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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Trey-Parker_Matt-Stone_1528.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:350:Can you guess which one of them used to have an afro back in the day?[[note]]Trey on the left, Matt on the right. The former afro owner was indeed [[spoiler:Matt]].[[/note]]]]
3->''"Me and Matt love to argue, but in general our sense of humor is pretty much alike."''
4-->-- '''Trey Parker'''
5->''"We are entertainers. We're trying to entertain people."''
6-->-- '''Matt Stone'''
7
8Trey Parker (born Randolph Severn Parker III, October 19, 1969) and Matt Stone (born Matthew Richard Stone, May 26, 1971) are creative partners in crime, best known for being the creators of Creator/ComedyCentral's [[LongRunner long-running]], brutally satirical, extremely vulgar animated sitcom ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark''. The two became friends in college and made their first short, ''The Spirit of Christmas'' (aka ''Jesus vs. Frosty''), that caught the eye of many and got ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' launched as the success it [[LongRunners still is.]]
9
10!!Creative works by the two include:
11[[index]]
12* ''Your Studio and You'' [[/index]](Their first Hollywood gig, an internal video for Creator/{{Universal}} after their buyout by the liquor company Seagram in the mid 90s; [[{{Homage}} modeled after a 50s educational short]], filled with famous cameos)
13* ''Time Warped'' (two pilots- one for Creator/{{Fox}}, the other for Creator/FoxKids- intended as a "musical romp through time")
14[[index]]
15* ''Film/CannibalTheMusical''
16* ''Film/{{Orgazmo}}''
17* ''Franchise/SouthPark'':
18** ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark''
19** ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkBiggerLongerAndUncut''
20** ''VideoGame/SouthParkTheStickOfTruth''
21** ''VideoGame/SouthParkTheFracturedButWhole''
22** ''VideoGame/SouthParkSnowDay''
23** ''Recap/SouthParkThePandemicSpecial''
24** ''Recap/SouthParQVaccinationSpecial''
25** ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkPostCovid''
26** ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkPostCovidTheReturnOfCovid''
27** ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkTheStreamingWars''
28** ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkTheStreamingWarsPart2''
29** ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkJoiningThePanderverse''
30** ''WesternAnimation/SouthParkNotSuitableForChildren''
31* [[Music/WhitePepper "Even If You Don't"]] music video by Music/{{Ween}}
32* ''Series/ThatsMyBush'', a live-action Comedy Central sitcom about George W. Bush's first year in office
33* ''Film/TeamAmericaWorldPolice''
34* ''Theatre/TheBookOfMormon''[[/index]]
35* ''Princess'', a very explicit web cartoon that lasted two episodes around the life of a dog.
36* ''Sassy Justice'', [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi38HMIvRpGgMJ0Tlm1WYdw a webseries]] starring a deepfake of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump as the titular consumer reporter, featuring deepfakes of other politicians like UsefulNotes/AlGore.
37* They also record music for their various works backed by Bruce Howell and D. A. Young under the rather vulgar name DVDA.[[note]]Stands for "double vaginal, double anal" and is mostly seen in hardcore porn movies.[[/note]]
38
39They also starred in ''Film/{{BASEketball}}'' ([[OldShame a fact that they are NOT proud of]]), but didn't write or direct. Trey has also voiced the villain in ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe3'', [[PlayingAgainstType a very different turn from the duo's]] [[SoMyKidsCanWatch usual adult fare]].
40----
41!!Tropes related to the creators:
42* AmusingInjuries: A staple in their work.
43* AuthorAppeal:
44** They like reasons to include UsefulNotes/{{Mormonism}} in their works. This includes a Mormon missionary as the main character in ''Orgazmo'', a ''South Park'' episode ("All About Mormons") dedicated to the religion, and ''Theatre/TheBookOfMormon''.
45** They enjoy throwing in musical numbers into their works, due to their love of musical theater (similar to Creator/SethMacFarlane doing the same on his three animated sitcoms). On top of this, ''South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut'' was made a musical with tons of shout-outs to contemporary shows and the protagonist of ''Team America'' is a Broadway actor.
46** Trey is an admitted Japanophile and actually knows the language, so you can pretty much expect any use of the Japanese language in their work to be some kind of BilingualBonus.
