One does not expect the cultural event of the winter to be previewed between jokes about a renamed South America, and yet here we are: the latest episode of South Park, which has spent weeks building a running gag that society's every ailment will dissolve the instant Grand Theft Auto VI arrives, broke from the bit long enough to show actual gameplay. Not a teaser cut by Rockstar's own marketing department, not a carefully staged trailer drop, but footage embedded in someone else's television show, which is either the shrewdest placement of the year or proof that the hype has simply outgrown the company's ability to contain it.

What the clip actually revealed, as both Eurogamer and GameSpot confirm, is not some landmark in physics or storytelling but a dog relieving itself on command, its owner dutifully collecting the evidence, and the player then prying that evidence loose to fling it at a passerby's face, where it detonates into the sort of chunky splatter one associates less with triple-A ambition than with a prank call made flesh. The YouTuber Will Mac, who broke the clip down on his channel shortly after it aired, treated the sequence with the reverence usually reserved for a plot twist, which tells you something about where expectations currently sit for this launch.

I will grant the scheme its due cunning: getting unpaid, in-character ridicule from a show that has spent two decades mocking exactly this kind of hype is a cleverer trick than another billboard, and it lands the footage in front of an audience that was never going to click a press release in the first place. You were, I gather, promised a game so expansive it would redefine the open world all over again, and the clearest proof of life we have received all month is a man throwing excrement at a stranger for comedic effect. That is either very funny or very telling, and Rockstar, wisely, is letting South Park decide which.

Set against a rival platform whose idea of event marketing still amounts to a subscription tier reshuffle announced on a Tuesday, there is something almost admirable in watching a game insinuate itself into a satire of its own anticipation; whether that cleverness survives contact with the finished product come the 19th of November remains the only question that actually matters, and it is one no cartoon dog is going to answer for you.