Trivia / South Park S 6 E 9 Free Hat

• Approval of God: According to Matt and Trey, they got "the nicest 'Fuck You' letter" from Spielberg himself after this episode aired, which made them unsure whether he liked the show lampooning him or not. Years later in a separate interview, Spielberg explained that he did enjoy the episode and the contents of the letter were him telling the duo that, thanks to the episode, he and Lucas would be remastering Raiders for real, which he meant as a complete joke.
• Creator Backlash: Somewhat in that on the commentary for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut Matt and Trey admitted that they now understood why George Lucas would want to change movies he had made decades ago as they felt that their own film did not match to the quality that they could make today, though they still stood by their complaints about Lucas (and Francis Ford Coppola for the theatrical version of Apocalypse Now) not making the original versions available for people who preferred them.
• Life Imitates Art: Though in a reverse fashion to its episode portrayal. The episode portrays Steven Spielberg as the mastermind behind all the alterations being made, with George Lucas weakly following along; in real life, Spielberg came to regret changing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and made sure all future theatrical and home releases of the film were the original version, and never altered any of his movies again. Meanwhile, Lucas continued to alter the Star Wars films up until Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012.
• Technology Marches On: In the years following the episode's airing, the controversy around George Lucas Altered Versions largely became a non-issue, as the advent of DVDs meant it became trivially easy for studios to include both the theatrical and altered (or Director's Cut) versions of films, outside of the very small number of cases where distribution of the theatrical cuts was intentionally suppressed.

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