If you were to name one of the many great gags in Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s great 2004 puppet movie, Team America: World Police, the answers are usually “Murica, F**K YEAH,” Kim Jong-il being “ronery”, the hilariously graphic puppet sex scene, and the weird-looking Matt Damon puppet that can only say his own name (which has held up fantastically well).
Whereas the Murica song, Kim Jong-il and the sex scene came about naturally in the writing process for Team America, the Matt Damon joke happened purely by accident.
Production on Team America was a chaotic and stressful affair for both Trey and Matt as not only were they directing and writing, working with puppets was ridiculously time-consuming and difficult. In fact, the pair were so overworked that they didn’t see the final finished product until the premiere.
Trey and Matt’s original plan was to make their version of Matt Damon intelligent and articulate. But when the puppet came out of the oven, he ended up looking, ahem, “retarded.”
But seeing as how busy everyone was and the lack of time needed to make a new puppet, Trey and Matt shrugged their shoulders and simply changed their Matt Damon’s personality from intelligent to an idiot who could only say his own name.
It was nothing but a last minute rush job given the circumstances but this ultimately became one of Team America‘s greatest gags that has not only stood the test of time but has essentially given Matt Damon a permanent slice of pop-culture capital he wouldn’t have gotten had be been portrayed as a regular character.
As for how the real life Matt Damon felt about being mocked by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (both of whom are his friends), he was understandably “bewildered” but took it in good stride and praised Trey and Matt as “geniuses” for their great satirical stuff and for including him in their work, even if he was portrayed as an idiot.
So there you have it, Team America‘s Matt Damon joke came about not because Trey Parker and Matt Stone hated the guy but because the film’s puppet maker messed up and everyone just rolled with it. But hey,