South Park: Kenny’s 12 Greatest Deaths
The many deaths of Kenny McCormack - which comes out on top?
Love it or hate it, there’s no debating that South Park has been an audacious show. It’s unafraid to tackle politics, risk the ire of powerful celebrities, and take on the big questions of our day. It’s also a show whose most well known joke is that a little boy in an orange parka dies a lot.
Kenny’s deaths aren’t as important a part of the show as they once were, but in the early days of South Park, when it was genuinely shocking, the glee with which the writers depicted the graphic death of this cute, innocent(ish) kid was one of its most important aspects.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone literally built a character around a propensity for dying a lot, and their comedy empire rolled on from there. It’s hardly the most thoughtful or groundbreaking thing they’ve ever done, but it made the show what it was.
Over the course of 20-odd years, Kenny has died in all manner of ways, for all manner of reasons. Some have been to progress a story, some for emotional heft, some simply for the gag. When it comes to killing Kenny, the possibilities are endless.
12. Laughs To Death
Kenny’s death in this episode is relatively mundane: after seeing a video of Cartman performing a song and dance routine dressed as a pig, he is so overcome with hysterics that he laughs himself to death. It happens fairly early on, and is not exactly remarkable in its presentation.
What it does do, though, is kick off one of the most famous and beloved episodes of the show’s entire run. Cartman is made to look a fool by his rival, ninth grader Scott Tenorman. Not one to take this kind of effrontery lying down, Cartman proceeds to put into event a sequence of events which results in Scott eating his own parents in a bowl of chilli, after Cartman lures them to their deaths on a farmer’s field.
It’s pretty much the moral event horizon for young Eric: wher he was crude and annoying before, from here he becomes a monster.
Really, you can take Kenny’s death as the moment the show changes forever. Prior to Kenny laughing himself to death, South Park is a silly and gross comedy about kids swearing. Post-death, it’s a show capable of astonishing darkness.