South Park’s Kenny R.I.P.

The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have finally decided to kill off Kenny McCormick after countless prior “deaths.” Kenny has been killed in over 80 episodes in various ways. He has been crushed, impaled, mutilated, microwaved, and dismembered, among other things. Since the show debuted in 1997 on Comedy Central, Kenny was killed in every episode. This helped to launch the most popular catchphrase associated with the show, “Oh my God! They killed Kenny! You bastards!” Yet, he would show up in the next episode, alive and mumbling.

The creators gave him a terminal muscular disease and on December 5 Kenny was gone for good. Stone told the Knoxville News-Sentinel, “It was the one episode where [all the characters] cared [he was dying] for once. After that, we said, “Why doesn’t he just stay dead?’ And it was like, “Okay, let’s just do that.’ It was that easy of a decision. I think a lot of people probably haven’t noticed. I couldn’t care less. I am so sick of that character.”

As stated on Eonline.com, Stone said it just became too difficult to come up with new and exotic ways for Kenny to die. He is quoted as saying, “We got sick of figuring out ways to kill him. It was funny the first 38 or 40 times we did it. Then it turned into, “Okay, how can we kill him now?“” There have been mixed feelings from South Park fans. Some are not happy to see Kenny go and others are happy about his demise, paving the way for a new character, Butters. Who knows, they started with Kenny’who could be next to go?