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• Acceptable Targets: Everyone and everything on the planet, at one point or another, has been lampooned on the show. Even the show itself. Except for Muhammad if the network has anything to say about it. On the other hand, some targets get off lighter than others.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Cartman. Is he an Anti-Villain and Took a Level in Kindness, as is implied in episodes such as "The Death of Eric Cartman" and "Jewpacabra"? Is he really nice guy or is still a monster, just hiding his true nature?
  • 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 there were no negative repercussions.
  • With the exception of "Erection Day", Jimmy manages to maintain his cheerful, confident demeanor through almost any situation that would make other characters freak out big time.
• Anvilicious:
  • "Eat, Pray, Queef". Talk about a 21-minute sledgehammer of male guilt. Ironic, considering the show's stance on Aesops.
  • Like everything else, they have fun with it. "...yeah, but at least Family Guy doesn't get all preachy and up its own ass with messages!"
  • A good majority of episodes are essentially Matt and Trey beating you over the head with either their libertarian beliefs or their hatred of Political Correctness Gone Mad.
  • "A Nightmare On Face Time" really beat you over the head with "nobody rents movies anymore!"
• Ass Pull: Stan's parents getting back together at the end of "Ass Burgers".
  • CRAB PEOPLE.
  • Osama Bin Laden was shot in the face by a US Marine in "Osama Bin Laden has Farty Pants." He returns in "It's a Jersey Thing".
  • Saddam Hussein was in hell, then exiled to heaven after Satan got sick of dealing with him, where he's seen in one later episode. He then shows up suddenly as the prime minister of Canada. It stands to reason heaven got sick of him too, and where else was he gonna go, Detroit?
• Awesome Music: Has its own page.
• 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 his wacky antics or see him as everything wrong with modern South Park.
    • And there are fans who see him as a fairly funny character who doesn't deserve all the increased screentime he gets.
  • Kyle is becoming this, mostly due to how annoying he has become with his overzealous moral preaching over every little thing that happens, especially when it involves Cartman.
  • Any of the adults except for Chef and Liane, depending on the episode.
• Big Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Trey and Matt's live-action cameo in "Free Hat". Context won't help much.
  • 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's Tats 2000": Kyle spends the entire episode questioning his existence after Cartman learns that the Tooth Fairy is make-believe. Eventually, Kyle somehow manages to vanish, but seconds later he comes back in a Mushroom Samba and summons the Half-Chicken Half-Squirrel.
  • The joke spoken by Cartman as the boys walk to the Super Adventure Club in "The Return of Chef".
  Cartman: Hey you guys, you know what you call a Jewish woman's boobs? *beat* Jewbs.
  • Though it's believed that an example of this can be found at the end of Season 15 finale "Poor Kid", this is averted since it's a reference to earlier in the episode, "Maybe a giant bird watches over us!"
    • All of Kenny's deaths qualify, though the "Coon & Friends" trilogy offered a canonical explanation in the form of a curse originating from Cthulhu.
  • 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. It would be a completely straight example of this trope if you weren't aware of a certain Invisible Children organizer.....
    • It does, however, get a Call Back in "I Should Have Never Gone Ziplining".
  • The live-action sequence at the end of "I Should Have Never Gone Ziplining".
• Broken Base: You believe it or not, Cartman has been a victim of this in later years by the same fans. Yes, a good fan base loves Cartman because he is funny as hell and the show would not be the same without him, but some viewers claim that Cartman's Comedic Sociopathy was exaggerated into him becoming an asshole extremely callous and lack of feelings with his friends and even family, and would not be very strange call it a challenge as The Scrappy in his humor becoming in Dude, Not Funny!. Many people hate Cartman by episodes like the end of "Kenny Dies". He is mostly hated by Kyle's fans.
  • A similar case would be his fight between him and Wendy. Several fans of the series (even fans of Cartman) felt comfortable that Wendy would have won in the fight with him. While there are other fans who hated her even more than it was Wendy hated.
  • Fans argue whether South Park was better as the lighthearted Monty Python-esque sitcom of its early seasons or the darker political satire of its later ones.
  • Male and female fans. Very prominent in Fan Art. However, averted as interaction between them is fairly low.

• 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, Cartman and Wendy.
• Creator's Pet: Some people think Randy Marsh is becoming this. Trey Parker himself admitted that Jimmy Valmer is this.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • 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 aforementioned episode aired roughly seven months before Bin Laden was Killed Off for Real, which makes it "Funny Aneurysm" Moment, Hilarious in Hindsight or Harsher in Hindsight depending on YMMV.
