Trey Parker From ‘South Park’ Explains Why Minions Are So Successful And It’s All A Mathematical Trick

Trey Parker was involved with the Despicable Me movie franchise both as an actor and in the soundtrack department on the third installment of the film franchise. While on the red carpet for the film, an interviewer asked Trey Parker what makes the Minions so successful. Instead of giving a quick response about nothing, Trey actually dropped some knowledge about semitones and how he believes there’s a mathematical formula for the success of Minions.

Trey Parker claims that you take any voice, jack it up 8 semitones, and you’ve got mathematical gold. He claims this is what they did on South Park with the ‘member berries’, the little grapes that were a major focal point of Season 20. Trey keeps referring to this as ‘magic’ but this doesn’t sound too far off from what producers do with auto-tuning. You find a sound that people like and you shove it down their throats until the franchise is dead.

That interviewer on the red carpet was NOT expecting such a legitimate answer from Trey, and this is just proof that he’s an amazing person to interview. I had the opportunity to ask him and Matt Stone some questions a few years ago before ‘Book of Mormon’ hit Broadway and it was one of the best interviews of my life, even though it was a group format with multiple people grilling them with questions at the same time. These guys are pros. (h/t r/videos)

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Cass Anderson is the Editor-in-Chief of BroBible. Based out of Florida, he covers an array of topics including NFL, Pop Culture, Fishing News, and the Outdoors.