‘South Park’ Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone Once Bragged About Farting on Danny DeVito

There are two kinds of Hollywood stories: the ones that sound like they were typed by a publicist wearing white gloves, and the ones that sound like they were yelled across a sticky bar table at 1:47 a.m. while someone tries to convince you the jukebox is “haunted.”

This is proudly the second kind.

Long before Trey Parker and Matt Stone became the perpetually caffeinated overlords of South Parkthe show that can turn a cultural panic into a punchline faster than most of us can find the remotethey were just two broke film guys in Los Angeles with the kind of humor that makes grown adults laugh and HR departments quietly reach for a stress ball.

And yes, in a now-infamous brag, they once described a pastime that involved finding celebrities in bars, letting one rip, and taking a photo as proof. Their “best” target, Parker said, was Danny DeVitobecause, in his words, the man was conveniently “right there.”

It’s gross. It’s ridiculous. It’s also weirdly revealingabout their comedy, their relationship with fame, and how South Park has always treated celebrity culture like a piñata filled with ego, hypocrisy, and occasionally… beans.

The Clip That Turned an Immature Brag Into Comedy Lore

The story traces back to the late ’90s, when South Park was still young enough to shock people simply by existing. Parker and Stone appeared on Dennis Miller Live and got a surprisingly thoughtful question: did it scare them to become the very kind of famous people they used to mock?

Parker’s answer was not a philosophical monologue. It was a detour into their early-L.A. loser era, when, according to him, their idea of a thrilling evening was “find someone famous, fart on them, and get a picture.” He even tossed out a few names, but the one that stuck to the cultural wall (unfortunately) was DeVito, framed as the “best” because of his height and proximity.

And like all enduring pop-culture moments, it’s memorable for two reasons:

• It’s unbelievably childishthe comedic equivalent of drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.
• It’s on-brandnot because Parker and Stone are uniquely obsessed with bodily functions, but because they’re allergic to reverence.

Why This Story Feels So “South Park”

If you’ve watched even a handful of episodes, you know Parker and Stone’s comedic engine runs on three fuels:

1. Satire (the sharp stuff that makes you laugh and then awkwardly realize you might be part of the problem).
2. Shock (because sometimes the fastest way to puncture a sacred cow is to hand it a whoopee cushion).
3. Storytelling speed (their ability to respond to pop culture like it’s a breaking-news sport).

The DeVito fart brag is basically a crude mission statement: “We don’t worship celebrities. We don’t treat fame like holiness. We treat it like something you can… deflate.”

The Anti-Red-Carpet Reflex

Hollywood often asks you to take it seriously. Parker and Stone’s entire brand is saying, “No thanks,” and then setting the seriousness on firesometimes metaphorically, sometimes with a song, sometimes with an animated child screaming a four-letter word you didn’t know could be used as a verb.

That reflex shows up everywhere in their public persona. They don’t just mock celebrities; they mock the idea that celebrity deserves automatic respect.

From Bar-Prank Bravado to Oscars Chaos

If the fart story is the grubby, broke version of their worldview, their Oscars behavior is the deluxe edition with nicer lighting.

When South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut earned an Academy Award nomination for “Blame Canada,” Parker and Stone didn’t show up looking like grateful nominees ready to network with the “serious artists.” They showed up dressed in replica versions of famously talked-about gownsthen later openly talked about being on LSD.

It’s easy to write that off as a stunt. But the deeper theme is consistent: they’ve never been comfortable acting like the room is sacred.

Even the nomination itself is a funny bit of contrast. The Academy, a symbol of prestige and decorum, officially recognized a song from a movie that was, among other things, loudly profane and gleefully confrontational. It’s like Buckingham Palace awarding a medal to a man in a “Kiss My Ass” hat. The absurdity is part of the point.

“Blame Canada” as a Cultural Moment

“Blame Canada” wasn’t just a goofy song; it was a satirical summary of moral panichow adults sometimes handle their anxieties by blaming entertainment, youth, or “outside influences” instead of dealing with the real issues. That’s classic Parker-and-Stone territory: take a national freak-out, put it in a blender with a catchy hook, then serve it to you with a grin.

So when they showed up to the Oscars treating the whole thing like a prank playground, it wasn’t random. It was the same impulse as the fart bragjust with better tailoring.

Why Danny DeVito Became the “Perfect” (and Unwilling) Punchline

Let’s be clear: DeVito did not sign up to be the patron saint of someone else’s gross anecdote. But in the logic of immature twenty-somethings trying to out-dumb each other, he offered two irresistible ingredients:

• He’s instantly recognizablea face you can’t confuse with “random guy at the bar.”
• He’s famously shorta fact he’s discussed publicly, and one Hollywood has referenced in his career for decades.

In other words, the story “works” as a brag because it contains a built-in visual gag. Parker’s joke is essentially: “We were so pathetic we took pride in something this lowand DeVito was literally low enough to make it easier.”

It’s crude. It’s also the kind of cartoonish, exaggerated imagery their comedy thrives on: a world where status is flimsy and everybodymovie stars includedcan be reduced to a sight gag.

