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On the DVD commentary for the episode, Parker and Stone state that they had originally planned to kill Kyle off for a year, but decided to kill Kenny instead as they were running out of original ways to kill him.
So let's say that Matt Stone and Trey decided to go with original idea and instead of killing off Kenny for a season, Kyle meets his (semi-permanent?) end at the end of season 5. How much it would change South Park season 6 and potential future of this show?
I know that replacing one character's death with another in the cartoon dosen't sound like much. But we have to remember that since Kyle isn't by canon immortal by any means, his death scene should be more impactfull. Fans saw Kenny's deaths countless times already, so it always was some kind of doubt about it back then. Other boy's death should ber much more "realistic". In addition, it's quite possible that Kyle's death could be considered "anti-semitic" since one of the few distinctive Jewish characters were killed off. I quess that Kyle's ressurection should be explained, so we could expect some episode dedicated only to his return, and it's quite possible that Kyle's absence could be much more impactfull post season-6. There's also chance for some small, possibly non-permanent changes:
- Butters afer replacing Kyle would paint his hair red
- It's very likely that Kenny would survive all episodes of season 6, since creators were tired of killing him off all the time.