Parker and Stone felt the computer animation in "Volcano" had greatly improved compared to the early episodes; they were particularly pleased with the lava, which was made to resemble orange construction paper.

The episode parodied the Duck and Cover educational videos from the 1950s and 1960s that advised people to hide under tables in the event of a nuclear attack.

When night falls, Cartman tells the story of Scuzzlebutt, a creature that has a piece of celery in place of one of its hands and Patrick Duffy for a leg.

At a lower elevation, Randy orders the South Park residents to dig a trench to divert the lava away from the town.

Similarly, the duo acknowledge the tunnel built in the episode would not really divert the lava, but they included it because Parker said, "Any movie today, that's basically how dumb they are.

Since the episode involved children drinking beer and threatening each other at gunpoint during hunting trips, Parker said he did not believe Comedy Central would have aired it following the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.

[4] By "Volcano" – which was produced after "Weight Gain 4000" –, Parker and Stone felt the textures were improved, as well as smaller details like the lines around the eyes of the characters.

While the series pilot "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" was animated with construction paper, subsequent episodes were made using computers.

Stone and Parker were especially proud of the animation of the lava, which they said took hours to perfect, although they acknowledged it ended up simply resembling orange construction paper.

While meeting with her, they simply started drawing the character, and decided to add a celery hand and Patrick Duffy leg for no particular reason.

Parker and Stone noticed the consistency error after the episode was filmed, but they did not have enough time to go back and fix it before the broadcast date, so it was left in.

In order to add time to the episode, Parker and Stone added the scene with Ned singing the song "Kumbaya" around the fire, as well as the long freeze-frame on a shocked Chef and Mayor McDaniels reacting to the news of the volcano's imminent eruption.

In this first appearance, Randy is identified only as the South Park geologist,[1] and it is only in the episode "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" that he is first introduced as Stan's father.

Parker said his father is very calm in real life, and Randy's relaxed reaction to learning of the volcano—calmly sipping his coffee—is "about how my dad would react to anything".

[1] "Volcano" was released alongside five other episodes in a three-VHS set on May 5, 1998, marking the first time South Park was made available on video.

[7] "South Park: The Complete First Season", a DVD box set featuring all thirteen episodes, including "Volcano", was released on November 12, 2002.

Matt Stone claimed there was no particular reason Duffy was chosen as the leg, except that he is such a nondescript actor: "He's just super bland.

Mount Evanston, the fictional mountain in "Volcano", was named after the real Mount Evans in the Front Range region of the Rocky Mountains in Clear Creek County, Colorado; Nichols Canyon in the episode was named after Kirt Nichols, a friend of Trey Parker.

[10] Upon learning children are in danger due to the volcano, Mayor McDaniels seeks publicity for herself by contacting the television news programs Entertainment Tonight and Inside Edition.

[23] Peter Hawes of The Sunday Star-Times in Auckland, New Zealand, said the episode was funny and intelligent, adding, "Once again, the US national psyche is imperishably captured by a crude cartoon.

"[10] He liked the way adults were portrayed as less sensible than the children, and he particularly enjoyed the "Duck and Cover" videos: "It is terrifyingly funny, for it is a word-for-word recreation of the insane Atom-bomb Safety film, created and distributed in 1952 by the US government, who never for a second thought it would work.

"[10] The Daily Record of Glasgow, Scotland, praised the episode and described it as "hardcore humour": "Love it or loathe it, you can't ignore the adult animation series whose bite is worse than its bark.