You probably remember the Super Best Friends. Or maybe you don’t. If you’re a younger fan diving into the back catalog of South Park on Max, you’ve likely noticed a weird jump in Season 5. One minute you're watching "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow" and the next you're at "Scott Tenorman Must Die." There's a hole. A big one.
The missing piece is Episode 68. It’s titled "Super Best Friends."
Back in 2001, this episode was just another Tuesday for Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It was a parody of the old Super Friends cartoon from the 70s, featuring a league of religious figures fighting crime. It was absurd. It was colorful. And today, it’s basically digital contraband.
What Actually Happens in Super Best Friends?
The plot is classic South Park chaos. A David Blaine-esque magician named David Blane (yes, spelled that way) starts a cult in South Park called the "Blaintologists." Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman get sucked in, but Stan eventually realizes that the cult is, well, a cult. To fight Blane's magic, Stan seeks help from Jesus.
Jesus realizes he can't do it alone. He calls in the Super Best Friends.
This is where the roster gets wild. The team consists of:
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- Jesus (with carpentry powers)
- Muhammad (who has the power of fire)
- Buddha (who apparently has the "power" of invisibility, though he’s mostly just snorting coke in the background)
- Moses (rendered as a glowing computer program similar to the Master Control Program from Tron)
- Krishna, Laozi, and Joseph Smith
The irony? When this episode first aired on July 4, 2001, there was almost zero controversy. None. People laughed at the Sea World parody and the "Blaintology" jokes. Muhammad was depicted as a literal character—a superhero who helped save the day. He was a "good guy."
Then everything changed.
The Muhammad Problem and the 2006 Shift
If you want to understand why "Super Best Friends" vanished, you have to look at 2006. That was the year of the Danish cartoon controversy. A newspaper in Denmark published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, leading to global protests and riots.
Comedy Central got nervous. Very nervous.
When Trey and Matt tried to show Muhammad again in the Season 10 two-parter "Cartoon Wars," the network censored the image. This was a massive turning point for the show's relationship with its parent company. The creators were frustrated. They felt the "censorship of fear" was a victory for extremism.
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But "Super Best Friends" was still sitting there in the archives. It had been out for years. It was on the DVDs. It was in syndication.
The real axe fell in 2010. During the show's 200th episode (appropriately titled "200"), the boys go on a journey to find Muhammad because Tom Cruise and a group of angry celebrities want his "power to remain uncensored." A radical group called Revolution Muslim issued a "warning" to the creators, which many interpreted as a death threat.
Comedy Central didn't just censor the new episodes ("200" and "201"). They went back into the vault and scrubbed "Super Best Friends" from their website and future broadcast rotations.
Where the Episode Lives Now
Honestly, it’s kind of a "forbidden fruit" situation. You won't find it on Max. You won't find it on the official South Park Studios website. If you try to stream it legally in the US, you’re basically out of luck.
However, it isn't "lost media" in the traditional sense.
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If you own the Season 5 DVD box set, it’s right there. Uncensored. The physical discs were printed and sold by the millions before the 2010 crackdown. Because of that, the episode is widely available on various "gray market" streaming sites and torrent trackers. It’s the digital equivalent of a bootleg VHS tape, even though it was once a mainstream TV staple.
Why This Episode Still Matters for Television History
"Super Best Friends" is a time capsule. It represents a pre-9/11 world where South Park could throw every major religious figure into a room together and make them fight a giant Abraham Lincoln statue without the network blinking an eye.
It’s also a masterclass in satire. While the "Super Best Friends" themselves are the hook, the real target was the absurdity of cult personalities. David Blane’s character was a direct jab at the "street magic" craze of the early 2000s. The episode highlights how easily people—especially kids—can be manipulated by a charismatic leader promising "miracles."
The fact that the episode is banned today actually reinforces the point the show was trying to make in later seasons: that some topics are treated as "untouchable" while others are fair game for mockery.
Notable Easter Eggs in the Episode
- The Sea World Joke: The cult members try to kill "the unbelievers" by throwing them into a tank with a killer whale, a dark foreshadowing of the show's later, more pointed attacks on Sea World in "Free Willzyx."
- The Tron Reference: The depiction of Moses is a 1:1 tribute to the 1982 film Tron.
- The Ending: Seemingly every major character is killed or humiliated, yet the "status quo" resets for the next week, which was the hallmark of early South Park.
How to Handle the "Missing" Content
If you're a completionist trying to watch the full series, here is the reality of the situation:
- Check Physical Media: The Season 5 DVD set is the only 100% legal way to own the episode in high quality. It hasn't been edited on the old discs.
- Understand the Context: Before watching, remember that the "Muhammad" depiction in this specific episode was meant to be heroic, not derogatory. This is a common misconception.
- The "200" Connection: If you manage to find "Super Best Friends," you should watch it immediately before "200" and "201." The latter episodes are direct sequels to the events of this banned episode.
- Expect the Bleeps: If you find a version of the 2010 episodes online, be prepared for a solid two minutes of bleeping at the end. That wasn't a joke by Trey and Matt; that was Comedy Central literally bleeping out Kyle's entire "I learned something today" speech because it mentioned Muhammad's name.
It's a weird legacy. One of the show's most lighthearted, superhero-parody episodes became its most controversial liability. But that’s South Park. It’s a show that lives on the edge, and sometimes, the edge moves.
Your next move: If you're serious about seeing the "banned five" (Super Best Friends, Cartoon Wars Part 1 & 2, 200, and 201), your best bet is hunting down the original DVD releases at a local used media store or eBay. Streaming platforms are unlikely to ever host these episodes again due to long-standing corporate policies regarding the depiction of religious figures.