Ah, South Park - The crude show about a group of foul-mouthed school boys that went on to become one of the greatest animations to ever play out on screen. We love it so.
Anyway, enough gushing. You can check out the show’s entire library now on HBO Max, apart from five episodes, that is.
That’s right, five South Park episodes aren’t available to stream basically anywhere on the web, due to their depiction of religious figures like the Prophet Muhammad. Here’s a run-through of the episodes deemed too naughty for TV.
Super Best Friends, season five, episode three, 2001
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Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman team up with Jesus to take down magician David Blaine, who they discover is behind a mass suicide pact.
Although the episode barely received any backlash when it aired, it was later removed, with South Park studios saying: “We apologise that South Park Studios cannot stream Super Best Friends.”
It’s thought the plug was pulled on the episode in the wake of ‘death threats made by Islamists’ after the season fourteen episodes 200 and 201 aired. More on that later.
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Cartoon Wars parts I and II, season ten, episodes three and four, 2006
In Cartoon Wars Part I, Cartman and Kyle come to blows over an upcoming episode of Family Guy, which intends to feature the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
Because of this, Family Guy’s network threatens to ban the episode, and Cartman sees this as a chance to get Family Guy off the air for good.
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Kyle, however, doesn’t want the show off air, and the two lads embark on a race across the country to Hollywood, knowing that whoever gets there first will have the final say on Family Guy’s future.
In Cartoon Wars Part II, Cartman ends up in Hollywood first, but Kyle isn’t far behind him. They have a final showdown at the television studios, in which Cartman attempts to shoot Kyle with a shotgun before discovering there are no bullets in the weapon.
The Family Guy episode ends up airing (sans Muhammad, because of Comedy Central’s refusal to show an image of him on screen), and terrorists respond with a cartoon of their own that shows Jesus taking a dump on the American flag.
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200 and 201, season fourteen, episodes five and six, 2010
In a nutshell, the two episodes see celebrities who have featured in past South Park episodes and been ridiculed by the animation’s writers attempt to steal the Prophet Muhammad’s ‘powers’, pointing out that he’s been exempt from ridicule on the show because he never features.
The outcry from terrorist groups was swift, and speaking in 2016 about pulling the episodes, former Comedy Central head Doug Herzog told the Hollywood Reporter: “We were protecting everyone who works here. That was the decision we needed to make.
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“That was the hardest we’ve ever pushed back [over the show’s content].”
So there you have it folks, don’t expect to be wrapping your eyeballs around any of the above episodes anytime soon.
Topics: South Park, Film and TV
Aisha Nozari