47** They also have a soft spot for imbecilic voices and laughable speech impediments.
48** Being big fans of ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'', they have referenced the show and its style often in their work.
49* AuthorCatchphrase: "Derp" was apparently a nonsense word invented on the set of ''[=BASEketball=]'' to exemplify stupid humor (really most of their work fits, ergo). It has been carried over to WesternAnimation/SouthPark in several forms, with no in-show explanation or link between them. Once there was a substitute school chef named "Mr. Derp" who did stupid physical gags; another time there was a Creator/RobSchneider movie trailer (as part of a running gag of successively stupider movie trailers) whose narration consisted almost entirely of nonsensical permutations of the word "Derp". The movie title is ''Da Derp Dee Derp Da Teetley Derpee Derpee Dumb''.[[note]] "[[RunningGag Rated PG-13]]."[[/note]]
50* AuthorTract: Much like how Seth [=MacFarlane=] is an atheist liberal, Parker and Stone’s work often have themes of agnostic libertarianism.
51* BadImpressionists: They deliberately put no effort in their celebrity voice impersonations, let alone the characterizations. Celebrities will appear in a way that is grossly exaggerated and often has little to do with their public image. As the famous "disclaimer" that prefixes every episode of ''South Park'' puts it: "All celebrity voices are impersonated.....poorly."
52* BerserkButton:
53** Creator/BarbraStreisand once insulted the duo's home state of Colorado in an interview. They responded by depicting her as a robot destroying South Park in "Mecha-Streisand", and even her very name is a swear word in of itself in BLU. Bottom line: don't mess with Colorado!
54** They do ''not'' like hearing their show compared with ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''.
55* BigEater: In the behind-the-scenes ''South Park'' documentary, Parker reveals that, when writing, he eats copious amounts of [=McDonald's=] food... [[AndADietCoke and a Coke Zero]].
56* BlackAndGreyMorality: While their work does not lack explicit villains and does take a moral stance on whatever issue they're satirizing, they're also not afraid to say that even the most well-meaning people can make just as many harmful, arrogant mistakes as ill-intentioned people, even if one side is clearly more in the right than the other.
57* BlackComedy: Their staple.
58* BreakthroughHit: It's because of ''South Park'' that you know their names.
59* TheCastShowoff: Both of them are capable singers, as seen in ''South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut'' and ''Cannibal! The Musical''. Trey can speak fluent Japanese, and on occasion Matt and Trey will speak Spanish.
60* CloudCuckooLander: Parker and Stone are Real-Life examples as far as their writing goes. Seriously, many of the plots of various ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episodes simply [[ItMakesSenseInContext have to be seen to be believed]].
61* {{Cool Old Guy}}s: More "cool middle aged guys," but the duo has evolved into this now.
62* CorruptChurch: Also a topic in their work, although they have attacked atheists and agnostics too.
63* CreatorBacklash:
64** Trey and Matt feel embarrassed about the show's first three seasons, as noted in an interview for ''Entertainment Weekly'', "it's just embarrassing to watch." In one of the commentaries on the season 3 [=DVDs=], the duo mentioned that they considered season 2 to be particularly bad.
65** They're not too proud of their involvement with ''[=BASEketball=]''. Not only did they feel that [[LowestCommonDenominator its brand of humor]] was beneath them, but they only agreed to under the assumption that it was just something you did once you "made it" in show business, and that ''South Park'' would have been canceled by then anyway (it wasn't, resulting in very little sleep during production).
66** In addition to a noted dislike of the ''South Park'' video games made early in the show's run (one of which, for the Platform/{{Nintendo 64}}, managed to make a 2003 G4 list of "most spectacular failures"), Trey and Matt were [[http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/south-park-creators-respond/ not happy]] about the "201" censorship. Trey even threatened to quit the show afterward.
67* CreatorBreakdown: Trey had a hard time forgiving his ex for cheating on him and it shows in a lot of his work:
68** ''Cannibal! The Musical'' has Matt and Trey providing commentary, during which Trey gloats over how he's now a famous comedy writer and his slut of an ex is now dating a nobody.
69** The ''Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut'' two-parter: No prizes for guessing who Liane Cartman is based on.
