Franchise Prequel/Trivia

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"Franchise Prequel/Trivia"

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This page contains trivia for "Franchise Prequel". Remember, trivia must be factual, provable, and it is always best to cite your source for not-so-obvious trivia. If you would like to dispute a trivia point, please discuss it in the talk page.

Trivia

• Butters being taken to Russia and then yelled at in front of Vladimir Putin by his father regarding the spread of false information on Facebook is a reference to accusations of Russia using fake Facebook accounts to buy political ads and spread false information during the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.
• The Coon mentions Harvey Weinstein, a Hollywood producer and former studio executive, who was recently accused of sexual harassment and rape by numerous actresses.
• Professor Chaos' headquarters is located in an abandoned Circuit City, a consumer electronics store that ceased operations in 2009.
• This episode is a prequel to the video game South Park: The Fractured But Whole, which was released six days after the airing of this episode (in addition, selected scenes where the Coon and Friends discuss their franchise plan in the beginning and the end of the episode come directly from the first trailer to the game).
• This is one of the few episodes in which Stephen grounds Butters for a legitimately good reason, while he often grounds his son for things that Butters either didn't do, was misled to do by his friends, or over things that weren't in his control.
• Facebook never has a safeguard program to provide users with personal protection (the method Professor Chaos uses to keep Coon and Friends away).
  • Although Facebook does have a safeguard program to prevent misusing and abusing of users' profile images.

References to Popular Culture

• Mark Zuckerberg's dubbed voice, posing and reference to an "unblock-able style" is a parody of classic kung-fu films of the 1970s and early 1980s, noted for their terrible English dubs and acting. Specifically the character Parsons from Bruce Lee's last film Enter the Dragon.
  • This means Mark Zuckerberg is the only person in the series who doesn't have a correct lip-sync.
• Jimmy's superhero persona Fastpass is an obvious reference to The Flash from the DC comic books, and his opening scene has several parallels to the opening of the CW's Flash show.
  • The name "Fastpass" is a reference to the Disability Access Service Card which allows disabled visitors to Disney theme parks to skip the queue. (This is separate to the actual Fastpass system, which can be used by all guests).
• The Franchise plan is a jab at Marvel's over-expansion, its ambitious and never-ending stream of movies and TV shows.
• After Stan tells Butters about their plans for a film focusing on the bad guys, Butters tells him, "Suicide Squad sucked!", referring to the 2016 DC Extended Universe film, which received generally negative reviews from both film critics and comic book fans.
• In the Coon and Friends headquarters, by the Coon Store, a poster for the "The Coon" can be seen that parodies the cover of the graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns.
• Super Craig and Wonder Tweek's outfit are almost the same (as Tweek probably used Craig's clothes or one that resembles it). Both of them are a parody of Superman and Wonder Woman.

Continuity

• Butters mentioned starting a website to spread malicious rumors about everyone in town in "The Simpsons Already Did It", although he did not start the website in this episode.
• Lexus Martin from "Raisins" can be seen as one of Butters' Facebook friends when he looks at The Coon and Friends Facebook page, likely meaning that they still kept in touch and remained friends sometime after said episode.