As a mainstay for such a long time, South Park has constantly been rattling cages with its content. South Park's very first episode is titled "Cartman Gets An Anal Probe," after all. Having evolved past the early days of the one-note gimmick of kids swearing on TV and doing things they shouldn't, South Park has become a cultural touchstone. Where the other adult-oriented cartoons that have been on the air for almost as long as South Park (Family Guy) or even longer (The Simpsons) have fallen by the wayside in terms of quality, South Park has somehow remained fresh and just as jagged, if not getting better with time. Their stories over the last decade or so, when focused, are sharp and critical of pop culture and modern-day society, finding some of the strangest and stupidest routes to parody such things.
With its humor circulating around everyday racism, antisemitism, and blasphemy, atop poop and puke jokes, South Park's sensitivity is the last order of the day (though recent years have found them grappling with changing times, like when they reveal that Token, the only Black kid, is actually named Tolkien after the Lord of the Rings author). With such an eagerness to disrupt, South Park has consistently come under fire from the censors and brought upon itself more than enough controversy. Here are some of the biggest disrupters.
Updated on September 24th, 2023, by Gaurav Krisnan: This article has been updated with additional content to keep the discussion fresh and relevant with even more information and new entries.
Warning: This article discusses some crude, mature humor.
13 "It Hits The Fan"
Season 5, Episode 1
When a show on TV promises to feature the first use of the word "shit," the town of South Park (and subsequently the world) goes cursing crazy, releasing a gang of knights and a world-ending dragon.
Far more common nowadays, at the time South Park — ever at the forefront of smutty revelation — managed to break new ground on television and ironically normalize the word in media. The word is uttered a gigantic 162 times in the episode (and seen in writing once).
12 "Krazy Kripples"
Season 7, Episode 2
This episode is centered around Jimmy and Timmy. After Jimmy's standup comedy show sees nobody from South Park in attendance except Butters, Jimmy joins the Crips thinking they're a gang of crippled people from birth, while their enemies the Bloods, according to Jimmy, are crippled after birth. Jimmy does this to get back at Christopher Reeves who receives all of South Park's empathy and attention because he acquired his disability in an accident later in his life as opposed to being born with it. Apart from the obvious jibes at disabled people, the episode depicts Christopher Reeves sucking blood out of fetuses to help him start walking again; something they show several times in the episode. An aspect of the episode that didn't go down well with people who have disabilities.
The episode also takes digs at the gang wars between the Crips and Bloods as Jimmy and Timmy massacre 13 Bloods after a truck swerves off the road killing the gang members to avoid crashing into the two kids. The episode is a bit balanced, between the dark humor with respect to disabled folk & fetuses and the hilarious depictions of what they portray as a nonsensical battle between Crips & Bloods, whom Jimmy eventually locks up in a recreational room to get them to "get along".
11 "Canada On Strike"
Season 12, Episode 4
"Canada On Strike" was an episode that way, way ahead of its time. Almost akin to the Simpsons, this episode foretold the future with regard to the characterization of the "internet stars" of the time, which is equivalent to an influencer today. This was in 2008, much before the popularity of social media like Instagram, TikTok, etc. The episode depicts Canada going on strike because they want more money. Meanwhile, the South Park kids want to solve the issue because their favorite TV show Terrance and Philip also gets canceled since they're Canadian. Cartman and the gang decide to make an internet video of Butters and make it popular enough so that they can make money off the internet to pay off the Canadian government so that things get back to normal.
In the video, Butters sings about wanting it in the a**, in a clear dig at gay people, while the video goes viral. The gang then goes to the Colorado Department of Internet Money to collect their income where a bloody battle ensues between the top internet stars/influencers of the time. The episode took a swipe at the financial failures of the Canadian government, depicting unemployment and hunger, along with its digs at gay people and the brutality of the YouTube internet stars killing each other over their popularity and views and earning "theoretical dollars". The episode would have perhaps been more relevant today, 15 years since it aired, with its digs at streaming numbers and influencers. Nevertheless, it's still a funny yet contentious episode.
10 "The Death Camp of Tolerance"
Season 6, Episode 14
There's a lot happening in South Park in this episode. First, we see a rather angry Mr. Garrison as he is promoted back up to teaching fourth grade after his earlier demotion to teaching kindergarten because the school staff found out he was gay. This episode takes it a notch further when Mr. Garrison and Mr. Slave conspire to do horrific "gay" acts in front of the students, which they hope will end in Mr. Garrison's termination. Once fired, Mr. Garrison believes he can sue the school and win.
