All of the ‘South Park’ Halloween Episodes, Ranked

In this send-up of toxic male culture, Randy Marsh and his dad pals head to their “Witch Week” retreat — but whoops, they accidentally conjure a real witch who terrorizes the town and snatches its children. It’s a classic South Park critique of male hypocrisy with an of-the-moment #MeToo-era metaphor, comparing the rituals of male bonding to predatory entitlement. Meanwhile, Cartman is annoyed with his time-burglar girlfriend, Heidi. The episode loses focus around the halfway point as slapstick broom gags take hold and a Trump-era parody is tossed up in the air but never really lands. Which is why, in the end, this one fits snugly in second-to-last place.

Perpetually hapless Randy Marsh makes the hasty decision to buy a Blockbuster video store in this excellent mid-series Halloween romp. Unfortunately for Randy and the Marshes, this is 2012 and streaming killed the video stores. But parodies of The Shining live to see another day. All failure and no business success make Randy a not-so-dull Jack Nicholson-style psycho as he starts acting odd, speaking to comic apparitions (Victorian ghosts flailing, grasping to rent videos — more like this, please). The Shining parody works, especially when filtered through Randy’s unique delusion (too bad The Simpsons already did it). The kids’ subplot, dressed as The Avengers, also skewers early streaming culture and online addiction with perfect timing. The satire here is more nostalgic than biting but it’s funny, smart and perhaps eight minutes too long.

In a sharp send-up of a certain celebutante era in the mid-aughts, South Park has everyone’s problematically favorite bundle of anxiety, Satan, throwing a Halloween party that mirrors the spoiled teens on the long-gone series My Super Sweet 16. Hell is a TMZ-ready L.A. nightclub, in perfect South Park absurdism, and the summoning of Biggie Smalls ups the episode’s stock. The gags come hard and fast throughout the episode, which can make it feel bloated. The show detours into Hell and its inhabitants are always welcome, but the B-plot with Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy doesn’t go anywhere (aside from a necrophilia gag that’s probably too much). The satire here is strong, but at times the episode gets lost in gore and noise, and is left chasing its own punchlines.

South Park’s mopey but stylish quartet of tragic teens, preteens and a goth child are back with a full episode adventure. Opening with a perfectly goth’d-up version of the show’s theme song (“Death and sadness everywhere/Loneliness and degradation”), we follow Henrietta as she’s shipped off, Wayward style, to a “troubled teen” camp, where she is converted to much-hated Emo Kid by an Invasion of the Body Snatchers reference of a house plant. As usual with the beloved Goth Kids episodes, subcultural identity and performative darkness are on the skewer, and for those who need the explainer, a fine point is put on the distinction between being Goth and Emo. This is a tight, funny, tragic and insightful episode about teenage subcultures that were so important at the time, and seemingly still are to Parker and Stone; we salute them, as always, for keeping it real.

A collision of late-’90s MTV and Saturday-morning cartoon parody, this is South Park at its weird, crass and juvenile best. The rap-metal band Korn guest stars as a Scooby Doo–style gang investigating “pirate ghosts” (which, true to the show’s spirit, turn out to be ordinary rednecks in sheets). The episode nails its intent because Korn plays it deadpan, the mystery plot works and the nu-metal culture and formulaic Hanna-Barbera tropes make oddly funny bedfellows. The boys’ subplot — Kyle’s grandma’s corpse being dug up and desecrated — is quite grotesque, but as with the best of early South Park, it’s tasteless, clever and delivered with impeccable timing. Yes, a few other gags drag and the “ghost” reveal is sort of anticlimactic. But this is the dumb brilliance that made South Park a hit, only wrapped in Halloween fog.

The show’s first foray into Halloween territory cranked the absurdity to 10, and featured some memorable and grotesque moments — and Tina Yothers, for reasons never explained. The former Family Ties child star is in South Park, judging the local elementary school’s Halloween costume contest. Wendy takes that prize but does not escape the town’s quickly spreading bout of “pinkeye,” which is in fact, zombification. Faces and brains are eaten as we learn that Cartman’s mother was on the cover of Crack Whore magazine, and the recurring “Oh my God, you filled Kenny” gag is taken to its most extreme when he is sawed in half by Stan to end the zombie mayhem (thanks to the good people at Worcestershire Sauce). An early episode, the animation is a bit rudimentary but the wit is sharp, gore delectable and by the end of the episode, we all learn the true meaning of Halloween — or was that Christmas?

There’s a portal to another dimension in our quiet little mountain town that hurls the anti-version of Eric Cartman (so thoughtful and polite!) to South Park, where he hangs out with the increasingly confused boys. But the central plotline of this season two Halloween episode and early favorite has Stan’s Aunt Flo’s gift of a goldfish — purchased at the Ancient Indian Burial Ground Pet Store — as murderous; Sharon Marsh assumes it’s her son who is relentlessly killing at night and burying bodies in the backyard. It’s Chef who connects these two sci-fi trope threads, and soon the boys set things right. Some classic dialogue, a tight plot and absurd (and absurdly crass) humor come together in what has been considered a classic for years and stands as a definitive early-era example of what South Park can do.

In the show’s best Halloween episode, the South Park kids’ obsession with e-scooters as a stand-in for unsupervised consumer chaos is perfectly observed. The episode nails suburban greed, trick-or-treat logistics and tech’s creepy omnipresence — all while keeping the focus on the kids of South Park Elementary, where the series began and where it truly shines. Funny, fast and visually inventive — the scooter swarm scenes are classic. It’s not just a great Halloween episode — it’s one of the late-season episodes that genuinely feels alive and proves that its creators still have it.