Eric Cartman

"Screw you guys! I'm a-going home!"

- Eric Cartman's catchphrase

"Respect my authoritah!"

- Eric Cartman

Eric Cartman is one of the four main protagonists, as well as the overarching antagonist and (sometimes) villain protagonist of the highly popular adult animated sitcom, South Park.

He is voiced by the series co-creator, Trey Parker, who also voiced Stan Marsh.

Appearance
Cartman wears a red jacket, yellow mittens, a blue hat with a yellow puff ball on top, brown pants, black shoes, and white socks (as seen in "Super Fun Time"). He sometimes wears a green t-shirt with a bear picture on under his jacket, a white tank top, and occasionally a dark red t-shirt. He has medium-brown hair and a double-chin. He also has triangular-shaped eyebrows, in contrast to the other main boys' rectangular ones. Even though Cartman is overweight, he always denies it (especially in the earlier seasons) by saying, "I'm not fat, I'm just big-boned", or some variation thereof. However, as seen in "Merry Christmas Charlie Manson!" and "Cartmanland", his weight problem may be, in truth, be genetic and runs in the family, as seen by the fact that, with the exception of his mother an aunt, and a cousin, his entire family is extremely overweight. But in "Fat Camp", when he tells his mother to talk about how he's big boned and such, she instead says, "Those were all lies, sweetie, you're just fat." In "Tsst", he is slightly thinner, although in later episodes, he was shown to have regained the lost weight. Cartman likely has blue irises, as, due to the events of "The Succubus", he has Kenny's eyes, which were shown with blue in "Starvin' Marvin". In Season Twenty, he wears a t-shirt with the words "Token's life matters".

Personality
Cartman is described in various terms, in short, he is an evil, vicious, angry, self-absorbed, immature, destructive, sarcastic, sadistic, loud-mouthed, lazy, and insane child. He is the most foul-mouthed character in the show. He is also racist and stereotypes almost everyone he sees. The very dark, usually disturbing undertones to his personality often hint at an extreme mental imbalance. Apart from being portrayed as having a general lack of moral responsibility or social conscience, he also seems to take pleasure from others' misfortune and is generally unable to show empathy, although there have been exceptions, such as in "How to Eat with Your Butt." Despite the severity of his actions, it is likely that they are a type of emotional defense mechanism against his insecurity and (potential) confused sexuality. This "defense", however, does not seem to be impenetrable, as evidenced by "1%". This has been parodied as well, in the cliché of a typical villain becoming benevolent. In these episodes, he usually convinces Kyle that he has good intentions, such as in the "Cartoon Wars" two-parter, where Cartman appears to Kyle that he is concerned about people's safety at the beginning, but it is later shown to only have been doing it to get Family Guy off the air. In the "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?" and "Probably" two-parter, Kyle and many others fall for Cartman's apparently "good intentions" for trying to prevent the children of South Park from going to hell. However, it is revealed later on that he only did it so he could earn money. In "Kenny Dies", he is distraught at Kenny's impending death leading Kyle to console him. Later when his real motives were revealed, knowing how Cartman typically is, Kyle promptly fights him in Kenny's defense.

Cartman can, on rare occasions, show compassion towards cats, as in "Major Boobage" in which he hides them in his attic from the authorities. Cartman seems to treat cats, as well as his own stuffed animals, much better in contrast to his friends or even his own mother. It should be noted of Cartman's formidable personality shift from early seasons to recent seasons. In the first four seasons, he was only a low-scale bully at worst with a heart of gold. By Season 5 onward, he becomes a heartless, sociopathic, and villainous protagonist (switching roles between antagonist and anti-hero, although sociopathic and greedy nonetheless). Although attempting a redemption for fear of a gender war in season 20 (and idealizing his girlfriend, Heidi Turner, to an eerie degree), it ultimately falls flat and Cartman becomes his usual sociopathic self (as well as a whole new type of realistic evil) in season 21.

