Every fictional universe has its own physics and laws of nature. Super Mario is something of an “actor,” as he and his friends and enemies can go-kart or have a war from day to day.
Family Guy has loose interpretations of reality, as the cutaways occasionally portray the cast as actors.
In contrast, American Dad! will rarely show the cast as actors, straight. Steve falls off a set, Stan walks off set (past a giant Klaus in front of a green screen), the cast has an episode on a stage. To them, it’s a sitcom.
However, South Park has instability as its physics. Being founded on an “anything can happen” mentality from Season One, the series features continuity errors, contradictions, and basic character goofs.
But that’s their universe, and it makes sense to them.
Perhaps everything can be attributed to Kyle questioning reality. In “The Tooth Fairy’s Tats 2000,” he discovers the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist, then questions his own reality, and it snowballs from there. Finally, he fades away, only to return as a mind-bending head that shape-shifts into multiple forms, then a squirrel with a rooster head, then Kyle. This is the only fanciful moment in the episode. Did Kyle alter the universe in the past and future during his reality-bender? That’s my theory, anyway. Let’s looks at some unstable effects their universe’s reality has.
Santa and Jesus both do and do not exist
Imaginationland. A land for all that is unreal to become real. Snarf. Wonder Woman. Santa. Ronald McDonald. Captain Crunch. Jesus. Manbearpig. Lepre– Santa and Jesus?
The entire idea of a place that makes imaginary characters real baffles the South Park universe. If God is in Imaginationland, then Heaven is, right? And Hell, by extension? And Jesus? But if Jesus is imaginary, who appeared in South Park as a resident since Season One? Does he commute, like the leprechaun?
Santa as well, but less so. He doesn’t live in South Park, but he clearly exists in reality, like how Santa powers the NSA.
Logic is thrown out of the window for multi-parters. Sure, they have some of the greatest logic, but how are multiple celebrities back to life in 200 and 201? It’s fun, why question it? If no one remembers Kenny dying in The Coon trilogy, why did Cartman say he dies all the time in “Cartmanland,” and why in the second Cartman’s father episode did Kenny beam down? They didn’t plan that far ahead, and it fills more plot holes than it causes.
Even so, this place that caters to the unreal manifesting into reality is something that could have settled Kyle’s fears of nothing being real. Did Kyle create Imaginationland under the influence of a reality crisis? Only if they confirm it.
Live-action is ugly, scary, or gorgeous
When live-action guinea pigs attack the world, everyone ruins in horror. When an employee at Sea World draws the boys, people comment on how silly they look, despite being sketched well by our standards. It would seem the human world is unsettling to that of South Park.
Not so. In the “Ziplining” episode, the boys are replaced with live-action actors, so the audiences are likely fine with it. Mr. Adler’s late fiancee and relatives are all in live-action. And in the Oculus episode, the boys, in live-action, comment on how crummy the South Park universe looks. Clearly, reality can be beautiful or ugly, depending on the viewer.
In “Tom’s Rhinoplasty,” Mr. Garrison gets plastic surgery that gives him a gorgeous human head, but can’t handle the pressure. This leads us into…
Human heads on cartoon bodies are evil and insane
Granted, Mr. Garrison isn’t exactly evil, but among other things, he did offer up children before himself in a hostage situation. But I’m thinking about the celebrities in Hell, which is all of humanity, good or evil (only Mormons go to Heaven). Hitler’s there with a human head, but so is Kennedy and Gandhi, both with human heads and cartoon bodies. In the human world, Saddam has a human head and is the main villain in the movie, before Satan. Then, of course, Mel Gibson, undoubtedly insane and evil.
I suspect the heads and bodies reject one another, so the body cuts off oxygen, turning the mind mad. Or it’s just funny. In Garrison’s case, maybe it started happening, as he couldn’t handle his new look.
When someone dies, their voice changes
Who could forget Chef’s death? After joining the Super Adventure Club, Chef seems… odd. Aside from his new outlook on children, he spoke in fragmented sentences. Later that episode, he died. But that’s not all. Clyde’s mother was voiced by a woman, up until the episode where she dies. There, she’s voiced by Trey Parker, likely for comedic effect. True, not everyone recurring gets a new voice before they die, but two strikes is plenty here.
Earth is a television show like The Truman Show
The Truman Show was a movie about a reality TV show featuring one man from the day he was born, living in a fake town and sealed off from the world. Precautions had been made to ensure Truman never found out his life was a lie, or it would be cancelled. The show, not his life. A bit extreme.
As “Cancelled” revealed, Earth is a reality TV series, as The Taco That Craps Ice Cream scoffs at the notion of a planet where multiple species naturally exist. Rather, multiple species were imported to Earth to see how they’d get along.
Reality TV is the least real form of television. Sort of a contradiction there, right? Everything’s shifted for the sake of entertainment, and it’s not reality being upheld, but the lie. So mind-wiping the Earth of their false existence protects the show, but not reality. Not what the truth states. And certainly not independence.
Since then, aliens have come to and gone from Earth, interacting with humans willy-nilly. The notion of Earth being a show was 11 seasons ago, and it likely has no need to arise again. Maybe the Joozians have things under control. Or maybe, they have someone on the inside, maintaining reality, perhaps with Joozian ancestry…
Kyle controlling the media? Cartman would believe it, so it’s probably not true.
I could sum this whole thing up myself, but I’ll let Kyle do it.
Kyle: “I’ve learned something today. You see, the basis of all reasoning is the mind’s awareness of itself. What we think, the external objects we perceive, are all like actors that come on and off stage. But our consciousness, the stage itself, is always present to us.”
The Conjecture of a Benjy's Lecture 