Okay, But… Is This Funny or Just Gross?

Both can be true.

As a story, it’s funny in the way that confessions of youthful stupidity can be funnyespecially when the confessor is clearly aware it’s idiotic. As a hypothetical real-life action, it raises an obvious question: isn’t that just… messing with strangers?

Comedy has always had a boundary problem: if you’re not careful, “punching up” turns into “being a jerk, but with a laugh track.”

The Two Lenses People Bring to This Anecdote

• Lens A: the chaos-goblin origin story. People love tales of successful creators being trash goblins before they became household names. It feels human. It feels anti-pretentious.
• Lens B: the consent and decency alarm. Even if you hate celebrity worship, celebrities are still people. Randomly harassing them is… not exactly a noble revolution.

The reason the story survives is that it sits right at that messy intersection Parker and Stone live in: irreverence that can feel refreshing, and immaturity that can feel like a middle finger aimed in every direction.

What This Says About Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Relationship With Fame

Here’s the irony: the fart brag wasn’t just about humiliating someone famous. It was also about protecting themselves from the gravity of fame.

If you reduce celebrities to targets of dumb pranks, you never have to feel small around them. You never have to admit you want approval. You never have to participate in the unspoken Hollywood rule that says: “Act impressed. Act grateful. Act like the room matters more than you.”

Later, when Parker and Stone became the famous people in the room, they kept the same defense mechanismjust with higher-profile stunts and sharper satire. Their whole “we refuse to be impressed” posture is partly comedic philosophy and partly emotional armor.

And That’s Why Their Work Still Hits

Love them or hate them, they’ve stayed consistent. Their comedy is built on distrusting institutionspolitical, cultural, corporate, celebrity, even the institution of “good taste.” That doesn’t mean every joke ages well. It does mean their comedic voice is unmistakable.

Even their interviews often circle back to the same idea: the offensive stuff is easy; the hard part is making it a story worth your time. That’s the real secret sauce behind decades of longevity: the outrageousness gets attention, but structure and momentum keep people watching.

: The Weirdly Relatable “Experience” Behind the Dumbest Brag

Most of us haven’t (hopefully!) walked into a bar, spotted Danny DeVito, and thought, “Ah yes, tonight I become a human air horn.” But the energy behind the storythe messy, juvenile, ego-protecting, friend-group-one-upmanship vibeis painfully familiar.

Think about the kind of jokes people tell when they’re young and broke and trying to prove they belong. Not “Ha-ha, what a clever observation about society,” but “Ha-ha, I did something stupid and everyone looked at me.” It’s comedy as a social handshake: you’re not saying, “Admire me.” You’re saying, “I’m willing to embarrass myself to keep the vibe alive.”

Now put that in Los Angeles, where insecurity comes with valet parking. You’re a nobody. You’re surrounded by people who look like they have meetings with producers even when they’re just buying oat milk. You want to make movies. You want to matter. And the easiest way to reject the whole status game is to treat it like a joke. A fart joke. The kind you can’t take back once it leaves the building.

There’s also the friend-group chemistry piece. Anyone who’s ever had a creative partneror just a best friend you’ve known long enough to share one brain cellknows how quickly you can escalate into “bits” that make perfect sense to you and absolutely no sense to the outside world. One person says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if…,” and the other person says, “It would be funnier if…,” and suddenly you’re ten steps beyond reasonable human behavior, fueled by laughter and poor impulse control.

That’s the engine behind a lot of comedy duos: mutual permission to be ridiculous. Sometimes that permission produces brilliant satire. Sometimes it produces a story you tell later with the tone of a man who just found an old photo of his frosted-tip haircut and whispered, “Why.”

And if we’re being honest, that’s part of why people still care about Parker and Stone. They never fully grew out of the instinct to puncture pretension. They just learned how to turn it into a product, a process, and a cultural weapon. The fart story is the caveman drawing on the wall; South Park is the cathedral built from the same impulse, only with better lighting and a choir that occasionally sings about blame.

So no, you don’t need to approve of the prank to recognize the human truth underneath it: sometimes “gross” is just “fear of being impressed,” wearing a stupid disguise.

Conclusion

“Trey Parker and Matt Stone farted on Danny DeVito” is the kind of headline that feels like it was generated by a malfunctioning middle-school brain. But the reason it sticks isn’t just because it’s grossit’s because it captures, in one dumb image, what Parker and Stone have always been doing: deflating the balloon of celebrity culture and refusing to treat status like it’s holy.

Their humor has never been polite, and it has never been interested in asking permission. Sometimes that produces fearless satire. Sometimes it produces a story that makes you laugh, wince, and think, “Please don’t ever tell this at a charity gala.”

Either way, it’s pure Parker-and-Stone: a reminder that South Park didn’t grow out of a polished writers’ room full of tasteful notes. It grew out of two guys who built an empire by treating the world’s seriousness like something you can pop with a pinsometimes a smart pin, sometimes a very stupid one.

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