Who Was the First Celebrity to Get Roasted by ‘South Park’?
South Park is obviously famous for its not-so-flattering depictions of celebrities, be they sitting presidents or music icons with the power to turn into grotesque Kaiju monsters.
Some stars clearly hated the show’s parodies — pour one out for the assistants who allegedly lost their jobs after quoting Cartman’s racist “Jennifer Lopez” character in front of the real J. Lo — while others were seemingly flattered to be spoofed by South Park. Like Joe Jonas, who recently admitted that it was an “honor” to be abused by Mickey Mouse on the long-running cartoon.
But who was the very first celebrity to feel South Park’s wrath?
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Recently, a fan on Reddit pointed to an episode featuring a Kathie Lee Gifford caricature as the earliest example of a South Park celebrity parody. The Gifford character appeared in the show’s third episode, “Weight Gain 4000.” In it, Cartman wins an essay contest (by cheating) and is to be presented with an award by the daytime TV host
Gifford shows up for the event in a bulletproof, Popemobile-esque pod, with a sign reading “God Bless” on top. After Chef sings a shockingly erotic song about the town’s guest, a crazed Mr. Garrison, at the insistence of Mr. Hat, tries to assassinate Gifford (his former childhood rival) with a sniper rifle, inadvertently killing Kenny instead.
But some fans pushed back against the suggestion that Gifford was the first celeb to be lampooned by South Park. One person noted that in the very South Park first episode, “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,” Kyle saves his little brother Ike from the alien “visitors” by instructing him to do an impression of “David Caruso’s career” — at which point Ike nosedives out of the spaceship (keep in mind, this was made in a pre-CSI: Miami world).
Another user noted that five minutes before that, in the same episode, Cartman name-checks Tom Selleck in reference to a Cartman-shaped crop circle — although that was less about Selleck and more about Cartman’s cluelessness.
Some folks also argued that the very first South Park celebrity send-up was really of figure skater Brian Boitano, who appears in the proto-South Park short film “The Spirit of Christmas” from 1995. The cartoon Boitano counsels the boys, who are unsure of what to do when Jesus and Santa Claus start beating the crap out of one another.
The Olympic gold medalist was later brought back for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, much to the chagrin of Brian Dennehy.
Come to think of it, if you consider Jesus and Santa Claus to be “celebrities,” technically, they’ve been part of the South Park-verse since 1992.
