 South Park back in its prime made a huge mark in adult animation becoming one of the most infamous adult shows, even to this very day, next to The Simpsons and Family Die. However, as you would expect from a show like South Park, it suffered a plethora of controversies, from the use of the N-word 43 times, to the depiction of Muhammad Hyde and Allah. The controversy I will be talking about has little coverage on the internet, there are a few small mentions of it on articles, and a very old post on 4chan with two replies which regarded skepticism due to lack of evidence, and has faded into obscurity, mainly due to how Comedy Central appears to be pretty good on covering up their tracks on a small controversy. The controversy in question dates back to 1996. A small group of audiences were allowed in the Comedy Central Studios in New York. These people have never been identified. They went into the room where test screenings for upcoming shows usually take place. The audience were excited to hear that they will be the first ones to witness Comedy Central's newest show. The test screening consisted of an animation test of an upcoming cartoon, South Park. In a few articles on the web, it was stated that unlike the actual pilot of the show, it was computer animated in 3D and was a far cry from the show's usual cut out style. Originally pitched to Comedy Central, it was animated by a small animation company known as Dreamspark Animation, a company that specializes in computer generated imagery, CGI, similar to Pixar or Pacific Data Images. The company was founded around the time CG was getting popular in the 80s, and in the latter half in the 90s, when the founder Darren Palfs was amused by CG after being astonished by the works of PDI when he attended SIGGRAPH in 1983. Palfs, before his work in the animation industry, was a computer programmer for Apple, and worked for the company until 1986, where he decided to give computer animation a shot, despite having no prior experience in film and animation. The company was originally run out of a cheap building in New Jersey, and there were only three employees. Palfs tried to get Apple to have some sort of interest in them, but when Apple turned them down, they went to the likes of IBM and other technology companies to see if they will have any interest in them. When Palfs saw that no one took interest in his company, he decided to go solo on the project. While it is true that they made computer animation that were merely just commercial work for TV, companies didn't really take notice in them until in the fall of 1994, when CEO of Comedy Central at the time Robert Creek invited DreamSpark into the studio to work on an animation test of an upcoming cartoon they recently pitched. The executives at Comedy Central wanted the show to be animated in CG, after seeing the success of the TV show Reboot, which premiered earlier that year. The studio gave Palfs's company a budget of $50,000 and a deadline. Originally planned to air in late 1995, the project spiraled into somewhat of development hell. Due to the small number of employees and software with weak processing units, by only two months they had only rendered 30 seconds of animation. In Palfs's own words, he said that he and his employees had actually started making process once they had acquired a merry band of computers. He paid for them out of his own pocket, since he wanted the budget to mostly go to animation, and even helped with his employees most of the time. In 1995, Palfs started to get his employees to work harder to meet the studio's standards, and Comedy Central even threatened the company that they will shut down production. Once new animation was rendered, Palfs sent the newly made footage to the studio for their thoughts. Comedy Central always replied either it wasn't up to their standards, or the animation needed some work, or both. Most of the time it was both. DreamSpark worked 24-7 non-stop. The employees and CEO never left the building, unless they needed to send the footage to Comedy Central. At night, they worked even harder than the day. One of the employees even suffered major insomnia, hallucinating that the characters jumped out of the computer and taunted them. Another employee even wanted to quit due to unsafe work conditions. Each presentation meant another row of sleepless nights of animating the same character and rendering the same environment over and over and over. It was madness. Pure madness. There was no time for storyboards, thoughts just have to immediately come up during animation. Palfs mostly stays in his office all day, working on rendering. Near the end of the year, Palfs as well as the rest of his team have already been stressed out due to deadlines. The four of them have been working on all of the animation and lighting, basically a lot for only four people when considering most animation companies have up to hundreds. And despite up-to-date equipment it was still being inundated with hardware problems. The computers