Kenny's deaths

Kenny's death is a running gag in the animated television series South Park. Kenny's manner of death changes from episode to episode, and usually features someone or something that fatally hurts him. A typical gag features the culprit or accident killing Kenny, followed by the phrases "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" and "You bastards!" from his friends Stan and Kyle, respectively. In more recent seasons (starting with season seven), the gags occur only a few times.

History of Kenny's death

In the first few episodes, Kyle says the entire phrase. It usually varies depending on who kills Kenny. On one occasion ("Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000"), Stan and Kyle accidentally kill Kenny, causing Stan to cry out, in a somewhat nonchalant way, "Oh my God, we killed Kenny." Kyle replies, "We killed Kenny?" and Stan says, "Killed Kenny; we're bastards!" In the earlier seasons, usually right after his death, rats show up, start nibbling on the body and carry off body parts. In "The Succubus", this is parodied: he is "killed" and rats gather on him, the sun rises and he is standing there alive again when the boys are waiting for Chef to come play baseball, then the next day when he is squashed by the Succubus during Chef's wedding. Also in the episode "Pink Eye" Kenny dies three times. First he is crushed by the Mir space station as it falls from orbit. Then he is cut in half (by Kyle) as a zombie. Then, when trying to come out of his grave, an angel statue falls on top of him, followed by an airplane crashing on top of the statue and Kenny. Kenny even dies in a flashback to kindergarten during the episode "Summer Sucks", when a firecracker he is holding explodes and blows him to pieces. In the episode Clubhouses, Cartman is the one who says "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" As Stan/Kyle was not present. Kyle says "You bastards!" outside the clubhouse as he slowly walks by.

In the episodes "Fat Camp", "The Biggest Douche in the Universe", and "Cripple Fight", it is suggested that Kenny's orange parka plays a major role in his many deaths. In "Fat Camp" Kenny is never actually killed, although a boy, who helped Cartman smuggle candy into the Fat Camp, dressed up as Kenny, dies in the end; to which Stan replies, "They killed Kenny!...sort of." In "The Biggest Douche in the Universe", Rob Schneider is killed while wearing Kenny's outfit and in "Cripple Fight" Timmy tries to have Jimmy killed by giving him a parka that resembles Kenny's. Jimmy is seen walking down a street, narrowly escaping death with every step, and a man (Jimbo Kern) can even be heard saying "There's Kenny! Kill him!" in the background.

Tired of figuring out new ways to kill him, Matt Stone and Trey Parker tried to kill Kenny off for good at the end of season five with the episode "Kenny Dies" (he dies in the Hell's Pass Hospital of muscular dystrophy) and replaced him first with Butters and then Tweek during the sixth season. A story arc that occurs during the second half of the season involves Cartman being possessed by Kenny after accidentally drinking his ashes (which Cartman thought was chocolate milk mix). Kenny's soul is trapped inside Cartman's body until it is exorcised into a pot roast, which is eaten by Rob Schneider, who subsequently dies. Finally, at the end of the 2002 Christmas episode, Kenny returns, stating that he had been "over there," as he points to his right. During the following season, Kenny seems to have lost his bad luck and doesn't die anymore. Kenny's lucky streak ended during the 2003 Christmas episode ("It's Christmas in Canada"), and died again in "The Jeffersons", "Wing" and "Best Friends Forever". Kenny's latest death occurred on the season finale of season 11 "The List" when he was shot in the head by the bullet that Wendy and Bebe fired. The bullet somehow missed them and hit Kenny in the head while he was having dinner with his family.

In the March 30 2005 episode, "Best Friends Forever", Kenny is the first in South Park to get a Sony PSP (he is first in line for it and therefore gets the PSP for free) and the first in the world to reach level sixty in the game Heaven versus Hell; he dies early in the episode to command Heaven's armies in the final battle against Satan (in the episode he is frequently likened or referred to as Keanu Reeves). His death is not permanent, however, and he is revived, but in a persistent vegetative state with a feeding tube in an almost-serious spoof of the controversy surrounding the Terri Schiavo case in Florida. This episode won South Park its first Emmy.

Kenny has died and come back 102 times in the South Park franchise (79 in the series, to date, two in the early animated shorts, six in other authorized TV parodies, five times in two video games, and twice in the movie. He is also killed nine different ways in the opening sequence).

Recurring deaths and series canon

While the series usually maintains an expanding continuity, it is a running joke that Kenny's deaths from episode to episode are treated in a highly inconsistent fashion.

Early-season deaths are usually treated as "non-canon", in that they are not acknowledged as having happened at all. In the clip episode "City on the Edge of Forever", while relating stories of previous episodes, Cartman mentions how Kenny died in one such incident, to which Stan and Kyle protest, "That's not the way it happened; [...] Kenny just died eight hours ago from that monster, how could he have died then too?" Cartman then replies, "Oh yeah. I guess that doesn't make sense." This episode turns out to be a dream within a dream.

In later seasons, the other characters do occasionally seem aware of Kenny's many deaths but usually fail to find them a source of concern. In "Cartmanland", the McCormick family sues Eric Cartman for Kenny's wrongful death, and Cartman protests, "Kenny? He dies all the time!" When Kyle is suffering potentially fatal kidney troubles ("Cherokee Hair Tampons") and Stan tells Kenny several times that he's worried his friend might die, Kenny responds with irritation (a popular translation of what he says during this scene runs, "You never care when I die.") and mumbles his own muffled version of Cartman's catchphrase "Screw you guys! I'm going home!", implying that he is aware of and considerably irked by the other kids' apathy towards his own previous deaths.

