Much of the show's humor, and of "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", arises from the juxtaposition of the seeming innocence of childhood and the violent, crude behavior exhibited by the main characters.

Despite South Park eventually rising to immense popularity and acclaim, initial reviews of the pilot were generally negative; critics singled out the gratuitous obscenity of the show for particular scorn.

When Chef learns that Kyle's brother was abducted and sees a machine emerge from Cartman's anus, he helps the boys escape from school by pulling the fire alarm.

The origins of South Park date back to 1992, when Trey Parker and Matt Stone, then students at the University of Colorado, created a Christmas-related animated short commonly known as "Jesus vs. Frosty".

Fox Broadcasting Company executive Brian Graden saw the film, and in 1995, he commissioned Parker and Stone to create a second short that he could send to his friends as a video Christmas card.

[3][4][5][6] South Park was part of a reaction to the United States culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, in which issues such as Murphy Brown's motherhood, Tinky Winky's sexuality, and the Simpsons' family values were extensively debated.

The culture wars, and political correctness in particular, were driven by the belief that relativism was becoming more relevant to daily life, and thus what were perceived as "traditional" and reliable values were losing their place in American society.

Its critics argued that Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny were poor role models for children while its supporters celebrated the show's defense of free speech.

[9] This laborious process involved creating hundreds of construction paper cutouts—including individual mouth shapes and many of the characters in several different sizes—and photographing every frame of the show with an overhead camera, to the dialogue that had been recorded earlier.

[10] For example, in the original pilot, Cartman flatulates fire after some older kids feed him hot tamales, while in the shortened version, he does so because of the alien probe implanted inside him.

[14] Parker and Stone's original intentions were to have the alien presence feature more frequently in the plots of subsequent episodes, but eventually they decided against this, as they did not want the show to look like a parody of the popular television series The X-Files.

[9] However, the crew started hiding aliens in the background in many South Park episodes as Easter eggs for fans,[15] a tradition that goes back to their first major collaboration, the 1993 independent film Cannibal!

"[18] "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" received poor results from test audiences, and Comedy Central executives were uncertain whether to order additional episodes of the show.

Describing the general tone of the show, Teri Fitsell of The New Zealand Herald explains that "South Park is a vicious social satire that works by spotlighting not the immorality of these kids but their amorality, and contrasting it with the conniving hypocrisy of the adults who surround them.

"[21] Often compared to The Simpsons and King of the Hill, South Park, according to Tom Lappin of Scotland on Sunday, "has a truly malevolent streak that sets it apart" from these shows; he cites the repeated death of Kenny as an example.

"[25] Frederic Biddle of The Boston Globe notes how the show "constantly plays on its grade-school aesthetic for shock value, with great success", arguing that at its height, it is "more a profane 'Peanuts' than a downsized 'Beavis and Butt-Head.'"

[26] Claire Bickley of the Toronto Sun explains that "The show captures that mix of innocence and viciousness that can co-exist in kids that age", that "the boys are fascinated by bodily functions", and that they "mimic adult behavior and language".

As Ethan Thompson explains in his article, "Good Demo, Bad Taste: South Park as Carnivalesque Satire", the style consists of four crucial elements: humor, bodily excess, linguistic games that challenge official discourse, and the inversion of social structures.

"[32] "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" initially earned a Nielsen rating of 1.3, translating to 980,000 viewers, which is considered high for a cable program in the United States.

[35] Tim Goodman of The San Francisco Examiner acknowledged that many viewers will find South Park "vile, rude, sick, potentially dangerous, childish and mean-spirited".

He argued that viewers "have to come into 'South Park' with a bent for irony, sarcasm, anger and an understanding that cardboard cut-out animation of foul-mouthed third-graders is a tragically underused comic premise.

"[36] Calling the series "sophomoric, gross, and unfunny", Hal Boedeker of the Orlando Sentinel believed that this episode "makes such a bad impression that it's hard to get on the show's strange wavelength.

"[37] Similarly, Miles Beller of The Hollywood Reporter called it "a witless offering that wants to score as it seeks to be pointedly outrageous and aggressively offensive but clocks in as merely dumb.

During this time, the site also featured a version of the pilot with audio commentary by Eric Stough and South Park Studios creative director Chris Brion.