South Park- All About Mormons

Condensed version of South Park's parody on Mormonism's Lost 116 Pages. See: Lost 116 Pages on Wikipedia.
The gold plates in this parody are shown as 4 seperate plates, when they were actually claimed to be a stack bound with 3 gold rings. Also, the gold plates were always covered or in a box. Some, as in the "Three Witnesses," claimed to see them in "vision" only. (The experience of the "Eight Witnesses" was "visionary" as well. Furthermore, all of the Eight were members of either the family of Joseph Smith Jr., including his father, or the family of one of the Three Witnesses' father, David Whitmer.) Others claimed to handle them while covered, indicating that Joseph had something rectangular on display, that if uncovered, would expose his charlatanism. In reality, there never were any real gold plates. This parody also has the townsfolk in 1820 talking of Joseph's "First Vision" of seeing the Heavenly Father and Jesus. However, this is anachronistic since no one in 1820 knew of it like that, as it was first dictated by Joseph in 1838, and no published source mentions it until 1842. See: New Light on Joseph Smith's First Vision.

It's gone now. Go here instead to see still frames of it.

UPDATE: See the entire episode here: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s07e12-all-about-the-mormons


After the parody of the Lost 116 Pages is an interesting exchange. Here is the transcript starting at 7:20:

Stan: Wait, Mormons actually know this story and they still believe Joseph Smith was a prophet?

Mormon: Well sure, the story proves it, doesn’t it?

Stan: No, it proves he did make it all up! Are you blind?

Mormon: Well Stan, it’s all a matter of faith.

Stan: No, it’s a matter of logic. If you’re gunna say things that have been proven wrong like the first man and woman lived in Missouri and that Native Americans came from Jerusalem, then you better have something to back it up. All you’ve got are a bunch of stories about some a$$wipe who read plates nobody ever saw out of a hat and then couldn’t do it again when the translations were hidden!