Is PiPi From ‘South Park: Streaming Wars’ Supposed to Be A Stand-In for Paramount?

When Paramount gave South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone a lowball offer, I wonder if they told the duo that fortune favors the brave.

Over the last couple of weeks, Parker and Stone have been making headlines for taking public shots at their parent company Paramount amidst its “shitshow” merger and acrimonious contract negotiations between the parties. Then, when the South Park duo hired one of Hollywood’s most aggressive litigators earlier this week in presumptive preparation for a lawsuit against Paramount and its prospective new owners at Skydance Media, the rift between the creators and their parent company blew wide open as both sides seem to be headed toward another Streaming War.

But while the tension between the South Park team and its parent company has never before reached the point of a potentially multi-billion-dollar legal battle, Parker and Stone may have been sneaking hints about their feelings toward Paramount going back to some of their best Paramount+ streaming specials, specifically the two-part masterpiece South Park: The Streaming Wars.

In a Paramount+ exclusive, the entire town of South Park’s water supply is taken over by a streaming service called PiPi+. Now, maybe that’s just a coincidence — and maybe Matt Damon has some crypto scam to sell you.

Back in 2022, a drought brought on by climate change (or ManBearPig — the two are interchangeable now) taught South Park the true value of incredibly scarce fresh water, leading to an uptick in “streaming services” as entrepreneurial residents of all ages sought to capitalize on the crisis. While the boys made bank building popsicle stick boats that helped streamers track where their water is flowing, the outrageously Italian waterpark magnate Pipi, first introduced in the Season 13 episode “Pee,” secretly conspired with both ManBearPig and the South Park Water Commissioner to seize control of the vital resource and force the town to purchase the pee from his pools through “PiPi+.”

As the title suggests, the entirety of South Park: The Streaming Wars was one big satire of the TV industry wherein the proliferation of streaming services reduced the overall quality of entertainment options and filled every unnecessary and unsustainable platform with a near-endless supply of piss-level content. While it may seem coincidental that The Streaming Wars Part 1 premiered barely a year after Paramount launched their hilariously-late-to-the-game streaming service Paramount+, it sure is convenient that PiPi ended up winning the war for South Park streaming rights just as South Park was launching into their new agreement to put out two Paramount+ exclusive specials per year.

Now, as Parker and Stone prepare to start another Streaming War with Paramount after accusing the company of meddling in their negotiations with other streamers, those of us who kept up a Paramount+ subscription for three-plus years just to watch South Park are starting to wonder whether we’ve been eating piss popsicles the entire time.