The One Celebrity Comedy Central Wouldn’t Let ‘South Park’ Kill Off - VICE
South Park—or should that be South America?—has featured some pretty brutal celebrity deaths throughout the course of its 29 years on TV.
Steve Irwin and Rob Reiner, for example, were both killed off on the show long before they died in real life. And how could we forget Justin Bieber, who was squeezed to death by Cthulhu in 2010’s “Coon vs. Coon and Friends”? But believe it or not, there was at least one famous person Comedy Central wouldn’t allow to die at the hands of series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
In the Season 1 episode “Starvin’ Marvin,” Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny donate money to the Christian Children’s Fund after seeing a commercial for the organization in which Sally Struthers promises donors a free sports watch. However, instead of the watch they were hoping for, the kids are accidentally sent a young Ethiopian boy named Marvin.
When the FBI arrives to bring Marvin back to Africa, he tricks them into taking Cartman in his place. There, Cartman finds out that Struthers has been hoarding food meant for the charity while filming her commercials on location.
Comedy Central Once Stopped ‘South Park’ From Killing This Famous Actress Cartman tells the hungry natives nearby what Struthers has been up to, and she tries to destroy the evidence by eating it as quickly as possible. The last we see of Struthers (in this episode, anyway), she’s been tied up and gagged, but her fate is never made clear.
Struthers eventually pops up again two seasons later, in 1999’s “Starvin’ Marvin in Space,” revealing that she somehow survived the events of the earlier episode. She also appears in the 2010 episodes “200” and “201.”
That wasn’t the original plan, though. As Parker explains in the episode’s commentary track, the final shot of Struthers in “Starvin’ Marvin” was supposed to show the actress dead on a spit. “They were gonna be eating her and living off of her fat,” Parker remembered. “And they wouldn’t let us do that. They said, ‘You can’t kill Sally Struthers,’” he continued, with Stone interjecting to call the decision “bull.”
The pair may or may not have finally gotten to kill Struthers in “201,” as Mormonism founder Joseph Smith is seen freezing her in place with his ice powers toward the end of the show.