  • After Jimmy labels Germans the least funny people of all, Cartman, of course, puts this trope into effect.
  Cartman: Do you know what happened to the last people to piss the Germans off? Tell him Kyle.
• 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.
  • "Jared Has AIDS" was pulled from the airwaves for this very reason. Not because the AIDS-related humor, but because of the final scene where Butters' parents physically beat him.
• Ear Worm:
  • "I'm goin' down to South Park, gonna have myself a time..."
  • "Kyle's Mom Is a Stupid Bitch". In D minor, no less.
  • "You and the Death Lord Cthulhu!"
  • "WORK, MEXICAN, WORK!"
    • "Work, Meheecan, work."
  • "Go Lemmiwinks! Stop Wikileaks!"
  • "With a hidey-lidey-lidey and a hidey-lidey-lay, we work and we make cigarettes all hidey-lidey day..."
  • "Jackin' it, jackin' it, jackety-jack. Spankin' it, jackin' it, spankity-smack..."
  • "Everyone knows it's Butters!"
    • "That's me!"
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Craig Tucker. In the fandom, he is the most popular and liked character after the four main protagonists. He is shipped with practically everyone, him and Tweek being the two most shipped characters after Stan/Kyle, which is the most popular ship in the entire fandom. Yes, Craig/Tweek is even more popular than Cartman/Kyle and Kenny/Kyle.
  • That's because he has the exact traits that make a character really popular: he is a stoical, deadpan bad boy, who is implied to be also tall, dark haired and pretty faced.
  • Everyone knows it's Butters! The character was promoted to a major role (after being seen in group shots as a generic student for years) because Matt and Trey found his kindness and innocence heartwarming. Also, they needed a character to fill the absence of Kenny for season 6, and they wanted to write up scenarios where his father keeps grounding him for ridiculous reasons.
  • Randy has gone from a relatively minor character to a very common character. The creators seem to like Randy for the "standard middle class white dad" guy, which is important in political parodies.
  • Chef for the first few seasons.
  • Rebecca and Mark from "Hooked on Monkey Fonics".
  • The Goth Kids are sure to steal any episode they're in.
  • Characters that only appear in The Movie, like Gregory and Christophe, have fanbases that are equal in size to those of reappearing characters.
  • Same goes for single-episode characters such as Thomas and Bradley.
  • Damien. And Pip for that matter.
  • TIMMY!!!
  • Mysterion became one almost the moment he showed up. Even after being revealed as Kenny, he's STILL one of the most talked about characters. In fact, Mysterion, before he was revealed, was such a major thing, that the South Park creators put out a Who Is Mysterion? t-shirt.
• 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.
  • This trope was applied by fans to "You're Getting Old" who saw it as a metaphor of Trey, Matt, or both getting tired of South Park and considering ending the series. They later denied this in interviews, and went so far as to make the followup episode a Retcon of it. Comedy Central further quelled these theories by renewing the show for another five seasons.
• Evil Is Cool: Cartman. Especially as The Coon in the "Coon & Friends" trilogy.
• Family Unfriendly Aesop: A staple of South Park, which makes sense given that it's a Family Unfriendly Show.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A lot of things get this treatment by fans, especially Mr. Garrison's sex change.
• 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. A 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.
  • Cartman/Wendy and Craig/Tweek.
  • Also his very vocal proclamation of their "relationship" to keep Kyle from getting with the new African-American he had set up with Token.
  • "Chef Goes Nanners" establishes a legitimized Foe Yay between him and Wendy.
• Freud Was Right: The aesop for T.M.I.
• Fridge Brilliance: One part of "200" was a Lampshade Hanging on the episode repeating plotlines. They've commented on that before, in "City at the Edge of Forever."
  • 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.
  • Enough strain to justify his constant attempts to get high and have sex with a girl rumored to have an STD despite knowing the negative repercussions. It's also worth noting that whenever he dies of a disease, they hold a funeral for him.
  • It also explains a lot about all the times he's willingly engaged in dangerous and/or self-sacrificial behavior.
  • Might also explain why, in the first episode he doesn't die, he cheers when the end comes.
  • 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!
• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment:
  • Isaac Hayes' death in August 2008 makes his character Chef's hilariously over the top dropped bridge extremely disconcerting.
  • Saddam Hussein's execution since The Movie (1999) makes the climax of the movie feel very different.
  • Episode 201 has a in-universe example when the ginger leader Scott Tenorman reveals that Cartman's father is not only a Denver Bronco, but Scott Tenorman's father he had killed in "Scott Tenorman Must Die".
