.
• Killer Robot: Kyle's Alexa turns into a mechanical monstrosity that tries to kill him when he lashes out at her, and judging by Stan telling Kyle how to get her to calm down, this is a feature, not a bug. Later on, both Alexas activate this mode when Butters tries to sell them on NFTs.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • After selfishly refusing to get vaccinated and threatening to trap everyone in South Park for over three decades, Clyde is shot dead by Cartman after he tries to kill past Kyle.
  • Cartman's youngest child, Hakeem, sends Clyde to the past to kill Kyle even after his father decided to go against it. fittingly he's completely Ret-Gone in new future while it's implied that Cartman's oldest children were reincarnated as Kyle's children, due to their great resemblance.
  • Butters says that Cartman's life as a miserable hobo in the new future is karma for all the heinous things he's done in his childhood.
• Like Father, Like Son: Cartman's youngest son demonstrates a lot of the same Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour he did when he was young, starting with him repeatedly saying "Fuck Uncle Kyle" and ending with him pulling the lever to send Clyde back in time to kill Kyle immediately after his father decided not to do it.
• Love Makes You Evil: Cartman's love for his family and fear of losing them is what causes Cartman to slide back to his evil ways in his efforts to stop Stan and Kyle. Thankfully Love Redeems Cartman and he decides to help them fix the future.
• Love Redeems: Cartman's marriage to Yentl really brought out the best in him, because she convinced him to help Stan and Kyle despite the risk of losing his life's happiness. This is further evident by Cartman in the new timeline, who becomes an alcoholic hobo spending his days yelling profanities at anyone that's slightly better off than him. Without Yentl's influence, Cartman never grew past being a hateful bigot who did nothing but blame everyone else for his own misery so that he could be a victim forever.

M-Z

• Male Frontal Nudity: Just like the previous special, Matt and Trey take advantage of the Paramount+ platform by having everything uncensored. This time around, there's a scene involving Butters using the urinal with his signature method of peeing with his pants pulled completely down and his shirt lifted up like he's still a child. Cartman then surprises Butters with a greeting from behind and Butters hops around in shock with his pants still down, his uncensored genitals completely exposed as he pisses all over the floor.
• Maybe Ever After: Considering how Wendy asks Stan to spend New Year's Eve with her and that Darwin is nowhere to be seen, it's heavily implied that Stan and Wendy are either still dating or might date again soon in the new timeline.
• Meaningful Name: The mispronunciation of Victor Chaos’s last name Chouse is an archaic word for swindler.
• More Despicable Minion: Clyde manages to become this to Cartman of all people after Cartman recruits him to his cause. While Cartman wants to prevent the future from being fixed, his reason for doing so is to prevent his family from disappearing. Clyde, on the other hand, is a selfish Anti-Vaxxer without any sympathetic motives and it's even implied he's helping Cartman just to spite everyone for trying to get him vaccinated. Unsurprisingly, Clyde becomes the new Big Bad after Cartman performs a Heel–Face Turn.
  Cartman: As an anti-vaxxer you understand that you have to be strong and stand by your beliefs even if it means others will die.
• Must Make Amends: To make up for his previous actions of trying to kill Kyle in the past and preserve the Bad Future, Cartman goes into the past with Stan and Kyle, save the latter's past self by killing Clyde, comes up with the idea to have the boys make up, and changes the future for the better, even at the cost of his own happiness.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Cartman has a moment of this after his wife and children react with horror to him beating up Kyle.
• Never My Fault: Possibly for Cartman in the revised timeline. He doesn't seem to recognized that if he forgo his awful personality and reform like in the old timeline, he would have not ended a lonely and miserable hobo. Instead he seemingly blames everyone but himself for all of his misfortunes judging by how he's cursing at them.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: While Butters used to be afraid of Cartman and usually complied to his demands as a child, the adult Butters in the fixed timeline no longer shows any fear towards Cartman. He merely curses back when Cartman tries flipping off Butters and closes the blinds.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Cartman's "reward" for helping Stan and Kyle fix the future at the cost of his happy life is to become homeless and miserable while everyone else gets a happy ending in the altered timeline.
• No Sympathy: Unlike Stan and Kyle, Butters is apathetic towards Cartman's fate in the new timeline, simply saying that he brought it upon himself before flipping off and cussing back at Cartman. Justified as Cartman was (and still is) an abusive, manipulative asshole to Butters and the other people (including Stan and Kyle) back when they were young.
