Black Friday (shopping) the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this was recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period when retailers would no longer be "in the red", instead taking in the year's profits. The earliest known published reference to this explanation occurs in "The Philadelphia Inquirer" for November 28, 1981. In 2013, an internet rumor alleged that the phrase originated in the American south before the Civil War, from the practice of
Black Friday (South Park) amount of cut content from "", a video game which Parker and Stone were heavily involved in the development of. However, as the episode became more and more focused on "Game of Thrones" and Black Friday, the aspects which were lifted from the game were almost entirely scrapped. "Black Friday" received critical acclaim. Max Nicholson of IGN gave the episode a score of 8.7 out of 10, writing: "Cleverly fusing elements of the Next-Gen Console War with HBO's Game of Thrones, 'Black Friday' was easily one of the best "South Park" episodes we've seen in Season 17." Ryan McGee of