Western Animation / South Park: Post Covid

Paramount+ release date: 11/25/2021

This "exclusive event" for Paramount+ flashes forward forty years in the future to show how the children of South Park have grown up and coped with the fallout of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Followed by South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid.

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South Park: Post Covid provides examples of:

#-L

• Abusive Parents: Randy Marsh continues to belittle his son 40 years after the previous special. It's also mentioned that he locked Shelly in a barn because she wouldn't do her "weed chores", and shows no remorse even though this led to her death when Stan burned down the farm.
• Accidental Murder: It's revealed that shortly after the pandemic ended, Sharon told Randy she wanted to divorce him, which caused constant arguing since it would mean each would get half of Tegridy Farms and Randy refused to give Sharon her half. Stan, tired of their constant yelling, burned down the entire farm to make his parents stop arguing, but he didn't realize Shelly had been locked up in a barn by Randy for not doing her chores and accidentally killed her. The grief of Shelly's death caused Sharon to shoot herself.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Shelly may have been a Bratty Teenage Daughter and a Big Sister Bully to Stan, but being locked in a barn by your own father and subsequently burning to death in a fire your brother started is a horrible way to go.
• All for Nothing: It's revealed that Stan, Kyle, and Cartman's plan to keep Kenny Locked Out of the Loop about their friends group breaking up and share custody of him was all for naught, as Kenny eventually caught on to it and began to resent them for letting their group break up over their petty arguments.
• Ambiguously Bi: Mr Garrison's lewd comment to a female nurse could just be a joke, but during his time as Mrs. Garrison he did start having sex with lesbians.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • The show makes it ambiguous as to whether Cartman's conversion to Judaism (including becoming a rabbi, marrying a Jewish woman, and having Jewish kids) is genuine or it's all part of a long term plan of his to get under Kyle's skin. Kyle is certain it's the latter, but Cartman's actions at the end of the episode suggest it's the former.
  • It's unknown what happened with Kenny when he briefly disappeared on the time machine, whether he went back in time or just poofed for a second.
• Amicable Exes: Wendy and Stan seem to be this as adults. Wendy is excited to see Stan and happily introduces her new husband to him, while Stan doesn't show any animosity towards Wendy and remains polite with her throughout.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: How Randy reveals he was responsible for causing the pandemic:
  Randy: A man in China had sex with a pangolin, and that started COVID. That man was me.
• Anti-Humor: Jimmy has become a late-night show host and his humor is almost exclusively set ups that sound like it could be very offensive but the punchline is a swerve to be so inoffensive it's hardly a joke, but that's part of the meta-joke. "A Priest, a Rabbi and a Muslim walk into a bar... and they all get along because they are really nice people."
• Ass Shove: Kenny hid a flash drive with vital information up his rectum.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Randy's recollection of events that caused Americans to lose their 'tegridy:
  Randy: We as Americans went through so much. First, that incompetent jack-hole was elected president. Then the pandemic came, and then the race wars. And then just when it seemed like we’d turned a corner, Space Jam 2 came out, and we all just kind of gave up.
• As You Know: Parodied; Everything about the future is always delivered in ham-fisted exposition that ends with "Because it's the future", which Stan and Kyle respond with frustration since they already lived through all of the changes.
• Awful Wedded Life:
  • Parodied with Stan. He seems be stuck in a miserable marriage with a nagging and demeaning woman who reveals herself to just be an Amazon Alexa he bought.
  • Apparently Randy and Sharon's marriage got so bad that Sharon filed for divorce and demanded half of the farm from Randy.
• Bad Future: The future of South Park isn’t dystopian, but it isn’t fun at all, either.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Mr. Hankey's Leitmotif plays while Kyle is on the toilet, only for him to look down at his completely normal poop.
  • The only time Jimmy stutters in the entire special is when he's talking to his assistant:
    "Tell them they can suck my p-p-p-popsicles."
