15 Things Most Fans Don’t Know About ‘South Park’

Sure, Matt Groening’s yellow family from Springfield was the first to break through the glass ceiling of adult animation, but it wasn’t until nearly a decade later, in 1997, that two guys from Colorado completely changed the game with their incisive, acidic, smart cartoon, South Park. Though it might appear that the R-rated shenanigans of four nine-year-olds from a mountain town in Colorado is focused solely on fart jokes, but the show has consistently demonstrated a razor-sharp social commentary time and again. There are also, admittedly, a lot of fart jokes. If you’ve been following the maniacal adventures of Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny since their first run-in with a UFO, there’s still plenty you may not know about this landmark series.

1. Chef Is Real

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have leant South Park a few real world details throughout the run, and that extends to one of the show’s most beloved characters, Chef. The boys’ original go-to advice guy was actually based on a real dining hall worker at the University of Colorado who worked there while Parker and Stone were students.