  • Considering that the Clip Show Parody Episode had a fake clip of Cartman's father being revealed as John Elway, who was a Denver Bronco at the time...
  • In the "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 LGBT teen suicides that was in the news in 2010.
  • In "Clubhouses," Randy and Sharon briefly separate after a series of arguments. They get back together at the end of the episode. The episode itself is funny... but then along comes "You're Getting Old...," which is "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" (about people panicking over Family Guy broadcasting an episode that has Muhammad on it) became a "Funny Aneurysm" Moment thanks to the "201" debacle. In fact, this and the line about the truck driver liking Family Guy because it's not preachy and up its own ass in morals aren't so funny anymore now that South Park and Family Guy have had their Seasonal Rot blamed on being heavy on the morals. Also Hilarious in Hindsight as the show predicted that Family Guy would do an episode that has to do with Peter and the Islam religion ("Turban Cowboy"). It didn't have any reference to Muhammad in it (as even Family Guy knows where to draw the line), but it is a very happy coincidence.
  • 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, which wouldn't be true until four years later.
  • As gross as the "stick food up your butt and shit out your mouth" concept in "Red Hot Catholic Love" was, it was at least ridiculous enough to be seen as impossible — until a video on Tosh.0 proved that vomiting up feces is physically possible.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The German-speaking fandom is the second largest after the English-speaking fandom. It has become so popular that the channel it airs on has started to show the newest episode 10 days after their US debut in English with subtitles not only giving German viewers the chance to see it earlier (until it has been properly dubbed) but also get a chance to hear the original voices and untranslated jokes.
  • The considerable Latin American fandom.
  • The show has an enthusiastic cult following in Japan. It explains the increasing amount of moe anime-style fanart out there.
    • 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.
    • Hidekaz Himaruya, [in]famous for creating Axis Powers Hetalia, is a fan. He sometimes names his blog posts after episodes.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In-universe example- In the episode "Cartman Joins NAMBLA" the boys are playing a board game called "Investigative Reports With Bill Kurtis." Cartman gives Kyle an AIDS card in the game and the other characters are horrified by this. Years later, the episode "Tonsil Trouble" had Cartman actually giving Kyle AIDS.
  • The "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 part in "Christian Rock Hard" when the boys illegally download songs and a SWAT team comes bursting in. Before the raid of the Megaupload offices this was thought to be ridiculous.
  • If there was ever any humor to be gained from the opening bit of "Dances with Smurfs," it left after the 2012 Connecticut school massacre, in which the sounds of the shooting were broadcast to the entire school after someone activated the office intercom.
  • In "Trapped in the Closet", the Scientology people tell Stan he is "extremely miserable and depressed," which would later be touched on in more dramatic ways in the "You're Getting Old/Ass Burgers" two-parter.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks:
  • Some fans didn't like that they made fun of Inception (or rather, a parody of it).
  • The big controversy came when they ripped off a College Humor skit down to individual lines, and admitted that they had not watched the movie before parodying it.
    • They had watched the movie before parodying it. They used the College Humor video as the basis for their parody because, since the movie was still in theaters, they couldn't get a copy of it to rewatch for themselves while writing the episode.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In "Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls", Cartman describes independent movies as being about "gay cowboys eating pudding". 7 years later, Brokeback Mountain fills 2/3rds of that criteria. Parker and Stone even said in an interview "if there's any pudding eating, we will sue".
  • In "The Passion of the Jew", Mel Gibson is portrayed as a raving lunatic who loves torture. The recent tapes to his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva makes this exaggeration even funnier.
  • "At least it doesn't get all preachy and up its own ass with messages, you know?": Once a burn on South Park's descent into being more political than funny, it can now be applied to South Park's biggest rival Family Guy (ironically, that line was used in favor of Family Guy being a better show than South Park). It can also, to a lesser extent, be applied to "The Simpsons," but these days, The Simpsons has turned into a Sketch Comedy show in sitcom's clothing.
    • The whole plot was kicked off by Family Guy deciding to show the prophet Mohammed uncensored. Cut to their censoring of "201"...
  • In "The Coon," while Mysterion is fighting Professor Chaos, there is a moment where he gets knocked down for a few moments, and the crowd of people watching think he's dead. Fast forward to the episode "Mysterion Rises," where we find out that Mysterion is Kenny, and is unable to die.
  • Remember the episode "Make Love, not Warcraft", wherein Butters said he prefers playing "Hello Kitty Island Adventure"? About that...