• No, You:
  • Stan and Kyle when their adult selves try convincing them to stop arguing.
  Stan: Oh, nice try, Kyle. You're such a fuckin' dickhead.
  Kyle: Fuck you! You're a fuckin' dickhead!
  • Then, at the end of the special:
  Cartman: Fuck you, Butters!
  Butters: Fuck you, Eric!
• Obliviously Evil: All Kyle wanted to do was go back in time so they can undo the pandemic. He sees Cartman as a manchild who only pretended to turn his life around to spite him and who wants to keep everything as it is to keep them all miserable. It's only when Yentl breaks up the fight that Kyle realizes that Cartman's reformation is real and that he is forcing Cartman to sacrifice his family and happiness. He tries to reassure them (mainly himself by the looks of it) that he's not the villain.
  Kyle: Okay, hold on, I’m not the bad guy here.
• Oh, Crap!: The asylum director's reaction when Kyle mentions they gave Victor a piece of paper, which lets him escape by rolling it into a mouthpiece and charm a guard through the cell wall.
• Parental Abandonment: Butters' parents went out to see a movie and never returned. This is averted in the new timeline when they decide not to ground him after being stoned off of Randy's new product.
• Pet the Dog: Turns out Butters gave Kenny money from the fortune he made off of NFTs so he would have all the funding he needed for proper research.
• Ponzi: Butters' sales pitch about how to make money with NFT's eventually starts sounding more and more like a Pyramid Scheme, but never quite making the connection. When talking to the elderly, he stacks plastic storage containers into a pyramid shape to really drive the point in.
• Playing the Victim Card: Cartman would continue to do this in the fixed future wear he attempts to let everyone know he's homeless by screaming obscenities at them, even writing "HOMELESS FUCK YOU!" on his signboard for everyone to see. Of course the only ones who show Cartman any sympathy are Stan and Kyle, while Butters just cusses back at Cartman before coldly closes the blinds on him.
• Porn Stache: Adult Butters has this.
• Positive Friend Influence: It's made clear here that it was Cartman's wife who changed him to become a better person, because without her influence in the new timeline, he not only failed to grow out of his childish behavior, but also regressed into becoming a total Manchild.
• Post-Cyberpunk: While Covid still occurred, China's still a superpower, and tech is still very advanced in the new timeline, the world managed to make the first point easier to handle, while everyone (except Cartman) is living happier lives.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Stan and Kyle's Alexas say this as they're "signing up Butters for Prime membership":
  Let us tell you about some great deals.
• Psychopathic Manchild: In the new timeline, Cartman still wears his childhood clothes, lives on the road as a hobo, and screams obscenities at people. To make it even more notable, while Cartman used to frequently curse at people as a child as part of his extremely Jerkass personality as well, he was also ambitious, manipulative, even charismatic sometimes, and despite his "friends" hating his guts, they were still technically his friends, and they still used to hang out with him. The Cartman we see in the new timeline is such a failure as a human being that cursing at people is all he does, all of his Faux Affably Evil and Manipulative Bastard tendencies are completely gone.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Downplayed in that Kyle doesn't suffer any great cost, but instead of feeling victorious that he finally won his rivalry over Cartman, he feels sad when he sees just how low Cartman has sunk.
• Redemption Earns Life: Cartman's two oldest children who despite not liking Kyle encourage their father to let him change the past, which leads to their never existing. Sure enough, Kyle's children in the fixed future greatly resemble them, implying that they were reincarnated as Kyle's kids as a reward for letting Cartman do the right thing. Cartman's youngest child, however, completely disappears as punishment for trying to have Kyle killed in the past.
• Redeeming Replacement: Kyle’s kids replaces Cartman’s kids in the revised future. However, while Cartman’s kids despise their Honorary Uncle Kyle, with Cartman’s youngest child wanting to kill him, Kyle’s kid adore their Honorary Uncle, Stan, and hug him the first chance they get.
• Reincarnation: It's implied that Cartman two oldest children have been reincarnated as Kyle's children in the new future given their great resemblance towards one another.
• RetGone: Due to Cartman never meeting Yentl in the new timeline, his kids no longer exist. Though it's possible that Cartman's two oldest children got reincarnated as Kyle's kids as mentioned above.