In the meantime, we first meet Mr. Lemmiwinks, the noble and brave gerbil who is set forth on a mystical journey to escape Mr. Slaves' intestines. He is visited by the appearances of the ghosts of Frog King, the Sparrow Prince, and the Catatafish, all creatures who did not make it out of Mr. Slave's digestive system. This episode was a spoof on the suggestion that Richard Gere had once used an anally inserted gerbil for sexual gratification.
9 "Woodland Critter Christmas"
Season 8, Episode 14
This is not only one of the most memorable South Park episodes but also one of the most disturbing. Stan stumbles upon some woodland critters one day as he's walking through the woods. He thinks they are sweet and promises to help them kill the bad cougar so that they will be safe. Of course, nothing goes right, and Stan realizes he's made a grave mistake when two little cubs pop out of a hole in the mountain when he kills their mama. He brings the body to the woodland creatures, where he realizes they are actually preparing for the birth of the antichrist and not actually Jesus. The cougar was the only one who could stop them, and now with her dead, they all have a huge inappropriate celebration involving blood.
Stan realizes the terrible thing he has done and vows to protect the cubs and help them get vengeance. The only way the antichrist can be stopped is by a cougar, and since they are so tiny, they will not be able to fight it off alone, so Stan takes them to an abortion clinic so they can learn to abort the antichrist instead. The antichrist has already been born, but the cougars do an abortion on poor Kyle, who suddenly decides to let the antichrist enter his behind and declares that he will dominate the world. With the antichrist removed from Jewish Kyle, Santa smashes it with a hammer and saves Christmas. Of course, this is a made-up Christmas story that Cartman thought up to mess with Kyle.
8 "Crack Baby Athletic Association"
Season 15, Episode 5
This episode was wrong on so many levels. Cartman is at the center of this particular episode, so you'd probably expect this one to be controversial right from the get-go. After watching an emotional yet depressing commercial about crack babies, Kyle goes to the hospital to volunteer but finds Cartman already volunteering there to take care of crack babies. As the video progresses, Cartman turns his volunteering into a full-fledged sport and company wherein the crack babies have to fight over a piece of crack, as EA Sports is interested in buying the rights to air the crack baby fights.
The episode also has a highly controversial scene as Cartman, dressed like Leonardo Di Caprio in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, calls the NCAA's athletes slaves and offers to buy them. The episode then ends almost bizarrely as the South Park gang discovers Guns 'n Roses lead guitarist Slash is not real. The shocking depictions of the crack babies aside, the episode received mixed reviews, for lack of depth in exploring the NCAA angle, but it was still one of 2011's most contentious South Park episodes.
7 "Trapped in the Closet"
Season 9, Episode 12
When Stan takes a personality test and is duped into giving money to the Church of Scientology, he is discovered to be the reincarnated body of founder L. Ron Hubbard. Calling out the movement as a straight-up scam, this one also includes trademark ribbing of celebrities (including now-convicted pedophile R. Kelly) and pushes big insinuations that Tom Cruise is gay. Every credit at the end of the episode is attributed to "John" or "Jane Smith" to protect the South Park team from getting sued. Now, this one had a lot of fallout. Proud Scientologist Tom Cruise himself had refused to continue his Mission Impossible III press tour if the episode wasn't pulled. Two months later, the episode was finally aired by Comedy Central, and the parallel controversy had brewed up huge anticipation for the particular episode.
Isaac Hayes, the voice actor for Chef, had hypocritically refused to commit his voice to anything critiquing the sect and left the show. The actor (who would die in 2008), had suffered a stroke not long before this episode, however, and his son revealed that he was being led by his advisors: Scientologists. Chef would return once again in the next season, where he was officially killed off, and finally, as a bittersweet boss battle in the official South Park video game, The Stick of Truth, as a Nazi zombie. On Hayes quitting, his son Isaac Hayes III, said to The Hollywood Reporter: "He was in no position to resign under his own knowledge [because of the stroke]. At the time, everybody around my father was involved in Scientology — his assistants, the core group of people. So someone quit South Park on Isaac Hayes’ behalf. We don’t know who."
6 "With Apologies To Jesse Jackson"
Season 11, Episode 1
Taking a very appalling stance on racism, this episode targeted black people and depicted them in a terribly derogatory way by using racial slurs several times throughout the episode. In the episode, Stan's dad Randy appears on Wheel Of Fortune where he spells out the racial slur on air. After the incident on live television, Randy is targeted by all of South Park for using the slur on live TV as Stan tries to justify his dad's actions to Toilken, the black kid in school. Cartman starts instigating a fight between the two, yelling "race war" all over school, but the episode doesn't stop there. Cartman is seen also making fun of a little person Dr. David Wilson by calling him a midget, when the latter tries to raise awareness in the school for using such words for people who have dwarfism.
