A group of writers stood at Seattle's Ballard Locks watching salmon migrate upstream — what should've been a quiet sightseeing trip instead became the origin point of the joke that would most rattleKanye Westin South Park history. This was the version Bill Hader told last Thursday (August 13) in Los Angeles, when he inducted South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
Hader, who wrote for South Park from 2008 to 2017 and is also known for his work on Saturday Night Live and Barry, recalled at the ceremony that the writing team was on a location trip in Seattle when Parker and Stone insisted on going to Ballard Locks to watch the salmon swim upstream. Hader said he had no idea what the point of this was, and could only stand behind the two of them, watching as they silently stared at the fish.
According to Hader's account, Stone said, "Imagine a fish riding a motorcycle, Evil Knieveling over all the other fish," and Parker chimed in with, "And it's got a big fish dick." The two paused for a beat, and Stone asked, "Did you say fish stick or fish dick?" Parker confirmed it was the latter, specifying he meant "a fish's penis." On the drive back, Parker searched online and discovered no one had ever used this pun before, and the whole team got excited.
The joke was then assembled in the car: Cartman would throw out, "Do you like fish dicks? Do you like putting them in your mouth? Then you're a gay fish" — a bit that would get so big even Leno and Letterman played along with it. Then the team discussed who should be the target — someone who wouldn't get the joke and would get genuinely angry about it. Hader said everyone shouted out the same name in unison: Kanye West. The rest of the story — Kanye holding a press conference to deny being a "gay fish," then eventually jumping into the ocean to serenade a fish and have relations with it — became the plot of the actual episode, built around that setup, from Season 13's "Fishsticks."
At the end of his speech, Hader commented on his old collaborators' working style: "They write scripts like their entire reputation rides on every single line, every single turn, and they care so much about whether the emotion of an episode lands, not just the jokes. They want you to genuinely feel how badly Kanye West wants to sleep with that fish."
Kanye West has never quite let this bit go over the years, referencing the episode in 2010's "Gorgeous," "Made In America" from the Watch The Throne album, and a leaked 2021 demo of "Life Of The Party." His reactions in multiple interviews have also suggested he never quite grasped the original logic of the joke.
South Park has made headlines over the past year for its satirical jabs at U.S. President Donald Trump; Parker mentioned back in May that the White House's fierce backlash has only motivated them to keep going.