Heroic Acts

 * Perhaps the most heroic act of Cartman is in the film, "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut", his frequent use of vulgarity, after getting electrocuted by a power box, coupled with the experimental V-chip implanted in his brain to stop him from swearing (which gave him temporary electrostatic powers), deliberately helps save the world from Saddam Hussein.
 * In "Major Boobage", he hides his pet cat and other cats in his attic so they won't get taken away, at first he refuses to hide them because he didn't want to get in trouble, but his love for cats got the better of him and decides to hide them.
 * In "Follow That Egg", he and Hedi are paired for a project. They had to raise an egg like it was their child, Cartman went up to Garrison, brought her a broken egg, and said that he broke it and Heidi didn't, and told Garrison to give him an F and Heidi an A, that way the grade will be C-, he was taking full responsibility for breaking the egg.
 * In "Fishsticks", when Kanye West and his friends confronted Cartman and Jimmy because he thinks that they say he's a gay fish even though it was quotes to a joke, Cartman tells Kanye and his friends to let Jimmy go and that he was the one who came up with the joke. He knew Kayne wanted to hurt and/or kill the person who came up with it. He was trying to take Jimmy's place so that Jimmy would be alive and well.
 * In "Rainforest Shmainforest", Cartman asks the construction workers to save Miss Stevens and the remaining children from the tribe of natives called the Yamagapa.
 * In "Die Hippie, Die", his intolerance of hippies saves South Park from a drug-filled hippie music festival.
 * In "I'm a Little Bit Country", by filling his TiVo with the history channel and dropping it and himself into a pool, he able to travel back in time to 1776, where he is able to institute the American tradition of Ice Cream Thursdays and return to South Park with a special 100th episode message about war and peace.
 * In "The Snuke", Cartman's intolerance against Muslims and his use of racial profiling save the day.
 * In "Grey Dawn", Cartman is the boy that figures out that by shutting down Country Kitchen Buffet, the Elderly won't have anywhere to get food, this being one of the few occasions where the boys rely on Cartman's planning (but only to an extent; Cartman wanted Kyle to suicide bomb the Buffet, but Stan over-ruled that and said they would only lock the doors.)
 * In "The Death of Eric Cartman", Cartman is under the belief that he was a ghost trapped on Earth until things were made right. He distracts three escaped convicts who were holding ten people hostage at the Red Cross while Butters lets them escape. Also in this episode Cartman makes up for all his previous wrongs such as the Sally Struthers incident ("Starvin' Marvin"), feeding parents to their child ("Scott Tenorman Must Die"), and crapping in the Principal Victoria's purse (seven times), however this was only to get in to the afterlife (Even though he wasn't dead), he didn't feel that way, and was not sorry to any of them at all.
 * In "Smug Alert!", he saves Kyle's family from a smug storm (however, this is due to the fact that Cartman had no one else to taunt and insult).
 * In "Make Love, Not Warcraft", Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Kenny logged into World of Warcraft together to kill the player killer Jenkins' character. First, Stan retrieves the Sword of a Thousand Truths from his dad. Second Kenny shoots his arrow and Kyle uses magic to paralyze Jenkins' character. And finally, after Cartman says, "Looks like you're about to get pwned", he crushes the player killer's head with his war hammer.
 * In "The Succubus", Cartman helps his friends to save Chef from unknowingly marrying a Succubus. Unfortunately, he doesn't prove to be very useful because at the time he was recovering from laser corrective surgery for his eyes.
 * In "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy", Cartman helps Kyle to save his brother Ike from his Kindergarten teacher Ms. Stevenson, whom Ike was having an unhealthy sexual relationship with. Although Cartman was doing it because the two were making out in the school hallways while he was the hall monitor (A job he took very seriously), he proves extraordinarily helpful and Kyle thanks him.
 * In "Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods", Cartman, angry at the other boys for missing his commercial debut, kicks the star projector, sending the full blast of the mind control machine into Dr. Adams' brain, saving the kids, Mr. Mackey, and Nurse Gollum from being put under mind control.
 * In "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants", Cartman repeatedly outsmarts, injures, and humiliates Osama Bin Laden until he is executed by a US soldier.
 * In "Cat Orgy", Cartman helps Shelly get back at Skyler for dumping her. When Skyler tries to get his revenge towards them as well, Cartman throws the box of catnip at his face, making the cats try to rape him and rip his pants off in the process.
 * In "The Poor Kid", Cartman told on the abusive foster parents to his councillor. If he didn't tell on the foster parents, Mysterion wouldn't have been able to save Karen and the foster kids as easily.
 * In "Imaginationland" ManBearPig kills Kyle and Cartman is devastated. Cartman then starts to punch the chest of Kyle's dead body in an effort to revive him, to which Kyle begins to breathe after coughing. (Although, Cartman did this to get Kyle to suck his balls rather than genuine care.)

Quotes
"You're right, guys. I'm gonna Tom Brady this thing!"

- Cartman after his friends convinced him to form a scheme to resolve the problem of PC Principal in "Stunning and Brave"

"I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say "You're not giving me four day of detention! You're only giving me one!""

- Cartman in "Stunning and Brave"

"NO! No, to hell with that! "You're giving me NO days detention! And then I'm gonna go home and fuck my hot wife! Who's not even that hot, kinda looks like a dude!""

- Cartman in "Stunning and Brave"