Eric Cartman on his tricycle

Eric Theodore Cartman, voiced by Trey Parker, is a fictional character in the animated series South Park. He is one of the four central characters, all of whom are eight-year old boys.

According to creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, when they were creating South Park, they were upset that "nowadays, it would be impossible to put a character like Archie Bunker on TV". But they thought that if he was a cartoon character, it might just be allowed. Hence, Cartman was born.

Eric, who is often only addressed by his last name, or for his obesity as "Fatass" or "the fat kid", is spoiled, self-centered to the point of narcissism, foul-tempered, foul-mouthed, disloyal, manipulative, cowardly, racist, bullying, and openly contemptuous of the few who can stand his deviant behavior.

Perhaps his family life is to blame: his mother (who is actually also his father) is an intersexual porn-queen (but a very sweet mom all the same). Ms. Cartman dotes on her son endlessly, beyond simply spoiling him. Cartman can almost always get what he wants simply by whining. Then again, his bad attitude may possibly be genetic, as all of his other relatives appear to have exactly the same temperament as Eric himself (except for his good counterpart from a parallel universe).

As the chubby antihero of the four lads, he was never intended to be the hero of the series, but within the first season he captured the popular imagination more than his three friends. The more outrageous his behavior, the more audiences seem to love him. (Compare Archie Bunker's original inspiration, Alf Garnett.)

Cartman has been hinted as having serious behavioral and emotional problems and/or gender issues; he is compulsive about singing the Come Sail Away song by Styx, he occasionally has tea parties with stuffed dolls, and has also been shown dressing up as and pretending to be Britney Spears. During Season 4, episode #406, Cartman joins NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association and becomes their poster boy, before he is rescued by NAMBLA, the North American Marlon Brando Look Alikes.

Cartman wears a light blue and yellow ski cap, a red jacket, yellow gloves, and brown pants. He has brown hair, which has been regularly seen since late in Season 5 (his hair magically turns black whenever he wears his Hitler outfit). Cartman has dressed up as Hitler in one of the halloween specials and in an episode from the 8th season. He tries to organize people in the episode where he sees The Passion of the Christ, and thinks it is Mel Gibson's way to rally people against the Jews. He can be seen as Hitler after he organizes all the people in his anti-Jew march (though they think it's something else.) The eradication of all the Jews is one of his life goals, with his other goal to make 10 million dollars. He has had numerous attempts to reach the latter, including starting a church and collecting donation money and starting a boy band called "Fingerbang" (Cartman doesn't know what it really means, he says he saw it on HBO), which he had a vision of in a dream. When Cartman got a million dollars, he used it to buy his own amusement park, which he did not allow anyone else to go into. It went about as well as anyone would have expected.

Cartman seems to be a fan of progressive rock bands such as Styx and Asia, as he is known to sing their songs in public at seemingly inappropriate times. He also seems to enjoy humming the Carson Era theme song to The Tonight Show when going about doing dull tasks.

Favorite words and catchphrases

• "Screw you guys, I'm going home."
• "You're breaking my balls man, you're breaking my balls!"
• "You will respect my authoritah! (sic)"
• "I'm not fat, I'm big boned"
• "This is all a bunch of tree-hugging hippie crap!"
• "No, kitty, that's a bad kitty!!"
• "... or I'll kick you (square) in the nuts!" (Also "balls")
• "Sweeeet!"
• "You can go over nyahh, but I'm going over nyah!"
• "Your family's poor, Kenny! YOUR FAMILY'S POOR!"
• "hippie!" (to any person he is displeased with)
• "balls" (a word that somehow finds its way into Cartman's lines in nearly every episode)
• "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" In Season 1, where he dresses up as Adolf Hitler and goes to school.
• "Suck my balls!"

A few catchphrases he tries to make cool:

• Hella; as in "No way, that's Hella lame!" (in the "Cartman from a parallel universe" halloween episode)
• Tits; as in "That is so Tits!" (in the toothfairy episode)
• Meecrob (Cartman says this is a nasty Thai appetizer, and uses this to become a new swear word, after the word shit becomes normalized after being on TV)

External links

• 'Come Sail Away' (http://www.songfacts.com/detail.lasso?id=1157) by Styx
• South Park Sounds (http://www.wavsite.com/sounds.asp?id=72) including 'Come Sail Away'