Original air date: 4/18/2007
In this Zombie Apocalypse parody, masses of homeless people invade South Park.
Tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: Big time. They stupidly (but also selfishly) assume the homeless are a lethal danger to them and barricade themselves on top of a roof, hammering the point home that the adults on this show are total idiots and it's left to the children to resolve the issues plaguing their town.Stan: Dude, our parents are just as stupid as these people! Our town is gonna end up just like this!
- Big Brother Instinct: After the car in which the boys were gets hit by a truck and the driver dies, the boys escape the car, but the street stays prone to car crashes, due to being swarmed by homeless people. After this, Stan, Cartman and Kenny open a manhole while Kyle watches the disaster. Stan calls Kyle towards their found escape and he only follows once his friends escaped, prioritizing their safety over his.
- Boom, Headshot!: Randy blows off Glen's head (at that range, Glen's head actually explodes) when he becomes a homeless person himself, wildly begging the others for change after the bank forecloses on his house thanks to too many homeless people in South Park plunging his house's value.
- Bungled Suicide: The homeless scientist attempts to "take the easy way out" when Gerald and some stray homeless enter his house. He ends up shooting himself repeatedly because of just how bad of a shot he is. Even a clean shot through his own forehead doesn't kill him right away, as he's last seen writhing in pain from the previous attempts.
- Comically Missing the Point:
- Kyle, being the only one who has some empathy for the homeless, tells the other boys that they have to do something. Stan and Kenny ask him what exactly they're supposed to do. Cartman suggests that he can jump over the homeless with a skateboard, and Kyle angrily retorts that isn't his idea of doing something.
- Most of the adults genuinely believe that homeless people are not humans and are perfectly fine with subjecting them to bizarrely inhumane treatment, like Randy suggesting that they convert them into wheels for their cars. Wendy's mother is the only adult to recognize that homeless people are no less human than everyone else, but she is utterly ignored.
- Dennis explains what happened in Evergreen: The town's homeless population made enough money from begging to start renting their own houses; the people of Evergreen went insane over who was formerly homeless and who wasn’t.
- Companion Cube: Even after blowing off Glen's head with a shotgun, Randy still treats his decapitated corpse as though it were alive, implying Randy may have gone mad from the isolation from the time he spent stranded on top of the roof.
- Deadline News: The news anchor gets approached by homeless on set, as he frantically tells them that he doesn't have any change.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- Randy thinks shooting people who simply ask for change is justified.
- Dennis burned his wife in her sleep after he came to the conclusion that she was homeless, since her name wasn't on the papers for their house.
- Faux Horrific: The homeless people overtaking the city is treated like a Zombie Apocalypse.
- Fearless Fool: Parodied by way of this trope standing in for the "Fearless Undead" trope. The homeless people, who are portrayed as zombie-like, keep barging into places and stand still begging for change even when they have trigger-happy homeowners pointing a gun at their faces and they know the homeowners will fire.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The community of San Antonio, Texas who moved their homeless to Evergreen as well as whoever sent the homeless to San Antonio in the first place.
- Idiot Ball:
- Gerald, trying to get the homeless away from him, throws all his pocket change away as well, and realizing he can't catch the bus resorts to asking for change himself as though he were homeless, instead of going to the bank or going home for more money — completely forgetting he's not homeless. And yet he still has the nerve to regard the homeless in contempt and lash out at them for giving him "competition".
- Stan also grabs the ball as well, as no matter how many times Kyle angrily corrects him, he still believes that Cartman jumping over the homeless was Kyle's idea. Downplayed, since this wasn't plot relevant and he didn't cause any serious damage. The ball was simply used for a Running Gag and the worst result was Kyle getting annoyed.
- Insane Troll Logic: Dennis thinks that being homeless and not being a homeowner are the same thing; he immolates his wife because he was the one who owned the house they lived in, as well as accusing the four boys of being homeless because they don't legally own houses (despite them being nine-year-olds who therefore can't legally own houses). He also seems to think that by giving the homeless homes, this somehow means that the homeless are "infiltrating" their society and that it would spark anarchy, completely disregarding the fact that if a homeless person somehow accrues enough money to buy a house, they're no longer homeless by definition.
- Karmic Death: Dennis gets killed by his wife, whom he burnt to near-death for being "homeless".
- Kids Driving Cars: Stan drives a bus at the end of the episode.
- Kill the Poor: Randy's solution to any homeless barging in on him involves a shotgun.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: While singing about Venice, California, Cartman says the homeless can chill "by Matt's house", referencing co-creator Matt Stone who lives in Venice (and, at that time, tended to have homeless outside his house on a regular basis).