• The Reveal: There was nothing special about Randy's weed, nor was it actually necessary to Kenny's research. He just wanted to take the edge off while he was time-traveling.
• Ridiculously Successful Future Self: Stan gets one in the revised future, especially compared to his Bad Future counterpart. Stan has become a successful Master Sergeant for the US Space Force who gets to travel all over space, is an Honorary Uncle to Kyle’s children and has a possible future with Wendy.
• Rule of Funny: Grown-up Ike speaks just like the show's other Canadian characters even though he grew up in the United States.
• Same Clothes, Different Year: As another example of how Cartman did absolutely nothing with his life, he still wears the exact same clothes from his childhood (40 years later).
• Say My Name: The asylum director frantically calls out Victor's name when he realizes that there's a danger of him escaping.
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: In contrast to Cartman from the Bad Future who became a Reformed Bully, the Cartman in the fixed timeline grows up to be the same petty and hateful person he was as a child only now he's homeless while the people he use to bully have all moved on and are now living happy lives.
• Separated by a Common Language: The clerk at the airport needs a Canadian interpreter to understand adult Ike. He speaks normal English, just very fast and peppered with "guy", "buddy" and "friend".
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The main premise is that Stan and his friends are trying to find a way to reactivate Kenny's time travel machine to prevent the Bad Future. While they are unable to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, they did manage to reunite the boys, and Randy uses the weed that Future Stan gave him to get people to forgive each other, resulting in a better future for them (except Cartman).
• Series Fauxnale: This could be interpreted as a Grand Finale for South Park given that the kids are all grown up in the end with Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and even Butters getting a happy ending, while Cartman finally gets karma for all the bad stuff he's done, except that South Park was renewed to 2027 and 12 more movies are expected to come out on Paramount Plus, along with the fact that Season 25 premiered on Comedy Central in February 2022.
• Ship Tease: Stan and Wendy have this in the fixed future. It's also worth noting that Wendy's husband Darwin is not in this future, possibly meaning that he never met Wendy in this timeline.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Cartman exaggerates this trope in the new timeline. While Cartman used to swear the most out of the four boys by a country mile, in the new timeline, Cartman drops an F-bomb in every single sentence he says, with his middle finger raised the whole time. It's also suggested that this is now his default way of speaking, and has been for a long time. Hell, even his homeless signboard has "fuck you" written on it.
• Skewed Priorities: Apparently Clyde thinks that letting everyone know that he is an anti-vaxxer is more important than anyone trapped in Quarantine getting any sort of help.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Heather Williams only appears briefly near the end, but her actions reunite the four boys and change the future as a result.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Butters somehow was never taken by child protective services after his parents literally abandoned him at home. Though with how absent-minded most of the adults are in South Park, it's unlikely anyone even noticed.
• Spotting the Thread: When the head of the mental institution tells the history of Kenny's mysterious investor "Chouse" to Kyle who had never heard of him to spite supposedly being an infamous figure, Kyle begins to catch on when he hears he parents kept him locked in his room and then when he read how his name was spelled on his file he put to and to together.
  Kyle: It isn't Chouse, it's Chaos.
• Stable Time Loop: Clyde mentions that a "knowledgeable expert" once told him that getting the vaccine would make "titties grow out of (his) my head". Turns out that expert was his future self, sent back in time to kill Kyle.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Both Stan and Kyle express their sympathy at Cartman becoming a miserable and homeless drunken bum.
• Take That!: It wouldn't be South Park without the occasional jab at something:
  • A jab at the former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who blatantly admits he's a pervert in the middle of announcing a lockdown.
  • NFTs are the one thing that Butters makes post-Sanity Slippage, who becomes a Snake Oil Salesman selling them to people with it being overpriced to the point where he was able to fund Kenny's time travel machine, while also causing a man to lose everything buying it, and creating massive discord among the citizens of South Park.
  • Anti-Vaxxers, once again, as Clyde is willing to trap everyone in South Park for more than three decades, and also kill Kyle's past self as well, just because he doesn't want to get vaccinated... but he'll gladly have a line of cocaine if you're offering.
  • When Stan and Kyle tell the others they tried to find Butters at his family's old house only to find it's now a Pho shop, Jimmy complains that the last thing the future needs is another one of those (curiously, he's able to say this without being speech-policed).
