Cartman Gets an Anal Probe/Trivia

Trivia

 * This was the first full episode of South Park. It was also the first appearance of many characters, including but not limited to:
 * Ike
 * Chef
 * Mr. Garrison
 * Officer Barbrady
 * During the opening sequence you can see part of the fight between Jesus and Santa from the original short on a sign.
 * During the opening sequence you can also see part of the fight between Jesus and Frosty from the original short on a T.V.
 * This episode made #9 on the list of 10 South Parks That Changed The World.
 * This episode was parodied in an episode of the children's show Arthur titled "The Contest", along with other shows such as Beavis and Butt-Head, and Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.
 * Though the entire series appears to be made of construction paper and stop-motion, this is the only episode that was actually animated with those techniques; every single episode (including extra scenes produced for this episode which were not featured in the original pilot) starting from "Weight Gain 4000", with the exception of a brief scene in "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" used computer animation.
 * In a pan shot of the cafeteria, a voice identical to Kyle's cousin, Kyle Schwartz can be heard, talking about his bad gas, coming from a Jewish kid with stringy black hair, which is not how Kyle Schwartz looks like. Cousin Kyle would not be introduced until several seasons in the future.
 * Two Hasidic boys can be seen in the cafeteria, one of which resembles Jason, who was formally introduced in season 6. They would make reappearance in "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", when a deleted scene from the original pilot wound up recycled.
 * Bebe and Red are shown on the bus, wearing much different outfits than what they would wear for the rest of the series.
 * Stan is the first character to ever fart in the show, he does so on the bus and Kyle replies with "You farted!", in which Cartman replies with "Somebody's baking brownies!".
 * Officer Barbrady's police car in this episode says "To Patronize and Annoy"
 * The music that plays during the cafeteria scene scene where Stan sees Wendy is the "love theme" from "Romeo and Juliet" by "Tchaikovsky", a typical romantic piece of classical music perfect for scenes of love interests meeting eye to eye, the tune would play later on when the two are about to kiss.
 * This is one of the two episodes Kyle calls Cartman by his first name, the other being "Quest for Ratings".

Mr. Garrison's Learning Plan

 * According to Mr. Garrison, Christopher Columbus discovered America and was "good friends" with the Indians, that he had helped them win a war against Frederick Douglass, then apparently freed the Hebrews from Napoleon and discovered France, all this before the year 1492.
 * On the chalkboard, the following sentences are present: "Johnny threw the red ball", "I ate too much cous-cous", "Don't make fun of my grandpa", and "I'm not positive, but I think Cathy Lee Gifford is much older than she claims to be". Mr Garrison tries to kill Kathie Lee (whose name he misspelled) in the next episode.

Differences between this and the original pilot

 * In the original pilot of this episode, Chef allows the boys to sneak out by giving them super hot tamales. Stan, Kyle and Kenny give their tamales to Cartman whom the fifth graders bully into eating all four, This gives him the power to fart fire as opposed to the anal probe doing that in the aired episode..
 * In the original pilot, Wendy and Pip are nowhere to be found in the classroom, another red-haired girl and a blonde girl filling their respective seats. In the aired version, the two girls remain in the classroom until Cartman farts fire, and are replaced by Wendy and Pip after that.
 * In the original pilot, Pip is flung off a slide, where he hits his head on a pole, and Kenny laughs the same way he laughed when he told Stan something he could do on his date. When that scene happens when he tells Stan, he laughs differently.
 * The little hearts that dance around Stan's head originally just rose up and started hovering, however in the aired version, they were just there already, followed by Stan's humongous smile.
 * The original pilot was 2 minutes longer than the released pilot.

References to Popular Culture

 * When Officer Barbrady investigates the mutilated cattle, the farmer mentions seeing black CIA and army helicopters in the area. Black or unmarked military helicopters (usually belonging to some US government department) are common trademarks of UFO and alien abduction lore, that suggest that the UFO phenomenon is being covered up by the government.
 * When Stan sees Wendy in the cafeteria, his smile is similar to Charlie Brown's smile when he sees the Little Red Haired Girl in Peanuts.
 * I Love to Singa, the song that plays when Cartman and Officer Barbrady are being put under alien control, is originally from a Tex Avery Merrie Melodies short. The song was written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg.
 * Cartman says that the crop circle looks like Tom Selleck, the actor best known for playing the character Thomas Magnum in the show Magnum P.I.
 * When seeing Cartman farting fire, Wendy says that he's "just like Rudolph!", referring to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer the popular Christmas character that had a nose that would shine red light.
 * When Chef is calling out to the aliens to visit him, he asks them to hurry up because the TV show "Sanford and Son" is about to come on.
 * To goad Ike into jumping out of the alien's UFO, Kyle tells him to do an impersonation of David Caruso's career. At the time this episode was made, David Caruso had just recently ended an unsuccessful stint on the TV series "NYPD Blue."
 * At the end of the episode, Cartman claims that actor Scott Baio, who got his claim to fame playing Chachi on the TV series "Joanie Loves Chachi", was aboard the UFO and gave him pink eye.
 * The quote "Cows on a people train" is from an obscure Dr. Seuss book entitled "In A People House," which he wrote under the pseudonym "Theo LeSeig"

