Original air date: 4/8/2009
Being bored with nothing to do, Cartman goes over to Jimmy's house, where Jimmy offers Cartman fishsticks when Cartman asks for something more substantial to eat than fruit. This leads to Jimmy coming up with a hilarious joke, which Cartman takes credit for.
Associated tropes:
- Auto-Tune: Used in the ending song, "Gay Fish," as a parody of Kanye West's then-recent hit "Heartless."
- Believing Their Own Lies: Cartman goes throughout the episode believing he had a big help in making the joke, to the point where he actually believes he came up with it on his own.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: Kanye West eventually starts kissing and humping every fish he finds attractive at the end of the episode.
- Comically Missing the Point: It never occurs to Kanye West that the "gay fish" thing is just a dumb joke and nobody really thinks he's a gay fish. Even after it finally gets through to him that people aren't just insulting him for no reason, the only logical conclusion he can think of is that he must really be a gay fish and has been in denial about it his whole life, and everyone was only trying to help him realize it.
- Gaslighting: Unintentional example. After hearing everyone call him a gay fish throughout the episode, Kanye West eventually becomes convinced he is one.
- It's All About Me: Kanye West thoroughly believes the "fish sticks" joke is about him personally (because he thinks everything is about him personally), leaving him to swear revenge on whoever wrote it.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Craig advises Jimmy to not fight Cartman over ownership of the "fishsticks" joke and to take Cartman's offer of half the profits. Kyle calls him out for his pessimism but Craig points out that challenging Cartman is not a good idea and that Jimmy is lucky to get something from him.
- Karma Houdini: Kanye West receives no comeuppance for murdering Carlos Mencia.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Kanye constantly insist that he's a genius despite continually failing to get the "fishsticks" joke and believing that it's a incredibly complex critique about him (even pulling out a whiteboard and analyzing similarities between him and fishsticks that lead to him being a gay fish) when it's just a simple homophone joke.
- Oblivious to His Own Description: After Carlos Mencia steals the joke, Cartman furiously calls him a "fat turd that steals from other people." Also happens in the end where Cartman, recalling what Kyle told him in the school's restroom, believes that Jimmy is the egotistical one of the two.
- Off with His Head!: Right after Carlos Mencia says "You're a gay fish, man," Kanye West strikes him so hard with his baseball bat that his head comes off with blood spouting out. Kanye even shoves fishsticks down Mencia's open neck hole offscreen.
- Poor Communication Kills: Kanye West didn't even watch the news, which flat out states the true meaning of the joke. None of West's fans or Carlos Mencia try to explain, they just keep telling him the joke.
- Recognition Failure: Jimmy and Cartman have no idea who Kanye West is or why he wants to kill them. Cartman even calls him "Puff Daddy".
- Self-Serving Memory: Cartman barely contributed to Jimmy writing the joke; he was just in the room eating potato chips whilst Jimmy's mom swatted a spider. But with each retelling, he not only exaggerates his involvement in coming up with the joke, he also changes the spider to a dragon he fights off himself. By the end, he's fighting off hordes of "Jewbots" as the Human Torch.
- Shout-Out: Carlos Mencia claiming "[His] dick don't work" and that he has to piss in a bag is from Carlito's Way.
- Stealing the Credit:
- Cartman tells everyone that he was the one who came up with the "fishsticks" joke, not Jimmy.
- Carlos Mencia does the same thing, taking the credit for the "fishsticks" joke, which doesn't work out for him.
- Stolen Credit Backfire: When Carlos Mencia steals the credit for the "fishsticks" joke on television, Kanye believes he was the actual creator, and has him tortured and murdered.
- Stylistic Suck: Parker is a classically trained pianist, performed in musical theater, and co-writes all the songs for his and Stone's projects. When he first attempted to use auto-tune as Kanye West, he had to purposefully sing off-key to achieve the desired effect.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: At the end of the episode, Kanye seems to be so deluded that he is able to swim around underwater molesting fish for an immense length of time. Subverted in the episode's alternate ending, where the Coast Guard recover his drowned corpse.
- Take That!: Along with Kanye West, the episode also takes pot-shots at comedian Carlos Mencia (perhaps not coincidentally, Mind of Mencia had just been cancelled by Comedy Central around this time).Mencia: No, man! It's true! I stole [the fishsticks joke], man! I took credit for it, because I'm not actually funny! Come on, man! Do you know what it's like? Being a comedian, but not being funny? Come on, Kayne! I just take jokes and repackage them with a Mexican accent, man!
