South Park Trivia | 40 facts about the animated series

South Park is an animated series, that has gained a lot of fans over the years around the world.

Let’s find out more about it!

1. South Park is an American animated sitcom.
2. It was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
3. It was developed by Brian Graden for Comedy Central.
4. The series revolves around four boys—Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick—and their exploits in and around the titular Colorado town.
5. The show became infamous for its profanity and dark, surreal humor that satirizes a wide range of topics towards a mature audience.
6. Parker and Stone developed the show from The Spirit of Christmas, two consecutive animated shorts.
7. The latter became one of the first Internet viral videos, ultimately leading to South Park‘s production.
8. The pilot episode was produced using cutout animation, leading to all subsequent episodes being produced with computer animation that emulated the cutout technique.
9. South Park features a very large ensemble cast of recurring characters.
10. Its debut was on August 13, 1997.
11. Since then 308 episodes of South Park have been broadcast.
12. It debuted with great success, consistently earning the highest ratings of any basic cable program. Subsequent ratings have varied but it remains one of Comedy Central’s highest-rated shows.
13. It is slated to air new episodes through 2022.
14. Since 2000, each episode has typically been written and produced in the week preceding its broadcast, with Parker serving as the primary writer and director.
15. A one-hour special episode, titled “The Pandemic Special”, premiered on September 30, 2020.
16. South Park has received numerous accolades, including five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and numerous inclusions in various publications’ lists of greatest television shows.
17. The show’s popularity resulted in a feature-length theatrical film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut which was released in June 1999, less than two years after the show’s premiere, and became a commercial and critical success, and garnered a nomination for an Academy Award.
18. In 2013, TV Guide ranked South Park the tenth Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time
19. Trey and Matt produce every episode in under a week
20. Jerry Seinfeld refused to play a turkey
21. George Clooney was cast as a gay dog named Sparky and performed a couple of barks.
22. He later voiced Dr Douche in the 1997 movie and his Oscars speech can be heard in ‘Smug Alert!’ Also, Jay Leno once voiced Cartman’s cat.
23. A celebrity is seen on screen in some capacity in every single episode, even if they might not speak.
24. The constant mocking finally came to a head in ‘200’, when Tom Cruise rounded up the stars to sue the town.
25. The only celebrities to actually voice themselves (minus singing parts) are: Robert Smith, Jay Leno, Korn, Radiohead, Wing, Brad Paisley and PewDiePie.
26. An urban legend suggests that Stone and Parker have placed a hidden alien in every episode since the pilot, but in fact they appear in around half of them.
27. In the early seasons an alien can usually be seen hiding somewhere, but in recent years the easter egg was decreased. Unless they’re really good at hiding.
28. Rather than try to do a high-pitched voice, Parker and Stone always pitch up the kids’ voices by three semitones, while Terrence and Philip go up by four and female characters up by two.
29. Every now and then, Kenny appears without wearing his trademark zipped-up orange parka, but you may not have even realised it.
30. Isaac Hayes’s naughty ballad as Chef narrowly missed out on the UK Christmas number one spot in 1998 by just 5,000 copies to the Spice Girls’ ‘Goodbye’, making it one of the closest festive chart battles ever.
31. However, it climbed up to number one the following week, and eventually sold over 850,000 copies. Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo reached number four the following year.
32. By season five, Parker and Stone felt that Stan and Kyle were too similar, and for a time wanted to get rid of Kyle and bring in Butters as the fourth boy.
33. However, in the end they decided to temporarily kill off Kenny for good to help promote Butters in ‘Kenny Dies’.
34. After Parker and Stone ripped apart Scientology in ‘Trapped in the Closet’, The Church of Scientology actually hired people to spy on them in the hopes of finding dirt to blackmail them with.
35. However, their investigation didn’t throw anything up, so they left them alone.
36. Butters was originally called Puff Puff
37. It was only when the creators began creating the video game The Stick of Truth that they realised they had never actually mapped out the town, as scenes usually just cut from one place to another.
38. A basic version can now be found when playing the game.
39. In every Halloween episode of South Park, at least one character is seen wearing a Chewbacca costume.
40. Despite being arrested only a handful of times, Cartman has a worse criminal record than Hannibal Lecter and Fagin combined