South Park

Comedy Central's longest-running animated series, their longest-running scripted series (The Daily Show, which premiered in 1996, is their longest-running show still in production), *and* Comedy Central's most-aired animated series on any given day.

It is the *third* longest-running American animated television series, premiering in 1997.

The show proved so popular that it saw release in many other countries (and Block 13 even spawned from the Arab World wanting the show), though not all of the episodes are released overseas due to controversial topics.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of the show) have stated that they'll make it for as long as Comedy Central will allow them to.

## Tropes

* Cartoon Network Isn't Teletoon: The first-run plays this straight, thanks to Much (formerly MuchMusic) airing it in Canada. This was justified thanks to Teletoon (whose French counterpart ironically aired the show at one point) complaining about the Comedy Network's proposed amendments to their license.
	+ However, MTV airs it at times. Downplayed in that MTV and Comedy Central share an owner (in this case, Viacom).
	+ Played completely straight for the Spanish-language broadcasts; in Latin America, it airs on MTV, while on Spanish-language television in the US, it aired on what is now *NBC Universo*, also playing this completely straight between the English and Spanish broadcasts in the show's native US, no less.
	+ As of 2020, partially subverted between French Canada and the US in the case of the first couple of seasons, due to HBO Max obtaining streaming rights. Comedy Central still funds the series, however.
* Cartoon Appropriateness Scale: Level 3 across the board, given it's on Comedy Central.
* The Next Day is Always the Same: Parodied extensively.
	+ How *Family Guy* is parodied. This, of course, mocks the increased use of cutaway gags *Family Guy* put in since its second uncancellation.
* Obscurity, much?: The "Chinpokomon" episode is this in Japan.
	+ South Korea banned the show after only a few episodes and tries to forget about it.
* Super Evil: Butters, when he's Professor Chaos.
	+ Eric Cartman comes as close to this without falling into it. It's a surprise he's been arrested fewer times than he should have been.
	+ Real-life political figures who have done evil things in real life will be interpreted as this in South Park.
	+ Princess Kenny turns out to be this in "The Stick of Truth" no matter which side you betray. Even more so should you betray Cartman in the climax.
* That's a Capital Idea: The entire point of "What Would Brian Boitano Do?", from the movie.
* Size Changing: Parodied in a few episodes, but not actually used.
	+ Unless you count the episodes "Weight Gain 4000", "The Ring", and "Cancelled", but even then it's parodied and downplayed (except in Mickey Mouse's case), and no one ever confronts Cartman about his height increase.
* The Most Awesome Videogame in the World: Both Terrence and Phillip movies.
* Gainax Ruined the Ending: Rarely, if ever, done on the show.
* Satisfactory Conclusion: Trey and Matt put an end to their continuous joke of killing Kenny in "Kenny Dies", allowing them to develop Butters' personality more. They've only used it sparingly since.
	+ In a two-parter from Season 15, Stan's world goes back to the way it was due to his parents working out their relationship issues.
* This gave us inspiration: In the Arab World, Block 13 aired and looked almost exactly like a normal South Park episode; it's no surprise that once Block 13 became more well-known outside the Arab World, it became infamous for being a South Park clone.
	+ Parodied in the episode "The Simpsons Already Did It", where Butters tries to find an evil scheme *not* already done in The Simpsons.
	+ Also parodied in the episode "A Very Crappy Christmas", where the boys make a short film which happens to be "The Spirit of Christmas", the short that spawned *South Park* in the first place.
	+ The first episode of season 18 was a parody of how crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter can sometimes host scams. Later in the decade, Daniel Ibbertson's *KickScammers* series started releasing.
	+ In *The Stick of Truth*, the New Kid's true name is Dohvakiin, which is the name of the main character of *The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim*. It also parodies the fact that someone named their child the exact same name, which *itself* parallels the first half of the plot of *Chrysanthemum*, except without the entire "named after a flower" thing.
* My Life Meme: The joke of killing Kenny, back when it was done in every episode.
	+ "...and it's gone."
	+ "They took our jobs!"
* The Colbert Effect: Caused this for Comedy Central. Trey Parker and Matt Stone didn't *intend* for this to happen, thinking it would get cancelled in six episodes. The series is now *22 complete seasons in* and as of 2019 is the only Comedy Central original animated series *still airing*. And they *still* want to work on it until its cancellation.
	+ Ironically they gave some to *Family Guy* in a negative way. People were already getting sick of the increased cutaway gags Family Guy offered, but the two-parter "Cartoon Wars" mocked this practice extensively, even saying that Family Guy was written by manatees. This may not be true for the actual Family Guy, but it did spark more hatedom in Family Guy cutaways.
* Only One Setting: For a series named after the titular fictional town, the series tends to avert this. Even in season 1, there's an episode where Sheila goes to New York. *The movie* has her visit the set of Conan O'Brien's then-current show to place Terrence and Philip under citizen's arrest. And in *The Stick of Truth* and *The Fractured but Whole*, you can visit Canada (and in at least the former, are required to in the main story). Despite this, pre-*Stick of Truth* videogames based on the show (especially the very first one) tended to play this straight by setting them entirely in the titular town.
* You Are Fired: In "Goobacks", due to immigration from the future, present-day people start losing their jobs, leading to the quote "They took our jobs!" and its many derivatives.
	+ In "Margaritaville", people of South Park lose their jobs with no replacements. Again, see the above quote.
	+ Elements of this trope happen in "Unfulfilled" after a workers' strike shuts down the Amazon plant in South Park.
	+ After Mr. Garrison comes out, he was fired from his teaching job, which today is seen as homophobic. He later becomes the US president in the South Park universe.
	+ In "Taming Strange", Mr. Mackey fired someone he only hired to take blame for Intellelink's problems in the first place.

TBA.