These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
YMMV: South Park
Acceptable Targets: Pretty much everyone and everything on the planet, at one point or another, has been lampooned on the show. Even the show itself.
And the Fandom Rejoiced: Inverted; most fans won't be pleased that Comedy Central still hasn't approved of the uncut version of episode 201 even for the season DVD set.
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.
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.
Any of the adults except for Chef and Liane in general, depending on the episode.
The Jew robot invasion on the fish sticks episode. 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 Tooth Fairy episode: 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 "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.
Cartman, whose only redeeming quality is that he's funny as hell. Especially in the episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die", when the extent of his revenge is revealed at the chili con carne competition: Mr. and Mrs. Tenorman are the chili and Scott is humiliated when Radiohead, his favorite band, taunt him for crying. Trey and Matt state that this was the point where Cartman went from being "Archie Bunker if he was an eight year old" to being a complete psychopath.
Also, the woodland critters he created. You know they are evil when Jason Voorhees is creeped out by them.
And there's the small fact that he teamed up with freakin' Cthulhu.
More like Cartman manipulated Cthulhu into doing his dirty work.
Arguably, Butter's parents. Especially Stephen. Seeing how he abuses and even once tried to kill his own son.
Actually, it was Linda who tried to kill her son. But seeing how Stephen tries to cover her tracks shows that he has no sympathy towards his son.
To be fair the two more or less had a nervous breakdown for what they done. They are also on several occasions shown to genuinely care for Butters or have other moments of clarity. How monsterous they are is a case of Depending on the Writer, otherwise they are just well intentioned idiots like all the other parents.
Let's not forget when Stephen sent Butters to live with Paris Hilton.
Crack Pairing: Subverted since many of them are actually canon. For example: Ike and Ms. Stephenson, Satan and Saddam Hussein, Mrs. Garrison and Richard Dawkins.
Creator's Pet: Some people think Randy Marsh is becoming this.
Most of the show. The trope is taken Up to Eleven in 201 with the final speech. At first it's stupid because they're censoring it. Then it gets kinda funny after awhile because the entire speech is censored. Then you find out that it's 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 Season 15 mid-season finale episode "You're Getting Old" and its somewhat serious tone is likely to be debated among loyal fans for awhile. Either it is set up as a turning point in the series, or Parker and Stone hit the Reset Button again in the subsequent episode, "Ass Burgers". Essentially, by the end, Stan, who has celebrated his 10th birthday and become too cynical to hang around Kyle, Kenny and Cartman, is teased as splitting from the other three. His parents, Sharon and Randy, split up as Randy admits his man-child attitude is a cover for his unhappiness. Juxtaposing these points across Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" and having no music play over the end credits, the episode creates intrigue on whether the show's character dynamic will be changed again, only this time without the Plot Coupon of Kenny being Killed Off for Real in Season 5 and continuing to stay dead throughout Season 6. Not to mention that Kyle and Cartman, two characters who historically hate each other, are seen playing video games together and smiling, a scene that may be Nightmare Fuel.
In the return episode, "Ass Burgers," the four boys, as well as Sharon and Randy, have reunited tenuously by the end of the episode, again set to "Landslide". Kyle and Cartman go back to hating each other.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Family Unfriendly Aesop: Very, very frequent, but given the nature of the show, it's safe to assume that it's intentional:
But the most blatant one was in the episode "Butt Out", whose theme was smoking. The episode portrays the anti-smoking campaignists led by Rob Reiner as hypocritical, psychotic, homicidal, discriminating, dictatorial alien-somethings, while the cigarette factory workers and the cigarette company spokespersons are goodhearted and innocent. The Aesop of that story is that it is one's personal choice to start smoking (or not), and that nobody should impose their will on others to do so simply because it is a personal choice. Yeah, good moral there guys, but if you could kindly included the fact that smoking is dangerous not only to oneself (being, you know, a narcotic) but also to your environment, as it is extremely unhealthy to infants, children and asthmatics and many domesticated animals, just to name a few. It additionally produces greenhouse gases as well. And it is nevertheless quite uncomfortable to certain people, who may end up involuntarily exposing themselves to the noxious fumes (especially if they belong to any of the groups named above). Hence, portraying the idea that whether one should start smoking as a personal choice may not be the most intelligent or most justified option. Especially after demonizing (in the truest sense of the word) all anti-smoking campaignists in such a manner.
Some people tend to interpret the aesop in Mr. Garrison's fancy new vagina to be along the lines of 'sex change operations are a bust because you're not really changing your gender, you're just screwing up your genitals.' which is probably not what the creators were trying to go for.
After much debate over when the best time to teach sex-ed is, "Proper Condom Use" ends with Chef telling the townspeople (and audience) that sex-ed shouldn't be taught in schools at all, and that only parents are qualified to tell children about sex because anyone else could be clueless about it, have a bad opinion of it, or be a total pervert. Leaving aside the fact that a parent could easily be either of the latter two, the whole argument seems to be based on a sadly common misunderstanding of what sex-ed actually entails, making it out to be a guide on to how to have sex, rather than providing information about safe sexual practices.
"Ass Burgers" ends with "Stick to the same thing forever, even if you don't like it!"
"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?
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".
