HBO Max Will Not Include These 5 Banned South Park Episodes

South Park is now on HBO Max in its entirety … almost. The lineup on the new streaming service doesn’t include five of South Park’s most controversial episodes: As THR noted, all five episodes include depicting religious figures, including Prophet Muhammad. The reveal shouldn’t be a first for long-running animated comedy fans; All South Park episodes featuring depictions of Muhammad have not been available to stream on services such as Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, South Park Studios, Comedy Central, and Amazon Prime Video in the years following their broadcasts.

5 South Park episodes you can’t stream on HBO Max:

“Super Best Friends” portrayed a team of superheroes made up of religious figures such as Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Krishna and Muhammad, the latter are strictly prohibited from representing figuratively in Islam. Still, the episode aired without much controversy in 2005 and was only censored in later years.

In IGN’s “Super Best Friends” review, we said, “While this is not one of the best South Park episodes of all time, it is notable for the audacity to incorporate almost all of the world’s major religions into one silly joke. ” “

South Park then explored, in its very meta way, the fury of portraying the prophet in the two-part “Comic Strip War,” which recounted the uproar over a cartoon (in this case, Family Guy) attempt to broadcast a uncensored version of The Prophet Muhammad. The episodes explored the themes of censorship, freedom of expression, and fear, but were also censored by Comedy Central to remove any on-screen representation or mention of Muhammad.

These episodes came after the protests and violence caused by the cartoon depictions of Muhammad in Danish newspapers, as well as the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim man who opposed the Van Gogh short film Submission: Part 1.

Series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone reviewed the subject of censorship in episodes “200” and “201,” the latter considered particularly incendiary and which saw Comedy Central beefing up security in its offices. Parker and Stone reportedly received death threats in response to the episodes.

Comedy Central also censored “201,” which at the time prompted Parker and Stone to shut down the network: “In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park, we’ve never done a show we couldn’t endorse. We delivered our version of the show. for Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t a prank on our part. Comedy Central added the beeps. In fact, Kyle’s usual final speech was about intimidation and fear. I didn’t mention Muhammad at all, but He also bled out. “