  • Also, in "Whale Whores" (which aired on October 28, 2009), Cartman does a cover of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" on Rock Band, which is odd, given that "Poker Face" (both the original and Cartman's cover) did not appear in the game until nearly five months later, when it became a downloadable song!
    • This is made either funnier or way less funny when you consider that the buzz created by the song appearing in South Park Rock Band was a major factor in Harmonix calling Lady Gaga about song rights. (which is why Cartman's cover was available at the same time)
  • In The Movie the censored version of 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 fanfic with the exact same title, but with a different plot that has an OC who has Aspergers'.
  • South Park: The Movie (which depicts Saddam Hussein in Hell and as the Big Bad) was made prior to Saddam Hussein's death, interestingly enough.
  • The entire "Make Love, Not Warcraft" episode seems to have become a prophecy for the future of World of Warcraft now that a hacker has started killing large groups of people in major cities.
  • "Medicinal Fried Chicken" counts as this, since the state of Colorado recently voted to allow marijuana for recreational use.
  • In "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", Cartman tells Kyle to go back to San Francisco "with the rest of the Jews". Guess what Kyle does in "Smug Alert!"
  • The very episode "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" can become this to anybody who has heard of the Elephant and Piggie book series written years later by Mo Willems.
  • In "Fantastic Easter Special", we hear a news reporter say that "Pope Benedict has stepped down, ushering in a new era of... Pope Bill Donohue" (since Bill is an American of Irish descent). Nearly six years later, Benedict did indeed step down, and now we have a new American pope, albeit a South American one, to be exact.
  • Terrance and Philip, a poorly animated Canadian (originally) cartoon full of fart jokes. Canada was a picked setting at random; Terrance and Philip were originally going to be British. In the Turn of the Millennium, many of the Canadian cartoons produced were full of toilet humour, raunchier than American kids' cartoons, and perceived to have terrible [Adobe Flash] animation.
  • The 2 part episode "Go God Go" with their portrayal of warring atheist factions becomes funnier with the today's schism between the so-called "New Atheism" and "Atheism Plus".
• Ho Yay: So much that it now has its own page.
• Hype Aversion: Unlike the rest of the town, Kyle doesn't care about Cop Drama having a Precision S-Strike.
• 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.
  • There's also "Only kids watch animation...and besides, nobody watches South Park for the ANIMATION anyway!"
  • A number of fans criticize Family Guy for many things that South Park is just as guilty of doing.
• I Am Not Shazam: "In this scene, Mohammed hands a football helmet to Family Guy." Nice one, Comedy Central.
• Idiot Plot: "Freak Strike", "Jared Has Aides", "Toilet Paper", "Butt Out", "Douche and Turd", "Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow", "More Crap", "Tonsil Trouble"^note Which has Cartman getting AIDS after a tonsillectomy due to the doctors' stupidity, and "The China Probrem"^note Not just the main plot of Cartman terrorizing a Chinese restaurant without any good motivation, but for the Narm-tastic subplot where the other characters cry over Indiana Jones being "raped".
  • "Fat Camp" and "Free Hat" have the respective Idiot Subplots of Kenny becomes famous for doing nauseating acts and the adults wanting a baby killer named Hat McCullough freed from prison, claiming that "the babies were killed in self-defense".
• 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: You could make this case for almost every character in the show, especially when they are not normal woobies. Scott Tenorman can count as such in particular. To start, 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 psychotic villain afterwards as a result of this, he did care a lot about his parents.
  • 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...
    • "The Death of Eric Cartman" is a good example of this. Everyone at school starts ignoring him to the point where believes he is dead and is now a ghost, all because he ate all the chicken breading off an order of KFC.
    • More conventionally in "Jewpacabra" as Cartman does it all to himself, but getting chained up and left as bait does given him a rare sympathetic moment.
  • Shelley qualified in Broadway Bro Down when her boyfriend died.
  • Ms. Crabtree. It's possible that she's suffering extreme trauma and that might be leading to her yelling and screaming.
  • Kyle counts too when he's not a regular woobie, seeing how much crap he's been put up with from just about everyone in the show, especially Cartman.
• Jumping the Shark: "201", by virtue of being censored beyond all recognition, even for the DVD release. This goes to show that Parker and Stone have hit their peak in terms of offensiveness, and it seems as though the show will never be more offensive than "201".
• Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of people consider each episode a set up for horribly, horribly mutilating that poor kid in the parka, and lose interest immediately after the blood smears begin to dry.
