Original air date: 10/27/1999
Korn comes to South Park and investigate a mystery involving pirate ghosts. The boys use Kyle's grandmother's corpse to scare the fifth graders.
This episode provides the following:
- Actually Pretty Funny:
- Cartman's mom can't stop laughing at the fat jokes targeted at her son.
- Stan cracks up at Cartman impersonating Kyle's dead grandma.
- Adam Westing: Dark, gloomy metal band Korn playing cheery, Mystery Inc. versions of themselves.
- Affectionate Parody: Of Scooby-Doo.
- Animation Bump: Kenny's Robocop costume is animated far more fluidly than the rest of the episode.
- Blind Without 'Em: Fieldy takes after Velma in that he can't see for crap when he loses his glasses. His vision is so bad, he mistakes a pirate ghost for one of his bandmates, even though all the ghost says is "Aarrhhh!"
- Buffy Speak: When Nibblett punctures the Antonio Banderas doll:Cartman: You son of a bitch chicken from outer space...thing, come back here!
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Cartman is led around with a blindfold to touch items simulating body parts. He feels eggs that are said to be eyeballs, Jello cubes which are supposedly brains, and a horse's ass to simulate the innards of the body (although he say it feels like cold spaghetti).
- Call-Back: Wendy wins the costume contest for her Chewbacca mask again.
- Casting Gag
- An uncredited Frank Welker voices the funny animal sidekick in a Scooby-Doo parody. Amusingly this was a few years before Welker took over as Scooby's official voice actor.
- Since he's the shortest member of the band (5'7", with the others all being around 6') and wears glasses, Trey Parker and Matt Stone decided to make Fieldy (Korn's bassist) the Velma of the episode.
- Christmas Creep: Cartman is looking forward to Christmas on the day before Halloween, to the point of circling what he wants in a shopping catalogue and singing Christmas carols while he and his friends set up their Zany Scheme to scare the fifth graders. Eventually, a delivery man shows up with a package for his mother, but Cartman assumes it's his Christmas present and takes a peek. It turns out to be an Antonio Banderas love doll, but Cartman is ecstatic over it.
- Continuity Nod: Korn can briefly be heard playing a piece from Skyler Morse's song "Shelly, Shelly" from "Cat Orgy".
- Distinction Without a Difference: "They're not pirate ghosts; they're ghost pirates!". The distinction, apparently, is that a ghost pirate is the ghost of a pirate, whereas a pirate ghost is a ghost that decided to become a pirate.
- Do Wrong, Right: When the angry mob decides to flip the band's van over, Officer Barbrady steps in...to provide instructions on how to do it properly.
- Dude, Not Funny!: At the cemetery, when Eric mimicks Kyle's dead grandma to scare Kyle, the latter calls him out for it. Stan thinks it's Actually Pretty Funny.
- Epileptic Flashing Lights: Light effect during the Korn song at the end.
- Fright Beside Them: Fieldy mistaking a pirate ghost for one of his bandmates.
- Ghost Pirate: The fiends that are currently haunting the South Park dock. Korn can't decide whether they qualify as "ghost pirates" or "pirate ghosts."
- Gratuitous Animal Sidekick: Nibblet, Korn's Space Chicken, is a parody of this type of character. His only significant contribution to the plot is that he's the one who exposes who is behind the pirate ghosts.
- Halloween Episode: Korn solve a mystery involving pirate ghosts in an Affectionate Parody of Scooby-Doo
- Homage: This episode is a parody of Scooby-Doo, and has Korn portrayed with the same personalities of the Mystery Inc. group (even using 60's phrases such as "Groovy"), and even riding in a van designed similarly to the Mystery Machine.
- The trap is sprung in a similar way, with the cast splitting up into two teams. Each team has its own adventure to chase the 'ghost' into being captured.
- Korn's trap consists of everyday objects, similar to Fred's traps.
- I Am Big Boned: Mrs. Cartman tells the boys that Eric is not fat but big-boned.Kyle: He must have a huge bone in his ass then.
Mrs. Cartman: (Laughs uncontrollably)
Cartman: GOD DAMN IT, MOM! - I Love the Dead: The officers in charge of the investigation assume, with absolutely no evidence, that the corpse of Kyle's grandmother was dug up by an insane necrophiliac to have sex with.
- Identically Powered Team: All the members of Korn have the ability to turn into various forms of corn.
- Impossible Shadow Puppets: It's amazing what one can do with cotton swabs and a flashlight.
