7 In McDaniel College in Maryland, South Park is used to explore and discuss social issues such as gay marriage, immigration, race, ethics, porn and others.

According to a professor from the college, the show’s use of humor as a means to criticize, examine or satirize almost every social issue is thought provoking and provides good material for impassioned discussions.(source)

8 The Church of Scientology performed an investigation on the show’s creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker to dig up dirt because of their criticism of Scientology. However, they found nothing. 

The Church reportedly went through phone records, bank records and personal letters. The investigation also included identifying the creators’ friends, checking public records and even going through their garbage bins.(source)

9 Comedy Central agreed to air the episode “It Hits the Fan” only after the creators decided to use the word “shit” 200 times instead of a few times. It was because they felt the standards of profanity have changed among viewers and “no one cares anymore” even if a character swore.

The executives at Comedy Central also felt that the amount of profanity was justified considering the context of the episode and decided to air it uncensored. Despite all the significant amount of profanity present in the show, the number of times the word “shit” was used in the episode did not stir much controversy.(source)

10 Matt Stone and Trey Parker managed to get hold of the script for the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” before its release. They wanted to secretly shoot a word-for-word parody with puppets and release it on the same day as the movie, but stopped because their lawyers talked them out of it. 

11 Chewbacca is a running theme in the series. Every Halloween episode has at least one child dressed up as Chewbacca and usually would win the costume contest.

Also, a satirised version of Johnnie Cochran always uses “the Chewbacca defense” to deliberately confuse the jury.

12 When the creators of South Park made the episode “La Petit Tourette”, the Tourette Syndrome Association thought that it would be offensive and insensitive to the sufferers. But when it was aired they said that “a surprising amount of accurate information was conveyed” in the episode about the syndrome. 

Before the episode was released the association expressed concern over the portrayal of people with Tourette syndrome and issued a press release saying so. However, their fears were proven to be wrong and they later conceded that the episode provided accurate facts about the syndrome to the public.(source)