South Park’s Latest Special Revived The Show’s Oldest Joke After A 4-Year Break

WARNING! This article contains SPOILERS for South Park: The End of Obesity

Summary South Park: The End of Obesity brings back a classic gag from the show's early seasons for a nostalgic throwback to its origins.

Kenny's death in the special signals a return to the series' anarchic humor, showcasing the show's enduring love for its iconic jokes.

Tony the Tiger's role in killing Kenny adds a new twist to the running gag, proving that South Park's humor remains sharp and relevant.

After a few years spent steering clear of the classic gag, South Park: The End of Obesity brought back the show’s most famous recurring joke. South Park has a love/ hate relationship with its early seasons. Before the show became a topical political satire, South Park originally focused on gross-out humor, shock value, and obscenity to garner laughs. The show’s plots were much more random and chaotic, with South Park’s lack of focus yielding varying results. Embarrassed by this early messiness, South Park co-creator Trey Parker once said he wished he could erase the show’s first three seasons from existence.

However, co-creator Matt Stone said he loved one of South Park’s most hated episodes due to this anarchic sense of humor. While South Park season 27 may not bring back the pandemonium of the show’s crude first few years, 2024’s first feature-length special proved that the series still has an affinity for its earliest gags. South Park: The End of Obesity satirizes Ozempic, Mounjaro, and other weight-loss drugs as Kyle attempts to help Cartman handle his obesity. In the process, South Park’s Kyle-centric special brings back one of the show’s earliest, and most iconic, jokes.

South Park: The End of Obesity Killed Kenny

The Supporting Star Was Killed By Tony The Tiger

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South Park: The End of Obesity revealed that the shady characters suppressing anti-obesity drugs were Tony the Tiger, Lil Debbie, Captain Crunch, and other assorted mascots for sugary snack food brands. These corporate cartoons were invested in keeping customers addicted to sugar, so the manufacturers of semaglutides posed a big risk to their profits. When Randy and a group of Ozempic-addicted suburban mothers hijacked a truck delivering semaglutides to South Park, they were ambushed by the cereal mascots. Kyle, Kenny, Stan, Cartman, and Butters were caught in the middle of the mess as they tried to get Cartman his drugs.

Kenny was thrown out of the truck and into a windshield by Tony the Tiger.

Although the promise of Cartman losing weight could have ended South Park’s oldest joke, this didn't come to pass in The End of Obesity’s ending. Instead, South Park brought back a classic gag by killing off Kenny for the first time in four years during the special’s closing scene. When Randy betrayed the moms and sided with the boys, the ensuing high-speed chase featured a grisly scene where Kenny was thrown out of the truck and into a windshield by Tony the Tiger. Naturally, this prompted Kyle to utter his famous catchphrase. This recurring joke last appeared in 2020’s The Pandemic Special.

South Park’s Earlier Specials Temporarily Killed Kenny

Post Covid and Joining The Panderverse Killed Versions Of Kenny

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In the show’s early years, South Park used to kill off Kenny in every episode. This running joke grew increasingly gruesome and elaborate until season 5 temporarily retired the gag with episode 13, “Kenny Dies.” This episode featured Kenny’s seemingly permanent death, although he was revived in the season 6 finale, “Red Sleigh Down.” Seasons 8 and 9 then featured only one Kenny death each as the series moved away from the running joke. However, like South Park’s recurring election episodes, the show continued to revisit this gag over the ensuing decades, even in recent specials.

In South Park: Post-COVID, Kenny’s death was treated as a dramatic tragedy, but it was reversed by time travel in South Park: Post-COVID: The Return of Covid.

South Park once went over three seasons in a row without killing off Kenny, but the show’s recent specials found clever ways to revisit the gag without impacting the canon of the series. In South Park: Post-COVID, Kenny’s death was treated as a dramatic tragedy, but it was reversed by time travel in South Park: Post-COVID: The Return of Covid. Similarly, thanks to the special’s multiverse premise, Joining The Panderverse could kill off Kenny without really committing to the idea. Ultimately, neither of these was the show’s real version of Kenny, thus allowing these two deaths to reference the joke without killing Kenny.

Why South Park Stopped Killing Off Kenny

This Gag Was Closely Associated With The Show’s Early Seasons

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South Park stopped killing off Kenny since the joke grew tired and, as it was closely associated with the series since its inception, predictable. When the series switched from anarchic gross-out humor to topical satire around seasons 4 and 5, a series consultant told VH1 that it became harder for Parker to fit the joke into every outing. For his part, Stone wasn’t heartbroken by the decision to permanently kill off Kenny in season 5, telling The Knoxville News Sentinel he was sick of the character. Although this was temporary, it did signal a change in the focus of the series.

South Park’s many Kenny deaths belong to an era when the series wasn’t trying to say much about society and culture. South Park’s original premise saw the show aim to satirize adult life through the eyes of children, but the show’s first few seasons were more concerned with gore and random humor than political figures or real-life events. As such, South Park’s Kenny deaths began to receive less focus as the show devoted more time and focus to news stories. From season 6 onwards, Kenny’s deaths were integrated into the show’s plot lines instead of taking place at random.

When Recent South Park Seasons Brought Back Kenny’s Running Gag

Season 21 Revived The Gag After 4 Years

The reason that South Park revived Kenny’s running joke was to offer viewers a nostalgic throwback to the show’s early years.

Kenny didn’t die between South Park seasons 17 and 21, much like he didn’t die between 2020’s The Pandemic Special and 2024’s South Park: The End of Obesity. However, Kenny died repeatedly in seasons 21 and 22, getting killed by a driver who was texting off-screen and an Amazon Alexa in the two outings. The reason that South Park revived Kenny’s running joke was to offer viewers a nostalgic throwback to the show’s early years. Like Kenny’s less frequent deaths in seasons 6-17, both of these events were central to the plots of their respective episodes.

The show’s early episodes killed off Kenny at random for shock value, whereas The End of Obesity killed Kenny as a nod to South Park’s origins. South Park’s writing is now much tighter than it once was, so it is harder for the series to pull off something as sudden and surreal as Kenny being killed by a completely arbitrary twist of fate in each outing. Fortunately, Tony the Tiger’s role meant Kenny’s death fit in 2024’s first special. The supporting star’s end in South Park: The End of Obesity allowed the series to prove the gag isn’t dead yet.