History YMMV / SouthPark

** Scott Tenorman in "[[Recap/SouthParkS5E4ScottTenormanMustDie Scott Tenorman Must Die]]" is a bully who deceives Cartman out of $16.12 by selling his pubes, tricking him into attending a pube fair, and broadcasting a video of him begging. In return, Cartman [[RevengeByProxy tricks Scott's parents into getting killed]] and [[FamilialCannibalismSurprise feeds them to Scott himself in the form of chili]]. Despite the [[DisproportionateRetribution severity of his actions]], Scott's bullying and refusal to stop make it nearly impossible to sympathize with him.

* JerksAreWorseThanVillains: [[Characters/SouthParkEricCartman Eric Cartman]] is a [[TheSociopath sociopathic]] VillainProtagonist with extremely vile sins including abuse to women (his treatment of Heidi) and mass murder. Nevertheless, he manages to be quite enjoyable primarily for being LaughablyEvil and a consistently humiliating barrage of LaserGuidedKarma moments. However, the same cannot be said for other characters.

** Scott Tenorman from "[[Recap/SouthParkS5E4ScottTenormanMustDie Scott Tenorman Must Die]]" is a bully who conned Cartman out of $10 by selling him pubes, tricked him out of another $16.12, tricked him into traveling hundreds of miles to a "pube fair", made him beg for the money only to burn it out of spite, and broadcast the video of Cartman begging and dancing to the entire town. As payback, Cartman [[RevengeByProxy tricks Scott's parents into being killed by a crazy redneck farmer]], then [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies turns their corpses into chili]] and [[FamilialCannibalismSurprise feeds it to Scott]]. While everyone agrees that what Cartman did to Scott is [[DisproportionateRetribution way worse than anything Scott did]], it's still nearly impossible to actually feel any sympathy for Scott since he kept bullying Cartman and refused to stop.

* JerksAreWorseThanVillains: [[Characters/SouthParkEricCartman Eric Cartman]] is a [[TheSociopath sociopathic]] VillainProtagonist with extremely vile sins including abuse to women (his treatment of Heidi) and mass murder. Nevertheless, he manages to be quite enjoyable primarily for being LaughablyEvil and a consistently humiliating barrage of LaserGuidedKarma moments. That said, the most dislikable characters in the series are Butters' AbusiveParents, Stephen and Linda Stotch. They often ground Butters over such trivial matters and ignore him when he is in serious danger. They even went so far as to callously sell him to Creator/ParisHilton for $250 million in the episode "[[Recap/SouthParkS8E12StupidSpoiledWhoreVideoPlayset Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset]]". While Cartman's misdeeds are known to be hard to take personally due to them usually being very over-the-top, Stephen and Linda's overall treatment of Butters hits close to home for many people, especially with how they generally [[KarmaHoudini avoid punishment]].

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: Having run for [[LongRunners over twenty years]], the show is famous for being ''very'' topical in its humor, as its extremely short lead time (with each episode being [[ProductionLeadTime written, animated, and edited in the course of a week]]), allows for [[RippedFromTheHeadlines ''very'' precise and topical humor]] that often becomes dated in less than a year and, thus, it's easy for even a casual viewer to determine what year any given episode was first aired without viewing the end credits. As such, it has lampooned just about every hot topic in pop culture, politics, and American society (and the occasional CanadaEh) as a whole that has cropped up during its run, from Music/BarbraStreisand, ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'' and ''Series/TheXFiles'' in the 1990s to UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', and Creator/TomCruise's public meltdown in the 2000s to LetsPlay/PewDiePie, safe spaces, ''[[Literature/TheTwilightSaga Twilight]]'', ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'', ''VideoGame/{{Fortnite}}'' and pop culture nostalgia in the 2010s to the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic in the '20s. That said, being the textbook example of an AnimatedShockComedy, the cartoon's use of [[VulgarHumor raunchy]] and [[BottomOfTheBarrelJoke offensive humor]] rife with [[TheNewRockAndRoll controversial shock value]] that attracted the attention of MoralGuardians, endless celebrity-bashing, nihilistic attitude, [[FilibusterFreefall overly libertarian politics]] and [[BothSidesHaveAPoint "both sides" approach]] to every real-life topic identify it as a cultural product of the late '90s and 2000s (see one of the examples below).

** An odd example in that some ''South Park'' fans in France strongly dislike the original English version, due to the local dub largely being considered a SugarWiki/SuperlativeDubbing; they often point to Trey and Matt [[ActingForTwo voicing most of the characters]] as a legitimate shortcoming of the original rather than a [[StylisticSuck deliberate design choice]]. This got to the point that French fans vocally complained on ''English''-speaking forums about ''VideoGame/SouthParkTheStickOfTruth'' not having a French dub, resulting in befuddlement and apathy from non-French fans responding to their posts. In short: English ''South Park'' in France is like Japanese ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' in America, with Trey and Matt as their equivalent to Creator/MasakoNozawa.[[note]]for voicing [[ActingForTwo multiple characters]] in the original and being criticized for their performances for stylistic choices understood by their local audiences[[/note]]

* HeartwarmingInHindsight: Big Gay Al was ousted from the Boy Scouts for being gay in "[[Recap/SouthParkS5E2CrippleFight Cripple Fight]]", but didn't hold it against them and stated that they shouldn't be forced to accept him against their will. In 2015, the Scouts finally allowed gay people to be scout leaders.