  • Space Jam 2 once again gets some flak as well with one of the positive effects of the weed Stan gives to Randy being that LeBron James is unwilling to do it anymore because it supports Chinese censorship, with the rest of the crew abandoning the project and cheering as well. At one point, Randy also bemoans that at least six more Space Jam films will have been made.
  • When Wendy states that aluminum foil can withstand the time machine's negative feedback, her husband Darwin references the 2021 Supply Chain Crisis, mentioning a massive shortage of aluminum and unmanned cargo ships drifting in Long Beach still having not been unloaded in such a long time.
  • A subtle one at network television and streaming services that try too hard to be inoffensive. When Jimmy tells one of his uncompromised jokes in the new future, PC Principal of all people can be seen laughing at it.
• Temporal Abortion: Cartman doesn't want to go through with the time travel plan because he loves his life and family in the future. He recognizes that if things played out differently, his children might not exist anymore. Unfortunately for Cartman, his suspicions turned out to be true.
• That Man Is Dead: In the original future, Butters goes by and is insistent on being called "Vic".
  Butters: Sorry guys, you have me confused. I think "Butters" was a twerpy little loser kid whose parents didn't love him. My name's Vic. Vic Chaos!
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Butters are usually good kids who happens to Butt Monkeys in their childhoods and suffer depressing fates in the Bad Future. Luckily, they are given happy and successful lives in the good future.
  • Stan is Knight in Sour Armor during his childhood who lost his mother and sister, while his First Love, Wendy, marries someone else in the bad future. Stan becomes more cheerful as an adult, his mother and sister are still alive, has a Maybe Ever After ending with Wendy in the good future.
  • Kyle never had much luck in romance as a kid while he severed his relations with his friends, resulting in him living alone and having no friends in the bad future. In the good future, Kyle finds woman who he loves enough to marry and start a family with and is still friends with almost everyone, with Kyle's children considering his best friend Stan their Honorary Uncle.
  • Kenny grew up poor and died constantly as a child, and while he does become a rich and well-respected scientist, he become resentful towards his peers and gets Killed Off for Real in the bad future. While his career remains the same in the good future, he is much more happier and is still alive this time around.
  • Butters was The Chew Toy as a kid who had to endure Abusive Parents and grew up on insane Snake Oil Salesman that had to be locked up in an asylum in the bad future. He retains his sanity in the good future, is still a Nice Guy to everyone (except Cartman), and is happy and satisfied working at Denny's.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Contrary to how he was always on the losing end of fights as a kid, adult Cartman can not only fight, he gains the upper hand against Kyle.
  • Butters became a walking cataclysm who's able to convince anyone to buy into the NFT craze and make them sell all their belongings to him in minutes, ironically achieving what he always wanted to do as his Professor Chaos persona. Even in the good future, Butters has more of a backbone than ever before because of how he cut ties with Cartman.
  • Token might've already had decent fighting skills in "Christian Rock Hard", but adult Token refined them with Kung Fu training and puts it to good use by single-handedly taking down two retirement home employees.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Stan is a much more cheerful person in the revised future than he was during his childhood and previous timeline where he happily greats all of his friends and family, while smiling all the way until he’s told about Cartman's presence.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • As Cartman tries to stop Stan, Kyle, and the old gang from changing the future, he relapses into his old bad habits when he was younger. Cartman manipulates Clyde to join his side, knocks out and ties up Craig and Tweek, threatens Butters into helping him and unleashes him on Wendy and the others, and steals all their research and Randy's weed to go back in time to murder Kyle.
  • After the trio makes the timeline better, Cartman goes from a happy family man to a single, angry, drunk homeless man, probably because he never changes from his cruel childhood self in the new universe.
• Took a Level in Kindness: The new future version of Shelly seems to be much nicer towards Stan, though she still calls him a turd. It helps that she's an adult now, and it's most likely that she grew out of being a Big Sister Bully and a brat when she got older as most teens do.
  • Heck, everyone seems to become a better person after the trio fixes their friendship, with some help from the weed Stan brought with him... except for Cartman.
