And that's the nicest thing they said about Paul Watson
South Park, especially after the first few seasons, has turned its entire concept toward social commentary and Take Thats at celebrities and entertainment.
- "Chickenlover" ends with Officer Barbrady learning how to read, only to be turned off of books after reading Atlas Shrugged.
- "Fatt Butt and Pancake Head" is basically one long insult to Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, depicting the former as a Rich Bitch who completely loses her mind the minute she loses her spot in the limelight, and the latter as a dimwitted Trophy Husband who mistakes Cartman's hand for a real woman. Hell, even the title is a dig at the couple.
- From the show's two-part episode "Cartoon Wars":
- The bulk of the episodes attacked Family Guy, portraying the show as little more than an unconnected string of meaningless pop culture references selected at random by Manatees. Seth MacFarlane has responded that this is pretty much an accurate description of how the show is written. He apparently took it back when he was in a talk show replying to the questioned rivalry with "They're on cable TV, who cares?"note
- The episodes also attacked its own channel, Comedy Central, for "pussing out" and refusing to allow them to air a cartoon depiction of Muhammad, which the episode argued was necessary to preserve America's freedom of speech.
- The show also saved some room for a self-deprecating Take That at itself when one character states that at least Family Guy "doesn't get all preachy and up its own ass with messages..." Which turned out to be Hilarious in Hindsight in light of what came later on Family Guy. But at least Family Guy has managed to keep the avails limited to every other episode or so, as opposed to South Park that's got at least one per episode.
- "Broadway Bro Down" featured Randy trying to sabotage a Wicked production to save his daughter from "subliminal subtext." "It's time to put an end to Broadway!" He slips into a Spider-Man costume and heads off to ruin the production...
- After "Blame Canada" lost the Best Song Oscar to Phil Collins' "You'll Be in My Heart," "Timmy 2000" depicted Collins always clutching his Oscar, using underhanded tactics to break up Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld.Chef: You've made them so dull and boring that they're actually going to a Phil Collins concert!
Doctor: My God. What have we done?- Later, Collins is run out of town by an angry mob, his Oscar statuette stuck in his ass.
- Liane Cartman is a real-life Take That at Trey Parker's ex-fiancée, who cheated on him. Liane Cartman is often described as a "slut" and a "crackwhore." Parker had previously made a similar Take That in Cannibal! The Musical by naming an unfaithful horse "Liane."
- The show leveled a Take That at the entire concept of celebrity guest appearances, most notably by having George Clooney provide the barks for a gay dog as his only contribution. Clooney apparently took it in good humor and was granted an actual speaking cameo in the film.
- Clooney also had a few Take Thats leveled at him. Including one from "Smug Alert!
" and Team America: World Police. Clooney has taken it all in stride. - While Parker and Stone love to poke fun at religions from Catholicism, Judaism, Mormons etc., you often get a balanced view of idiosyncrasies for that religion offset by practitioners being pretty decent. When it comes to Scientology on the other hand, they tend to up their Take Thats toward the celebrity followers as well as the teachings.
- When telling the story of Scientology, they play it entirely straight and the Take That is actually them adding the caption at the bottom that this is what Scientologists actually believe. This led to an often denied rumor that Scientologist cast member Isaac Hayes left the show as a result of their parodying of his religion. The rumor is hard to deny when the writers turned Chef into a brainwashed pedophile, using spliced in voice clips of Chef from earlier episodes. Chef is then brutally killed off by a mountain lion and a bear in the most gruesome way possible before the people that brainwashed Chef bring him back to life as Darth Chef. Even if Isaac Hayes left the production for other reasons,note it's still pretty clear they were really upset.
- The episode "Canada On Strike" is a Take That aimed at The Writer's Guild of America's strike in attempt to get "all that Internet money." Notably, Parker and Stone are not members of the Guild.
- Barbra Streisand used to be their favorite punching bag. In "Mecha-Streisand", Streisand is the villain and turns into a Kaiju monster much like Mecha-Godzilla. "Spookyfish" is presented in "Spooky Vision," which is just letterboxes featuring Streisand's face. In the film, Cartman's most offensive curse is "Barbra Streisand."
- Possibly the episode's title, "Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods", was to make fun of Ebert for giving poor reviews to Orgazmo and BASEketball both starring Stone and Parker. The only reference of Ebert in this episode was the constellation of his face and his thumb down.
- Perhaps the show's most scathing attack came against TV psychic John Edward of Crossing Over. The show painstakingly explains how Edward uses cold reading to fool his victims and argues that his show exploits people in mourning. They finish off the episode by dubbing him "The Biggest Douche in the Universe," and play the credits over an actual photograph of his face.
- "Whale Whores" is one long Take That at Whale Wars, with Stan joining the anti-whaling activists from that show only to discover they are a bunch of boring, ineffective wimps who never accomplish anything. The show's star, Paul Watson, is horribly killed by a harpoon and later called an "incompetent media whore."
- In earlier seasons (and the movie), Sheila was Take That incarnate.
- "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs" is a big jab at readers who try to find meaning and symbolism in everything they read, even if the authors never intended it to have them there in the first place.
- "You're Getting Old" is a big jab at people who are overly cynical about everything and make no effort to find something they actually like. The next episode, "Ass Burgers", continues the trend and makes fun of people that get themselves drunk in order to escape from their problems.
- In "Dead Celebrities", Ghost Hunters is referred to as "the gayest show in the fucking world". The ghost hunters are depicted as complete idiots for believing in ghosts even though ghosts are real.
- "Cripple Fight" portrays the attorney Gloria Allred as a Ambulance Chaser who made a case into a PR stunt to make herself look good.
- "Chinpokomon" is a jab towards Pokémon and its fanbase, as the franchise was already incredibly popular by the episode's release. Little did Trey and Matt know at the time, this would prove to be Hilarious in Hindsight as rather than being a fad that would phase out in a couple years, the Pokémon franchise grew even more to the point that it became the largest media franchise in the world and prove to have a huge staying power with no signs of it going away. This didn't stop various South Park media from bringing back Chinpokomon to make a jab towards newer generations, however. That being said, this ended up being one of the few episodes that was banned in Japan thanks in part to the mean-spirited jokes and stereotypes about Japanese people and culture.
- According to the DVD commentary, Trey Parker wrote the South Park S10 E12 "Go God Go" and South Park S10 E13 "Go God Go XII" two-parter as his way to stick it to people who claimed him to be an atheist. While Parker likes to make fun of religion, he believes in God and has a strong dislike for Richard Dawkins, which was presented in the episode.
- "Raising The Bar" is a scathing indictment both on "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo", but to the concept of Bile Fascination.