  • It looks like Wendy is a cocaine-addict and wants to share some with Clyde, but the "coke" is actually the covid-vaccine, and she and the others are trying to trick Clyde into getting vaxxed.
• Bedlam House: South Park Mental Hospital Plus is portrayed as a dark, gothic building in a gloomy part of town being ran by a creepy Mad Scientist owner.
• Bland-Name Product: As seen by her jacket, Bebe appears to work for a company named Mary May—a spoof to the real-life cosmetics company Mary Kay.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Randy rightfully points out that Stan was the one who deliberately caused the fire that led to Shelly's death while Stan also points out Shelly would've never been in danger had Randy not locked her in the barn.
• Call-Back: Victor Chaos, who is strongly implied to be Butters, was described as Kenny's right-hand man. This seems to be a callback of their strong bond in "Going Native", especially since Kenny was the only boy in South Park Elementary that Butters genuinely admired and respected.
• China Takes Over the World: Randy implies that China has surpassed the United States as the superpower.
• Cliffhanger: Stan and Kyle vow to get back in touch with their childhood beliefs and continue Kenny's work on time travel, even resuming their attempt to contact Victor Chaos, Kenny's right-hand man and sole surviving member of his research team. Meanwhile, Rabbi Cartman is happy with his future as is and doesn't want Kyle to change the past, and Randy protects what he believes to be the last remaining marijuana sprout in Tegridy Farms. Finally, the audience sees for the first time how Victor Chaos's name is spelled, thus implying that he's actually Butters.
• Continuity Nod:
  • When Kyle tells Yentl on why he doesn't trust Cartman, he mentions to her that Cartman gave him AIDS.
  • Randy mentions to Stan about the unfortunate events that occurred during Stan's childhood such as the 2016 presidential election^note As usual, it's ambiguously worded so viewers, depending on how much they are aware of the events of prior episodes, would likely assume Randy was referring to Donald Trump instead of Mr. Garrison and eventually confessing to having sex with a pangolin which started the pandemic.
• Crapsack World: The universe that South Park takes place in was already pretty crappy to begin with, but things still managed to get a lot worse, anyways. In what seems to be a parody of a liberal American's ideal version of the future, China has taken the USA's spot as the world superpower, people are forced to eat bugs in lieu of meat, criminals can do whatever they want because there's no local police force, COVID is still a problem forty years later, and so much more.
• Cyberpunk: While it's more humorous and has a brighter looking aesthetic than most examples, it still could be considered this. It takes place in a Bad Future where advance technology has dominated every aspect of life, crime rates have skyrocketed due to lack of law enforcement, and COVID is still running rampant throughout. The retirement home even makes a giant reference to Blade Runner, one of the Trope Makers of cyberpunk.
• Dark and Troubled Past: At some point, Stan got sick and tired of living at Tegridy Farms and decided to set the weed farm on fire. Unbeknownst to him, Randy locked Shelly in the nearby barn when she didn't want to do her weed chores. So when the fire burnt the farm, Shelly burnt with it. To make things worse, Sharon was so devastated by the death of her daughter she killed herself by shooting herself in the head. Stan and Randy blamed each other for their family falling apart and were left miserable as a result.
• Darker and Edgier: While there are still funny moments in this special, the setting is a lot more bleak and dramatic than the usual fare.
• Data Drive MacGuffin: Stan, Cartman, and Kyle retrieve a hard drive from Kenny's rectum. The drive shows what Kenny was doing immediately before his death.
• Dirty Old Man: Mr. Garrison was already this, and is still this 40 years later. He tells a nurse that he'd like to shove his dick in her mouth.
• Driven to Suicide: It's revealed that Sharon killed herself out of grief after Stan accidentally burned Shelly to death.
• Eccentric Millionaire: Kenny manages to break free from his impoverished upbringing and becomes a brilliant, world-renowned philanthropist who also dresses like a homeless guy.
• Expospeak: Parodied. A Running Gag is characters explaining what things are like in the future, tacking on lines like, "...since, of course, it is the future." The characters who live in the future will thusly respond, "Yeah, we know."
