South Park is the long-running creative love child of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The cartoon centers around a group of young boys from a small Colorado town. As you may know however, the series is nowhere near suited for a child audience. Matt and Trey have been using the town of South Park as a canvas to paint their social commentary for nearly three decades. While the show does somewhat rely on crudeness, with its polarizing imagery and plot points, the creators deliver a consistently hilarious satire that is adored by their fans and begging to be a topic of conversation to everyone else. Primarily ran in a sitcom format, the series has taken on many genre blending story lines throughout the years.
What fans love more than a concisely written episode of their favorite NSFW cartoon, is when plot lines are stretched out across the span of multiple episodes. South Park has had numerous multi-part episodes throughout its long run. With 12 two-part episodes and five trilogies, the series writers have found success great success in their longer stories. Some being loosely sequential while most are directly chronological, each multi-part South Park story has something uniquely characteristic to offer. Despite that truth, some have made us laugh more than others. Here is every multi-part South Park episode ranked by how funny they are.
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17 You’re Getting Old
Paramount Media Networks
A two-part episode that sticks out for its potent emotional quality unalike any other episodes of the series. “You’re Getting Old” and “Ass Burgers” are two back to back episodes from season 15 that primarily focus on Stan and the Marsh household. Opening on Stan’s 10th birthday, a rift is formed between his parents Sharon and Randy when Sharon takes away Stan’s new tween-wave music CD. Randy defends his son by insisting to Sharon that the music does not sound like poop. Meanwhile, the sound played out of the headphones is literally sounds of farts and defecation. Randy’s defense for Stan goes too far when he begins to perform tween-wave as a way to retain his youth.
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As Stan’s parents decide to split up, he has come around to hear the music does sound like defecation. In fact, everything begins to seem like poop to Stan. He is clearly depressed and sent to a special therapy group for people who share his apathy. The group turns out to be a spoof of The Matrix that pumps Stan full of Jameson in the fight against poop. Meanwhile, Cartman founds a successful burger restaurant where the secret ingredient is his butt. As such, the episodes can be seen as being about perspective. What seems like poop to one person is another man’s secret sauce. Both episodes feature “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks as the soundtrack to Stan’s coming of age.
16 Cartoon Wars
Paramount Global Distribution
Banned from cable and streaming services, Cartoon Wars is a two part episode that revolves around the censorship of the prophet Mohammad. The episodes are based on the real controversy that South Park faced after airing previous episodes featuring a representation of the prophet Mohammad. In the episode, Family Guy is depicted as the cartoon guilty of the Mohammad controversy. Kyle and Eric both desperately want to prevent next week’s episode from airing but for very different reasons. The boys infiltrate Fox with the help of Bart Simpson.
The president of Fox feels pressure to run the episode since a dark secret surrounding the Family Guy writing staff prevents them from being reasoned with (they’re manatees). With a terrorist attack imminent should the episode air, the drama is heightened to a cosmetically ridiculous level. Struggling to decide between protecting free speech or people’s feelings, the Fox president decides to air the episode. Terrorists retaliate, with their own spoof cartoon.
15 200
A preceding banned episode featuring Mohammad, “200” and “201” are celebrations of South Park’s episode count at the time. Because of this, they feature many characters and plot points from previous episodes. Opening on a school field trip to a chocolate factory, conflict is sparked when Stan antagonizes Tom Cruise by ineloquently calling him a fudge-packer.
Overall, the episode pokes fun at how celebrities are frequently ridiculed for laughs on South Park. Featuring a large ensemble of cameo characters from previous episodes, the celebrities are antagonized as an angry mob. The boys seek help from the Super Best Friends, a team of religious leaders from the original banned Mohammad episode. By juxtaposing these two foil groups, the episodes interestingly comments on the deification of celebrities.
14 Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?
Paramount PicturesWarner Bros.
A season 4 episode of religious commentary, “Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?” starts while the boys are in church. The priest foretells his scariest visage of hell imaginable and terrifies the kids into taking their faith more seriously. Meanwhile, Satan is hosting a luau sing along party in Hell with special guests Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy. While the boys begin to wonder if Timmy will be able to make confession since all he can say is his name, Satan is juggling a love triangle between his gentle new man Chris and ex-boyfriend Saddam Hussein.
The primary irony is found in the difference between everyone on Earth’s idea of Hell and the actual hell where Satan is a hopeless romantic caught between choosing a nice guy or the bad boy. On Earth, Cartman starts his own congregation for his peers but is really scamming them out of their money. Satan is so confused in love that he asks God for guidance. God comically looks unalike anything ever imagined. This suggests that God is so beyond out conception that no one religion is likely correct.
