So Season 25 establishes that Tolkien’s name is Tolkien and after that the subtitles on Max from previous episodes accommodate that, which is really cool, but there’s still the episode where Cartman wore a shirt that said “Token’s Life Matters”. Why did he write Token if he was talking about Tolkien?
Prior to the airing of the episode where Stan and Randy discover that the character is named after JRR Tolkien, the character’s name was, in fact, Token for any concerns of the show.
Over time, Tolkien’s role evolved beyond being the “token black character” trope he was written to make fun of. When the writers chose to reveal his new name, the insistence that everyone always knew it to be Tolkien was some playful gaslighting of the audience on part of the writers.
Any case where the character’s name is spelled out on screen prior to this episode, it will be spelled “token”. This even applies to when the character signs their own name as “token” in S9E3 for his contract with the super talent agency. On top of this, even though they went back and replaced most subtitles where his name is spoken, they seem to have missed some(at least on Max).
Well yeah I knew that already but it doesn’t answer my question
The episode with “tokens life matters” aired more than half a decade before they changed his name to Tolkien.