South Park Weight Gain 4000 (1997– ) watch online HD

First episode to use the computer technology to animate the show

This is the first episode where Mr. Hat appears to be a separate entity from Mr. Garrison.

Butters appears during the play rehearsal scene beating Pip.

While recording their voice performances, the actors read the lines slowly and the dialogue was then sped up to create the characters' distinctive voices. At that time, Trey Parker and Matt Stone had not mastered the pace at which they needed to speak.

First appearances of Jimbo Kern, Mayor McDaniels, Bebe Stevens and Clyde Donovan.

The line "Beefcake", which Eric Cartman enthusiastically screams after hearing it on a Weight Gain 4000 commercial, became a well-known catchphrase following the episode's broadcast, and T-shirts and sweatshirts with Cartman shouting the line became very popular. One of the earliest and largest fan sites was called www.beef-cake.com. Matt Stone and site creator Taison Tan decided to shut the site down in April 2001 when the official site South Park Studios launched.

While discussing Cartman's weight gain in the commentary for this episode, Trey Parker and Matt Stone explains that Cartman gains 700 lb making him almost as heavy as Sally Struthers.

The crowd shots took a particularly long time to animate due to the large amount of people featured, and the animators were especially proud of the use of depth and motion in the perspective of the crosshairs in Mr. Garrison's rifle scope as he tried to assassinate Kathie Lee Gifford.

The episode was animated in chronological order from beginning to end.

Kathie Lee Gifford was the first of many celebrities to be spoofed in a South Park episode. The creators said they chose Gifford completely at random, not based on any particular reason or distaste for her.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote the script while working on Orgazmo (1997).

The episode was created in little over a month in a studio in Westwood, California, by about 15 animators using PowerAnimator, the Alias Systems Corporation animation program most commonly known as "Alias", which would be used in subsequent episodes.

The 30-page script was shorter than in later episodes, which would average between 45 to 50 pages.

South Park: Chef's Luv Shack (1999) included a mini-game called "Beefcake", in which players control a Cartman character who moves back and forth between the screen eating cans of Weight Gain 4000 that are thrown down at him. The salesmen from the episode are featured as antagonists in the mini-game.

Cartman's monologue about rainbows was inspired from a woman Trey Parker and Matt Stone overheard at a restaurant. Apparently, she didn't like rainbows, either. Probably because it means the end of a rainstorm, and she liked the rain.

The episode also marked the first reference to Jesus and Pals, the public-access television talk show hosted by Jesus Christ. The fictional show is mentioned twice in the background during commercials on television sets, although footage from the show itself is not shown until Pietu parkas: Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride (1997) later in the season.

Shortly after the episode aired, the tabloid The Globe hired Suzen Johnson to film herself seducing Frank Gifford, Kathie Lee Gifford's husband, for a newspaper story. The incident was the first of what Trey Parker and Matt Stone called the "South Park Curse", in which something tragic or embarrassing supposedly happens to a celebrity shortly before or after they were featured in the series.

Kathie Lee Gifford appears at a parade hidden inside a bulletproof glass bubble. The bubble was inspired by an appearance Pope John Paul II made in the Popemobile during a trip to Denver, which was attended by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They thought the design of the Popemobile, which has a bulletproof booth built into the back of a modified truck, was "hilarious".

The creators and animators said they were still developing the characters and trying to figure out the future direction of the show with this episode, which was more slow-paced than the series would eventually become.

In the scene where the kids are in the state waiting for Kathie Lee, and Cartman comes up to them really fat, Kyle says "Cartman you are such a fat ass! That when you walk down the street people say, G*ddamn it that is a fat ass! This comes from Matt Stone and Trey Parkers early South Park (1997) project, "The Spirit of Christmas" (1995), the construction paper short, because in that project, Kyle says, "Cartman, you are such a fat fuck, that when you walk to the street people G*ddamn it that is a fat fuck!" Comedy Central wouldn't allow the F word for some reason.

The picture of student of the week is Cartman.