YMMV / South Park S11 E13 Guitar Queer-O

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of the very first jokes of the episode is Stan outright telling his father than real guitars are for "old people," much to the chagrin of Randy, who hates the thought of kids playing plastic toy guitar controllers more than real guitars. While this was a complaint among detractors at the time, players eventually getting bored playing with uncomfortable plastic guitars was one of the major reasons (alongside the sheer glut of installments, spinoffs and knockoffs, plus the rise of games like Rocksmith, which do utilize real guitars and the internet offering a variety of tutorials that made learning much easier) that caused the franchise to peter out three years later, as evidenced by the underperformance of 2010's Warriors of Rock installment.
  • Stan's assessment of Jay Cutler, who was just coming off his second season and his first one where he played in every game, "you kind of suck now, but my dad says you'll be good some day", was a stunningly accurate statement about Cutler's career as a whole.
  • "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" actually didn't appear in the first few installments of the Guitar Hero franchise, until it would later become a playable song in the family-friendly spinoff Band Hero.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The episode satirizes the Guitar Hero fad at its absolute peak in the mid-to-late aughts, when there really were more kids playing guitar-based rhythm games than actual instruments.
  • Likewise, this episode was made back when Jay Cutler was the quarterback for the Denver Broncos, specifically in his second year in the league. Cutler would be traded to the Chicago Bears nearly two years later and would ultimately retire after playing for the Miami Dolphins in 2017, about a decade after the episode's original airing.