13 Meteor Shower
South Park’s first ever trilogy from season three, these three episodes have completely different storylines that barely intersect, yet all take place under the sky of the same meteor shower. The first, “Cat Orgy” follows Cartman as his mom stepped out to a meteor shower party for the night he is babysat by Stan’s older sister Shelly. Meanwhile, Mr. Kitty is in heat and trying to leave the house. The eventual result is an orgy of cats attacking 12-year-old Shelly’s 22-year-old boyfriend after he breaks up with her for being prude. In the next episode, “Two Guys Naked in a Hot-Tub”, Randy is ashamed of masturbating in front of Gerald at Mr. Mackey’s but ultimately gets over it when most men in the room admit to also trying that out.
The third episode has the most outrageous storyline, taking place at Kyle’s Jewish camping retreat. Kenny comes along and pretends to be Jewish. The campers and the rabbi summon Moses who is a giant face made of light. Kenny is persecuted when he is discovered as being non-kosher. However, Kenny redeems himself by thwarting the evil plot of an antisemitic Jew on the campground. All three episodes feature a character whose willingness to try something new rewards them in the ending.
12 Go Fund Yourself
After the Washington Redskins football team must change their name, the boys purchase the rights to use the name for their own business. No one is quite sure what the business does, but they get tons of donations because of the name. The football team struggles as they watch their legacy be forever changed by a few fourth grade boys who want to sit around doing nothing. The kick-starter company the boy’s donations are funneling through ends up making most of the money while the boys are ultimately failures who must cope with rebuilding all the bridges they have burned as entrepreneurs. The episodes poke fun of the positions intermediary businesses play in the economy.
11 Ad
This trilogy is the finale of season 19 of South Park. When the R word is published in the school newspaper, PC Principal has a bone to pick with the editor, Jimmy. Jimmy strongly stands with his decision for free speech and starts a press war against PC Principal and his frat. Portraying the frat as a group who fakes philanthropy to earn female attention, PC Principal is taking things hard. Meanwhile, the people of South Park are loving the ad-free school paper.
Things take a turn when Jimmy is scooped up by news men since he may be the chosen one. The only person who could properly discern advertisements from the news and save media. To his surprise, even people can be advertisements now. In an all out war against the advertisements, the towns’ people ultimately become aware of the deception around them and stand up to the gentrification of their town. It is one of those great examples of how South Park is always in touch with the time it’s written in.
10 Pandemic
Comedy Central
The boys have a great distaste for Pan flute bands until they see the potential to cash in. After getting a loan from their classmate Craig, the boys begin to play the busking circuits. That is until Pan flute bands are considered a threat to public health and are all scooped up and quarantined. The boys plead their innocence since none of them are Peruvian enough to be a real Peruvian pan flute band. In a twist of fate, the lack of pan flute bands in the world summons demon Guinea pig monsters who attack the whole world. Craig complains the whole time for even being included, poking dun at the boy’s propensity for getting into trouble and insisting no one at school likes them.
Craig ultimately becomes the hero in the end since his likeness is depicted saving the Earth in a Peruvian cave painting. The best part of these episodes is how the Guinea pigs are keyed into South Park with green screen. They are dressed up in all different outfits and make the cutest evil villains South Park has ever seen.
9 Cereal
Paramount+
When Stan and Randy spot a mysterious creature on their farm, the town goes into panic over the possibility that Man-Bear-Pig is real. The police chief continues to insist that every bloodbath occurring around town is a school shooting, even though none of them take place in a school. All the adults in this episode make quick work of their day-to-day lives, so they can get home to play Red Dead Redemption 2. This is one of those South Park moments where Matt and Trey are probably cashing a fat check for cross-promoting a product all the while maintaining the comedic integrity of their show.
Stan’s grandfather admits it was the old people who caused the inevitable coming of Man-Bear-Pig. Involving the help of the theatrical Al Gore, Man-Bear-Pig becomes a metaphor for climate change. Satan agrees to help defeat the monster since the people of Earth have been doing his job for them lately. Ultimately the problem is solved by reaching a new agreement with Man-Bear-Pig and his lawyer. The People of earth can live so long as they give up soy sauce and Red Dead Redemption 2.
8 Cartman’s Mom
Cartman is filmed having a tea-party with his stuffed animals by the rest of the boys, this leads to a revelation that he may have some psychological issues. Mr. Mackie questions Eric to discover he has emotional scars from not knowing who his father is. Eric then goes on a quest to find out who slept with his mom on the night of the barn dance. Once he discovers the answer to that question is everyone in town, he must resort to a DNA test with Dr. Mephesto. The first episode ends with the lights going off and Dr. Mephesto being shot before the results are spoken.