70** The LoveDodecahedron in ''Team America'' may also have been influenced by this, as Lisa is the one who cops the most abuse for sleeping with Gary.
71** ''Raisins'' (the season seven ''South Park'' episode where Stan turns Goth after Wendy breaks up with him and Butters thinks a waitress at a Hooters-style restaurant for kids actually likes him) may have been an indicator that Trey has since learned to let go and laugh about it... then "The Ring" (the season 13 premiere in which Kenny dates a fifth grader with a seedy reputation who gets Kenny to join a purity ring program after seeing The Music/JonasBrothers in concert) happened.
72* CreatorProvincialism: The titular town of ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' is based on Parker's hometown of Conifer, Colorado, and also on nearby Fairplay, located in Park County [[note]]there is no actual town or county in Colorado named "South Park"; that's the name of the valley and grassland area where Fairplay is located[[/note]].
73* CreatorsPest: Trey and Matt are noted as disliking the following characters:
74** [[TheyKilledKennyAgain Kenny]] was KilledOffForReal because they were getting sick of him and finding new ways to kill him off. After a season of Butters, and later Tweek, filling his place, Kenny was brought back, though with a reduced role.[[note]]Which was their [[WriterRevolt way of getting back]] at Comedy Central for forcing them to reinstate the character; his death was originally meant to stick.[[/note]] They originally considered killing Kyle off, because they felt that he and Stan were interchangeable, but the pair have since undergone DivergentCharacterEvolution.
75** [[MadScientist Dr. Mephisto]] was phased out because they stopped finding him funny. They felt that they should have got rid of him in "[[Recap/SouthParkS4E5CartmanJoinsNAMBLA Cartman Joins NAMBLA]]".
76** Pip existed simply because Trey and Matt hated reading ''Literature/GreatExpectations''. Eventually, they realized that Butters fulfilled [[ThePollyanna his role]] better, and Pip was [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome phased out]]. They brought him BackForTheDead in "201", mostly so that fans would stop asking what happened to him.
77* DerangedAnimation: Their signature style, pretty much.
78* EqualOpportunityOffender: Their personal philosophy has always been "If one thing is off limits, then everything is."
79* {{Garfunkel}}: Parker is the chief creative force behind the duo, with Stone playing more of a supportive role. Stone seems to have made peace with his secondary role in group judging by his answers to interviewers. For his part, Parker says that he considers their work relationship to be a partnership and that their joint ventures would not be the same without Stone's input. He also says that Stone has a more forceful personality and will take charge in situations where Parker is more likely to bend to pressure, making his producer credits well-earned.
80* HereWeGoAgain: They lost the Academy Award for Best Song to Music/PhilCollins at the 1999 Oscars (Collins won it for his songs in Creator/{{Disney}} Animation's newest [[Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon animated classic]], ''WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}''), then had to go up against [[Music/{{U2}} Bono and The Edge]] (''Theatre/SpiderManTurnOffTheDark'') at the 65th Tony Awards, with Trey especially despising the idea of losing to both Collins and Bono in one lifetime. They didn't, and won '''nine''' Tonys.
81* HeterosexualLifePartners: The two have been friends since college. Stan and Kyle's relationship in ''South Park'' makes this trope evident even more, considering the two are based on their creators (Stan being Trey and Kyle being Matt). It got to the point where, early on in their careers, people [[MistakenForGay assumed they were gay]], which was one of the factors in them not getting much work in Hollywood.
82* MagnumOpusDissonance: Despite their hate for the show's first three seasons (with season 2 as so hated that they didn't even do audio commentary for it on the DVD set), Parker and Stone also state the second season episode "Not Without My Anus" (the episode that centered on Terrence and Phillip getting their child back from UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein) to be the only episode they liked from said era, because it was "something weird and different". Even stranger considering the episode generated a ''lot'' of fan backlash, and that the first three seasons are home to many of the show's most memorable episodes according to critics and fans.
83* ManOfAThousandVoices: ''South Park'' features the voices of the two for every male character with very few, case-by-case exceptions. And they flat out admit their imitations of celebrities are done "poorly".
84* NotSoAboveItAll:
85** They've actually been involved in celebrity causes (notably the [=WM3=] case involving three teenagers falsely convicted of murder); though in fairness, it later turned out that the kids ''were'' innocent.
