Damien (South Park) - Production

Production

"Damien" was written by series co-founders Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with writer Brian Graden. It was directed by Parker and Stone. "Damien" first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on February 4, 1998. It was highly anticipated in part because it was the first new episode of South Park in about two months, since the extremely popular Christmas special "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo" aired on December 17, 1997. Before "Damien" even ran, Mike Duffy of Detroit Free Press said the episode was "certain to become one of the show's signature moments". In fact, Parker and Stone originally intended for "Damien" to be the season's Christmas episode. Although they had long planned to feature Mr. Hankey in the show, they did not decide to make him a Christmas character until halfway through the filming of "Damien", during which time they decided to make "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo" the holiday episode instead. Nevertheless, they decided to finish production of "Damien" first, even though it would not air until after the "Mr. Hankey" episode.

Parker said he and Stone did not intend for "Damien" to be offensive to Christians or any other religion: "In South Park, Jesus is a great guy, he's on our show, and in this episode he's the hero. We're not in the business of offending people. We're in the business of making people laugh." The mean way Damien is treated by his fellow students when he joins the school, as well as Damien's reactions to the treatment, were inspired by Parker's experience of the second grade, when he started at a Cheyenne, Wyoming elementary school in the last three weeks of the school year. Parker said, "It was brutal ... Everybody already had their little groups and the year was almost over, so I wasn't going to fit into any of them, and I just wanted to destroy and kill, which was the inspiration for this show."

Michael Buffer, the boxing ring announcer best known for his catchphrase, "Let's get ready to rumble!", made a guest appearance as himself in "Damien". Parker and Stone originally planned to use the catchphrase without Buffer, but when they learned that Buffer had legally trademarked the phrase, they included him in the episode since getting the rights for the catchphrase cost nearly as much as hiring Buffer for a guest appearance. Parker and Stone both said Buffer was friendly and they enjoyed working with him. Voice actor Mike Judge, star of Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill, had originally been slated to provide the voice of the Damien character, and even recorded several lines for the part. However, since Judge lives in Austin, Texas, it proved too difficult to for him to come back and rerecord lines as the script and episode changed, so Stone instead provided the character's voice. Judge later provided Kenny's un-muffled line when he removed his parka in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

By the time "Damien" was animated, much of the drawing and animation responsibilities that had previously been handled by Parker and Stone were now being delegated to a team of animators. The duo were particularly proud of the animation during the boxing match between Jesus and Satan, which used elements of perspective and three-dimension seldom used in the series before; Parker said it was "definitely the most action (oriented) stuff we'd done (so far)". While animating Jesus, Parker and Stone deliberately left glitches in the animation that made it appear skin was showing beneath the beard on the left-hand side of the character's face. Parker said this was done because it was the way Jesus appeared in the crudely animated The Spirit of Christmas, a 1995 animated short film by Parker and Stone that served as a precursor to South Park, and they wanted to maintain that nuance for the character.

Parker and Stone said a number of Cartman's characteristics which have endured throughout the South Park series started in "Damien". Specifically, his voice took on a higher-pitch that was more nasally and whiney than in previous episodes; Stone described it as a "self-indulgent accent". Some of his regular vocal mannerisms were also developed in the episode, including his use of the sound "Nyah" while saying the word "Here", and the way he says "Hey you guuuuuuys" while talking to his friends. Parker, who provides the voice of Cartman, said the characteristics came about naturally while filming the episode: "This show for some reason, for whatever reason, maybe I just lost interest, but I was trying all these messed up things with him and all these things sort of stuck."

"Damien" included the first appearance of Satan, who would become a commonly recurring character throughout the series. Although Satan displays an evil and unscrupulous personality in "Damien", he is portrayed in later episodes as a thoughtful, sensitive and often deeply conflicted character. "Damien" was the first episode Parker and Stone wrote that included school counselor Mr. Mackey and local religious leader Priest Maxi, but they were also included in "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo", which aired before "Damien" even though it was produced afterward. Although Jesus had been introduced as a South Park character in previous episodes, "Damien" marked the first time he interacted with the main characters outside of his public access talk show, Jesus and Pals. Parker said many viewers thought the character was a crazy person who falsely believed he was Jesus, and he and Stone wanted to show in this episode that he was supposed to be the actual Jesus. "Damien" is also the first episode to feature South Park's bar, which is simply called "Bar".

Prior to the broadcast, Parker and Stone said "Damien" would be the first episode in which Kenny would not be killed; ultimately, however, Kenny was shot by Jimbo at the end of the pay-per-view fight. Kenny is turned into a duck-billed platypus in the episode, which Parker said was done because, "Duck billed platypuses are something I've always been infatuated with. They're just so bizarre." In the original script, Pip, the unpopular British student inspired by the character of the same name in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, was originally supposed to be killed and permanently removed from the show after "Damien", in which Damien projects Pip into the air and blows him up in a shower of fireworks. However, Parker and Stone decided they should not kill any student characters except for Kenny, so they decided not to kill Pip and to bring him back for future episodes. However, Pip was eventually killed in the episode 201 after a very long absence from the show.

"Damien" was later released, along with eleven other episodes, in a three-DVD set in November 1998. It was included in the second volume, which also included the episodes "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", "Death" and "Pinkeye". The episode, along with the other twelve from the first season, was also included in the DVD release "South Park: The Complete First Season", which was released on November 12, 2002. Parker and Stone recorded commentary tracks for each episode, but they were not included with the DVDs due to "standards" issues with some of the statements; Parker and Stone refused to allow the tracks to be edited and censored, so they were released in a CD completely separately from the DVDs.