Five Times ‘South Park’ Had Major Retcons

1 Character Names

Plenty of South Park kids — like Butters, for example — existed in the background of the show in non-speaking roles for years before coming to the forefront. So it’s not surprising that several of them received throwaway names that later changed when they became real characters. For example, Butters was originally “Swanson,” and Heidi was originally “Marcy.” Plenty of kids also had different last names; some even had different designs for their parents. Pedantic fans might call these “continuity errors,” but this is exactly the kind of thing Parker and Stone don’t stress out about.

2 Terrance and Phillip’s State of Existence

Back in Season One, South Park introduced two of its most enduring characters, Terrance and Phillip, the Canadian entertainers whose TV show has often been used as a stand-in for South Park itself in the show’s more meta storylines. However, during their first appearance and a couple of times afterward, Terrance and Phillip are referred to as cartoon characters, not real-life people. Their animation style, which is an even cruder take on South Park’s, seems to suggest this. But in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, they appear as actual human beings the boys need to rescue. This change stuck.

3 Tolkien’s Name

When South Park began, Parker and Stone thought it would be funny to name the only Black kid in class “Token.” The joke lasted for 22 seasons. But they eventually decided it was inappropriate — or more likely, they tired of it — and decided to rewrite the character’s entire history.

In Season 25’s “The Big Fix,” Stan finds out that his friend’s name is, and always has been, Tolkien in honor of Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien. Stan, however, always thought it was “Token” (because it was), so he spends the episode wrestling with this, wondering if getting Tolkien’s name wrong this whole time makes him racist, as all of his friends tell him they knew it was Tolkien, too. The message of the episode ends up being a funny gaslighting of the South Park audience by saying that the kid was always named Tolkien, and if you thought it was Token, then you are the racist.

As a final bonus, they even changed the closed captioning on every previous episode that included Token, having it read Tolkien instead.

4 Kenny’s Modes of Resurrection

For the first several seasons, one of the show’s trademarks was Kenny dying in every episode. But Parker and Stone grew tired of trying to shoehorn it in all the time, so they stopped doing it, opting to only kill Kenny when they had a funny way to do so. This wasn’t exactly a retcon, but what they revealed about Kenny in Season 14 certainly was. After dozens of deaths, Kenny — while disguised as the superhero Mysterion and with his voice unmuffled by his trademark orange coat — explains that he can’t die and that he dies over and over only to wake up in his bed and to have no one remember his death. It’s also revealed that Kenny’s parents were once members of the Cult of Cthulhu and that Kenny’s mother re-births him each time.

This, however, contradicts several other scenes throughout the series, some of which also contradict each other. For one thing, while it’s revealed in the Mysterion episode that Kenny immediately gets re-birthed, we’ve seen Kenny in both heaven and hell on various occasions, and for all of Season Six, he’s absent after his death. 

Moreover, despite the claim that his friends don’t remember his deaths, in an early season Cartman says, “Kenny? He dies all the time!” 

5 Cartman’s Father

South Park was an immediate hit in its first season, but just to be sure that fans came back for Season Two, Parker and Stone decided to end the inaugural season with a cliffhanger around who Cartman’s father is. Any of the following men are teased to be his potential father: Chef, Jimbo, Ned, Mr. Garrison, Chief Running Water, Officer Barbrady, Kyle’s Dad, Mephesto, Kevin or the 1989 Denver Broncos. 

When South Park returned four weeks later, they faked out their audience with “Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus” but then picked up where they left off in the next episode and revealed that none of those potential fathers were Cartman’s. Instead, his mother, who is said to be a hermaphrodite, is his father and someone else is his mother. By the time this is revealed, though, Cartman is so exhausted that he no longer cares. 

This maternal mystery persisted for years until the show’s now-banned 200th episode in Season 14, when Cartman finds out that everyone was lying to him, including his own mother — who is actually his mother — and that one of the characters listed in Season One was, in fact, his father. He was a right tackle for the Denver Broncos named Jack Tenorman, and because the Broncos were having a good season that year, the residents of South Park decided to cover things up so as not to create a scandal. 

This was a shocking revelation because Jack Tenorman was also the father of Cartman’s enemy Scott Tenorman, and because, in Season Five, Cartman had killed both of Scott’s parents, made them into chili and fed them to Scott. It was the darkest moment in the show’s history made even darker by this retcon.