20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About South Park

After killing off Kenny in just about every single episode, Parker and Stone decided they'd do it for real in the Season 5 episode Kenny Dies. In that finale, Kenny actually does die, and then he's absent for all of Season 6 (only to return at the very end). Originally, though, it wasn't going to be Kenny who would be offed: it was going to be Kyle.

Up until a couple of weeks before the episode was made, the idea was to kill Kyle in the season finale, partly because Parker and Stone felt that Kyle and Stan were a bit too similar. Meanwhile, they were starting to love Butters as a character, and so the plan was to kill Kyle and have Butters replace him for good. They changed their minds, but still liked the idea of actually killing off a character in the last episode, and so they moved the plot onto Kenny, mainly because they got sick of having him die every week.