The second episode is a cross parody between The Simpsons: “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” and America’s Most Wanted. The episode heavily relies on the character in question trope from the whodunit genre. Surrounding Mephesto at the hospital bed, the town learns that Cartman’s mom is Cartman’s dad since she is a hermaphrodite.
7 Rehash
The telethon includes musical performances by Lorde, who is secretly Stan’s father Randy, and other celebrities like Iggy Azalea who end up beefing with Randy backstage. Cartman hosts the telethon from his little box but ultimately becomes hated by the internet and replaced by the real Pewdiepie. This episode stands out for its mixed media approach with the inclusion of Pewdiepie.
6 The Coon
This trilogy is a superhero movie parody. Cartman and other boys from school have started playing superheros in Cartman’s basement. When BP spills oil in the Gulf of Mexico they take it upon themselves to interfere, but Captain Hindsite gets there first. The plot is led to escalate by Cartman who wants to invite Captain Hindsite to the superhero group, but he is disregarded as a little kid. This displays the kids’ crossover from playing superheroes to being real superheroes. Kenny’s alter-ego Mysterion has the ability to never die, canonizing Kenny’s every death and subsequent reappearance. When Cartman is kicked out of the group for being a poor leader, he is sent on a path to do the good of a covert narcissist.
BP accidentally opens a rift to another dimension, leading Cartman to team up with Cthulhu. Using ultimate persuasion, Eric gets Cthulhu to do his bidding. This includes killing Justin Bieber and thousands of his fans and a montage that parodies My Neighbor Totoro. They are defeated when the least expected hero from the kid’s group, Mint Berry Crunch turns out to have real powers from another planet, spoofing Superman.
4 Black Friday
This three part episode revolves around the time leading up to Black Friday deals at the mall. All the kids in town have taken sides in the console war. The Xbox-One and PS4 are shamelessly plugged throughout the three episodes and the writers even outright plug their new South Park video game at the ending. These things shoot the irony through the roof as the three episodes involve Sony and Microsoft’s evil plans to outdo each other.
Much of the comedy of this trilogy is due to its parody of Game of Thrones. There is even a George R.R. Martin character in this trilogy who ironically insists on delaying Black Friday. There is also a ton of dialogue in Japanese without subtitles, and Kenny becomes an anime princess. The trilogy concludes with the boys deciding they’d rather play outside… and promote the South Park video game.
3 Imaginationland
Cartman and Kyle make a deal that if Leprechauns are real Kyle must suck Cartman’s balls. When the boys collectively perceive a leprechaun, they learn about Imaginationland and a terrorist plot that will soon destroy the place. Butters is left behind in imaginationland following the terrorist attack and braces himself with the various intellectual proprieties to face the evil side of imaginationland. In a classic battle of good and evil, Butters becomes the main hero. On his team to guide him are the likes of Luke Skywalker, Gandalf, Gelinda the Good Witch and Aslan from Narnia.
They all must face off against characters such as Venom, Jason Voorhees, Alien, Predator and many other imagined villains. These episodes are a visual spectacle for how many intellectual properties they have represented on screen at once all raising hell against one another.
2 Go God Go
When Ms. Garrison falls in love with an atheist, it creates an alternate future where everyone is atheist and believes in science. When Cartman insists on freezing himself rather than waiting for the Nintendo Wii to come out, he wakes up in said future. Still desperate to find a Nintendo Wii, Cartman hops around loyalty from one Athiest group to another trying to find what he desires. Although there is no more war over religion, the non-religious groups still debate on what the best name for an atheist group is. Facing the threat of a sentient Otter race, Cartman uses the help of a prank call device that allows the user to call the past.
When he cannot get his past self, or any of his friends to believe his story, he must find another way to return to the past. Cartman ends up calling Ms. Garrison and breaking up the couple, therefore ending the ill-fated future. These two episodes are especially funny for how they explore the unanswerable questions of religion.
1 COVID-19
Perhaps one of the greatest ever of South Park’s ventures, the covid-19 and vaccine specials make up the most recent multi-part episode. A full-blown social commentary on the recent global pandemic and all the conspiracy attached to it. In South Park, Randy is the chief cause of the pandemic, and the only one who can stop it. When it turns out his semen is the key ingredient to the vaccine, he begins to ejaculate into the weed he sells his customers. How fitting for the long-running, often crude cartoon.
When the old people get the vaccine first, they run amok in the town since no one else is allowed to use any public facilities. This two part special had the great power of comic relief for all of us watching through one of the scariest global experiences in our human history. That’s why this South Park multi-part episode earns the top spot.
