Five ‘South Park’ Kids Who Lingered in the Background for Years Before They Suddenly Became Important
Even the most dedicated South Park fans would have a hard time identifying every classmate of Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny’s — despite many of them having been around since episode one. That’s because a handful of them have yet to be explored or given a consistent first name.
Those background kids, however, need only to wait as their star turn might be just around the corner. It could take years, but there have been several South Park kids who spent seasons hidden in the background before getting their due.
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Here are five of them…
Kevin Stoley
Kevin Stoley has been hanging around since the show’s first episode. He first got a line in Season Two, but it wasn’t until Season Six that his character had any kind of a personality. When all the boys are playing Lord of the Rings in “The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers,” Kevin wants to play Star Trek instead, which makes him a total loser to the others. Since then, Kevin’s running gag is that his sci-fi nerdiness annoys everyone else, especially Cartman.
Jason White
When he appeared in the background of the first episode, Jason White stood out simply because of his receding hairline. As we got to learn a little more about Jason, we found out he’s an average kid who goes along with whatever trends are sweeping the school, like the metrosexual push in Season Six and the High School Musical fervor in Season 12.
He doesn’t really become important until Season 21, when we meet his family, “The Whites.” Jason’s dad is an angry Trump (Garrison) supporter who rails against the PC culture supposedly overtaking South Park. Jason’s biggest ever episode, however, occurs two seasons later when Cartman throws a football into the road and Jason is run over and killed.
Strangely, Jason has appeared alive and well in the background of several episodes since his death, which is likely nothing more than an animation mistake or Trey Parker and Matt Stone forgetting that he’s dead.
Heidi Turner
Heidi Turner, the only character on this list who wasn’t around during the pilot, still started out pretty early in the show’s history. She could first be spotted at the beginning of Season Three in a non-speaking part. In Season Nine she got a little bit more to say when she hosted a sleepover, but she was so forgettable that she didn’t have a consistent hair color or consistent character models for her parents.
In Season 20, however, she became front and center when she was bullied off social media by an online troll and then, after Cartman was forced offline too, she bonded with him, soon becoming his girlfriend. They remain in a tumultuous relationship until the end of Season 21, at which point Heidi has become a female Cartman. Finally, she realizes how far she’s fallen and breaks it off with Cartman for good, losing weight and resuming her place as a background character with little to say.
Tolkien Black
As the only Black kid in South Park, Tolkien Black — originally Token Williams, then Token Black — was noticeable from the very first episode. And, when his “Token” name was revealed, he became known for being a “token” Black character joke. Though he spoke briefly during the first three seasons, his first major episode was “Cartman’s Silly Hate Crime 2000” in Season Four, when Cartman throws a rock at him after Tolkien/Token called him fat.
Since then, he’s been a major part of many episodes, especially those aiming to make a point about race issues. He also plays board games with Stan, performs TikTok dances with Kyle and generally hates Cartman ever since he first shot him in Season 17.
Leopold “Butters” Stotch
It’s hard to believe that Butters began as just another kid in the background. He’s called “Swanson” in Season Two, but South Park producer Eric Stough revealed to me that the show’s files gave him a much cuter moniker. “When we set up the computer with all these characters, he had that little yellow puff of hair, so we just called him Puff Puff in Season One and Season Two. Trey didn’t even know the name Puff Puff; it was just in our files.”
While he got a line here or there, Butters’ voice and personality — which was based on Stough — weren’t revealed until late in Season Three, when Stan is forced to play with him at a party for a meteor shower. His role exploded when Kenny “died for real” in the second-to-last episode of Season Five. In fact, the season finale was “Butters’ Very Own Episode,” which focused entirely on him. He then took over for Kenny as the fourth kid in the group until the trio fired him. Since then, Butters has still been one of the show’s core characters, often at Kenny’s expense.
