South Park (season 3)

Development

After the second season of South Park, show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone began to take more creative control of the show back, which they had delegated in the previous season to a writing staff. Parker and Stone have openly expressed dislike for the second season as a whole. "There's a lot of funny stuff in the second season," Stone remarked, but Parker agreed that they were still learning how to write for the show. They took the advice of friends in the television industry and let other writers on the staff write scripts and take more control of the show, which they later regretted. They even considered developing a show for broadcast television and leaving South Park, but they decided to continue working on it. On the DVD commentaries for the third season, Parker advised viewers to "throw away your season two DVDs. I don't like those shows." Parker would later say the same about the third season: "If I had to permanently erase anything from the library, it would basically be anything before season 4. It's just embarrassing to watch. Okay, we were, like, 26, 27. But it's like, 'Really? We thought that was funny? We thought that was well-written? Oh my God, this is terrible.'"

Like many South Park seasons, episodes were mostly produced in the week preceding their original broadcasts.

Writing

Parker characterized the third season as "where South Park turned the corner... and [became] good to us." The third season was produced simultaneously with the film adaption of the series—South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut—and came at a time when the duo began learning more about story structure and character development. They applied these lessons to the show as well. Parker noted that producing the film and season at the same time was "tough." The show and film occupied two separate buildings a mile apart that the duo would often have to switch between. Paramount was unhappy with the duo working on the show equally with the film. "Jakovasaurs" arrived at a peak of post-production work on the film, and the following episode, "Sexual Harassment Panda", Parker and Stone claim to have no memory of making: "We don't remember doing these shows at all," Parker remarked in the episode's commentary. Stone characterized the episode as "delusionary writing."

With the film completed for its June 30, 1999 release date, the duo still were contracted to produce three more episodes before taking a break. They came up with the idea to produce a trilogy of episodes—"Cat Orgy", "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub", and "Jewbilee"—which they called "the meteor shower trilogy." They felt "brain-dead" on ideas and created the idea to make things easier. "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub" features the first major appearance of Butters Stotch, who became a main character in the series in later seasons; prior to this episode, he was a nameless background character, having had a non-speaking background role in Cartman Gets an Anal Probe. They based Butters on the show's animation director, Eric Stough, whom they mocked while working on the film. "Jewbilee", the trilogy's conclusion, became regarded as one of the duo's favorite all-time episodes. "We were literally crawling around the floor trying to finish the show but we were also all already on vacation in our minds," Parker remembered. To this end, they decided not to care about the episode's content and just make whatever came to mind. Following the episode's completion, the staff took a vacation for a month, returning later in the year to complete the rest of the season.

Their first episode back, in October 1999, was "Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery". Parker remembered the making of the episode difficult, as they had been away for so long. "Chinpokomon" features the guest voice of Parker's old college friend Junichi Nishimura, and several elements of the script—namely, the Japanese having "small penises"—were inspired by a trip to Beijing with Nishimura. In the trip, Nishimura's boss kept referring to the size of his own penis as "so small", which became a joke in the episode. "Hooked on Monkey Fonics" was based on a friend of Parker and Stone's, who homeschooled his child. To Stone, the episode distilled down the essence of South Park: that children are not innocent, but rather "little bastards." "Starvin' Marvin in Space" was produced around Thanksgiving 1999, and the duo decided to write a sequel to the season one episode "Starvin' Marvin". The duo thought of it as not a regular episode of South Park, but something wholly its own.

After completing the dialogue for the aforementioned episode, Mary Kay Bergman, the voice actress behind many of the female characters on South Park, was found dead of suicide. Parker and Stone, shocked by the news, made the remaining episodes in the third season revolve around mainly male characters, beginning with "The Red Badge of Gayness". "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics" is mostly an animated music video, of sorts, to the album of the same name which was released one week prior. Parker and Stone had spent several weeks with composer Marc Shaiman, whom they had worked with on Bigger, Longer & Uncut, to create an entire album of South Park-themed holiday songs. "Are You There God? It's Me, Jesus" was made at the request of the network to produce an episode centering on the New Millennium. "World Wide Recorder Concert" fulfilled their contractual obligations with the network, and required the team to come back after the Christmas break to complete it.

Cultural references

The central character in "Jakovasaurs" is based on Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999). Plot elements of "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub" were inspired by a HBO documentary on the Waco siege, perhaps Waco: The Rules of Engagement; Parker and Stone regarded the incident as a "disaster". They parody the pop star Cher and her song "Believe" for the episode, used for tortuous purposes. The parody was performed by staff writer Pam Brady. In "Jewbilee", the Moses character is patterned after the Master Control Program from the film Tron. The nu metal band Korn guest star in the episode "Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery". Korn approached the show's staff with the idea to premiere their new single, "Falling Away from Me", on South Park. Parker and Stone were at first unreceptive to the offer, but became more excited when the idea came to portray them in a cheesy fashion, like the appearances of the Harlem Globetrotters in The New Scooby-Doo Movies. The animators attempted to model the animation after Hanna-Barbera's style.

"Chinpokomon" satirizes the phenomenon of the Pokémon franchise, which at the time was at its peak of popularity. To prepare, the show's writing staff sat down and watched episodes of the Pokémon anime, which they regarded as nothing more than marketing to buy trading cards. "Starvin' Marvin in Space" mocks media mogul and minister Pat Robertson and his program, The 700 Club. "The Red Badge of Gayness" references American Civil War reenactments and parodies the film Gettysburg. "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics" features an obscure reference to a bootleg tape of the one broadcast of the Star Wars Holiday Special, in which a news reporter, teasing the late-night news, remarks, "Fighting the frizzies, at eleven." Parker called it "one of the most obscure things we've ever done in South Park. "Are You There God? It's Me, Jesus" mocks the musician Rod Stewart and the Backstreet Boys, and its title references the book Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret..