Prior to the tenth season of South Park, some seriously unfortunate drama unfolded.
“The Return Of Chef” has the titular character featured using repurposed episode footage from previous seasons, which was a controversial move by itself, but the specific moment for the purposes of this feature is the very end where the longtime cafeteria cook falls off a burning bridge, tumbles down a rocky cliff side, gets impaled on a tree, gets shot, and then gets torn apart by a mountain lion and a bear.
This left Trey Parker and Matt Stone with a decision to make regarding how to say goodbye to Chef… and they went with the darkest possible route.
Isaac Hayes, who had voiced Chef from the very beginning of the show, made the decision to quit because of the episode “Trapped in the Closet” (which heavily criticizes Scientology – a group Hayes belongs to).