South Park 10 Facts You Didnt Know About The First Season

South Park: 10 Facts You Didn’t Know About The First Season

South Park’s first season is known for being literally made out of paper, but there’s a lot more about it that fans need to know about.

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Comedy Central’s South Park has become one of the most renowned animated sitcoms, thanks in large part to its goofy and often boundary-pushing style of humor. With such a zany and over-the-top show, it stands to reason that there’s plenty of insanity and intrigue involved in the making of this cartoon.

This is especially the case in the show’s debut season, which hadn’t quite found its footing yet, and was assembled under somewhat crude conditions. Still, this sillier, more simplistic brand of South Park is part of Season 1’s charm, as are the often-crazy conditions surrounding its creation. With that said, here are 10 interesting behind-the-scenes facts involving South Park’s first season.

10 The Original Pilot Was Too Long For Syndicated TV

As one might expect with a brand new show, there are bound to be some hiccups born from inexperience. This was certainly the case with South Park’s debut season. One example came in the form of the pilot episode’s length, which was 28 minutes long rather than the required 22.

This was because Parker and Stone had not considered the needed time allotted for commercial breaks, and thus ended up cutting several minutes worth of material from “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe.” Extra scenes included more emphasis on Pip, which can later be seen in “An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig.” Another includes the true origin of Cartman’s flatulence, which was apparently from older kids feeding him hot tamales and not the alien probe in his butt.

9 The Pilot Was Made The Old Fashioned Way

South Park is known for its crude style of animation that resembles flat construction paper. Of course, this is all for stylistic effect but as it happens, the pilot was indeed animated using construction paper and other cheap art supplies.

Parker and Stone spent over three months in a small animation studio in Denver cobbling together various construction paper cutouts to create the first season’s episodes. Literally thousands of frames were shot to assemble an entire episode, as pieces were moved and swapped out in stop-motion fashion. One can certainly understand why this format was ditched soon thereafter, as seen in the now more refined digital animation that modern South Park incorporates.

8 The Characters Talked Fast Because Of Imperfect Editing

Astute listeners might notice the pitch and speed of some of the South Park children’s voices sound a bit different when their debut season is compared to later episodes. In order to make the adult voice actors sound like kids and give them more of a cartoony vibe,dialogue was sped up via editing and sound design software.

But during Season 1, this technique had not yet been perfected, nor had the speed and pitches of the voices been solidified. This led to a lot of vocal inconsistencies in the way characters talked, with some kids sounding faster than others while others had a noticeably unnaturally high pitch voice.

7 Lava & You Was Inspired By A Real-Life PSA

Taking the form of an old obscure reference, the Lava And You bit in “Volcano” is derived from a safety video played in various schools across America in the ’50s and ’60s.

During this post-war era, America was at the height of a nuclear scare. This set the stage for a rather cheesy (and not particularly helpful) video for school children, showing them how to prepare for the atomic bomb. Apparently, all they had to do to stay safe from nuclear fallout was to duck under a table. Parker and Stone satirized this with a similar Public Service Announcement (PSA) shown to the kids of South Park, informing them that ducking and covering will somehow save them from hot magma.

6 Mr. Hankey Was Created Before The Show Even Began

Most fans know of the amusingly crude animated short, The Spirit of Christmas, which was simply made as a Christmas card for a Fox executive. But the true origins of what became South Park can be traced all the way back to 1992.

Parker and Stone had met in a film class at the University of Colorado, and discussed filming a three-minute short involving a boy who befriends a talking piece of poo. This would become “Jesus VS Frosty,” which would lay the foundation for the aforementioned The Spirit of Christmas. The talking poo, Mr. Hankey, would be one of the first supporting characters introduced in Season 1 (which began in 1998) and would become an icon of the show itself.

5 The Pilot Took Six Months To Complete

The pilot episode was a pretty laborious endeavor on the part of Parker and Stone, who opted for old school, stop-motion way of animating. So it’s perhaps understandable that the animators opted to “cut corners” whenever possible.

Characters not engaged in major actions or speaking roles can often be seen completely still in the background. This was done to save time on animation, as fewer pieces would be swapped out. Interestingly enough, even with this minimalistic style, the entire production of the pilot episode still took six whole months to finish.

4 Death Was Inspired By A Doodle

While it may not have the iconic status that some of Season 1’s episodes have, “Death” is still significant when it comes to South Park history.

The Grim Reaper featured in the episode is actually inspired by Trey Parker’s tendency to sketch cartoon images of Death riding a tricycle. This is why in the episode, Death is randomly riding around a tricycle while chasing the boys through the streets.

3 A Violent Shelly Scene Was Deleted Due To Concerns Of Backlash

Fans might remember the scene in “An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig,” which shows Stan lying on a puddle of water as he tells Shelly that she’ll regret beating him. While this looks like a normal occurrence by the show’s crass standards, the beating wasn’t actually shown. As it turns out, Shelly beating up Stan (and any context for the joke) was indeed cut out.

Originally, Shelly had set Stan on fire the second time she beats him up, prompting this response. The showrunners excised the scene so that the show wouldn’t get heat for displaying dangerous acts being performed on and by minors, like what often happened on MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head.

2 Unlikely Celebrity Voices Voiced The Animals

The inclusion of celebrity voices has long been a popular practice when it comes to cartoons. Parker and Stone being who they are, they decided to implement this in their own show but with one amusing twist.

In the show’s first season, they had sought to secure a lineup of big-name celebrities that would slot into various episodes. The kicker? They would play the absolute silliest, most minuscule roles. This included George Clooney as Stan’s dog Sparky, and Jay Leno as Cartman’s cat. Apparently, Jerry Seinfeld was tapped to voice a turkey, but had second thoughts and turned down the offer.

1 An Animator’s Hand Makes A Surprise Cameo

The rather unrefined nature of South Park’s pilot episode really takes the spotlight in a scene where Chef sings to the kids in the school cafeteria. At the beginning of his trademarked song about passionate lovemaking, a brief flash of a left hand can be seen on the left side of the frame, seemingly assembling part of Chef or tilting his head for the next shot.

It flashes by so quickly that viewers are likely to miss it if they blink at the wrong time. In any other show, this would be a cause for panic but in South Park’s case, it just adds to the first season’s ragtag charm.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/south-park-season-1-facts-didnt-know/

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