A film so immediately controversial, so beloved and reviled, so self-serious yet over-the-top in its violence and theatrics, "The Passion" was ripe for parody.
Seth MacFarlane's animated comedy "Family Guy," a show with its own history of anti-Semitic controversies over the years, has parodied Gibson's film a number of times, most notably in the Season 4 premiere, which aired in 2005. Titular patriarch Peter Griffin (voiced by MacFarlane) finds himself in hot water with Gibson after stealing a copy of "The Passion of the Christ 2" from Gibson's hotel room. According to the show, Gibson's sequel, subtitled "Crucify This," is a modern day action comedy in the vein of "Rush Hour" or Gibson's own "Lethal Weapon" series, this time starring Jim Caviezel and Chris Tucker.
The final satirical word on the film, ironically, was arguably the first. "South Park" aired its Season 8 episode "The Passion of the Jew" just five weeks after the film premiered in theaters. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone satirize not just the film, in their usual sledgehammer style, but the culture war attitudes that had already sprung up around it, as well as Gibson's own perceived passion (in the modern sense) for ultra-violence and masochism.
When the show's quartet of nine-year-olds — Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman — sneak into a screening, each of them has their own powerful reaction. Stan and Kenny hate the film so much that they travel to Los Angeles to get their money back from Gibson himself, only to find him bouncing off the walls a la Daffy Duck, begging to be tortured. Kyle, who is Jewish, is so horrified by the film's Jewish characters that he converts to Christianity. Cartman, meanwhile, uses the film's legitimacy to indulge his fascist tendencies.
