Top 20 South Park Predictions That Came True

“The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs”

Unlike many other episodes, this one wasn’t intended by Parker to be a commentary on increasingly sensitive, modern sensibilities. Instead, it’s a look at how banning books – namely “The Catcher in the Rye” – only makes people want to read them more, as the boys embark on a mission to write the most offensive, bannable book of all time. But it’s the moment when Mr. Garrison explains why “Catcher in the Rye” is controversial that he indirectly made a prediction, as today, basically everything has to have a trigger warning at the beginning. But how many times have you watched something on Netflix with a trigger warning for “strong language” only for it to have barely any profanity?

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#18: Sports Teams Changing Names

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“Chef Goes Nanners” & “Go Fund Yourself”

Although not a prediction, there is a telling throwaway line by Jimbo in the episode about South Park’s flag, where he asks Chef if the Cleveland Indians should change their name for being offensive. That was in 2000, and two decades on, the team announced they would be switching their team name to the “Guardians” because of the former name’s appropriation of Native American culture. However, it wasn’t the only time “South Park” examined this particular topic, featuring a whole episode about the similarly named Washington Redskins football team. In it, the boys are able to get the trademark for the team, while the owner laments over them “culturally appropriating” it. The episode aired in 2014, and, 6 years later, after much mounting pressure, the Redskins would abandon its name.

“Sexual Harassment Panda”

This episode aired way back in 1999, seven years before the first documented use of the phrase “Me Too” and eighteen years before the #MeToo Movement rose to prominence in Hollywood. In it, South Park Elementary is visited by Peetie the Sexual Harassment Panda, who sings a song to teach the kids about inappropriate behavior. Then they get carried away and begin constantly accusing each other of harassment, leading to myriad lawsuits. It echoes the prevalence of such allegations so many years on, though it’s worth remembering that, in reality, false allegations are extremely rare. Still, there are many similarities between this episode and the modern news cycle.

“The Magic Bush”

This episode began its life as an allegory for racial unrest in the US in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in 2014. The townsfolk all buy their own drones, bringing on the arrival of swarms of police drones and eventually National Guard drones as peaceful drone vigils turn violent. But it ended up predicting something very odd happening in South Korea, as the country announced it was going to be using security drones to catch civilian-operated drones that invaded the airspace over the 2018 Winter Olympics in Seoul. And then in 2021, the country announced an investment of $37 million in “drone cops” to eliminate unauthorized drones over airports.

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#15: Costume Hypocrisy

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“Holiday Special”

This might be the most oddly specific and perfectly timed prediction of all. On September 27th, 2017, this episode following Randy Marsh’s checkered past as a die-hard Christopher Columbus fan aired. We see Randy disavowing Columbus and campaigning to have his statues removed, only for Stan to discover that Randy was photographed at numerous fancy dress parties dressed as the man himself. A couple of days after the episode aired, a news story broke on a librarian rejecting a gift of Dr. Seuss books from Melania Trump on the grounds they are “racist” – only for it to eventually be revealed that said librarian had been previously photographed dressed as and promoting “The Cat in the Hat”.

“Chef’s Chocolate Salty Balls”

By the time this episode aired in 1998, Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain” had already been published in “The New Yorker” for two years. But the successful movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger didn’t release until 2005. The episode seemingly predicts the popularity of a movie still seven years away from debuting, by lambasting the Academy’s love of indie movies about “gay cowboys eating pudding”. Who knew that such a movie would eventually become one of the most decorated and critically acclaimed pieces of cinema ever made? Or perhaps Trey Parker and Matt Stone read and enjoyed Proulx’s short story and wanted to will the movie into being.

“Here Comes the Neighborhood”

This 2001 episode examines the fear the townspeople have when a large number of Black celebrities start moving in – though, the issue they have is that these celebrities are all rich, and it’s rich people they don’t want in South Park. They embark on a mission to scare the rich people away, which eventually devolves into KKK-style tactics, most notably dressing up as “ghosts” because “rich people hate ghosts”. Obviously, it’s meant to be ridiculous, but in 2015 a group of cadets at a military college in South Carolina were photographed doing the exact same thing. They were allegedly dressed as “ghosts” for a “holiday skit” and were ultimately suspended because nobody bought that excuse.

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#12: Trump’s Tweets

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“Put It Down”

Donald Trump writing ludicrous tweets wasn’t something that started when he won the 2016 election – he’d already been known as a chronic Twitter user for years – but this episode got a lot more specific. It showed Mr. Garrison tweeting something inflammatory at North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, daring him to nuke the town of “South Park” to get revenge on Tweak. Though Trump had already been tweeting about the situation in the week leading up to the episode, providing the inspiration, just days after it aired, he tweeted a threat that North Korea wasn’t going to be around much longer, mirroring Garrison’s sentiments.

“Gluten Free Ebola”

Airing on October 1st, 2014, this episode was less than two weeks ahead of numerous deaths from an Ebola outbreak in the US. The episode isn’t strictly focused on Ebola, instead suggesting that the fad of gluten-free diets in the US mirrored the rise of ongoing outbreaks of Ebola in Africa at the time – but it’s still unsettling that the first case of Ebola in the US was announced the day before the episode aired, with the first death reported on October 8th. While we don’t know how Parker is able to make such prescient episodes, we do know that you can’t get Ebola from consuming gluten in real life.

