This South Park Season 5 Episode Remains One Of Its Most Outrageous
"South Park" co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the poster children for equal opportunity offenders. Over the course of the animated series' impressive 25-and-counting season run, no facet of the zeitgeist, whether a passing fad or the most powerful individuals in the world, has remained safe from Stone and Parker's devilish sense of humor.
When "South Park" premiered in 1997, it was immediately clear that the crude animation and even cruder humor would push some buttons. "South Park," after all, called its first episode "Cartman Gets An Anal Probe," and would later produce such hits as "Dead Kids" and "Cartman Joins NAMBLA" (via IMDb). As such, there are plenty of contenders for the most shocking "South Park" episode. Some Redditors claimed it was the satanic Christmas special "Woodland Critter Christmas," while others mentioned the scatological pyrotechnics of "Make Love, Not Warcraft."
When it comes to the most outrageous "South Park" episodes, one Season 5 installment stands above most — if not all — of the rest.
Scott Tenorman Must Die still shocks South Park fans today
Love him or hate him, "South Park" fans can't deny that Eric Cartman is one of the show's most entertaining characters. From the jump, Cartman was an entitled, conniving kid. Let's not forget the time he snuck into the Special Olympics, or when he led a neo-Nazi rally. But it took a single episode in Season 5 to catapult Cartman towards pure, vindictive evil.
In "Scott Tenorman Must Die," a cruel ninth-grader named Scott tricks Cartman into buying his pubic hair. When Scott continues to humiliate Cartman, the younger boy decides to exact his revenge at a chili festival, even knowingly downing some chili spiked with pubes in order for his plot to come to fruition. In a horrific twist, Cartman arranged for the deaths of Scott's parents, ground their bodies into his dish, and fed the chili to Scott. "I made you eat your parents!" he says in a sing-song voice as Scott vomits and weeps.
For "South Park" fans, the episode reveals a dark side of Cartman that he hasn't surpassed since. "I knew Cartman was an evil psycho," wrote u/berrosc on Reddit, "but I didn't know he was THAT messed up...It was pretty scary to think this funny character I loved had that much evil in him." Making things even more shocking in hindsight is how in the Season 14 episode "201," it is revealed that Scott and Cartman are half-brothers, which means Cartman effectively had his own father killed nine seasons prior.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker concede that "Scott Tenorman Must Die" stands in a league of its own. "This is one of the darkest episodes," said Parker in the DVD commentary. "We went to a place with Cartman that we hadn't gone to before." He concluded with a chuckle, "That's why I think it's so good, personally."