In some episodes, Stan and Kyle use their usual phrase without even thinking about how Kenny died, or who killed him. In Rainforest Schmainforest, after Kenny gets a girlfriend, he is seemingly killed by a bolt of lightning. As per normality, Stan and Kyle recite, "Oh my God, they killed Kenny! You Bastards!" However, Kelly, Kenny's girlfriend, asks them, "Who killed Kenny?" The boys responded sheepishly, "Th-they." "Who's 'they'?," she responded. "They're bastards," showing that even the boys sometimes don't realize the circumstances around Kenny's death, only that it happened and they must recite their statement out of pure repetition.

In "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut", the second part of a two-part episode (where Kenny had died in the first part), Kenny miraculously materializes next to Stan, accompanied with angelic music, but Stan merely acknowledges him with "Oh, hey, Kenny." Kenny himself seems to be somewhat aware of his own recurring death. In "It's Christmas in Canada", Kenny refuses to get on city airline planes and decides to stay in South Park with Cartman. When Stan asks why, Kenny says, "'Cause, dude, I'll fucking die." Kyle, however, does not seem to have realized Kenny's bad luck as he replies "You're not gonna die, Kenny. Don't be stupid." Another instance in which Kenny is aware of his countless deaths is in the first season's Christmas special; he cheers when he realizes he hasn't died at the end. In "Tweek vs. Craig", Kenny avoids shop class fearing the dangers of the many hazardous tools; after he narrowly avoids dying, he channels the dead girlfriend and relatives of the shop teacher for a few moments.

In "Cartman Joins NAMBLA", Kenny spends most of the episode upset that his mother is having another child, and continually tries to find ways to abort the fetus. Near the end of the episode, Kenny is unexpectedly killed by being backed over by an ambulance. In the final scene, Kenny's mother and father fawn over the infant she has just given birth to. Kenny's father, struck by how much the new child resembles their deceased son Kenny (including orange parka), decides to name the new baby boy Kenny in his brother's memory, to which Kenny's mother declares "Yes! A brand-new Kenny!" The final punch line of this gag comes when Kenny's father says "God, this must be like the 50th time this has happened", to which his mother corrects, "52nd". (Arguably, this is indeed the 52nd incarnation of Kenny). These events suggest that all the Kennys are different children, but that the other boys are unaware of it and treat them all as the same person. This does not explain how and why the Kennys gestate and age so quickly, or why they all have the same personality. However Kenny's mother's explanation is not canon and, therefore, just humor.

The gag of Kenny dying in almost every episode was dropped with the airing of "Kenny Dies", in which Kenny's death is treated with more weight; in particular, the other boys are somehow able to sense that it would be more permanent--though it should be noted that in a few episodes—for example "Pink Eye"—they treat his death as if permanent (ironically, since Kenny comes back to life twice in that episode). Unlike previous episodes which his death is over-the-top, he suffers from a serious muscular disease and the boys and their parents are shocked by it (Stan in particular could not bear to see him in the hospital). The reason Kenny was killed off in Season 6 was because Trey Parker and Matt Stone were getting tired of killing him and decided to just get rid of him but they then decided to bring him back by leaving clues of his return such as having his soul live inside of Cartman. At the end of Red Sleigh Down Kenny returns and the boys did not sound surprised and respond to him as if they knew he was coming. Since his permanent revival, Kenny has died extremely rarely throughout episodes. In Season 9, he died in Best Friends Forever. He was revived in a vegetative state but his feeding tube was removed when they disrespected his wishes of not being seen on TV in his vegetative state. He didn't die at all in Season 10. However the usual lines were used in Make Love Not Warcraft when his character was killed along with everybody else by a person with a high level.

His most recent death was in The List, the finale of Season 11. He was killed by a stray bullet, fired when Wendy and Bebe were struggling over a gun some ways away, while eating cereal for dinner at home. A pair of Pop-Tarts popped up immediately after he was killed. He has not died yet in Season 12, but he would've if Stan hadn't saved him.

In popular culture

• The phrase "Oh my God! They killed Kenny!" catchphrase was ranked # 35 on TV Land's Greatest TV Catchphrases and Quotes. It was here that Matt Stone and Trey Parker revealed that "You bastards!" was referring to themselves.

• In a battle between Kenny G and Flea on Celebrity Deathmatch, Flea rips out Kenny G's lower jaw, and then throws it into the audience like a boomerang, causing the jaw to come back and bury itself right into Kenny G's skull, killing him. Nick Diamond (one of the hosts) says, "Oh my God! Flea killed Kenny G! Flea killed Kenny G!" Then a little boy in the audience yells out, "YOU BASTARD!"

• On the Boy Meets World episode "And Then There Was Shawn", which is a parody of Scream, George Feeny is the first person to die by having a pencil stabbed in his head. Eric responds by shouting "Oh my god! They killed Feeny!" Someone then replies with "You Ba..." which is cut off when the killer appears as they run out of the room screaming.

• Kenny's constant death and Stan/Kyle's response had become so well known that after winning his fight against Ken Shamrock at UFC 40: Vendetta, Tito Ortiz (notorious for putting on a t-shirt offending his defeated opponent) put on a shirt that read "I killed Kenny, you bastard".

• In the videogame crossover comics, Charlie from Street Fighter dies in all of the comics. Since Charlie is known to die in every game he was in, they make him die the same way Kenny always dies. Sakura and Cammy from Street Fighter quote Stan and Kyle "Oh my god They killed Charlie, You Bastards!"

• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Danny Strong informally dubbed his character Jonathan Levinson as the "Kenny of Buffy" due to the great number of bad things that have happened to him.

• In the Comedy Central special of Jeff Dunham's show, one of his puppets, Walter, mentions Kenny dying in saying "I see Cartman, I see Kenny... oh, Kenny just died".

External links

• Repository of translated Kenny-isms, including details about his deaths