10 South Park Secrets You Totally Missed

During Season five, Matt Stone and Trey Parker felt as though Kyle’s personality was too similar to Stan’s and were going to kill him off permanently, with Butters as the replacement within the group of boys. They eventually decided against it because they realised his character was an important part of the show and from then on started giving him some more individual traits (his moral high ground, for one) so that he would differ from Stan.

It was then decided Kenny would be killed off permanently as they felt he wasn’t crucial enough to the show and were also tired of thinking of new creative deaths for him. Unlike most of his demises, Kenny's death is "Kenny Dies" was played out with greater pacing and had nothing comical about it.

By the end of Season 6, his character made a return to the show as Parker and Stone believed he was important to the sitcom. His deaths would be less frequent and were eventually phased out completely.

Whilst we're on the subject of characters who were almost killed off permanently, Token Black was going to be killed off forever in Season 17’s “World War Zimmerman". Conclusively, that plotline was cancelled and Cartman just shot him instead. Admittedly, Token does not play a pivotal part of the show like Kyle does but it still would have been a shame to have lost him.