I just started watching South Park in reruns, and I noticed that some characters have mouths that are in effect the top and bottom parts of the heads moving totally seperate from each other.
Like Kyle’s brother Ike has this.
Is there a reason for this? I realize the animation is very simple on purpose, but I was wondering why some characters like Ike and Terrence and Phillip have the odd mouths
Those characters that have the heads you describe are Canadian.
Except for Saddam Hussein.
Saddam was the boss of Canada in one episode.
Related question though: why are Canadians depicted this way?
According to Wikipedia, there are a couple of theories originating with the creation of Terrance and Phillip. They were created as a response to complaints that South Park was nothing but fart jokes and crude animation. Parker and Stone created them to demonstrate what a show that had only fart jokes and even cruder animation would look like. The fact that Terrance and Phillip are Canadian is likely to be a reference to the circle-shaped characters in Břetislav Pojar’s Canadian animated short Balablok.
So they are easily identifiable and different from everyone else.
Ike is adopted, by the way. There was an episode where his Canadian parents turned up wanting to reclaim him. That’s why he has a Canadian head.
Originally Terrance and Phillip were supposed to be an animated TV show, hence their crude style. But eventually all Canadians were shown to look the same as them, so I think that idea went out the window early on.
Then again, that doesn’t explain Ike, who was portrayed that way in the very first episode, so maybe I’m incorrect.
GuanoLad, read the post above yours…Ike is an adopted Canadian boy.
Because, according to Mrs. Broflovski, Canadians have “big flapping heads.”
I think what GuanoLad was getting at was that Ike had a flappy head before it was established (in the show) that that’s how Canadians looked.
Or anyone else where they use a photo for the head.
It was established pretty early on that Ike was Canadian. I can’t remember if T&P showed up before or after that though.
Indeedly do, that was my point.
I have never listened to the commentary on the DVDs so perhaps all this speculation has been confirmed by Matt and Trey.
Another question if I may, what’s with the “Braniff, I believe it” at the end of the credits? I know Braniff was an airline that went under but what does that have to do with South Park.
Ike had a flappy head in the first episode (“Cartman Gets An Anal Probe”) and IIRC it was established he was adopted in that episode too. So maybe the flappy head thing was just to make him look different from the rest of the family.
Terrance and Phillip showed up about 6 episodes later.
I thought it wasn’t established till the episode in which Ike has his bris.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the same ultra-crude animation technique used for the cartoon-within-a-cartoon Terrence & Philip as with the toddler Ike, and later it was decided that this was a common characteristic of being Canadian.
And what’s with the eyes? I know that its quoted in one of the South Park Movie song or something about “Beady Eyes”, but again, I think that’s a reference to the fact they were already doing it in their animation.
Me too, but I thought that was in the first season. It was the forth episode of the second.