South Park has been lampooning politics and pop-culture for two decades now.
In that time, plenty of misconceptions and myths have appeared about the show.
Here are the real stories behind some South Park myths.
Now we can all claim to have learned something today.
Everyone is offended
You'd think that with the show's knack for mocking literally everybody, few advocacy
groups would support South Park, even if they weren't made fun of that week.
As it turns out, quite a few prominent groups representing people who've been lampooned
by the show have actually praised it for being fairly even-handed.
For example, the Tourette's Syndrome Association credited the episode "Le Petit Tourette",
which features jokes about Tourette's Syndrome, for raising awareness and getting aspects
of the condition factually correct.
Likewise, a group linked with the NAACP lauded the episode "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson"
for airing uncensored racial slurs and portraying the impact that they have in context.
Even people of the Jewish faith, possibly the most mocked group in the show's history,
have repeatedly supported the show.
"And you especially can't say anything about Jews."
"Oh, Jesus, why don't you just cut off my balls!"
Organizations have praised the show for both for its nuanced portrayal of the kind of accepted
anti-semitism Jewish people face daily… and sometimes just because, like everyone
else, they find it funny.
And when the show mocked Kanye West's ridiculous ego with a running joke that he enjoys relations
with male fish, West actually didn't mind the episode.
"Hey man, I'm a genius, alright.
I'm the most talented musician in the world!
If I was a homosexual or a fish, I would know."
He responded on his blog that he found the episode HILARIOUS... in all caps, too, so
you know he was being super serious.
West thanked the show for helping keep his ego in check, gave the animators a special
shout-out for taking the time to faithfully animate his crew, and admitted that he totally
understood why people felt that way about him.
And Kanye West never did anything stupid or egotistical ever again.
"I'm with you!"
"Ye is in the building!
Throw your motherf---in' hands in the air right now!
Put your hands in the air!"
Yeah.
Just kidding.
It's all paper
South Park has a unique animated style, owing to the fact that the show's original pilot
was made using cut-out construction paper, and the show's creators just stuck with that
look throughout the series.
It was a labor-intensive process, but it worked pretty well on a budget.
With that in mind, actual construction paper stopped playing a part in the animation process
20 years ago.
By the time the second-ever episode began production, everything was converted to digital.
The closest the animators have come to using construction paper since then was the time
they scanned every piece of pilot-episode paper into a computer to use as reference.
So, we're basically seeing the same paper cutouts that were used when Cartman got an
anal probe.
An alien in every episode
Watch South Park enough and you'll begin to notice a lot of running jokes and and stuff
hidden in the background.
Among the most enduring Easter eggs are the secret aliens in various episodes, hidden
there by the animators.
The phenomenon is so pervasive that there's a popular rumor that you can find an alien
in the background of every episode ever aired.
But that just isn't true.
While there are tons of hidden aliens, animators for the show have denied that they've gone
as far as to hide one in every episode.
Why?
Well mostly because the guy whose job it is to do it often forgets.
Because of this, even the animators don't know exactly how many aliens are hidden throughout
the series.
Sorry, but the truth isn't always out there.
They've never shown Muhammad
Perhaps the biggest controversy in the show's history is when they attempted to include
an image of Muhammad in a 2010 episode, simply titled '201'.
Ultimately, Comedy Central censored all mentions and depictions of the Prophet in the episode,
prompting widespread criticism.
"You see, I learned something today… (expletive deleted)"
They even refused to rerun the episode, in addition to making it unavailable to view
legally online, or even to purchase on DVD in some countries.
All of this was a surprise to show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, since Muhammad
was shown uncensored in the 2001 episode "Super Best Friends," and nobody gave a flying fart
about it back then.
The episode prominently features a number of religious figures as band of godly superheroes,
Muhammad included.
He gets wicked-sick flame powers and gets punched by a giant statue of Abraham Lincoln.
The big difference is that "Super Best Friends" aired before 9/11, prior to a huge shift in
the political climate of the US, and prior to a group called Revolution Muslim threatening
Parker's and Stone's lives.
"A warning by a radical Islamic group, right here in America, right here in New York.
They will end up dead because of a cartoon."
To this day, you can't watch any Muhammad episode on South Park Studios' official site,
including the 2001 episode, but you can see the Prophet in the opening credits of several
seasons, hidden around an alien, the devil, and Scott Tenorman, the kid who ate his own
parents in a bowl of chili.
They invented the word "derp"
Consult with Urban Dictionary, preferably not with your parents around, and you'll see
that the word "derp" is credited to the 1999 South Park episode "The Succubus."
"If you like Chef, you're going to love Mr. Derp!
Ooh, derp!"
That credit isn't entirely correct, though.
While this episode helped popularize the word, it was actually in an earlier Parker and Stone
project: the 1998 film BASEketball.
But it's not like Parker and Stone came up with the word, either, since the word was
likely coined by the writer and director of that film, David Zucker.
You know, the guy who wrote Airplane!
And that guy has given us nothing but classics.
"Surely you can't be serious."
"I am serious.
And don't call me Shirley."
They were sued by Yelp
Business review website Yelp doesn't really have the most positive reputation, mostly
due to the idea that they allegedly extort small businesses in return for positive reviews.
South Park riffed on these claims in the 2015 episode "You're Not Yelping".
Soon after the episode aired, news spread that Yelp had taken offense and that they
were suing the show for $10 million.
Stone and Parker stoked the flames of controversy by issuing a sarcastic response, giving the
lawsuit claim "one star."
Except...Yelp never attempted to sue the show at all.
The story about the alleged lawsuit came from a satirical website… and a lot of people
who didn't read very closely passed it around as real news.
Did you really think that an article written by a guy named "Jimmy Rustling" was serious
news?
Thanks for the forward, grandma, but stick to NOT DYING.
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