86** They harshly mocked and deconstructed microtransactions and pay-to-win free mobile games, and the addiction caused by them, in the episode "Freemium Isn't Free", but apparently had no qualms about the release of the AllegedlyFreeGame ''VideoGame/SouthParkPhoneDestroyer''.
87* PlayingAgainstType: Given [[Theatre/TheBookOfMormon their]] [[Film/TeamAmericaWorldPolice usual]] [[Franchise/SouthPark work]], Trey Parker taking up the role of Balthazar Bratt in a family-friendly movie like ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe3'' is a far cry from the duo's BlackComedy shtick.
88* ReclusiveArtist: While they do still occasionally grant interviews and do {{DVD commentar|y}}ies [[note]]Albeit reluctantly and only "mini" ones, as their preference for fast turnaround on their projects leaves little time for dwelling on details which they can later share. They opted out of doing commentaries for season 2 of ''South Park'', which they both agree is their worst, and the COVID pandemic prevented them from recording ones for season 23.[[/note]], they've also made it quite clear that [[CelebrityIsOverrated they don't crave fame, nor are they willing to play by Hollywood's rules to achieve it]], and are fine with burning bridges if it means getting to speak their mind. In the more modern sense, neither use social media for similar reasons (Trey briefly joined Facebook, but quit because he didn't like the culture, which inspired the ''South Park'' episode "You Have 0 Friends"). As such, Hollywood and the media have responded in kind by leaving them alone. They've also said that they prefer spending time with their families anyway. According to Trey, both he and Matt have repeatedly offered Comedy Central the opportunity to cancel ''South Park'' on amicable terms if both parties can't reach an agreement on censorship (which, considering how the show is still running, probably tells you all you need to know about who relies more on the other).
89* RefugeInAudacity: They are [[WordOfGod "equal opportunity offenders"]] after all.
90* RunningGag: Back in the early seasons when they introduced each episode of ''South Park'', they would refer to each episode as their favorite episode.
91* SelfPlagiarism: Trey and Matt wrote the gag song "Montage" for an episode of ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', but the same song was used in their completely unrelated film ''Film/TeamAmericaWorldPolice''.
92* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Surprisingly, despite their love of {{black comedy}} and [[RefugeInAudacity audacious]] humor, much of their work is on the idealistic end and express hope for mankind. Though often accused of being centrist for their BlackAndGreyMorality, if there's ever an explicit villain in their work, they're almost always punished or the world is clearly much worse off if [[TheBadGuyWins they win]].
93* SoMyKidsCanWatch: Trey took the role of Balthazarr Bratt in ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe3'' so as to be in a movie appropriate for his then four-year-old daughter Betty.
94* TechnicianVersusPerformer: Parker is clearly the more creative of the two, while Stone handles more of the business side (fitting, as his father was an economist). See "{{Garfunkel}}".
95* TerribleArtist: Parker and Stone enjoy StylisticSuck. They deliberately don't make the animation in ''South Park'' and ''Team America'' too good, because they enjoy the jerky movements.
96** Subverted with ''The Book of Mormon'', which looks just as professional as any other broadway musical.
97* ThrowTheDogABone: In recent years, they've been treating their designated ButtMonkey Butters with much more dignity. For instance, when Butters does finally break and attempts suicide, it's not played for laughs and his injuries stay with him for the rest of the season.
98* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
99** Website/IMDb trivia stated that Trey opted not to direct ''[[Series/BarneyAndFriends Barney's Great Adventure:]] TheMovie''.
100** Apparently, the duo were at one point asked to write the sequel to ''Film/DumbAndDumber''. They were apparently so unsatisfied with their work [[ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules they wrote a check to the production company so they could return the money they were paid]].
101** They were also set to write a film called ''My All-American'' at one point, as well as one titled ''Giant Monsters Attack Japan!''. Both projects fell through, as they remembered how burnt out they got on ''Team America'', as well as wanting to focus more on ''South Park'' and (eventually) ''The Book of Mormon''.
102*** Interestingly, ''Giant Monsters Attack Japan!'' would've been the first production of theirs that would've been [[SoMyKidsCanWatch appropriate for children]], as they were aiming for a PG-rating.

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