constantly crashed during test renders, and on top of that, bedlines kept on coming. Nonetheless, the team still continued to work overnight to the point where none of them could even stay awake any longer. Palfs usually made some coffee for him and his employees during rendering to help them stay awake. The intended pilot was supposed to be at least 30 minutes, a bit too long an episode to work on with such a small number of employees. Palfs still kept on working, even harder than the other employees. Until in the spring of 96, he finally snapped. He gave out more newly written scenes for the animators to work on, telling them not to think about it. In order to achieve edge for an adult cartoon, he came up with twisted ideas, such as surreal, dark humor, even darker than most adult shows. The employees usually gave temporary voices to the characters for the test reels, and Phelps asked one of the employees to do a voice of the main character dying. The pilot became more cynical than what Comedy Central was expecting. That summer, Palfs called up the studio saying to rearrange a test screening for the finished pilot. Palfs also informed them not to watch it yet until the screening, claiming it to be a surprise. This brings us to the now. Comedy Central set up the TV and got out the tape. The label read nothing but Cartman Pizza. Copyright 1995. The runtime was also written on the label, being a mere two minutes, a far cry from the intended half an hour the Comedy Central staff was expecting. Deeply disappointed, the staff nevertheless put the tape in the VCR, rewound it, and it started to play. The following information was gathered when the video was analyzed. The video started with a black screen with great text saying, Cartman orders pizza. Copyright 1995. Not for redistribution. The screen then fades to black before cutting to the animation. Coming music, like something you'd hear in a shopping mall, plays as it shows a living room with a child character sitting on the couch. The character in question was wearing yellow gloves, brown pants, a red shirt, and a blue and yellow toque. The character started to speak, with subtitles forming on the screen. And the movie for Tasty Pizza. With thick rice flavor. Tomato delicious. And cheese of the year. The character, who appears to be the character Eric Cartman that the VHS label was referring to, then turns his head to see a phone on a table. The phone had only four buttons with the letters P, I, Z, and A. His arms then stretch to pick up the phone, using the keypad he spells out the word pizza on the phone. Another character can be heard from the other line, saying, Thank you for calling Pizza, what can you put in your mouth today? Eric then once again says the same line, although slightly altered. Get me a Tasty Pizza with thick rice flavor, tomato delicious, and cheese of the year. The screen then pans into the phone, as the pizza delivery guy then replies, I'm afraid we don't sell that. He says. The screen then cuts to Eric, and then it slowly pans closer to his face as the screen then gains a reddish tint and ominous music plays, something that sound like a jet airplane taking off. He yells out. The phone then falls to the ground as Eric then decides to fly into the telephone in a cartoon like fashion. The scene then cuts to a table with a phone resting on it, as Eric then comes out of the phone and into a room with the words, pizza factory, behind him. Eric then says in a threatening tone. The pizza delivery man tries to reason with Eric, stating, This apparently does not make Eric any less mad as he rises up into the air and starts to spin. Eric starts to blow as the pizza delivery man starts to melt. Eric laughs, yet the pizza delivery man starts screaming. The screens, well, it sounded almost like. It sounded like it came from a video. A recording of some sort, to be exact. Unknown fast paced music started playing, as the voices went from a mix of screams and moans. One of the staff members tried to turn off the VCR, but it apparently was jammed, which made him swear a little bit, which was honestly kinda funny for the other staff members, since he normally doesn't swear. The test audience stared blankly at the screen, almost like as if they were hypnotized. However, for reasons unknown, the staff didn't felt that kind of way. As two of the staff members tried the best they can do, the video continued. While the audio continued, the video cuts to a showcase of unrelated test animations of the Eric character model running in place. Well, not really running, more like bouncing from his left leg to his right. There was 7 seconds of this until cutting to the next scene, which consisted of a traditionally animated, like something from a Disney movie, clip of a white humanoid creature's face, fading into the screen. It smiles in a horrific-like fashion, with clip chief as it smiles, stretching its mouth wider than it was humanly possible. It flicks its tongue in a grotesque-like manner before