• The Faceless: As a joke with his ever-present parka, adult Kenny has ridiculously bushy hair and beard along with always wearing sunglasses to where you really can't see his face. It is also partially a joke on the appearance of some Silicon Valley moguls.
• Fan Disservice: The scene where Kenny's nude, uncensored, and pudgy corpse is covered in rats and Stan shoves his hand in Kenny's rectum to retrieve a flash drive. To add further disgust, the flash drive is covered in feces, which causes Cartman to vomit on Kenny's head.
• Foreshadowing: Butters is the only one of the main fourth graders who neither appears nor gets mentioned by the others, setting up the Wham Shot at the end of the episode.
• Formerly Fit:
  • The seemingly fit Clyde Donovan is shown to be very pudgy as an adult, although he was described as being the second fattest kid in the show.
  • Adult Kenny has visibly put on a lot of weight. It's possible that having a childhood of malnutrition may have screwed up his metabolism.
• Future Loser:
  • Stan is a lonely alcoholic trapped in an awful faux-marriage with an Alexa hologram and has the same nasty disposition as Randy. His first love Wendy meanwhile has married a rich man that looks similar to Gregory from Bigger, Longer & Uncut.
  • The Goth kids aged quite poorly, no doubt due to a childhood fuelled by caffeine and tobacco.
• Generation Xerox:
  • Cartman's son looks and speaks exactly as Cartman did as a child. All of his kids also develop a hatred for Kyle like their father did as a youth.
  • Stan acts exactly like Randy: selfish, a scapegoater, and a functioning alcoholic who denies he has a problem and makes excuses when confronted on it. He even uses a variation of Randy's "It's called [X] and it's classy!" line.
  • The now-grown up kids are just as quick to overreact during a crisis as their parents have been throughout the series.
• Gorn: Kenny's lab assistants violently exploded from the inside out when he tried to jump back in time.
• Groin Attack: Stan, under the orders of Randy, does this to a doctor at the retirement home in order to get Randy out of there.
• Happily Married:
  • Wendy is shown to be married to a man named Darwin and seems very happy with him.
  • Likewise, Cartman has also married a Jewish woman named Yentl and is shown to be very happy with her, to the point where they have loud sex while staying in Kyle's house.
  • Tweek and Craig are also implied to be a loving and functional married couple.
• Heel–Faith Turn: Cartman, possibly. In the past forty years he converted to Judaism, becoming a rabbi in the process, is Happily Married with three kids, and seems to be trying to make amends with Kyle. However, Kyle is unconvinced and thinks this is yet another of Cartman's pranks designed to humiliate him.
• Honor Before Reason: Clyde constantly refuses to get vaccinated out of a belief that it may affect his body, despite the fact that his refusal to get vaccinated is the only reason why the lockdown in South Park has occurred in the first place.
• Hope Springs Eternal: Among the ruins of Tegridy Farms, Randy spots a small sprout and immediately becomes protective of it, dubbing it the last of America's 'tegridy.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Because some people see eating animal meat as offensive or cruel, people in the future eat insects instead.
  • Clyde is totally willing to do cocaine with Wendy, but backs out when he learns it's actually the COVID-19 vaccine, saying he doesn't want to put something like that in his body.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Stan and Kyle's adult selves look just like Trey Parker and Matt Stone, respectively. Kyle no longer having his afro is even similar to Matt Stone losing his afro in later years.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • When everyone learns Clyde isn't vaccinated, he tells them that he wants to have more research on the effects before he gets it. Craig points out they've had 40 years' worth of data and research on the vaccines at this point.
  • Another reason Clyde doesn't want to get the vaccine is because he's allergic to shellfish, and some people who handle the vaccine might have eaten shellfish, contaminating it with "shellfishness".
• Internal Reveal: Stan finally learns that the whole pandemic was his dad's fault after he confessed to having sex with a pangolin in China.
