Original air date: 11/9/2005
When Cartman submits a class presentation about how "Ginger kids" (children with pale skin, red hair and freckles) are evil, Kyle, Stan and Kenny give him a taste of his own medicine by making him look like one. Unfortunately, Cartman warps it into a Nazi-style rally to exterminate anyone non-Ginger.
Tropes
- Adults Are Useless:
- The crowd of adults at the Annie premiere stands by and does absolutely nothing while the actress playing the titular character is jumped and attacked by Cartman and the Ginger Kids.
- Gary Nelson, the Hilton employee who constantly checks in on Cartman's Ginger Separatist Movement meetings, doesn't seem to be bothered by the cages full of children and a giant cauldron of lava.
- Mrs. Garrison as usual. She just sits back and lets Cartman deliver a hate speech against Ginger kids.
- Blackface: Cartman and the Gingers consider the casting of Annie by a non-ginger girl to be this. Ironically, Cartman himself has been unwittingly subject to this, having had his hair dyed by Stan, Kyle, and Kenny.
- Bludgeoned to Death: Parodied. Kyle's tasked with knocking Cartman out—so they can alter his hair and skin—using something resembling a bludgeon, but he gets a bit too into it and has to be restrained before he beats Cartman to death.
- Boomerang Bigot:
- Cartman spends the first act proclaiming Ginger Kids are soulless monsters, but the moment he's subjected to that same bullying he begins espousing Gingers are the master race and need to exterminate every non-Ginger kid.
- Craig is also seen bullying a Ginger kid with his friends, even though his father is Ginger himself, thus making Craig half-Ginger.
- Kyle is also somewhat creeped out by gingers even though he has red hair.
- The Corrupter: Cartman turns the Ginger Kids into a cult of would-be murderers.
- Creepy Child: The Ginger kids are considered creepy by nearly everyone, including their own parents (who even doubt if their kids have souls). Even Kyle finds them creepy, despite claiming otherwise. It doesn't help that most of them spend their screen time blankly smiling. They get even scarier after Cartman turns them into a cult.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Cartman's speeches and efforts to rally up the Ginger Kids to exterminate every non-ginger is directly inspired by Hitler and his Nazi ideology.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Invoked when Kyle mentions how Cartman "somehow" turned Ginger overnight after he spent days ridiculing Ginger kids. Cartman states he doesn't see how that's ironic.
- Cartman exclaims all Ginger Kids are monsters, while he himself is a bigoted, manipulative sociopath who has already killed a few people. Before he corrupted the actual Gingers, Cartman was exactly the type of monstrous Ginger kid he espoused the others were.
- Fair-Weather Foe: Cartman begins the episode calling for the extermination of gingers, but when Stan and Kyle make him think he's a ginger he becomes a ginger supremacist, showing that he's fine with genocide so long as he's not on the chopping block.
- Fantastic Racism: Cartman is at first heavily biased against Gingers, but then after Kyle "transforms" him, he doesn't really change his bigoted ways, he instead changes sides. He still considers Kyle to be a "Daywalker", though, because Kyle only has red hair and not pale skin with freckles.
- Gone Horribly Right: The boys dyed Cartman's hair, bleached his skin and drew freckles on his face to make him think he was a Ginger kid so Cartman would stop making fun of the actual Gingers. Well, Cartman did just that and proceeded to create a Ginger Separatist Movement that tried to exterminate all non-Gingers.
- Hard Truth Aesop: Bigots and supremacists don't hold their viewpoints out of hatred, but rather a feeling or superiority and entitlement. No matter what they are on the outside, at the end of the day they'll still see themselves as superior. Cartman starts the episode preaching anti-Ginger rhetoric, so the boys turn him into a ginger in the hopes that he will change his views after being tricked into thinking he is what he hates. Instead he goes the opposite direction and turns into a xenophobic ginger supremacist who rallies people to exterminate all non-gingers.
- Hope Spot: In an attempt to change the students' opinions on gingers, Kyle makes a presentation of his own, debunking Cartman's claims. Mrs. Garrison calls the presentation "dry and science-y", and Cartman gives a speech to everyone warning them to not believe in Kyle since he's part ginger, undermining the message of his presentation.
- Hypocrite:
- Cartman calls Ginger Kids "vile and disgusting", among other things. Yes, the same Cartman who is morbidly obese and also a carrier of the ginger gene.
- Kyle claims that people aren't creeped out by Gingers at the beginning of the episode. He eventually shows that he actually is creeped out by them. Also, Kyle is a redhead himself.
- Jerkass Ball: Jimmy, Clyde and Tolkien — of all people — are shown bullying a ginger and throwing him out of the cafeteria. Jimmy even calls the ginger a retard.
- Karma Houdini:
- The episode ends with Cartman narrowly avoiding any retribution for the hate crimes he instigated.
- The Ginger Kids themselves get away with kidnapping and nearly killing several children under the orders of Cartman, as well.
- Karmic Transformation: Kyle, Stan, and Kenny attempt to invoke this by tricking Cartman into thinking he turned into a Ginger so he'll realize what he was doing was wrong. Instead, Cartman remains a bigot and just turns it towards the non-Ginger population.
- Kick the Dog: Craig and his friends cruelly reject one of the Ginger Kids after Cartman scares the class into hating Gingers.
- Laser-Guided Karma: One of the Ginger Kids that abducts Clyde from his bedroom is the same kid he and his friends forced out of the cafeteria into the hallway during lunch. The same can be said for his friends who also made fun of Gingers, though it's unclear if the same kid had a role in their abductions.
- Moral Myopia: Cartman openly discriminates against gingers, but once people start discriminating against him for being "ginger", he takes extreme measures to enact revenge.
- Never My Fault: After Cartman is subjected to the same discrimination against Ginger Kids that he started, he decides to start a separatist movement against all non-Gingers instead of admitting his bigotry was wrong.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Stan, Kyle and Kenny deciding to teach Cartman a lesson escalated to him attempting genocide on all non-Gingers.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Cartman and the other Ginger Kids dish one out to the child actress playing Annie.
- Not So Above It All: On their way to change Cartman back to normal, Stan admits that even he was initially creeped out by Ginger Kids. Shortly after, once they are confronted by several Ginger Kids, even Kyle is creeped out by them, despite claiming otherwise at the beginning of the episode.
- Oh, Crap!: When Kyle whispers that they pranked Cartman and that he didn't suddenly become a Ginger, he clearly realizes that he's toast if the Gingers find out he's fake to the point that he stops and dismantles his own rally.
- Redheads Are Uncool: The entire episode's built on this starting with Cartman doing a report on how Gingers are freaks. He himself carries the gene, as revealed in 201.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Cartman's group's protest at the fact the lead actress in a nearby production of Annie isn't ginger is based on the real life protests that occurred when Caucasian actor Jonathan Pryce played a bi-racial character in Miss Saigon.
- Start X to Stop X: Cartman declares that the best way to fight hate is with more hate.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: The Hilton airport employee who keeps checking in on Cartman's Ginger rally meetings asking if they want anything and keeps thanking Cartman for choosing Hilton Airport.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Implied. Kenny is last seen being snatched away when he, Stan, and Kyle are running from the ginger kids, and he doesn't appear to be among the prisoners at Hotel Hilton after. However, it could be that he was simply hidden in the crowd.
- You Are What You Hate: Cartman is later revealed to have a redheaded father, meaning he has the gene.