• Toxic Friend Influence: A recurring theme in this episode is that Cartman's life genuinely got better once he broke away from Stan and Kyle. This isn't because any of them were really a bad influence on each other, but their rivalry would motivate Cartman to harass them, bringing out the worst in him. With the pandemic keeping them separated, Cartman was no longer motivated to behave that way and found happiness with Yentl. Then South Park got locked down and Cartman was in close connection to Stan and Kyle, where, despite his noble intentions, his old manipulative and conniving self returned, until Yentl called him out on his actions. In a rebooted timeline nearly everyone is in much better condition because they were able to maintain their relationships, while Cartman became a homeless drunk because he stayed with them too long.
• Tragic Hero: Cartman is forced to sacrifice his happy life to ensure that everyone else will have a better future, which results in Cartman becoming a homeless drunk in the new timeline.
• Uncertain Doom: Future Clyde is killed by Cartman before he has the chance to murder Past Kyle in the bad timeline; however, everything gets reset when the boys' relationship is repaired. With these changes in place for the good timeline, Kenny, Shelly, and Sharon are now alive and well, whereas Clyde is nowhere to be seen despite his death being undone in the new timeline. Either he couldn't make it, he just wasn't interested in attending the party, or he died because he was still unvaccinated in the new timeline as he was in the at-risk group of getting COVID-19.
• The Un-Reveal:
  • In the new future Kyle has two biological children, all but confirming that he's married. However the audience is never shown who Kyle married in the new future.
  • It's never made clear what caused the boys (and everyone else) to cut ties with Cartman for good in the revised future, though its most likely something Cartman did at a certain point and was apparently so bad that not even Butters wants anything to do with him. It could also be a combination of things; the call-forwards in Seasons 25 and 26 show that Cartman has permanently damaged his relationship with his mother and screwed over his friends for money (even Butters), while also having little to no desire to do anything with his life beyond being spiteful, lazy, and manipulative. All of these things will likely contribute to everyone's collective last straw with Cartman.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Past Clyde hardly reacts when his future self barges into his house to ask if his dad still has his gun.
• Villainous Breakdown: Cartman in the revised timeline has one (or at least is stuck in one for quite a while) upon seeing all of his former friends living happy lives and celebrating Christmas together while he's all alone, homeless and miserable, where he screams insults at Stan and Kyle once they notice him.
• We Used to Be Friends: Subverted in the new timeline where the four boys reconciled with each other and continue to remain friends. Eventually Double Subverted in regards towards Cartman when other boys decide to cut ties with Cartman at a certain point, which led to Cartman becoming a homeless drunk who's all alone in the future.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Darwin isn't shown in the new future, leaving what happened to him completely unknown. Given how flirty Wendy and Stan seem to be with each other at the Christmas party, he probably never met Wendy at all in this timeline.
  • Yentl is also not seen in the future, making her fate unknown as well. Since she never married Cartman and Kyle's children resemble Yentl's from the previous timeline, it's possible she married Kyle instead.
• What If?: The message of the episode ended up being that there was no timeline where Randy didn't "fuck a pangolin" and cause the pandemic, but there were always options to change how they reacted to the event and attempt to make things better instead of worse. Stan, Kyle and Cartman ended up changing events to help them stay closer friends during the pandemic instead of drift away like they did, which had a ripple effect that made the world deal with the pandemic in a much better way... and prevent the creation of Space Jam: A New Legacy.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The end of this special reveals the main characters’ new lives in the revised future:
  • Stan has a successful career in the US Space Force, his mother and sister are still alive this time around, and he has a Maybe Ever After future with Wendy.
  • Kyle is a happy family man with a wife and children of his own, with the latter considering Stan to be their Honorary Uncle.
  • Kenny is still a successful scientist who just won a Nobel Peace Prize for combining dark matter with breast implants.
  • Butters works at Denny's Applebee's Max as a waiter who’s just been promoted to manager.
  • Cartman has become a miserable and homeless alcoholic who’s done nothing with his life but scream insults at people, while having driven everyone away from him with his horrible behavior.
• Would Hurt a Child: Clyde has no reservations about shooting Kyle's past self. He's only stopped when Cartman shoots him instead.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Randy says this to Wendy and the others when they ask where he had sex with the pangolin so that they can stop him from ever doing it. The new future reflects this, with China still staying a world superpower and COVID-19 never disappearing for good.
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: Kyle laments that for all the talent Cartman has displayed when getting whatever he wanted, he never put them into any productive use in the revised future resulting in Cartman becoming a homeless alcoholic.

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