Continuity

 * Half of the scene which takes place in cafeteria was cut and later used in An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig.
 * When Wendy remembers the times when Stan throws up in front of her in Tom's Rhinoplasty, clips from previous episodes are shown, including the one from this episode.
 * In "Mecha-Streisand", before the helicopter lands at the bus stop, Cartman grabs his butt and screams, "Aliens!"
 * Reused clip from this episode appears in The South Park Clipshow (a.k.a. "City on the Edge of Forever").
 * In the end of "Cow Days", Cartman comes to his friends, Stan and Kyle, to tell them about his 'dream' until realizing that it was real events when he dressed like a prostitute. It is a reference to this episode.
 * In "Free Hat", Trey and Matt made fun of South Park, promising that they'll redo the pilot episode... again.
 * In a later episode, "Cancelled", the first part of this episode is redone, with harsher language and more elaborate animation (such as Ike getting kicked and Cartman getting dragged down the alien hallway), with the boys thinking that they are experiencing déjà vu. Cartman also mentions about his 5th visit in the outer space (two of them were in this episode).
 * "I'm sure glad that's over with" - This exact phrase was spoken in the early "The Spirit of Christmas" shorts.

Kenny's Death
The Visitors' UFO blasts Kenny after Kyle throws a rock at it, and Kenny is flung into the road. He survives, but a herd of cows run him over. He survives that, but Officer Barbrady runs him over with his police car and kills him. The boys later mess with Kenny's bloodied corpse, with Stan tapping it with a stick while Kyle removes his head, trying to convince Cartman that he's dead. Rats then come and start eating Kenny. In the unaired version, Kyle says "Rats!" when he and Stan leave the corpse.

Goofs

 * When Cartman is tied up at the tree, you see Cartman "far away" three times. The first and second time, Cartman says "Really? Uh... I don't think I have to fart anymore tonight" And "I don't wanna", and in the background, it is seen small stars, but in the third, when he says "Ok... that does it", you see a big star between the small.
 * When Stan asks, "Cartman, are those the same visitors you saw?" Kenny blinks twice and both times his closed eyes can be seen popping out of his hood.
 * When Kyle shouts to the visitors "COME DOWN HERE, YOU STINKING ALIENS!" his voice sounds exactly like Stan's. The same mistake was also made in Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society.
 * Snapshot_024.png before Kenny dies, when the space ship is lowering down, for one of the frames it looks as if the Spaceship was falling apart, but only for one frame.
 * Red can be seen two places at once in the classroom. Later on, she's not there and the two sides where she was, she's replaced by Pip and Wendy.
 * Mr. Hat does not have eyes in this episode. In all subsequent episodes, he has eyes.
 * When Officer Barbrady gets hit by the cow's device that was given to them by the visitors, his inner left ear turns pink.
 * When Cartman sets Pip on fire, the caption says that he is a girl.
 * When the boys first get on the bus, girls similar to Bebe and Red have no mouths. The same girls also disappear when the camera pans back onto their seat, then reappear moments later, then disappear again.
 * Wendy's voice is a little deeper pitched in this episode than in the episodes following this one.
 * In one scene where the kids are trying to figure out how to get out of school, two kids are seen standing in the cafeteria line. When the camera zooms back, they aren't there anymore.
 * After Stan says "Rabbits eat lettuce." and Miss Crabtree says "Well, yes they certainly do;" her Bird disappears.
 * The laces on Kenny's parka are not present in the opening scene. However, they appear when the boys get on the bus.
 * As Kyle runs down the bus shouting, we see that it is quite populated, though these children aren't present in the shots immediately before and following this one - only the boys are there.
 * Jason is seen talking with another boy in the lunch hall, a Jewish child. But when the boys see Wendy, he is shown sitting with a blond-haired boy.
 * When Chef comes out from behind the cafeteria counter, the flaps on Kyle's hat are in front of the main portion of his hat. This is not the case in any other shot of the back of his head.
 * Chef's apron goes from upper case to lower case in this episode.
 * Wendy's hair switches, in some scene's if you look closely at her fringe, it's on reverse.

Hidden Visitor(s)
The visitors appear many times in the episode but the hidden visitor appears on the tray in the cafeteria on the far left.