• Irony:
  • Doctors claimed Kenny died from a new variant of COVID, but since Kenny showed symptoms after he came back from the past, chances are he actually died from the original SARS-CoV-2 strain and not some new variant.
  • Eric Cartman, the racist, sexist, sociopathic, anti-semitic nine-year-old has somehow grown up as the most well-adjusted adult who converted to Orthodox Judaism with a very happy marriage, loving kids and has the title of Rabbi. Kyle seems successful but lives alone, and his obsession with Cartman pulling a elaborate prank on him is implied to be somewhat motivated by jealousy. Stan is the worst of all, existing as a bitter alcoholic who moved away from South Park — even his Alexa AI can't stand him at this point (either that or Stan himself programmed her to be like that).
  • Tolkien ends up joining law enforcement as a detective, despite (or maybe because of) all the times he was unfairly targeted by Park County Police as a kid just for being black.
• It's All About Me:
  • Unfortunately, Stan becomes this in the future as he always prioritizes himself and his need to drink rather than helping others during the crisis.
  • Clyde refuses to get vaccinated even though the whole town is under quarantine because of him.
  • Even after everything that has happened, Randy still cares more about his marijuana farm than his family.
  • Kyle shows shades of this with Cartman, unable to accept the possibility that Cartman has really moved on from his past life and their rivalry, and insisting Cartman's entire adult life as rabbi and family man is an elaborate set-up to humiliate him, personally. Though given this is Eric Cartman, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that it is.
  • By the end, Cartman is willing to prevent Stan and Kyle from going to the past to stop COVID, save Kenny, and create a better future, just so that he won't lose his happy life.
• Jaded Washout: Adult Stan is cynical and lonely, having left most of his friends behind in South Park, lost most of his family ^note His grandfather died of old age and he accidentally killed his sister, which caused his mother to commit suicide. except his detestable father, and has turned to alcoholism. He's reluctant to return to adventures with Kyle and the gang because he thinks it's childish.
• Karma Houdini: Cartman grows up to have a loving wife and family despite all the horrible things he did during the show, including giving Kyle AIDS, which Kyle even brings up. This also becomes a reason for Cartman trying to stop Stan and Kyle's efforts to change the future as it may nullify his status as this. It does.
• Karma Houdini Warranty:
  • Randy Marsh was a Karma Houdini for the past several seasons by being a neglectful father, blowing up multiple personal marijuana gardens to maintain his monopoly on weed (which kills several people), killing Winnie the Pooh, and spreading COVID after having sex with a pangolin. But sometime after that, Stan burned down Tegridy farms, destroying Randy's dreams, and Randy was locked up in a miserable nursing home for decades.
  • This is what Cartman fears will happen if Stan and Kyle succeed in changing the future, which leads to his motivation to stopping them. Cartman's fears are proved correct in the next special where he looses his Karma Houdini status mentioned above.
  • Though they aren't shown or mentioned in the episode, Sergeant Harrison Yates and his crew seem to have finally received their comeuppance when they get defunded for their constant abuse of power. The only problem is nothing seems to have replaced them and now criminals can just murder people in the streets with zero repercussions.
• Logo Joke: The special opens with a bumper declaring it to be a "made-for-TV movie"; said bumper homages the late 1970s "projector" intro used by CBS for movie presentations (which was brought back in a Retraux fashion in 2020 as a result of COVID forcing delays in programming, resulting in CBS airing films as a substitute).

M-Z

• Male Frontal Nudity: The fact that this is a Paramount+ exclusive means that everything is uncensored. As such, a middle-aged Kenny's uncensored and pretty huge penis is on display as his nude corpse is exposed in a morgue.
