South Park: Kenny’s 12 Greatest Deaths

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is a ridiculous movie musical with some of the finest songs ever heard in cinema. It’s also one of the first times the writers have taken the death of Kenny McCormack seriously (relatively speaking).

Kenny is dispatched early on, a victim of a too-successful attempt at lighting a fart on fire. It seems as though that might be it for the boy, but instead he descends to hell, where he catches wind of a plot by Satan, at the urging of miscreant sex pest Saddam Hussein, to take over the earth. Kenny takes the form of a ghost for much of the film, haunting Cartman with chilling warnings, but he also provides counsel for Satan, whose relationship with Hussein is an unhealthy one.

In a heartwarming moment, the film ends with Kenny ascending to heaven after removing his hood for the first time in the series’ history. The South Park movie is unsurprisingly built on a bedrock of shock humour and pointed satire, but they manage, not for the last time, to pull off something genuinely heartwarming through their use of the ultra-mortal Kenny.