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Stan and Cartman blame Kyle for the homeless taking over South Park because he gave one of them $20.
- No FEMA Response: The fire department never comes to rescue the South Park adults trapped on top of the community center because it's surrounded by homeless. Granted and justified because what they were dealing with does not constitute an emergency (though it was, in fact, a bizarre situation).
- Oh, Crap!: As the homeless invade South Park, several of the characters develop this reaction.
- Kyle, upon seeing more homeless outside his house, even saying the phrase verbatim.
- Randy is ganged up by a seemingly endless swarm of homeless to the point he devolves into a babbling mess upon making it to the community center.
- Chris Swollenballs when the homeless somehow make their way into the TV studio.
- Gerald, upon realizing he gave all his change to the homeless and tries to get it back so he can catch a bus.
- Glen gets a dose of this after finding out the bank had foreclosed his house, evolving into a Mass "Oh, Crap!" when Randy turns the shotgun on him.
- Only Sane Woman: Mrs. Testaburger is the only person in the city council who recognizes that homeless people are human and is disgusted by the rest of the council's ridiculously inhumane solutions, like converting the homeless into wheels for their cars. Unfortunately, no one listens to her.
- Overly Long Gag: The scientist trying to commit suicide through firearm because he keeps hitting non-lethal areas.
- Revenge: Dennis's wife shoots him as payback for almost killing her by burning her in her sleep.
- Rule of Three: Glen said that he had two liens against his house before this episode began. When the homeless arrive in South Park, his house's property value plummets and the bank confiscates it as strike three, leaving him without a home.
- Running Gag: Cartman mentioning he would jump the homeless. He claims to have jumped over 50 of them, when really he barely made it over one. Kyle is blamed for coming up with the idea, which he vehemently denies doing each time.
- Shout-Out: The whole episode is a parody of Dawn of the Dead (2004) (albeit the homeless here are slow, the 2004 movie showed the zombies to be fast and agile) with some satirical commentary on the economy thrown in.
- Take That!:
- Randy complains that he hates cherry-flavored Pop-tarts and won't eat them even when there's no other food left.
- To the apathy that the general public show to actually solve the homeless problem, instead only giving homeless people change or just ignoring them, even as the problem gets worse, which is depicted as making it another town's problem.
- The Unintelligible: Christine, the woman whose husbands burned her alive in their bed after getting it into his head that she was homeless. Justified as the fire burned her lips off.Dennis: Christine, I can't understand you.
Christine: Yeah, gecause you gurned my nicks ogh! [Yeah, because you burned my lips off]
Dennis: I nurned your ripsauce? - Too Dumb to Live:
- The people of Evergreen tore themselves apart over the homeless problem, ultimately destroying their town. The survivors eventually decided to trick the homeless swarm into migrating to South Park. The boys must save their parents because they know they're just as stupid as the people of Evergreen.
- The homeless people keep begging for change even when they have a gun pointed at their face and many of them end up getting shot as a result.
- Ungrateful Bastard: The homeless keep asking for change even after they receive it. Near the beginning, Kyle gives a homeless person twenty dollars. However, when the person finds out he doesn’t have more, he goes straight back to asking people for change without even a thank you.
- Useless Protagonist: Randy gets a whole subplot to himself and takes on the role of a secondary protagonist, but he doesn't do anything useful; he just pathetically waits out on top of the South Park community center hoping somebody will come save him and executes Glen for becoming homeless.
- Vicious Cycle: The boys realized that the only effective solution to rid their town of the homeless is to move them to another occupied territory (as seen in Evergreen). However, California can apparently deal with the influx better than small Colorado towns.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Evergreen Survivors were willing to shoot kids, stating that not being home owners makes them homeless.
- Zombie Apocalypse: A comically metaphorical one where the homeless people are depicted like mindless zombies who moan "CHANGE!" much like a zombie would for brains.
- Zombie Infectee: Parodied. Glen, one of the people holing up on the roof with Randy and the others, gets a call from his wife telling him that the bank has foreclosed on their mortgage and repossessed their house, rendering him homeless. Randy immediately points his gun at Glen as if really is about to become a zombie. As soon as Glen starts asking the adults if they can spare him some change to pay for his storage, Randy takes this as him completing his transformation and blows his head off. Gerald also starts begging for change after throwing all the money in his pockets at the swarm, ultimately becoming one of them and following the rest of the homeless as they're lured to California.
