Why South Park 'Permanently' Killed Off Kenny In Season 5

In almost every episode in the first few seasons of "South Park," Kenny McCormick gets killed in very violent and very funny ways. Stan would always say, "Oh my God, they killed Kenny," and Kyle followed up with, "You bastards!" The joke was one of the best running gags on TV, but stopped in Season 5 when Kenny died and actually stayed dead once the show's creators had grown tied of him.

"I am so sick of that character," "South Park" co-creator Matt Stone revealed to the Knoxville News (via the New York Post). Stone explained that Kenny "was always kind of a prop anyway. He couldn't say anything, so it is really hard to develop a character who could never really talk." In 2001, Kenny died for real in the aptly titled "Kenny Dies." While previous deaths had been throwaway jokes, this episode saw Kenny suffering from a terminal muscular disease, and unlike in every other instance, his friends were actually pretty upset. Well, Stan and Kyle are upset — Cartman is just using the tragedy to get stem cells to duplicate a Shakey's Pizza restaurant.

In the DVD commentary, Stone and Trey Parker explained that their original idea was to play the entire episode as a drama with no laughs whatsoever because they thought it would be funny. They ultimately decided they needed some comedy, however.

Following Kenny's death, Butters was promoted to the fourth main character in Season 6 of "South Park," before Tweek replaced him in the last few episodes. Even though Matt Stone said he thought "a lot of people probably haven't noticed" that Kenny died, there were some fans who were very upset that he wasn't on the show anymore. At the very end of the Season 6 finale, "Red Sleigh Down," Kenny just walks up like nothing happened. He's been a main character for more than 20 more seasons since.

Although Kenny came back, the gag of him dying in every episode didn't. Going forward, Kenny rarely died. In some seasons, he doesn't even die at all. In others, he only bites it in a small handful of episodes — often just one. Kenny also got more opportunities to show his face and received some more character development, alleviating Stone's earlier complaints about the character's limitations.

In Season 14, a trilogy of episodes parodying superheroes revealed that Kenny's many deaths and resurrections weren't just a gag, but actually a horrific curse of immortality. Every time Kenny died, he would be reborn with the memory of his previous deaths even though nobody around him had any recollection.