- Inescapable Net: The ghost pirates get trapped in one by Nibblet.
- Insistent Terminology: There is a big debate over whether the proper term is "pirate ghosts" or "ghost pirates".
- Laugh Track: Parodied. Happens a few times — once when Head is told that he's reading a map upside down, and twice in succession when Fieldy (mistaking a pirate ghost as Jonathan due to not having his glasses) asks the ghost if he has a cold, followed by mistaking the ghost's screaming as a song. In a case of No Fourth Wall, Cartman asks "who's laughing".
- Let's Split Up, Gang!:Jonathan: Alright, gang, we have to split up and look for clues.
Stan: How should we split up?
Jonathan: I know. Let's have everyone who enjoys having obstacles in their life, which they can overcome, go this way, [points to his right] and everyone whose insecurities sabotage their potential to overcome those obstacles go that way. [points to his left]
Korn: O-kay! [the groups separates in two. In the secure group are Stan, Kyle, Jonathan, Munky, and Fieldy. In the insecure group are Cartman, Kenny, David, and Head]
Kyle: Wow! That was easy. - Mean Character, Nice Actor: In-universe. Korn are depicted as a bunch of dorky and somewhat bumbling Nice Guys who are eager to solve this groovy mystery. When they start playing their music, they take on their more sinister stage personas.
- Mood Whiplash: Korn maintain their cheery, Scooby-Doo like personas all throughout the episode, right up until the very end when they happily announce to the crowd that they wrote a song about their adventures in South Park... and then they play "Falling Away From Me" to the horrified shock of the townspeople.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Korn members and the ghost pirates/pirate ghosts are designed more realistically, and with outlines (which South Park usually lacks), to emulate the style of Scooby-Doo.
- Only Sane Woman: The South Park resident who questions the officers in charge of the necrophilia investigation. "Excuse me. How is this helping?"
- Rotten Rock & Roll: Father Maxi detests demon-worshipping rock music.
- Rule of Cool: When Cartman points out that Korn turning into corn didn't do anything, Head notes they know but it's cool to do.
- Sad Clown: Quite a literal example as Kyle was dressed as a clown and started crying when his grandmother was missing.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Parodied. It turns out that all the paranormal occurrences were the result of Priest Maxi trying to stop the Halloween Haunt- but the "logical explanations" include such ridiculousness as Maxi using a flashlight to create a giant ghost ship and a dog apparently swallowing an entire corpse whole.
- Shout-Out:
- The cemetery managers' description of the defiling of Kyle's dead grandma is taken from Nekromantik.
- Kyle's Grandma's tombstone is a tribute to the late Stanley Kubrick. The tombstone has 1928-1999 written on it, which is Kubrick's birth and death years.
- Shovel Strike: Kyle hits Cartman in the face with a shovel when he mocks him for being a wimp.
- Skintone Sclerae: The members of Korn feature these as an homage to the art style of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!.
- Sidekick Creature Nuisance: Nibblet, the resident Scooby-Doo Expy is some kind of weird bird-monkey creature whose antics often get the gang in trouble.Officer Barbrady: What the Hell is that thing?
- Special Guest: The members of Korn provide their own voices for this episode. They also used the episode for the world premiere of their single "Falling Away from Me".
- Spoofy-Doo: The episode parodies Scooby-Doo, with the metal band Korn in the roles of Mystery Incorporated as they investigate why pirate ghosts are haunting the town (which they are blamed for). They have their own mascot, Nibblet, but unlike Scoob, he generally gets in the way of the investigation and only manages to help uncover the culprit's identity in the end. To complete the reference, they're all drawn in the style of Where Are You!, contrast to everyone else in the episode.
- The Stinger: The credits are briefly interrupted with a scene in which Kenny gets killed by tiny Snowspeeders.
- Talk Like a Pirate: There are ghosts who are pirates, so of course they're going to talk like this!
- They Killed Kenny Again: The credits are interrupted by a scene where Kenny is killed by Snowspeeders. This is the first time Kenny dies without his parka.
- Too Much Information: The graveyard watchmen explaining with great detail how to have sex with a decayed corpse, as well as providing a fun audible demonstration by fisting a jar of mayonnaise.
- Torches and Pitchforks: When the townspeople decide to lynch Korn.
- Transformation Sequence: The sequence of Korn turning into corn.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Kenny's ED-209 costume is an actual working robotic suit, but everyone else dismisses it, much to his frustration.
