Grand Theft Auto VI has been a punchline on South Park all season long, but this week the equally controversial animated show went a step further. In its latest episode, South Park aired real gameplay footage of the actual game, supplied by Rockstar Games itself and confirmed in the credits.
The short GTA 6 gameplay clip turned up in "Guinea Pig on a Stick," the fourth episode of Season 29, which aired October 28. In a side gag, the boys and the adults gather to watch footage of Jason on a Vice City beach and the scene builds to a crude emergent moment involving a dog, an NPC and some thrown filth, while the characters rave about the next-level graphics and world-building. Cartman gives the clip his most enthusiastic and least printable seal of approval. The gag then plays the launch as the "big change" coming in November, with a wink at the midterms on the third, continuing the season-long tradition.
This was not a one-off. GTA 6 has run through the whole "South America" season as a recurring bit, as we've already mentioned. The premiere kept insisting things would get better in November, the joke being that is when the game comes out. The dog-poop scene is the most substantial version of that running gag so far and the first to use Rockstar's own footage rather than a verbal jab.
South Park reaches for Rockstar whenever a game is culturally unavoidable, which GTA 6 obviously is. The show built detailed gags around Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018, when Sergeant Yates feuded with his wife over her playing on his save file and it has name-dropped Grand Theft Auto for years, from Grand Theft Auto V to Cartman betraying Kyle over Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.
South Park's history of Rockstar and GTA references
Episode | Year | The Rockstar reference |
|---|---|---|
South American Biker Gangs, Season 29 premiere | 2026 | "Things will get better in November," a GTA 6 punchline |
Guinea Pig on a Stick, Season 29 | 2026 | Real Rockstar-supplied GTA 6 footage and a dog-poop gag |
Time to Get Cereal and Nobody Got Cereal, Season 22 | 2018 | Detailed Red Dead Redemption 2 gags over a shared save file |
Let Go, Let Gov and Grounded Vindaloop | 2014 | Passing Grand Theft Auto V mentions |
Margaritaville, Season 13 | 2009 | Cartman betrays Kyle over Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars |
South Park goes to Rockstar when a game is dominant, but using real footage is new.
The footage is the part that stands out. Rockstar guards its gameplay closely, so handing a clip to a comedy cartoon is equal parts a marketing stunt and flexing. It fits a final-stretch marketing push that has seen the studio open up in ways it never has and a dog-poop bit on South Park is exactly the kind of mainstream, non-gaming reach money cannot usually buy.
WIth only weeks to go, GTA 6 is turning up everywhere pop culture lives. Saturday Night Live turned it into a Weekend Update showdown, a Hunger Games director went on record hoping it would not overshadow his film, mainstream media has turned its attention towards it and Rockstar has physically taken over Miami to turn the city into Vice City. A cartoon airing real gameplay is one more sign the game has broken clean out of its own medium.
When a satirical cartoon is running your footage a few weeks before the launch, the marketing has done its job. GTA 6 launches on November 19 and South Park will almost certainly have more to say about it before then.