  • They've probably been really disappointed for the last decade or so.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Inverted. Kenny made such a habit of dying in every episode that now that they've more or less abandoned the gag, when they want to make the audience think someone's going to die, they stick Kenny in the situation to reinforce the possibility.
• Love to Hate: Cartman is one of the most popular and iconic cartoon characters ever, even if - especially because - he is a a bigoted, selfish, spoiled sociopath.
• Magnificent Bastard: 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.
• Memetic Badass: "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" from The Movie.
  • Coming soon to the Food Network: "What Would Brian Boitano Make?"
    • Even better? The logo has the word "do" scribbled out with the word "make" underneath in marker.
• Memetic Mutation
  • Step 1: Watch South Park
    • Step 2: ?????
    • Step 3: PROFIT!
  • DEY TERK ER JEEEERBS.
  • DERP! *
    Originally used to refer specifically to anything Matt and Trey considered bad comedy (e.g. slapstick, "wacky antics", Rob Schneider), this one has taken on a life of its own to the point of becoming regularly used internet slang generally meaning "stupid" in some form or another, and has also spawned the expanded forms "herpderp" and "herpaderp"
  • I'm not your friend, guy! He's not your guy, buddy! I'm not your buddy, friend!
  • Oh, the tears of unfathomable sadness!
  • You're a towel!
    • You wanna get high?
  • The 'Cartman Voice' is instantly recognisable, as are many of his catchphrases.
    • "Screw you guys, I'm going home!"
    • "Respect my authoritah!!"
  • Oh my god, they Killed Kenny!
    • You Bastards!
  • X makes me a sad panda.
  • I'm sorry, I thought this was America!
  • THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE
  • If you X when you Y, you're gonna have a bad time.
• Misaimed Fandom: Yeah, there are people out there who actually agree that "gingers have no souls." And act on it.
  • Like his spiritual forebear Archie Bunker, there is a Vocal Minority of Cartman's fanbase who completely miss the satire inherent in his racist, misogynistic, anti-semitic rants.
  • Likewise, there are those who fail to recognize that the show employs stereotypes (racial, sexual, regional, national, religious, etc.) for the purpose of mocking them, rather than endorsing them.
  • There are many people (read: middle-schoolers) who use "Jew" as an insult because Cartman does it to Kyle all the time.
• Moe: Butters.
• Moral Event Horizon: Most people label "Scott Tenorman Must Die" as either Cartman's Moment Of Awesome or this trope. Sometimes both. Cartman 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 Francisco, and massacres innocent people at Burning Man. All the while thinking he's 'doing good'.
  • When Stephen and Linda Stotch sent Butters to live with Paris Hilton.
    • And before that, when they gave him a savage beating for cussing them out on the phone (when it was really Cartman who did it).
  • 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 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.
  • Sheila Broflovski crosses it in The Movie when she starts a war with Canada which includes an Inferred Holocaust of Canadian-Americans (which would include her own adopted son), which culiminates in murdering Terrance and Phillip and by extension triggering The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Gerald Broflovski crosses it in "Major Boobage" by proposing a bill to ban cats in South Park.
• Narm/Narm Charm: In later seasons.
• 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*
  • The "creamy goo" (not to be confused with Rob Rheiner's "precious goo") from "Sarcastiball". It's Butters' ejaculate. Which he bottles and saves in his closet. And everyone drinks it!
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page, as you might have guessed.
• Older Than They Think: Chef was fighting zombies with dual-wielded chainsaws over a decade before Zombieland.
• One-Scene Wonder: Kenny does very little except die once per episode. Has gained Character Development in later episodes. He still has little involvement outside a single memorable gag per episode, though at least it has actual character involvement now.
• Periphery Demographic: The show is extremely popular with Yaoi Fangirls on Fanfiction Dot Net and Deviant ART. Blame all the Ho Yay and interesting characters.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Style (Stan/Kyle), Creek (Craig/Tweek), Kyman (Kyle/Cartman), K2 (Kyle/Kenny), Crenny (Craig/Kenny), Bunny (Butters/Kenny), Candy (Cartman/Wendy) and many, many more.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: All video games thus far based on the series have been met with, shall we say, less-than-stellar reception. However, the upcoming South Park RPG for Xbox360 and PlayStation 3 (the first retail home console South Park game since the PS 1 era) may yet buck this trend, given the involvement of respectable developer Obsidian Entertainment, relatively generous development time, and extensive supervision from Trey and Matt.
