The Original 'South Park' Pilot!

Did you know South Park came to fame as a video Christmas card? That's right, a Fox executive commissioned Trey Parker and Matt Stone to create the Spirit of Christmas short in '95, based on a similar video they made three years prior. It soon became one of the Web's first viral videos, but as many people were still offline 14 years ago, Spirit of Christmas was also a hotly bootlegged video. I later got a chance to ask Parker about it, and he said that video landed them a deal nearly instantaneously, and they spent the next three months making the pilot episode by hand. By the time it was ready to air, South Park had truly become all the rage.

That first episode, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe," is the only full episode that Parker and Stone did entirely by hand, and the full episode never aired on Comedy Central. A dozen years later, South Park Digital Studios is making up for it with the online premiere of the complete, original, paper-construction pilot with four additional minutes of never-before-seen footage. The complete pilot is available exclusively on the Digital Studios website until Sept. 12.

The Emmy-winning animated series, now in its 13th season, returns to the air Oct. 7 with its mid-season premiere. Launched a dozen years ago, South Park remains Comedy Central's highest-rated program.