These Are the Victims of the So-Called ‘South Park Curse’

These days, being parodied on South Park might be embarrassing for some celebrities, but at least it isn’t potentially life-ruining. Back when the show first began, however, getting dunked on by South Park was as paranormally risky as having a tea party with the Annabelle doll. 

As we’ve mentioned before, the second episode of South Park’s first season, “Weight Gain 4000,” finds Kathie Lee Gifford visiting the town to present Cartman with an award. But she comes surprisingly close to being picked off by a sniper rifle-wielding Mr. Garrison, who’s still miffed that the talk show host beat him in a talent show when they were kids. 

As Trey Parker and Matt Stone revealed on the episode’s DVD commentary, the storyline wasn’t actually meant to be a criticism of Gifford. “It was completely random,” Parker explained. “It wasn’t any big need to pick on Kathie Lee Gifford, she was just this random celebrity.”

“We never really thought the joke was ripping on Kathie Lee Gifford,” Stone added. “We always thought the joke of this episode was why does this whole little town give a shit about Kathie Lee Gifford?”

But as the duo pointed out, after the episode was completed, but before it aired, Kathie Lee’s husband Frank Gifford was involved in a major sex scandal after a tabloid hired a woman to seduce the former football player and lure him to a hotel room that was equipped with video cameras. “It’s become known as the South Park Curse,” Parker noted. “Because since then there’s been tons of times where we randomly pick a celebrity and then something really bad happens, or they die. People started to get worried.” 

More tragically, in Season Two’s “Summer Sucks,” Mr. Garrison fantasizes about attacking Lamb Chop creator Shari Lewis, and throwing her famous puppet on a barbecue. Less than two months later, Lewis died of “complications from uterine cancer.”

Even folks working at South Park became anxious about the curse. “When we choose to pick on a celebrity, a lot of people around the office are like something bad’s going to happen to them now,” Parker recalled. 

Obviously the show went on to parody tons of celebrities, not all of whom have suffered horrific outcomes soon afterwards. Although it’s perhaps worth mentioning that the show featured an episode all about Jared Fogle just five years before his Wikipedia page got way darker. 

Also, South Park joked about how unfunny Rob Schneider is, which for all we know, cosmically doomed him to continue to be unfunny for the rest of his life.