  • Strangely subverted in a scene where Kyle is using the bathroom, and there's a shadow effect on his exposed crotch, followed by a split-second shot of his conspicuously genital-free area as he goes to pull his pants up. Guess the uncensored effect only happens for shock value.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: When Randy sees the burnt down Tegridy Farms, he says this was where he lost everything he cared about... and also his wife and daughter.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After Kenny's "Reason You Suck" Speech, Kyle, Stan, and Cartman finally realize they were all responsible for Kenny's death and their friendship falling apart. However, this realization encourages Stan and Kyle to continue Kenny's work to prevent the pandemic from happening, save Kenny, and just maybe, stop the end of their friendship too.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Kenny's little sister Karen wears a necklace with a green question mark charm on it, which is Mysterion's logo.
  • The rats on Kenny's corpse are a reference to how rats would swarm his body after dying during the show's early years.
• Never My Fault:
  • Stan and Randy go back and forth about whose fault it was for the loss of Sharon and Shelly.
  • Randy tries to pin blame on China for COVID-19, even though he was the one who originally raped a pangolin (with some pushing from Mickey Mouse).
  • Stan, Kyle, and Cartman all refuse to take responsibility for their friendship ending during the pandemic. Eventually, they find a video where Kenny calls them all out on this and tells them it was all of their faults.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • While not as much as the previous Covid specials, there wasn't much shown in previews to tempt people to sign up for Paramount+, and there were a couple differences from what was shown in trailers and the final product.
  • When Kyle calls Stan in the first trailer, he is shown working as the new school counselor. In the special, he calls Stan from Gerald's old study and it's said he works at an online counseling startup, not at the elementary school.
  • Randy telling Stan that it's not a "special" but an "exclusive event" was shown in the retirement home in the second trailer, but in the special it's in the ruined barn at the farm.
• Non-Idle Rich: Token is now a police detective after growing up in a wealthy household.
• Numerological Motif: Victor Chaos' cell number in the asylum is 41002-66. This represents the date (4/10/2002) and episode (Season 6 Episode 6) Professor Chaos debuted on the show.
• Older Than They Look:
  • Token is pushing 50 years old just like the other fourth graders, but he looks significantly younger than the others due to the fact he still has a full head of hair with no greys, no visible wrinkles, and is still in good shape.
  • Like Token, Kyle is also pushing 50, but looks like he's only in his thirties.
  • Strong Woman, Bebe, and Nicole show few signs of aging, unlike everyone else. It's especially notorious in Strong Woman's case, as aside from a few wrinkles she looks exactly the same as she did 40 years prior (Though it's also been speculated that it might be one of the female PC Babies fully grown up).
• Political Overcorrectness:
  • A running theme in the future is that society makes more efforts towards diversity and togetherness, sometimes to aggressive extents. For example, Jimmy can't tell any jokes on his late-night show that could possibly offend audiences, restaurants don't sell meat and community resources are expended trying to keep the elderly from dying.
  • The sheer ridiculousness of COVID restrictions, to the point where a town becomes quarantined just because one person isn't vaccinated and the elderly aren't allowed to go outside so they don't risk becoming sick, as any of them dying for any reason would cause the entire country to go into lockdown. The military aren't even permitted to identify who that one person is because they can't single someone out for their beliefs.
  • PC Principal is back and has undergone a Character Check, threatening anyone who uses gender-specific language or casts someone in a movie who doesn't share their character's background.
• Properly Paranoid: At the end of the special, Cartman turns against Stan and Kyle, planning to prevent them from changing the future, implicitly because if the future is changed, he'll lose his wife and kids (and may even lose his Karma Houdini status). By the end of the next special, it turns out he had every reason to worry, the future is successfully changed, and Cartman ends up worse off than he could have ever imagined.
• Psychopathic Manchild: If Kyle is right in that Cartman really hasn't changed and just converted to Judaism and created a family solely to humiliate Kyle, then that would be extremely petty and immature for someone over 40 years old.