ending. This scene creeped out the staff the most. The animation in the clip looked way too fluid and surreal for people to believe it was actually man-made, and the face of the creature was drawn in a way that wouldn't have been possible with cell animation, or even with CG for that matter. The last clip shown was a plethora of maggots decomposing a dead body, burrowing in the cheeks and the eye socket. One of the staff members felt the urge to vomit, and ran out of the room. The screaming and the music became louder, as it cuts back to Eric's getting faster and faster, until stopping to face the screen. This becomes all the more apparent as the pizza delivery man starts turning into a pizza. The screams have finally stopped, as the last 3 notes of the song repeats over and over again, as the pizza starts to fly inside of Eric's mouth, to which the music stops. Eric then flies back into the phone and says, The camera then follows Eric into the phone, where an identified character wearing an orange jacket covering his mouth comes into the screen. The character mumbles something that doesn't appear to be English at first, before swelling up and popping like a balloon. Text comes into the screen, saying, Another string of text forms into the bottom, saying, The tape then ends, and the staff looked at the TV horrified. They looked at the test audience, and realized that all color has drained from their eyes, leaving only the pupil. Eyewitness accounts say that the audience started screaming. They squealed in a high-pitched sound as one of them jumped out a window, with two of them slicing their necks with the broken glass. Two of the audiences ran out of the building, and went missing the following week. Speaking of the following week, an executive at Comedy Central drove to the Dream Spark Animation HQ in New Jersey, to see that the door was left unlocked. He went inside, and saw that the whole building was completely demolished inside. The computers were all destroyed and the lights appeared to be broken. There was no sign of the other three employees. He went inside Pelf's old office, which apparently the lights were still intact. Pelf's body was found dead, with a bunch of blank papers and a broken coffee mug all over the floor. Further analysis found that the cause of death was a heart attack brought on by lack of sleep and stress. On his desk was the animation cells of the aforementioned scene with the creature's face, with the phone number of the executive written on one of them with a black marker. The executive heard a groan coming from inside of the closet, causing him to run out of the room and out of the building. The last member, a 23-year-old girl, ran out, never to be seen again until 2020, where she broke into the Comedy Central headquarters and stole the footage. This could explain why it was uploaded onto YouTube. The version that was uploaded onto YouTube was heavily edited, removing parts of the middle chunk, specifically the disturbing scenes. The question is what was her motive in stealing the footage? I recently got a hold of her over Skype, and I did a small interview with her. She said that she obsessed over it. She felt the need to watch it again, even going as far as to say quote. I would even kill to see it again. End quote. I told her if she recently got help, and she replied with. No, but I will think about later today. She even concluded saying that she'll keep me updated on the situation, but I don't expect her to really do that, but that's that, I guess. The incident still remains unsolved, as again, little coverage exists on the web. The original version of the tape and cut apparently appears to be lost media, and there has been some speculation that the full video is up somewhere on the dark web, but I have no way to confirm this. This event happened over than 20 years ago, anything relating to this incident has appeared to have left the company. You would expect that it would just come out, but I checked, and many others have checked too. There were no records of anything that could back up this mystery other than the footage. I even contacted Comedy Central about this incident, but they didn't return my calls or emails, as expected. Calling the number of DreamSpark animation will give you an automated message saying that the company went out of business in 2003, and the building has been renovated into a hair salon. The only surviving witness to my knowledge is the girl who demands to remain anonymous. She even responded to how Comedy Central is trying to cover up this controversy, and says that's one hell of an effort to try to cover up their tracks. She's right, though. I've never heard of this sort of thing ever again. There just wasn't enough to report to the authorities. I tried to track down the IP address that uploaded the YouTube video, but it simply said it never existed. The video is still studied. Note, this creepypasta was based on the video by Exploshy. I recommend you watch her. She's very talented.