Kenneth McCormick[2] is a fictional character and one of the four main protagonists in the adult animated sitcom South Park, alongside Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Eric Cartman.

Kenny was a third, later fourth-grade student who commonly has extraordinary experiences not typical of conventional small-town life in his hometown of South Park, Colorado, where he lives with his poverty-stricken family.

The character gained popularity thanks to a running gag during the first five seasons of the series, whereby Kenny would routinely suffer an excruciating death before returning alive and well in the next episode with little or no explanation.

He is not revealed to be Kenny until the season 14 episode "Mysterion Rises", the character's third appearance as part of a three-part story arc.

The reasoning behind the idea was to genuinely surprise fans, and to allow an opportunity to provide a major role for Butters Stotch, a breakout character whose popularity was growing with the viewers and creators of the show.

[14] Stone stated that thinking of humorous ways to kill the character was initially fun, but became more mundane as the series progressed.

[13] When they determined that it would be too difficult to develop the character because he was too much of a "prop", Parker and Stone finally decided to kill off Kenny permanently.

For much of season six, Kenny remained dead, though he still appears to possess Cartman's body, and both Stone and Parker entertained the idea of eventually bringing the character back.

[15] According to Stone, only a small minority of fans were significantly angered by Kenny's absence to threaten a boycott of the cable channel Comedy Central, on which South Park is aired.

"The Pandemic Special" sees Kenny being gunned down by the police when they are equipped with military weaponry to deal with the children breaking free from COVID-19 quarantine.

[21] In South Park: The End of Obesity, Kenny was killed by Tony the Tiger in is his first on-screen death since "The Pandemic Special".

[citation needed] When developing the character, the show's creators had observed that most groups of childhood friends in small middle-class towns always included "the one poor kid" and decided to portray Kenny in this light.

[23] An unnamed precursor to Kenny first appeared in the first The Spirit of Christmas short, dubbed Jesus vs. Frosty, created by Parker and Stone in 1992 while they were students at the University of Colorado.

Kenny next appeared on August 13, 1997, when South Park debuted on Comedy Central with the episode "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe".

[24] While he originally voiced Kenny without any computer manipulation, Stone now does so by speaking in his normal vocal range and then adding a childlike inflection.

[29][30] As the technique of Kenny's muzzled enunciation frequently implies, many of his lines are indeed profane and sexually explicit, the lengthier of which are mostly improvised by Stone.

[24] He first appeared unobscured by his hood in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, where it was revealed that he had messy blonde hair.

"[31] On a few occasions during episodes that have originally aired since the film's release, he has been seen without the parka;[note 1] however, unlike in Bigger, Longer & Uncut his entire face has been only seen four times in the television series without being partially obscured or otherwise altered, this being in "The Losing Edge", "The Jeffersons", "You're Getting Old", and "DikinBaus Hot Dogs" (except in DikiniBaus Hot Dogs, his face is slightly concealed by a pair of sunglasses shades).

[36] He is amused by toilet humor and bodily functions,[36] and his favorite television personalities are Terrance and Phillip, a Canadian duo whose comedy routines on their show-within-the-show revolve substantially around fart jokes.

[39][40][41] This portrayal continues in the video game South Park: The Stick of Truth where Cartman notes that playing a "chick" is "just how [Kenny] seems to be rolling right now".

[42] Kenny's deaths are well-known in popular culture,[8] and was one of the things viewers most commonly associated with South Park during its earlier seasons.

quickly became a popular catchphrase,[13][36] while both Kenny and the phrase have appeared on some of the more popular pieces of South Park merchandise,[8] including shirts, bumper stickers, calendars and baseball caps,[4] and inspired the rap song "Kenny's Dead" by Master P, which was featured on Chef Aid: The South Park Album.

In the book South Park and Philosophy: Bigger, Longer, and More Penetrating, an essay by Southern Illinois University philosophy professor Randall Auxier, entitled "Killing Kenny: Our Daily Dose of Death", suggests that the fashion of the recurring gag serves to help the viewer become more comfortable with the inevitability of their own death.

[60][61] In the book South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point professor Karin Fry wrote an essay concerning the parallels between Kenny's role in the show and the different concepts of existentialism.