Terrance and Phillip

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*South Park* character
Terrance and Phillip

Gender:	Male
Hair:	Black (Terrance) Blond (Phillip)
Age:	Unknown
Job:	Actors/Comedians
Religion:	Roman Catholic
First appearance:	Death
Voiced by:	Matt Stone (Terrance) Trey Parker (Phillip)

Terrance and Phillip are a pair of fictional characters in the American animated series South Park. They are a comedy duo from Canada.

Terrance (born as Terrence Henry Stoot in the "small Canadian village" of Toronto), voiced by Matt Stone, has black hair and wears a red shirt with a letter "T," while Phillip (Phillip Niles Argyle of Montreal), voiced by Trey Parker, has blond hair and a blue shirt with a "P." They may be named after Terrence Mann and Philip Quast, both famous for portraying Javert in the musical Les Miserables. The characters were inspired by the number of complaints about fart jokes in South Park. In commentary by Matt Stone and Trey Parker during the first episode Terrance and Phillip appeared, they complained of many people saying South Park was poorly animated and all fart jokes and thus invented Terrance and Phillip to demonstrate what a show that was all fart jokes would be, and made it even more poorly animated.

Like virtually all Canadians in South Park, Terrance and Philip are geometrically-figured with small beady eyes and Pac Man-like heads which flap up and down whenever they speak. This may originally have signified they were a crudely-animated series within another crudely-animated series, but was quickly retconned into a distinguishing feature of Canadians^{[citation needed]}. An alternate theory on this is that they appear voicing themselves as animated characters in the film, and happen to look exactly the same in both cases, much like Mr. T in the Mr. T animated series. Interestingly, at the beginning of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Cartman claims that, "The animation is all crappy," but later in the movie, characters interact with them as real people. While singing Blame Canada, Sharon Marsh refers to it as "the darn cartoon".

The duo briefly separated with Philip having a "serious job" as an actor in "Canadian Shakespeare" plays. Terrance also becomes obese in this episode.

1 South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
2 Similarities to South Park Creators
3 Terrance and Phillip as a satire
4 Trivia
5 Episodes in which they are prominent

[edit] South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

In the 1999 movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, outrage on the part of American mothers to the duo's profane act (in particular their feature film Asses of Fire and the video for their song Uncle Fucka) leads to their arrest when the duo appear as guests on the American late-night talk show Late Night with Conan O'Brien, which in turn leads to a war between Canada and the United States. Their deaths at the hands of Kyle's mother Sheila cause the upwelling of Satan and his partner-in-evil, Saddam Hussein, from the underworld. However, they were resurrected at the end of the movie by Kenny's wish that everything should return to normal.

[edit] Similarities to South Park Creators

In Bigger, Longer and Uncut, Terrance and Phillip go on Late Night With Conan O'Brien, where Brooke Shields is also a guest. Matt and Trey actually did visit the show with Brooke Shields, and this scene was meant to be a parody. Also, South Park parents' outrage in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, over Terrance and Phillip's movie Asses of Fire is meant as a statement of how real-world parents react to Trey Parker and Matt Stone's movie.

Another possible message comes from the episode "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow," where the team breaks up. Terrance claims that part of the reason they broke up was because he, Terrance, wrote all the episodes of their show while Phillip just said the lines. This is likely based on reports that Trey Parker is the main writer of South Park, with Matt Stone having less involvement with the creating process; the fact that Terrance is played by Stone and Phillip by Parker is probably meant to be ironic.

Terrance has black hair, as does Matt Stone, his voice actor. Phillip and Trey Parker both have blonde hair. This was likely intentional.

[edit] Terrance and Phillip as a satire

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Terrance and Phillip are most likely a self-parody -- that is, a representation of how many people viewed South Park at the time. Their comedy seems to mainly be based on fart jokes, which is how many people seemed to judge South Park. Since then, Terrance and Phillip has been used as a plot device to reflect how Matt and Trey (or alternatively, South Park) is viewed in the real world.

Some South Park fans see Terrance and Phillip as a parody of Beavis and Butt-head. The duo owe most of their fame to toilet humor and profanity, much like Beavis and Butt-head. They are also known to have a bad reputation with the children's parents. They also share the laughing that Beavis and Butthead is famous for and sit on a couch similar to Beavis and Butt-head's. In the commentary for the 2006 DVD edition of Beavis and Butt-head Do America, series creator Mike Judge relates how Parker and Stone once expressed their admiration for the show and how Judge offered them valuable advice when South Park was starting. According to Judge, Parker and Stone said that Beavis and Butt-head were like the blues in that it's the same kind of thing over and over again, but that the quality is always excellent. Judge took this as a high compliment.

Another quite plausible explanation of the basis for their creation is the Canadian comedic duo Wayne and Shuster. Wayne and Shuster made their debut on the Ed Sullivan Show, like the South Park characters. They also had a debate concerning whether or not a certain sketch would be suitable for American audiences; this can be reflected by the fact that in Terrance and Phillip's debut, the only part the American audience reacted to was an unintentional flatulence at the end of the performance. Many see this as a reference to the "Canadian perception of Americans."^{[citation needed]}

However they originated, Terrance and Phillip are two undoubtedly Canadian stereotypes. In "Not Without My Anus," they are invaded by Iraq. This is a famous stereotype, saying that Canada could be easily invaded^{[citation needed]}. In the same episode, they attend a "Roughriders vs Rough Riders" Canadian football game, seeing as how the Canadian Football League once had two football teams with near-identical nicknames. There is also a caribou visible in this episode.

The Canadian accent is also exaggerated for comic effect, using the common stereotyped view of Canadian raising, that is, that Canadians say "aboot" in place of "about," and "eh" in place of "er" and "huh" sounds. "Here" and "There" are sometimes changed to "Heeya" and "Theya."

[edit] Trivia

It has been implied twice ( "Not Without My Anus", & South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut) that Phillip may be a homosexual (in Not Without My Anus, he was surprised to discover that they weren't gay when he called Scott a homophobe. In South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, he made Terrance perform fellatio on him when he was asleep and took a picture of it), whereas Terrance, as seen in Not Without My Anus and Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow, is a ladies man, as he makes out with anyone who wants him to in Behind the Blow and he is shown in Not Without My Anus to have been married to Celine Dion and had a daughter named Sally.