Kenny McCormick

**Kenneth "Kenny" McCormick**, voiced by Matt Stone, is one of *South Park's* main characters, along with Eric Cartman, Stan Marsh, and Kyle Broflovski. He first appears in the short films both entitled *The Spirit of Christmas* in 1992 and 1995. He is voiced by Mike Judge in the feature film *South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut* and Eric Stough in "The Jeffersons", "Lice Capades", "Mysterion Rises", and "Turd Burglars".

Kenny is most famous for dying in almost every episode in the first five seasons of *South Park*. He is also easily recognizable for almost always wearing an orange parka, or just having his face hidden, that covers most of his face and muffles his speech. In "Mysterion Rises" Kenny, who is revealed to be the superhero Mysterion, reveals that he has the power of immortality, in a sense, and that he just wakes up in his bed after having died. He is then upset that his friends never remember him dying, and even kills himself in front of everyone to prove himself.

The character was killed off the show in the Season Five episode, "Kenny Dies", but returned in the following season, at the end of "Red Sleigh Down" and has since been a regular character; however, he now only dies occasionally. In most of the episodes in the tenth and eleventh seasons, he tends to recede into the background, though this tendency seems to have ended with the Season Eleven finale. Throughout the tenth, twelfth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-third seasons, Kenny did not die once. Kenny died three times in total in Season Thirteen, five times in Season Fourteen, and once in seasons fifteen, sixteen, twenty-one and twenty-two.

## Background

### Character Inspiration

Like many of *South Park* 's characters, Kenny is based on a real person; in this case, a childhood friend of Trey Parker's also named Kenny. In a 2000 interview Trey said that the real life Kenny was the poorest kid in the neighborhood and wore an orange parka that made it difficult for anyone to understand what he was saying. Trey also stated that real life Kenny would skip school from time to time causing the others to jokingly say he had died, and a few days later, he would join his classmates and attend school again.

## Trivia

* Kenny is related to Stan's family through being named "honorary nephew" by Jimbo in "Volcano".
* Kenny is an immortal - while he can technically die, he just keeps being reborn (unless another immortal kills him), aging at an increased rate (10 years worth of growth in a few hours), and retaining memories and physical and mental characteristics. ("Mysterion Rises", "Coon vs. Coon & Friends")
* In *South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut*, when Kenny is tortured in Hell, he is in an area that appears to resembles Dante's sixth circle of heresy.
* In the overall series, Kenny was introduced as the comic relief, but was killed off in the Season Five episode "Kenny Dies" and stayed dead until the Season Six episode "Red Sleigh Down".
* Kenny has had a history of ingesting things he should not - including gasoline ("Volcano"), cat pee ("Major Boobage"), alien drugs ("Cancelled"), and various other things such as a Manatee spleen, dog poop, and his own vomit ("Fat Camp").
* As seen in "Pandemic", Kenny seems to buy shaving cream and razors on a regular basis, noting that it was for his balls. This indicates he is either producing pubic hair extremely early on, or just does not quite get the idea of a razor.
* Since "The Jeffersons", Kenny has been the only *South Park* character to have their hair change in appearance (although it is always blond and messy) regularly.
	+ He has had at least four hair styles: the original in the movie, the "new" style in "The Jeffersons", a slightly shorter one used in "The Losing Edge" (mostly hidden under a baseball cap,) and an updated version of the original style since "Lice Capades".
* Kenny seems to prefer lying down to sitting up - whenever he is doing something on the floor with the other boys (board games, toys and so forth) he will be lying on his front while the others generally sit down.
* Kenny owns a laptop, courtesy of One Laptop Per Child. ("You Have 0 Friends")
* Kenny has a pet cat who was shown in "Major Boobage". It was only mentioned briefly in "Douche and Turd" by Cartman who thought that he had broken the cat's leg the week before was the reason that Kenny voted for the Giant Douche. Despite this, a black cat can be seen walking near Kenny's house in "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000". Whether this is Kenny's cat or not is unknown.
* Kenny has gotten the least amount of people killed - only himself and Sarah Jessica Parker. Stan and Cartman chainsawed dozens of people while they were zombies, Kyle inadvertently caused dozens of pedophiles to kill themselves to stop Cartman from faking Tourette's Syndrome, and Butters has accidentally killed many people while tap-dancing.
* Kenny's perverted sense of humor is not limited to obvious innuendo - he once did a glitter-and-glue drawing of a clown holding someone's head in one hand and a bloody knife in the other. This could also mean he is coulrophobic. ("Fourth Grade")
* Kenny is the only one of the four main boys who is not imaginary, in that the others had to be re-imagined by Butters. ("Imaginationland, Episode III"). However, since Cartman was able to imagine something into Imaginationland, something only real people can do, the others can be considered "real".
* Kenny has been turned into a platypus ("Damien"), a ghost who then possessed Rob Schneider, a pot roast which Rob Schneider ate to be possessed, and Cartman ("The Biggest Douche in the Universe"), and has been resurrected as a zombie ("Pinkeye").
* Kenny has a habit of hurting himself when he gets bored - during a tedious ADD test, he ended up bashing his head against a wall repeatedly ("Timmy 2000"), and during a presentation by the Butt Out group, he began chewing his own hand ("Butt Out").
* While in his parka, Kenny never says 'yes' or 'no'; if he agrees with something he always says "Yeah" or "Uh-huh". Furthermore, in "World Wide Recorder Concert", he answered "nope" when Cartman asked him something. Other times, he says "Nuh-uh" instead.
* Kenny is the only boy known to sleep in his underwear. However, sometimes - in particular shortly after a resurrection - he wears his parka to bed.
* Kenny is able to make moose calls, as shown in "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs".
* Kenny has killed himself a total of ten times, some of them being heroic self-sacrifices, but others not so:
* As of Season Eighteen, Kenny has had the most absences out of the four main boys.
* His girlfriend broke up with him at the end of "Skank Hunt", as he can be seen crying on the floor at the end of the episode. It is unknown who he was in a relationship with, as the breakup happened off-screen.
* Kenny is the only one of the boys who has not had an episode involving his birthday. Cartman had "Damien", Kyle had "Casa Bonita", and Stan had "You're Getting Old".
* Headcanon: His other besties are Derek Generic and Jerry The Mouse.