Original air date: 12/3/2003
The boys get in trouble for smoking cigarettes after being forced to sit through an anti-smoking assembly, but the ensuing outrage has Kyle trying to stay out of it as the scenario of the town being outraged over something minor has all been done before.
"Butt Out" contains examples of:
- Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: Believing Kyle is going to sneak behind his back to steal the commercial position for the Anti-Smoking team, Cartman sneaks into Kyle's house to nail his bedroom door at night. It turns out not only was Kyle just getting back to his room after getting a glass of water, but the door opened the other way. This still didn't stop Cartman from boarding up the door once Kyle went into his room.
- Ambiguously Human: Reiner emits green goo in place of red blood.Reiner: "My goo! My precious goo!"
- Asshole Victim: At the end of the episode, Liane grounds Cartman for smoking but doesn't say anything on him killing Rob Reiner, nor does the rest of the town, as he had just exposed himself as a would-be child murderer.
- Broken Pedestal: Cartman idolizes Reiner for enforcing his will on others at every turn. Then he learns the star of the commercial is going to be killed.
- Clueless Aesop:
- In-universe. The anti-smoking group Butt Out comes to the school and puts on a presentation against tobacco usage which is so lame, so unimaginably childish, painfully outdated by at least two decades at the time, and poorly thought-out that all it does is make the kids utterly miserable, while simultaneously giving no actual reasons whatsoever why smoking is bad. Worse still, they end on the message "If you don't smoke, you can grow up to be just like us", which of course prompts the kids to begin furiously smoking to avoid ending up anything like the thing they just saw up on stage.
- The tobacco executive states that slaves were brought to America to help work the tobacco fields, with Cartman adding that none of their black friends would be here if not for tobacco. This isn't questioned at all, which seems to imply that slavery was a positive thing.
- Kyle points out later in the episode how the boys rarely seem to care or know what they're preaching about when they talk about what they learnt, usually only wanting to get out of being in trouble or deescalate a situation they caused.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Hey, did you guys know that each year over 600,000 people a year die from smoking?! A year!
- Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Inverted. The members of Butt Out, at the end of their presentation, enthusiastically scream "If you don't smoke, you can grow up to be just like us". Smash Cut to the boys desperately trying to smoke cigarettes on the school's parking lot.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
- As Cartman reads his script from the teleprompter, he realises the intent to have the commercial's actor die.
- When Reiner openly admits this in public, the townspeople backing him slowly stop cheering.
- Fat Bastard: Reiner uses propaganda to point out the dangers of smoking while ignoring his obesity to the point he needs butter to squeeze out of his limo, is constantly eating something and when Cartman stabs him with a fork, he bleeds green goo and deflates.
- Felony Misdemeanor: The parents act as if smoking is "the worst thing" Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman have ever done, never bothering to comment upon the fact that they've just accidentally burned their school to the ground, not to mention Cartman's long list of crimes, which adds a count of murder at the end of this episode (Rob Reiner) which nobody comments on.Liane: Eric, you've done a lot of horrible things in your life, but smoking? You're grounded for three weeks!
- Gilligan Cut: The boys are forced to sit through an assembly by an anti-smoking motivational group they think is really lame and disturbing. The group ends their show by saying that if the kids don't smoke, they can grow up to be just like them. Cut to the boys frantically smoking behind the school.
- Godwin's Law: Kyle calls Rob Reiner a fascist because he uses his influence to try to make people agree with his views on smoking. The viewer is clearly expected to agree with this statement but it's incorrect, as fascism is a specific political ideology that emphasizes nationalism, and while Reiner does have an authoritarian personality he does not express any views consistent with fascism.
- Hypocritical Humor:
- Rob Reiner believes the tobacco companies, with their millions of dollars and their slick desks and fancy buildings, are responsible for making people want to smoke before the camera pulls out to show the slick desk and fancy building Reiner is in.
- Reiner despite being a stern critic of smoking is a serious junk food addict, is very obese and indulges in greasy fast food all the time even though what he does is just as hazardous as smoking.
- Idiot Ball: Reiner publicly admits to the entire town that he plans to poison Cartman and blame his death on the tobacco companies.
- I Have No Son!: Randy is distraught over Stan smoking a cigarette and overreacts by screaming out this trope's name.
- Hypocrite: Kenny's parents are shocked that their son would smoke, despite being crippling drug addicts. However, they don't say anything substantial on the matter, so they may have just been trying to save face in front of the other parents.
- Innocuously Important Episode: This is the first time none of the characters learned from their mistakes.Stan: Well, I guess we learned our lesson.
