The classic South Park episode “Simpsons Already Did It” — in which Butters goes temporarily insane after learning that everyone has already thought of everything, so there’s no point in worrying about anything — aired on Comedy Central on June 26, 2002. By then, The Simpsons was between seasons 13 and 14. The most recent season of Fox’s most decorated animated series was its 27th, meaning more episodes have aired post-“Simpsons Already Did It” (305) than pre- (296). If The Simpsons hadn’t already done it in the first 13 seasons, they probably have in the past 14, right? Right, but so has South Park.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s full San Diego Comic-Con panel is now online, and you should really watch the whole thing; they don’t often give interviews. But one of the more interesting conversations is 12:30 minutes in, when moderator Chris Hardwick asks them about poking fun at other shows, like The Simpsons and Family Guy. With the latter, it’s openly hostile; with the former, it’s in good fun, because, well, Simpsons did it. The inspiration for that episode came from “life experience, sitting in the writers’ room, coming up with something, spending a couple of hours on it, and have someone say, oh yeah, Simpsons did that,” according to Stone. But “now what’s awesome 20 years later,” Parked added, “we’ll sit there and we’ll go, ‘Oh, and this could happen, and this could happen,’ a couple of hours will go by… and then [someone will say], ‘Dude, somebody did this.’ No, we did that 10 years ago.”
South Park did it?
