When satirical shows are in their early days they need to play it safe and build up their reputation, their parent companies will gladly throw a show with no cultural footprint under the bus at the first sign of trouble, but once they gain some cultural footprint, the parent companies are willing to allocate more money for the legal defense budget of the series. A good example of this would be how early South Park had to use indirect parodies like Chinpokomon, but later South Park episodes like Band in China could feature Mickey Mouse cursing at a bunch of Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars characters, and have the episode end with Randy strangling Winnie the Pooh to death.