The boys lie to get ninja weapons from the fair, but must decide whether or not to tell their parents when Butters is injured with a throwing star.
Let's Fighting Tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: The adults pay no attention to Butter's eye injury, instead focusing on Cartman walking around nude.
- Affectionate Parody: Of shonen anime and background songs, especially nonsensical ones.
- All Jews Are Cheapskates: Parodied. Kyle attempts to discard his nunchaku in a well so that his parents won't ground him for playing with weapons. Cartman, however, taunts him by saying that his Jewish nature will not allow him to get rid of weapons he paid a significant amount of money for. Despite his best efforts, Kyle can't will himself to do it and joins the other boys to get a refund.
- Apathetic Citizens: The citizens of South Park (aside from the Stotches) don't care about Butters getting seriously injured. Only the sight of Cartman being nude grabs their attention.
- Animorphism: Played for Laughs when Cartman uses his powers to turn Kyle into a chicken.Kyle: Goddammit, Cartman!
Cartman: (mock singing) Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Now you are a chicken! Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah! - Art Shift: The fantasy sequences would often cause the episode to shift to an Animesque art style.
- Becoming the Mask: The plot starts off when the boys get a little too invested in their ninja play fight and Kenny throws a shuriken straight at Butters. Cue Mass "Oh, Crap!" when the Imagine Spot cuts off and they realise Butters really has a shuriken through his eye.
- Bilingual Bonus: "Let's Fighting Love" is full of these; the first verse sees the singer boasting about his genitalia, while the second verse points out how ridiculous the lyrics are. Notably, the entirety of the song is in authentic Japanese (which Trey Parker speaks fluently), as opposed to foreign-sounding gibberish.
- Bittersweet Ending: The boys are let off the hook while Butters is ignored by the townsfolk in favor of Cartman's nudity, but Butters does get taken to a hospital by his mom (albeit off-screen).
- Blatant Lies: Cartman tries to blame his nudity on a Wardrobe Malfunction. No one buys it.
- Brick Joke: When Chef meets the weapon-wielding boys, he warns that they could "have somebody's eye out".Stan: ...Yeah, we know...
- Crocodile Tears: The boys convince the weapons vendor to give them weapons by making up a sob story about their parents being dead, all while fake-crying loudly.
- Delayed Reaction: It takes around three seconds for Butters to scream in pain after getting hit with Kenny's shuriken.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Kenny iconically throwing a ninja shuriken straight at Butters' eyes during their play-fight. Kyle straight up lambasts Kenny for this, to which he frantically insists he still thought they were playing.
- Cartman probably wouldn't have stripped naked had he remembered the kids were only pretending to be super-powered ninjas and he doesn't actually have the power of invisibility.
- Everybody Cries:
- Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny use a sob story, complete with Crocodile Tears, to convince a vendor at the county fair to sell them their ninja weapons.Stan: Goddamn, that's like the 12th time that's worked.
- Craig mentions to the boys he and his gang used a similar sob story to get the weapons from the same vendor.
- Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny use a sob story, complete with Crocodile Tears, to convince a vendor at the county fair to sell them their ninja weapons.
- Exposed to the Elements: South Park is cold and snowy as usual, but for the majority of the episode, Kenny is bare-chested and Cartman is shirtless. At the very end, the latter gets completely naked.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Stan doesn't often have a high opinion of Butters, but he is rather shocked that Kyle is scared enough to agree to Cartman's plan of killing Butters to hide their crime.
- Linda may be abusive to Butters for the most part, but she was legitimately shocked over his predicament.
- Eye Scream: Butters gets hit in the eye with a shuriken, setting off the episode's main conflict.
- Foreshadowing: Cartman mentions watching The Passion of the Christ and uses what he saw in that movie to rip on Kyle for being Jewish. Said film will be the topic of an upcoming episode.
- Gratuitous Japanese: "Let's Fighting Love," with a bit of Gratuitous English thrown in.
- Hypocritical Humor: When Butters is taken to the vet's office, the veterinarian laments on the twisted things people do to animals, before immediately deciding to euthanize him. When Butters escapes, the vet goes for another random dog instead.
- Invisible Streaker: One of Cartman's "many, many powers" as a ninja is the ability to turn invisible, albeit with the caveat that his clothes don't follow, hence why he strips naked at the end. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have any powers in the real world, so all he accomplishes is just getting naked in front of everyone.
- Irony:
- Kenny is the one responsible for Butters' injury.
- Despite being Abusive Parents for the most part, Stephen and Linda are the only ones who care for Butters' situation.
- It's All About Me: The boys, especially Kyle, care more about having to face punishment for playing around with weapons and endangering Butters than they do about the latter's safety.
- Jerkass Ball: Stan, Kyle and Kenny reject Butters when the latter asked to play with them, then refuse to give him proper medical attention since it would get them in trouble. Kyle even agrees with Cartman's decision to kill Butters. The episode ends with the boys later throwing Cartman under the bus to save themselves. Although Cartman is an asshole and dressing up Butters like a dog was his idea, he was mostly just focusing on showing off his powers.
- Karma Houdini: Stan and Kyle face no repercussions for not helping Butters deal with his eye injury. While he does get punished for something else, Cartman also does not face extra punishment for that. However, Kenny stands above them all, as he was the one who gave Butters the injury. He doesn't even come close to dying in this episode.