• The Scrappy: Earlier on, Wendy wasn't that popular. Somewhere between the early seasons and "Breast Cancer Show Ever", that changed.
  • Towelie is both an in- and out-of-universe example. Especially after A Million Little Fibers.
  • Stephen and Linda Stotch.
  • Sergeant Harrison Yates, especially since he seems to have usurped Officer Barbrady's role. There's also his Irrational Hatred towards Kyle, which doesn't have the same dynamic as Cartman's.
  • 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. Ironic in that both factors have been undone in recent seasons.
  • Some fans dislike Randy due to his Creator's Pet status and his increasingly exaggerated personality.
  • Travis the anthropomorphic head louse from "Lice Capades" is greatly despised, mostly by virtue of his fantastically grating voice.
• 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.
    • Season 15 ITSELF is dividing fans.
    • And now we have Season 16, which for the most part loses its luster after the heartwarming episode "Cash For Gold".
• Shallow Parody: Parodied mercilessly in "Cartoon Wars", specifically as relating to pop-culture references on Family Guy.
  • Played straight again in "Insheeption," which parodies Inception using College Humor as research instead of the film itself.
  • And yet again in "You're Getting Old", in which Stan and his friends watch the trailer for Jack And Jill. The actual trailer hadn't even came out yet at the time the episode aired, so all Matt and Trey had to go by were the title and the fact that Adam Sandler stars as both characters.
• So Bad, It's Good: The Bowdlerised mess that is "201".
  • Most of the older episodes pre-Growing the Beard.
• 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.
  • Butterballs showed that anyone can be a bully, even people trying to stop them.
  • "Eat, Pray, Queef" makes this statement pretty clear by the end, during Sharon's speech and the closing song.
  • "My Future Self and Me": Be honest with your kids.
  • "Conjoined Fetus Lady" has a rather nice anvil about how hurtful and demeaning the Inspirationally Disadvantaged mindset can be.
• Tastes Like Diabetes: "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" had shades of this.
• Tear Jerker: Has its own page.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Played deliberately in the "You're Getting Old"/"Ass Burgers", after an enormous number of life changes occur as a result of him maturing (including his parents divorcing and Kyle and Cartman becoming friends and business partners), Stan is just coming to appreciate the new directions in his life and new possibilities there are. Cue a stack of Reset Buttons reverting everything back to normal, much to his despair.
• Toy Ship: Many, most canonically Stan and Wendy.
• Unacceptable Targets: Muhammad. Parker and Stone went for lampooning the fact that he's not an acceptable target, instead — particularly because 5 years before the Muhammad taboo entered the limelight, he had been depicted with no repercussion. "201", the second episode of their 200th anniversary two-parter, had all mentions of Muhammad's name censored by the network, along with the "I learned something today" speeches at the end (which didn't even mention Muhammad). Comedy Central went so far as pulling it from ever airing again - they won't even let it be streamed on the show's official website. You can find it here, but its being a TV rip means the bleeps are still in place.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks: "201" is on the Season 14 DVD/Blu-Ray release, but since Comedy Central refused to clear the original uncut version of the episode for home video release, it remains censored — despite every other episode on the set going uncensored ("200" even has every use of Muhammad's name unbleeped). 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. 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. 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, 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?
• Villain Decay: Cartman, starting in Season 15.
• 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.´ Which hasn't stopped it from finding a huge and adoring audience among teens and preteens. In fact, that's probably a large part of why it has.
• The Woobie: Butters' personality is enough to melt even the hardest of hearts. The fact that his parents take all of their problems out on him makes him this.
  Butters: 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?^note He says this in the banned episode "Super Best Friends"
  • Kyle has had this plenty of times.
  • Although not as much as Kyle, Stan would also be a Woobie at times, especially in Seasons 7 and onward, until season 16 where he turns into a rather Wangsty kid depending on an episode's plot.
  • Kip Drordy.
  • In the Coon and Friends trilogy, Kenny/Mysterion has been revealed to be one.
  • Kenny's sister Karen. "The Poor Kid" can attest to that.
  • Mr. Mackey in "Ike's Wee Wee".
  • Britney Spears in "Britney's New Look".
  • Clyde in "Reverse Cowgirl".
  • Satan in The Movie.
  • In the Fan Nicknamed "Coon Trilogy", Captain Hindsight, who has the superpower of perfect hindsight. Every time he appears at the sight of a disaster he knows instantly what could and should have been done to avert it. And he hates it because the second something happens he'll be able to tell people what they could have done to stop it, but his knowledge comes too late to make a difference. Talk about Blessed with Suck.