Randy tries to get his reputation back, so he kisses Jesse Jackson's butt as an apology, while Cartman and the dwarf person Wilson get into a brawl in the schoolyard. Randy then unites with other characters, inspired by celebrities who used the slur in real life, as they escape a bunch of rednecks who are looking to kill white people who use racial abuse. The episode had the pervading discrimination theme and was over-the-top racist, with repeated use of the racial slur, but sort of anti-climatically saw Randy facing the brunt of the abuse for using it, which was an ironic and perhaps deliberate decision made by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Nevertheless, this one was pretty controversial and if not for the irony in it, could have caused a huge uproar.
5 "Cartoon Wars"
Season 10, Episodes 3 & 4
In this incredible two-parter, South Park teases the censors while actively crapping on fellow cartoon shows. When Family Guy threatens to show an image of the Prophet Muhammad in their show, Muslim terrorists threaten to enact revenge (again, South Park disturbingly predicted the future, with terrorists attacking and killing cartoonists who drew Muhammad with the Charlie Hebdo attacks). Actively goading parent broadcaster, Comedy Central, the South Park writers keep their tongues in their cheeks while pushing as many buttons as they possibly can.
As one of the best examples on this list, the episode gave an opportunity to demonstrate the question of where we stand on free speech and if we can be bullied with violence when our speech contains certain imagery or content. Seeing The Simpsons/Family Guy/South Park crossover is excellent fanfare for the viewers, too. South Park and its creators would rattle chains again in the 14th series by featuring Muhammad, which Comedy Central would go on to obstruct on screen.
4 "A Million Little Fibers"
Season 10, Episode 5
In an elaborate plan to get Oprah fired from her job in order to spend more time with her, Oprah's own vagina takes hostages in a plot that ultimately teams it up with her anus. Yeah, this one probably should have been left in the writer's room, but was so ridiculous and personal that it tends to tip over from stupidity and offense into absurdist humor.
Featuring multiple shots focused on Oprah's crotch and a subplot of Towelie, the stoner towel, having just penned his memoirs (in a riff on James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces and his confrontation with Oprah), while totally ignoring the town of South Park and its residents — this is a really weird one. Weirder yet is that "Mingey" talks with a cockney accent, and Gary the A**hole is voiced somehow with an English/Welsh and Jamaican accent hybrid.
3 "The China Problem"
Season 12, Episode 8
Following the release of Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the boys haven't properly recovered from what a mockery of a film it was, going as far as to say that Indiana Jones had been "raped" by creators George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Shown (albeit in dream sequences) to be physically and graphically assaulted not once, but three times, on-screen by the filmmakers, this one is pretty shocking and only gets away with it because the character is, well, fictional.
Meanwhile, Cartman believes the Chinese are going to invade and take over America, so he dresses up in stereotypical Chinese garb. Butters also shoots multiple people in the penis. Looking back on this episode now, pre-Star Wars and pre-Snyder fans, even pre-Trump supporters, this is an episode that somehow predates our current state of toxic fandoms.
2 "Crippled Summer"
Season 14, Episode 7
In a parody of Intervention, this episode revolves around a summer camp for handicapped children that goes by "Lake Tardicaca." With a focus on South Park's Jimmy, his fellow campers are oddly shaped Looney Tunes caricatures.
In a bid to be crowned winning team, a series of back and forths between Jimmy and the opposing captain, Nathan, results in a series of sabotages that keep backfiring. The B-story focuses on Towelie's addiction to heroin, and Nathan is raped by a shark — twice.
1 "Band in China"
Season 23, Episode 2
When Randy is busted for bringing his weed into China, he is sent to a prison camp where he meets all sorts of sell-outs by way of the Disney corporation. In this really strong episode, the show comments on censorship and appeasement to please a dictatorship of a country as long as it means that ticket sales continue. In one scene, Stan is writing a script for his new biopic where a Chinese official is literally reading over his shoulder and altering the text when he sees something he doesn't like, which I'm sure the South Park creators have felt more often than they would have liked (and happened in some way to Disney's property, Marvel, with Chinese censors).
The nation of China would go on to ban South Park as a whole in their country, which really is something; China literally turned the episode's title into a fact and national policy. Regular guest star, Mickey Mouse, would return for this episode — and Randy would strangle Winnie the Pooh to death, reminding everyone that, yes, this is still a cartoon.