- Lampshade Hanging: Later in "Let's Fighting Love," the lyrics lampshade the song's nonsensical dialogue. Translated from the Japanese (except for the last six words, which are in English in the original):This song is a little stupid
It's hard to make sense of
The English is all messed up
That's okay, we do it all the time! - Loophole Abuse: When the other boys tell Cartman that he can only have one power, he declares that he has the power to have any power he wants.
- My God, What Have I Done?: It's very understated, but Kenny is blatantly horrified when he realises he really did impale Butters with a ninja star.
- Negative Continuity: Butters' eye injury seems to have completely healed by next episode and is never brought up again even though the severity of the injury would likely cause him to lose that eye.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Cartman constantly makes up new powers for himself, to the point where Kyle eventually takes them all away from him.Kyle: Goddammit, Cartman! you can't keep making up powers!
Stan: Yeah dude, that's like the fifth power you've come up with.
Cartman: I am Bulrog, and I have lots and lots of powers.
Kyle: No, asshole! From now on, you only get to have one power. So, what is it?
(Beat)
Cartman: I have the power to have all the powers I want. - Oh, Crap!:
- The boys have this reaction after Butters gets stabbed in the eye with Kenny's shuriken.Cartman: Oh shit, dude!
Stan: Butters! Oh my god!
Kyle: What the hell did you do that for, Kenny???
Kenny: *frantic muffles* (I just threw my ninja star at him!) - Cartman also has this reaction when the townspeople witness him in the nude.
- The boys have this reaction after Butters gets stabbed in the eye with Kenny's shuriken.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- After Kenny throws a shuriken into Butters' eye, Kyle is so terrified of what his mother will do to him if she found out he was playing with weapons that he actually agrees with Cartman that they should kill Butters and hide his body rather than get him medical attention.
- The Stotches, who are normally callous to Butters' well-being, have him treated for his injuries immediately upon seeing him at the auction.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Played with. The adults completely buy into Butters' "dog disguise", but his mom is able to see through it by the time he shows up at the auction.
- Pet the Dog:
- Despite blowing him off earlier, the boys do allow Butters to play with them after he shows up in his Professor Chaos costume.
- Butters' parents take him to a hospital (albeit off-screen) after witnessing his predicament at the auction.
- Previously on…: Parodied. A self-serious narrator narrates the events of the two rival ninja groups' epic battle before they unite for the common cause of finding Butters as if it happened in a previous episode in a shonen anime, even though it really happened before the first commercial break.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The adults' outrage at Cartman running around naked in public as well as Cartman trying to defend it as a "Wardrobe Malfunction" are a reference to the Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Craig and his gang initially try to bail once they find out the main characters seriously injured Butters. However, the boys blackmail them into helping them find him by threatening to squeal about their own possession of weapons.
- Shout-Out: The boys ninja/anime forms are basically Street Fighter characters. Stan looks like Ryu, Kyle resembles Fei Long, Cartman is E Honda, Butters resembles M Bison combined with Sagat, Jimmy is Sodom, Clyde is Adon, Craig is Guy, and Token is Dee Jay. Kenny is the odd man out here, as he resembles Raiden from Mortal Kombat. Also, Chef resembles Akuma.
- Skewed Priorities: The townspeople are more upset at Cartman running around naked than Butters nearly losing his eye, ultimately forgetting about the latter and allowing the other boys to get off scot-free for what they did. Lampshaded by Stan:Stan: I guess parents don't give a crap about violence if there's sex things to worry about.
- Stock Ninja Weaponry: The boys all acquire stereotypical ninja weaponry and fight with it. Stan uses tonfas, Kyle and Token wield nunchaku, Cartman wields a sai, Kenny uses a shuriken (the only weapon he could afford), Craig wields a katana and Clyde fights with two kama.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Craig and his gang also use a sob story about their dead parents to guilt trip the knife vendor into selling them ninja weapons.
- Take That!: The end of the episode tackles how parents and Moral Guardians make uproars with the presence of nudity or sexuality in media, but at the same time tend to be unfazed by depictions of extreme violence.
- Teeny Weenie: Cartman's penis is shown to be very shriveled up and minuscule. That stands to logic because being obese makes your penis look a lot smaller. There's also that fact that's he's still a kid.
- Too Dumb to Fool: The adults take time to process and deduce that because Cartman caused irreversible damage by having a "wardrobe malfunction", they can't try covering it up and are going to have to explain the concept of streaking to their children as fast as they can... which is the exact opposite of the logic that the boys used in dressing up Butters like a dog, which the adults completely pushed aside. Apparently, only the people doctor was caught unaware, even if doing something as quickly as possible meant having to send Butters to someone more equipped with treating animals.
- Trauma Conga Line: Butters has a rough episode. First he gets hit in the eye with a shuriken. Then, in order to disguise his identity, he is forced to pretend to be a dog. To top it all off, he gets urinated and defecated on by actual dogs.
- Vocal Dissonance: None of the boys' voices change, even when they're drawn to look like big, burly ninjas.
- Wham Shot: The shot of Butters standing with the shuriken in his eye in the normal art style is the moment when the fun and games with the anime-inspired ninjas ends.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Kyle screams what the hell was Kenny thinking throwing a ninja star at Butters' face.
