More Crap - Cultural References

Cultural References

"More Crap" satirizes Irish singer, musician, and humanitarian Bono, best known for being the main vocalist of the rock band U2. Bono is portrayed as obsessed with being the best at everything and winning awards, and is criticized for not letting others claim success over him. Stan makes remarks about Bono's wealth and knighthood, as well as his highly successful band, and his "hot wife", Alison Hewson. The episode also shows Bono in Africa at one point, and makes reference to his numerous accolades, including his 22 Grammy Awards, and his nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and the Nobel Peace Prize. In a joke, Bono is revealed to have first-place trophies in much smaller scale categories as well, such as "most Sports Illustrated subscriptions sold". In the episode, people claim that Bono is both "talented" and "caring", being "able to do so much, try to help so many people", but, despite all of this, he "seem like such a piece of crap". As the plot progresses, this problem is explained when the comparison between Bono and feces moves from metaphorical to literal, as he is revealed to be an actual piece of excrement raised as a human. As such, Bono's obsession with being number one is his way of compensating for being born "number two" – a euphemism for feces.

Near the end of the episode, when Bono is breastfed by his father, they both refer to the breast milk as "bitty". This is an allusion for the British character-based comedy sketch show Little Britain, in which the character Harvey constantly insists on receiving "bitty" from his mother's breast, despite being an adult.

"More Crap" aired about a month after South Park received a Creative Arts Emmy Award for "Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour)" that year, at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards for the episode "Make Love Not Warcraft". The show makes fun of having won the award, by way of a running gag in "More Crap". Several times during the episode – such as when Randy is looking at the excrement inside of him through an ultrasound image – a caption appears on-screen, with a spinning Emmy Award along with the text "Emmy Award Winning Series".