“Crème Fraîche”

When the Carnival Cruise Line’s ship Triumph set off in early 2013, nobody on board knew the infamy it would achieve. But when a fire broke out on board and disabled the toilets and electricity, its over 3000 passengers and crew were left on what was nicknamed “the poop cruise”, spending four days without working toilets stranded in the Gulf of Mexico. Just three years earlier, in 2010, a news show on South Park reported that “passengers said that the Carnival Cruise Line smelled like poop.” Maybe people should have taken it as a warning against booking cruises with Carnival.

“Medicinal Fried Chicken”

In February 2018, disaster struck KFC, one of the biggest fast food chains in the world, when a change in delivery supplier led to up to 700 of its 900 UK branches to be temporarily closed due to a lack of... chicken. Because of this shortage, people were able to sell buckets of chicken on eBay to desperate customers for as much as $140 USD. This black market for chicken was mirrored in a 2010 episode of South Park when all the KFCs close down and the town’s outlet becomes a medicinal marijuana dispensary, which leads to Colonel Sanders becoming a crime boss of a chicken-smuggling empire, and Cartman a Scarface-type hotshot dealer.

“Britney’s New Look”

In this 2008 episode, the four boys try to help Britney Spears escape the torment of the paparazzi and general public who are obsessed with taking her photo - even more so after she shoots herself in the head and somehow survives. At the end of the episode, Britney dies surrounded by South Park citizens taking her picture, and soon after, a news anchor reports that Miley Cyrus – who was just 16 when this episode aired and still starring in Hannah Montana–will become the next big thing, a la Britney. Considering Miley Cyrus’ controversial phase in the early 2010s, it seems that the folks in the South Park writers’ room got it right again.

“Jared Has Aides”

In 2015, Subway Guy Jared Fogle was convicted of several sex-related crimes and sent to prison; however, his ruining Subway’s public image was first predicted in 2002 by South Park. In the episode in question, he tells everybody his weight loss success is actually due to his having “aides”, spelled a-i-d-e-s, which everyone mistakes as him saying he has Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. For his promise to give everyone aides, he is fired from Subway, though he makes a reappearance in the 2017 video game South Park: The Fractured But Whole as a boss hell-bent on mistreating the boys. In retrospect, the original episode is very creepy.

“Dead Celebrities”

The main plot of this episode centers around Ike Broflovski being tormented by dead celebrities, but a subplot involves Billy Mays advertising a product called “ChipotlAway” - which is able to remove the bloodstains people get in their pants after eating food from Chipotle. Six years after it aired, E-Coli in Chipotle products caused more than 50 people to get sick. The 2015 outbreak meant the chain was forced to close 43 restaurants in Oregon and Washington alone. Unfortunately for the customers affected by the outbreak, no such “Chipotlaway” type quick fix exists in the real world.

“Members Only”

Seeking to escape a world of internet trolls and social media, Cartman and his girlfriend Heidi Turner seek refuge at the SpaceX building in the hopes that they can get on a rocket and go to Mars because it has “shitty WiFi.” Elon Musk shows up and tells them they still haven’t solved all the science problems involved with going to Mars, but Cartman – along with Butters and musical icon Cher – stay waiting. This episode is from 2016, but it was just a year later that Musk began to publicly outline his plan to send a rocket to Mars as early as 2019.

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#4: Mel Gibson Goes Insane

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“The Passion of the Jew”

An episode from season 8 details the various responses to Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ. While Kyle’s Jewish faith is shaken and Cartman opts to go a neo-Nazi route with his “Mel Gibson Fan Club”, Stan and Kenny simply think the movie sucked and go to get their money back. When they get to Gibson’s mansion, they find he is a religious extremist and that he’s obsessed with forcing people to torture him. Eerily, two years later in 2006 when Gibson was arrested for DUI, he told the police that “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” echoing the ideas parodied in the episode.

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#3: The Death of Osama bin Laden

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“It’s a Jersey Thing”

When the popularity of reality show Jersey Shore threatens to take over America, Randy Marsh knows there is only one course of action: sending a video tape to Osama bin Laden and begging al-Qaeda for help. Al-Qaeda oblige and kill the Jerseyites by crashing hijacked planes into them. At the end of the episode while bin Laden is being honored for his work, a Special Forces commando descends from the ceiling and shoots him in the head. Sure enough, SEALs actually killed bin Laden on May 2nd, 2011, just about seven months after this episode aired.

“Where My Country Gone?”

Many people didn’t believe Trump would win the 2016 election, including Parker and Stone, who had to hastily rewrite the end of season 20 to accommodate for the fact he – and therefore Mr. Garrison – was the victor. But they already predicted this outcome an entire year earlier, in an episode that aired in September 2015. South Park is awash with Canadian immigrants in this season, who have all moved down south to escape from Canada’s own Donald Trump in the Great White North – who’s even built a wall to separate the country from the US. Yes, though they already covered Trump’s potential victory fourteen months prior, even they didn’t realize he’d actually win.

“Chef Goes Nanners”

The premise of this 2000 episode centered on a debate about changing the South Park town flag, which depicted four white stick people standing around a black stick person hanging from a noose. Chef says the flag is clearly racist and must be changed, while Jimbo says the flag is traditional and must stay the same to preserve their heritage. Although conversations surrounding the controversy behind the confederate flag have been going on for ages, fifteen years after this episode aired, a major dialogue began in real life about its place in modern America. Many major retailers began banning Confederate flags from being sold in their stores, while various states chose to remove the flag from any official government property or product. South Park… it’s always a step ahead.