Even though The Simpsons and Family Guy are both animated series that have been on the air for decades, it could easily be argued that South Park’s long tenure is more impressive. After all, when Matt Stone and Trey Parker tried to find a home for South Park, almost all of the networks “hated” the concept and immediately passed on it.
At first blush, it may seem like all of the network heads who passed up the opportunity to air South Park must have regretted their decisions. However, considering that South Park has been a very controversial show at times, a lot of the people in charge of the networks likely are happy they dodged all of that.
Even though South Park has been the subject of a lot of sensational headlines over the years, not all controversies are created equally. Instead, there is one episode of the show that upset so many people that fans of the show have to agree that it is the most controversial in the show’s long history.
Other Controversies
To this day, South Park remains one of the most fascinating shows on television. As a result, the series’ legions of fans still want to know everything they can about the series they love so much. Despite that, at times it can be easy to forget how controversial South Park has been over the years. After all, the show’s most recent controversy was focused on the pandemic episode and that uproar was comparatively mild.
As long-time fans of South Park will already know, the show has been the subject of so many controversies that any attempt to list them all here would be foolhardy. For example, Isaac Hayes left the show amid controversy, “closetgate” upset many, and the show’s depictions of the Virgin Mary, Mormonism, and Steve Irwin caused uproars. In fact, there are so many examples of South Park causing controversy that there is a Wikipedia page dedicated to them.
The Standout Episode
In July 2001, the third episode of South Park’s fifth season, “Super Best Friends” aired for the first time. At the beginning of the episode, David Blaine comes to South Park and convinces Stan, Cartman, and Kenny to go door to door recruiting people to join Blaintology. Even though most shows would never dare make such an obvious reference to Scientology for fear of the controversy that would follow, that aspect of the episode was largely ignored.
From there, “Super Best Friends” took a surprising twist when Jesus comes to South Park to try and stop David Blaine’s efforts. Unfortunately for Jesus, Blaine’s hold on the people of South Park was already strong enough that he couldn’t convince them to turn their backs on Blaintology. As a result, Jesus decided to bring together Muhammad, Buddha, Moses, Joseph Smith, Krishna, Laozi, and "Sea Man" to form the Super Best Friends. From there, madness and hilarity ensued throughout the rest of the episode.
For those that are unaware, most Sunni Muslims feel very strongly that visual depictions of the prophets of Islam should be prohibited. That is especially true when It comes to Muhammad which is why so many people were deely upset that he appeared onscreen during “Super Best Friends”.
The Aftermath
When word broke that South Park was set to feature a visual depiction of Muhammad, to say that there was an uproar would be a huge understatement. In fact, during later episodes of South Park that were set to feature a depiction of Muhammad, a prominent banner that read “censored” covered up the animation of him. On top of that, the audio was bleeped out any time a character referred to Muhammad by name during those episodes.
While some South Park fans called Comedy Central out for clearly censoring the show, it is very easy to understand why they decided to do so. After all, one group was so upset that “Super Best Friends” featured a depiction of Muhammad that they warned that Matt Stone and Trey Parker could be killed. The representative of the group later spoke to the Associated Press and stated that they weren’t threatening Stone and Parker. Instead, they were just issuing “a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them”.
When most shows are the subject of controversy, the whole thing quickly gets forgotten once the original incident blows over. When it comes to South Park and “Super Best Friends” however, the controversy has had some lasting effects. For example, almost a decade after the episode originally aired, a South Park fan on Reddit noted that Comedy Central had removed it from their website. Even though the original uproar over the episode was so severe, a lot of South Park fans still couldn’t stomach that decision. In fact, the top comment on the Reddit thread revealing the episode’s removal called Comedy Central cowards in a very colorful way.