Kyle: (disdainfully) No we didn't, dude. No we didn't. - Job Song: A chorus of cigarette factory workers sing a jolly song about the joys of their job.
- Just the Introduction to the Opposites: The episode mocks the heavy-handed Black-and-White Morality of the usual depictions by turning Big Tobacco into an industry run by friendly, helpful people, while anti-smoking activists are portrayed as sleazy and corrupt.
- The Needs of the Many: How Reiner and his group justify wanting to kill Cartman.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The titular anti-smoking group from the school assembly seems to be based off of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.)
campaign, as both use Totally Radical methods of trying to prevent the youth from using cigarettes and drugs. - No Sympathy: Neither Stan, Kyle, or Kenny care when Cartman tells them that Rob Reiner wanted to kill him.Cartman: They had me say I died from second-hand smoke and... now they want to sacrifice me to make it look real! They'll stop at nothing!!
Stan: Well, get away from us then.
Kyle: Yeah dude, don't get us killed too. - Obliviously Evil: Reiner, who is so oblivious to his Knight Templar methods that he openly states to the public his intents to kill a child from his advertising campaign just to add to the shock value of his message against smoking. He acts beleaguered when the townspeople are naturally rather disturbed by this.
- One-Steve Limit: Subverted, two of the "Butt Out!" members are named Kyle and Randy, which are also the names of two main characters in the series (see The Danza in the trivia tab). Quite fittingly, Kyle (Broflovski) and Randy Marsh's son Stan are shown cringing when the respective "Butt Out!" members are introduced.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Played for Laughs. Rob Reiner's disguise as "Rita Poon" is simply to put on a wig. His beard is still visible and he doesn't change his voice. Naturally, the tour guide falls for it until Reiner pulls the wig off and reveals his identity.
- Person as Verb: "I'm Rob Reiner, and you've just been Reinered."
- Precision F-Strike: Mr. Mackey's response to (finally) noticing the school is on fire.Mr. Mackey: What the-? HOLY SHIT! M'kay?
- Properly Paranoid: Cartman reads the lines for the commercial and is concerned about the part saying he'll already be dead by the time it airs. One of Reiner's people (who happens to look like a vampire) then offers him a special cupcake, which Cartman immediately refuses.
- Recycled Soundtrack: A scene at Rob Reiner's headquarters uses a track from the Monster anime.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Rob Reiner. He's a millionaire living such a lavish lifestyle that he overlooks maybe some people behave differently from him because they're not as fortunate as he is, such as when he hostilely lashed out at a bar patron simply for smoking indoors (though it's legal in Colorado bars) and asking him why doesn't he just de-stress by going to his vacation house in Hawaii or Mexico.
- Skewed Priorities: The boys are reprimanded and condemned by their parents for smoking, but not for accidentally burning down most of the school.
- Strictly Formula: Much to Kyle's annoyance, the episode plays out like so many before it: things getting out of control, the townspeople turning into an angry mob, and the boys having to talk about what they learned.Kyle: This is all following a formula!
- Take That!: The entire episode is one for Rob Reiner, down to one of the characters gratuitously calling him a fascist, and then having him die via green goo leaking off his body.Matt Stone: [during the audio commentary for the episode] Living in California, Rob Reiner, he's really into politics here in California, and he did something that raised cigarette prices like by 50% or something like that, and so we resorted to calling him fat, basically. Trying to make a political point.
- Torches and Pitchforks: Kyle realizes that they should tell their parents the truth because he predicts that if they don't the townspeople will probably show up with torches or something, and there'll be a big showdown until they talk about what they learned, and change everyone's minds. In the next scene the townspeople show up carrying torches ready for a big showdown.
- Totally Radical: An anti-smoking group performs at South Park Elementary, trying to reach the kids this way. Their approach is so painfully outdated that they actually cause the boys to want to smoke.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The anti-smoking company. If they hadn't been so lame and outdated with their approach (or at least if they hadn't said that "If you don't smoke, you can grow up to be just like us") then the boys wouldn't have smoked in the first place and there wouldn't have been an outrage.
- Viewers Are Morons: Rob Reiner's rant about tobacco executives sitting behind "slick desks" is accompanied by a dramatic camera zoomout to make it even more obvious what the joke is.
- Villain Killer: Cartman kills Rob Reiner in the end by stabbing him with a fork, causing him to deflate and leak green goo everywhere.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Rob Reiner is a fat, lying manipulative bastard who is adored by the townspeople for the TV show characters he played and possibly also the movies he directed.
- Would Hurt a Child: Reiner's group tries to kill Cartman to further one of their attempts to persuade people to stop smoking.