• Rags to Riches: Kenny, who was born in the poorest family in South Park, managed to turn his life around and become a millionaire scientist and philanthropist.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: This special ends with the boys learning that Kenny blames them for the Bad Future that he died trying to fix it, while Cartman secretly plots to stop Stan and Kyle when the two decide to carry out Kenny's mission to save the future. That said it also shows Randy discovering the last bud of Marijuana which would be integral in changing the future for the better.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Kenny has his assistant give this to Stan, Kyle, and Cartman in a video, blaming them for causing the bad future as a result of their refusal to make amends.
• Reformed Bully: Cartman has seemingly mellowed out a lot during the pandemic, going from a vicious antisemite to a soft-spoken Jewish rabbi and family man. Kyle is incredibly suspicious of it, and the audience is left unclear if it's even genuine. At the very least, he does seem to love his kids and wife.
• Retired Monster: Kyle accuses Cartman of being the same nasty asshole he was before, with his conversion to Judaism and family life as a way to take a swipe at Kyle.
• Ridiculously Successful Future Self:
  • Kenny has gone from an unlucky kid living in extreme poverty to a millionaire scientist and philanthropist who spends his days fraternizing with bigwigs and attractive women.
  • Jimmy grew up to become a wildly popular comedian and late night Talk Show host.
  • Downplayed with Cartman, who is a rabbi and a family man, but it still appears to be quite a step up from his life as a child psycho. Not to mention he's a lot better off than Stan, and while Kyle seems to be doing rather well, he's single, unlike Cartman who is married.
• Robotic Spouse: Stan's wife is a sentient Amazon Alexa that he's constantly arguing with. Either Stan programmed Alexa to hate him or she developed a hatred for him as time went by.
• Running Gag:
  • Every time a doorbell rings, it plays a little song sung by Trey Parker, since apparently all doorbells in the future sing.
  • The title of every single establishment has "Plus" or "Max" tacked onto the end.
  • Characters repeatedly dump Expospeak about how the future works, repeating "It's the future" as they describe it and annoying everyone else in the scene.
• Sanity Slippage: Butters seems to have gone through this, since he's shown in a mental institution under the alias Victor Chaos (Pronounced "Chouce"). It's been speculated that the abuse inflicted to him by his parents, Stephen and Linda, is the cause of it.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Stan and Kyle agree to fix the future, Cartman leaves the lab and flees with his family admitting that he doesn't want the future to change, while implying that he plans to stop the two in their efforts in doing so.
• Second Love: Both Wendy and Cartman first started off dating Stan and Heidi respectively during their childhoods. They are now Happily Married to Darwin and Yentl respectively, who are two completely different people.
• Self-Made Man: Kenny went from a poor kid coming from a broken home to a successful scientist upon adulthood.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: It’s revealed that prior to his death, Kenny was developing a means of time travel in order to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from ever occurring. At the end of the special, Stan and Kyle decide to finish Kenny’s work and fix the future. However, Cartman, now married with three children, fears that he will lose his happy life if they succeed and vows to prevent them from changing the future.
• Ship Sinking: After years of on-again-off-again teasing, it's clear that Stan and Wendy are not a couple as adults, as Wendy has a husband and Stan hasn't lived in South Park for years. That said, they are still on good terms with each other, as Wendy is excited to see Stan again after so many years and Stan is polite to Wendy and doesn't seem to mind her husband Darwin.
• Sickening Sweethearts: Cartman and his wife openly make out when they are supposed to be discussing Kenny's plans before his death. They also have noisy sex.
• The Silent Bob: Kenny never actually talks in the special, one recorded interview clip has the interviewer always interrupting him or inferring his response before he can speak.
• Sole Survivor: Victor Chaos is the only remaining member of Kenny's time travel research team, and he's locked up in an insane asylum.
• Stealth Pun: Jimmy, who is handicapped and walks on crutches, has grown up into a comedian who tells neutered insensitive jokes about minorities with very bland compliments as punchlines. In other words, Jimmy has become a lame comedian.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Adult Craig looks exactly like his father did 40 years prior, aside from having black hair instead of his father's red.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Sharon and Shelly died at some point during the 40 year timeskip, with Shelly accidentally burning to death when Stan decided to torch Tegridy Farms, and Sharon committing suicide in a fit of despair caused by Shelly's death.
