South Park is of course known for its thoroughly offensive appropriations of pop-culture elements. The creators of the series are not afraid to borrow, riff on, steal, damage, insult, or prank from any commonly known reference. It's no surprise, then, that they would create an entire episode paralleling a Star Trek episode about a parallel universe.
"Evil" Cartman from the Parallel UniverseEpisode Summary
"Spooky Fish" appears as the Halloween Special for the series Season 2. The episode opens with the kids school bus running over Predator. Cartmen, then appears way too polite, and with a goatee. Confused, his friends realize they are in some creepy, alternate universe in which everyone is nice to them. Stanley travels home to find there is a goldfish waiting for him as a gift. Something is totally spooky. Suddenly, Cartmen appears again, this time acting utterly jerky, as usual. Stanley attempts to sleep as a lightning storm goes on outside.
As the lightning flashes on and off, we see Cartmen's persona continually switching back and forth--polite and goateed, rude and hairless. Everyone in town is confused by Cartmen's behavior. In the midst of the lightning storm we begin to see the fish is actually a murdering aquatic vertebrate. Clearly.
South Park Parallels
The parallel of the South Park episode rest in the Cartman character. The humor is, of course, found in that Cartman is a complete jerk in regular South Park, and so in the parallel situation, Cartman must be nice. You've gotta love that nice Cartman is the one with the goatee--but that normal South Park can't help but regard everything from the alternate universe as absolutely evil. Spock, of course, is wonderful in both universes in the "Mirror, Mirror" episode.
"Spooky Fish" also riffs on the movie Pet Semetary by explaining the evil murdering fish as originating from a dead pet burial ground.
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