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. Like many
South Park seasons, episodes were mostly produced in the week preceding their original broadcasts.
Paramount Pictures 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. Parker and Stone claim to have no memory of making "
Sexual Harassment Panda", the following episode, due to their exhaustion from working on the film: "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. "
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. 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). "
Starvin' Marvin in Space" mocks media mogul and minister
Pat Robertson and his program,
The 700 Club. "
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.'' == Episodes ==