  • Kenny died shortly before the special, and his death is what kickstarts the plot. While Kenny dying is nothing unusual, this is one of the few times where his death is taken seriously by his friends and the first time in 20 years that his death sticks. Makes sense, as his post-menopausal mother probably can't give birth to him again.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The Goths have all aged terribly, due to excessive consume of coffee and smoking throughout their entire childhoods.
• Take That!:
  • The pandemic lasted for decades because the media broadcast that the (initial) end was in sight, without warning audiences to stick the landing until they'd actually reached it. The end result was everyone dropping all precautions, giving the virus an abundance of chances to mutate and dooming humanity once again.
  • Jimmy complaining about what jokes he can and can't tell is an obvious potshot at one note "politically correct" comedians and networks too afraid of being condemned for telling what could be considered "offensive" jokes, primarily Jimmy Kimmel, whose show is used as a model for Jimmy's show.^note Ironically, Matt and Trey have appeared on Kimmel's show in the past, and Kimmel's younger brother Jonathan has worked on South Park.
  • To a lot of the proposed solutions for current problems, like getting rid of meat and using insects as a protein substitute. It’s clear everyone is miserable in the future after these "solutions" are implemented.
  • One of the new future developments is a reliance on cryptocurrency. This gets mocked, as the cashier sarcastically notes that people would rather trust a "Ponzi scheme" than traditional banking.
  • A very obvious one towards the movement to defund police (started by Black Lives Matter, a movement Trey and Matt have bashed in the past) is the scene where Stan drives by South Park's police station, shown to be destitute and in desperate need of new hires. Right after that, Stan watches a man fatally shoot a woman and get away with it in broad daylight, with Stan looking in disgust.
  • Anti-Vaxxer mentality is described as "shellfishness".
  • Randy cites Space Jam: A New Legacy as the final straw that caused America to lose its 'tegridy.
• They Killed Kenny Again: But with a different spin on it this time: he died shortly before the events of the special, not during.
• Time Skip: The episode flashes forward forty years into the future to show how the kids of South Park have grown up.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Cartman seems to have gone from a selfish, manipulative, antisemitic child psycho to a rabbi and loving family man... but Kyle only sees this as an elaborate con.
• 20 Minutes in the Future: It's mentioned that it's been 40 years since the pandemic, putting the setting somewhere around 2060.
• Wham Line: Randy and Stan's exchange explains a lot about why Stan left South Park and why he and Randy are both so miserable now.
  "Right, like you didn't want to murder your sister!"
  "What happened to Shelly was your fault, not mine!"
  "Yeah, like it was my fault your mom shot herself!"
  • "In the event of Dr. McCormick's death, he wants everyone to know the group that is responsible for the way things are. It is, quote, 'My three dickhead friends: Stan, Kyle, and Cartman.'"
  • "Wait! Dr. McCormick, you forgot your chin diaper!" To put into context, there was no cover-up about how Kenny really died. When he returned to his time he coughed briefly, revealing that he did in fact die of the COVID Delta Plus Rewards Program variant.
• Wham Shot:
  • Early in the special, we're introduced to a woman in Stan's house who seems to be his wife. Then during an argument with her in the car, Stan shouts, "Alexa, stop!" and she fades away, revealing herself to be an advanced Amazon Alexa smart device and reinforcing that Stan truly has nobody in his life.
  • Throughout the special, characters try to get in contact with Kenny's former assistant, Victor "Chouce," who's in a mental asylum. At the end of the episode, we see Victor's nameplate in front of his cell... and it actually reads Victor Chaos, heavily implying that this is Professor Chaos — Butters — all grown up.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The setup for the special is obviously a spoof of It: Chapter Two. A group of friends who slowly drifted apart are brought back together to their original town, and are inspired by the death of one of their friends to fight back against the threat over said town, reconnecting in the process.

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