Dead Celebrities
The episode was written and directed by series co-creator Trey Parker, and was rated TV-MA L in the United States (specifically for adults, with coarse language).
Among the celebrities featured in the episode were Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze, Walter Cronkite, Dom DeLuise, Ted Kennedy, Natasha Richardson, Bea Arthur, David Carradine, DJ AM, Ricardo Montalbán, and Steve McNair.
He is haunted by people such as Farrah Fawcett, David Carradine, Ed McMahon, DJ AM, and especially Billy Mays, who repeatedly tries selling Ike products from the afterlife.
The boys call the team from the reality television series Ghost Hunters in to help, but they quickly, fearfully start ascribing supernatural meaning to random noises, before urinating and defecating on themselves, and finally running from the house.
At the hospital, the boys seek help from Dr. Philips, a medium (a parody of Zelda Rubinstein's character in Poltergeist), who explains the celebrities are trapped in purgatory, which she compares to being stuck on a plane that isn't quite ready to take off.
Surprisingly to her, the celebrities are all too acceptant of the fact, with CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite and actor Patrick Swayze revealing their trapped state's cause to be Michael Jackson's refusal to acknowledge his death.
The annoyed ghosts of these celebrities are shown in purgatory, which indeed does look like the interior of an airplane, minus the plane itself, complete with seats, flight attendants and pilot voice-over announcements.
The boys find from online research that the only way to make Jackson believe he is dead is to give him the acceptance he sought in life, so they take him to a child beauty pageant for young girls.
"Dead Celebrities" makes frequent mention of the Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant chain, describing the food as extremely tasty, but claiming it resulted in bloody stool.
In the episode's commentary, Trey Parker and Matt Stone admitted that they loved Chipotle, but found it funnier to use a restaurant with a reputation of being healthier rather than typical fast food restaurants like McDonald's or Carl's Jr.[9] Ike's ability to see the spirits of dead celebrities parodies the 1999 M. Night Shyamalan-directed film The Sixth Sense, which stars Haley Joel Osment as a young boy who can see ghosts.
[4] "When I first learned of the premise of this episode, I was expecting some biting social commentary on our culture's obsession with celebrities and the hypocrisy of treating them like dirt when they're alive and practically worshiping them when they die.
He praised the parodies of The Sixth Sense, Poltergeist and Ghost Hunters, but said some jokes, like the masturbating judges at the children's beauty contest, were offensive and unfunny.
[2] Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, stars of Ghost Hunters, declared that "far from being offended or incensed [...] they loved being made fun of alongside Michael Jackson and Billy Mays.
Club called it "a decent episode", but felt the dead celebrities were too obvious targets for South Park satire, adding, "It's easy to make the same jokes that the rest of the world already has."
[4] Ingela Ratledge of TV Guide favorably described the episode as the exact opposite of award show segments that reverentially pay homage to the year's departed celebrities, calling it "a wonderfully tasteless farewell.
It shows the boys taking Michael Jackson (in Ike's body) to the South Park location of Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks & Mortuaries to prove he is dead.