In The Coon/Cthulhu/Mysterion Saga, Cthulhu is animated with advanced computer animation in contrast to everyone else, who look like shitty little construction paper. While at first this may appear to just be another parody of the show's animation like the way Mecha Streishand and the remade aliens were animated in "201" and "Free Hat" respectively, it can also be interpreted as illustrating how otherworldly Cthulhu is. The original stories of H.P. Lovecraft like "Call of Cthulhu" would go into great detail about how hideous Cthulhu was in his appearance, being so alien he drives men mad when they look at him. Having three dimensions and a more detailed body may just be the way his appearance manifests in the South Park universe.
After the reveal of Kenny's immortality, Kenny's screams of horror in The Movie when he first arrives in Hell can be interpreted as him freaking out that this time around, he's not resurrecting.
Fridge Horror: In "Mysterion Rises" Kenny reveals that his superpower is immortality and that, no matter how many times he dies and catches glimpses of the afterlife, he'll always wake up in his bed the next morning. Not only that, but everyone who witnesses him dying gets their memory wiped the moment he comes back, leaving him as the only one who remembers the experience. Considering his dozens of deaths over the course of the series, you really have to wonder what kind of mental strain that would leave on a nine year old.
Imagine getting your limbs chopped off by psychotic Earth Day head honchos. Kenny's whimpering takes on a whole new level of horrifying with above knowledge of his condition.
Kenny himself sums up the true horror of what it is to be immortal:
Kenny: Pretty cool? Do you know what it feels like to be stabbed? To be shot? Decapitated? Torn apart? Burned? Run over? It's not pretty cool, Kyle! It fucking hurts!
Isaac Hayes' death on 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.
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 ShowParody Episode had a fake clip of Cartman's father being revealed as John Elway, who was a Denver Bronco at the time...
In the "Douche and Turd" ep, 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 & 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 gay and transgender 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 "Creme 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?
It explains the South Park-esque sequences in FLCL too. Amusingly, the directors' commentary for FLCL commented that South Park is as much a Widget Series to the Japanese as FLCL is to the US. It showed up again in Gainax's also-crazy series, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, which itself seems to have taken inspiration from South Park's no-holds-barred commitment to raunchiness.
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 "HUMANCENTiPAD" episode 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.
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.
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 an insane lunatic that loves torture. The recent tapes to his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva makes this exaggeration even funnier.
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 in 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 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 five 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 fanficwith the exact same title, but with a different plot that has an OC who has Aspergers'.
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.
It's Popular, Now It Sucks: Some fans say they liked the show better back during its early years when it was new and edgy, and most kids had to watch the show in secret since their parents had banned it from the house. 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
A big YMMV, but Cartman in "HUMANCENTiPAD".
Cartman does occasionally get subtle moments of sympathetic spotlight, usually under realisation 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.
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 he is a Complete Monster.
Magnificent Bastard: Cartman can pull this off when he wants to. Despite being typically an idiot, he is also a master manipulator. A good example is when he almost managed to cause the South to secede just using beer to entice his troops, with only one mentioned casualty. And that's not even getting into manipulating Cthulhu.
DERP! This one has advanced to the point of regularly used internet slang generally meaning "stupid" in some form or another, and has 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.
Theres another subset of Cartfans that just prefer him over Stan and Kyle, do to his being funnier (even if his a Humanoid Abomination). We aren't supposedcheer for Cartman but since this is a comedy show...
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.
Episode 201 makes 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.
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 "Poor and Stupid", Cartman DRINKS tons of Vagisil in a store. *shudder*
Nightmare Fuel: A good number of things that Cartman has done surely counts. "Scott Tenorman Must Die", anyone? That episode is a combination of Nightmare Fuel and many consider it to be Cartman's number one Moment Of Awesome.
The Christmas Woodland Critters. Even the villains in a "Imaginationland" are disturbed by them.
Jason Voorhees: Dude, I would not want to meet the kid that thought those things up!
Kenny revealing, after fourteen seasons, that he's immortal, and remembers every single death (in the seasons when he did die on a regular basis), and that he has been severely traumatized because his friends never remember him dying. It turns out he's the spawn of Cthulhu.
I can't die. I've experienced death countless times. Sometimes, I see a bright light. Sometimes, I see Heaven or Hell. But eventually, no matter what, I wake up in my bed wearing my same old clothes. The worst part? No one even remembers me dying. I go to school the next day and everyone is just like "Oh, Hey Kenny," even if they had seen me get decapitated with their own eyes.
Not to mention that he seems to have an Irrational Hatred towards Kyle.
The girls from "Raisins" aren't that liked. Specially the one who toyed with Butters.
Mr. Garrison, due to being a mild Spotlight-Stealing Squad and getting an absolutely pointless sex change.
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 exasperation.
Seasonal Rot: Starting with Season 12, episodes fell into the controversial territory.
This is being Lampshaded starting with Season 15, mixing in a little bit of Creator Backlash.
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.
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.
Tear Jerker: "Kenny Dies." According to Word of God, Parker and Stone wanted to see how far they could go in one episode without telling a single joke. Kenny's death is made all the more traumatizing by the way Stan and Kyle respond to it: as opposed playing the Only Sane Man or The Snark Knight, as they do in almost every other episode, they act like two actual children who've never dealt with death before and don't know how to respond to it.
Which elicited some laughs, simply because of the juxtaposition of "...they're mourning for the character who always dies?" But then you get to "Heat of the Moment", sung by Cartman of all people.
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). 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 & 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 & 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?
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.
"Faith Hilling" came across as this.
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.
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), and lost a bunch of friends on Facebook. He even cries when the 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.
