Eric Cartman

Eric Theodore Cartman, usually referred to as just Cartman, is one of the main characters, along with Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenny McCormick. Cartman is sometimes the main antagonist of an episode, for example "Trapper Keeper". None of the other three main children really consider Cartman their friend and do not know why he still there with them like nothing, but a certain form of unstable friendship ends up being born between them. However he is usually Kyle's first choice when he breaks his friendship with Stan. In earlier episodes, Kenny was his best friend, however, in later seasons, Butters Stotch is usually depicted as such.
Cartman was the first one of the boys to be shown without his hat, as seen in "Merry Christmas Charlie Manson!". He also weighs 90 pounds, as revealed in "Weight Gain 4000".
According to the creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, they thought it would be impossible to put a character like Archie Bunker on late-20th century television. But then they came up with the idea that it might be allowed if the character were an animated nine (formerly eight) year-old boy living in the mountain town of South Park, Colorado. Thus, Cartman was born.
Contrary to popular belief that Cartman's name was derived from German war-pilot Erich Hartmann (which would reflect his love of Hitler and the Nazis), Cartman's name and personality are based on Matt Karpman, a friend of Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Karpman was known for being slightly overweight, short, very obnoxious and skilled with his verbal comebacks. According to their mutual friend Jonathan Korty, Trey came up with the name Cartman during a Super Bowl party on 29 January 1995. The Spirit of Christmas: Jesus vs. Frosty had been completed back in 1992 and "The Fat Kid" needed a name. Trey was sitting in a corner quietly watching Karpman and their other friends trash talk during the game when one person said, "Shut up Karpman". Trey suddenly blurted out, "Cartman! That’s the perfect name for The Fat Kid." Karpman's retorts against that further convinced Trey that "The Fat Kid" had to be named Cartman.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have repeatedly stated that Cartman is their ultimate favorite of all the characters in the show. Although Cartman is initially modeled after Archie Bunker, Toni Johnson-Woods, author of Blame Canada: South Park and Contemporary Culture, says that she believes Cartman also draws parallels to Jackie Gleason of The Honeymooners, and Fred Flintstone.
== Trivia ==
* Cartman has Kenny's eyes, due to the events in the subplot of "The Succubus".
* Kyle has one of Cartman's kidneys due to the events of "Cherokee Hair Tampons".
* It is most likely that Cartman is the youngest of the four friends. His birthday was in the first season, and it has been clear that he turned 8, while the other boys already were 8 years old. However, Stan made it clear that Cartman and all the other boys were ten years old in "Crack Baby Athletic Association" while Stan was still nine years old only to turn ten two episodes later. It could be that the birth dates of all the boys were called out randomly and their permanent birthdays set in later. This mix up made Stan the youngest of the four boys.
* Cartman is mostly known by his family name, and most characters, including Stan, Kyle, Wendy, and Tolkien, call him by his surname.
* In "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000", it is shown that Stan and Kyle pick on Cartman because he is fat, not because of his many crimes.
* Cartman has been shown to go to great lengths to get revenge on people who did relatively minor things. An example is in "Tsst", where Cartman made a kid saw off his own leg and get him sent to the hospital just because the kid called him chubby. Despite this, he never does something like this on any of his friends, despite the fact that they have called him much worse names than "chubby". He also has never arranged a gambit to get Wendy's parents killed like he did Scott Tenorman's, despite the fact that what Wendy did to Cartman was worse than what Scott did. Why he has not done these things yet is not yet known, although it is shown that Wendy can occasionally outsmart Cartman and turn his schemes against him. Cartman may not have sought extreme revenge on Wendy due to his feelings for her; it is shown that he likes Wendy in "Chef Goes Nanners". Cartman sends a fake police report to a psychiatrist's wife, who then commits suicide; It can be assumed that he knew she would do so, as he is a master of manipulation.
* Cartman maintains somewhat friendly relationships with most of the boys at his school and is shown playing with them on occasion, despite the fact that all the kids openly hate him, though this is considered a love/hate relationship that he shares with the boys.
* In the episode "Chickenpox", the boys sleep at Kenny's house. When they rolled out their sleeping bags, Kyle and Stan both had Terrance and Phillip and Cartman had Urkel from Family Matters on his.
* According to the girls, Cartman is the ugliest boy in their class, likely because of his weight. He is the only one not invited to the girls' party in "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset".
* In the "The Unaired Pilot", Cartman was originally scripted to have a father and a sister. However, they had no speaking lines and were cut for the official pilot onward.
* In the episode "It's a Jersey Thing" he (along with Dog Poo) was raped by "the Snooki", an evil creature from Hell.
* In the episodes "It's a Jersey Thing" and "It's Christmas in Canada", Cartman is shown to cry when physically attacked.
* He is the only one of the fourth graders to have noticed Kenny's reoccurring deaths, as shown in "Cartmanland".
* Cartman saved Kyle for the sole reason to pick on him and have something to do in "Smug Alert!", despite his apparent desire to kill or get rid of Kyle.
* Cartmans ass is shown to be very powerful in two ways:
# Cartman successfully fights off Craig using his ass in "Tweek vs. Craig".
# Cartman successfully imbues the tastes of several different restaurant chains foods into his own burgers by farting on them.
* Cartmans farts are shown to be highly toxic and even deadly in "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants" when an American man in Afghanistan smells the inside of the cargo area Cartman farted in, and he throws up and appears to have died. Stan, Kyle, and Kenny's surviving could be due to their constant exposure of his farts, and have thus gained a tolerance / resistance to its fatal effects.
* Cartmans farts are apparently harmless if they imbued with food and ingested, as no one gets sick from eating them in "Ass Burgers", at least until the people who ate them realize what they were eating.
* Cartman is shown to undergo several things that would most likely help him psychologically; he sees a therapist in "T.M.I.", which screws him, as in the end his penis is still below average; he goes to Fat Camp in "Fat Camp", and resolves to lose his weight, but is then kicked out, and he is left crying and eating a donut; Cartman makes an altruistic shift in personality in "Tsst", when Caesar Milan successfully rids Cartman of his dark side, only for it to return to him when his mother, despite knowing what she did to him before, makes him turn back to his normal self.
* "1%" marks the first time he possibly makes an advance in psychological health, as he kills all of his stuffed animals, who he gave voices and personalities, to the point that one even insulted him in an earlier episode, severing a dangerous psychological attachment to his stuffed toys, even if it was through a delusional episode.
* Cartman's stuffed animal Clyde Frog was decapitated by Kyle in a fit of rage after he was infected with AIDS by Cartman in "Tonsil Trouble", but was not given a funeral, and in fact survived, and was repaired, presumably by his mother.
* If Cartman has split personalities, then he has, or rather had, at least five; Clyde Frog, Peter Panda, Muscleman Marc, Wumpletumpkins, and Polly Prissypants. If Mitch Connor / Jennifer Lopez is included, then he would still have one left.
* As shown in the 1992 short The Spirit of Christmas, the design of Cartman was originally going to be used for Kenny. As shown, when Frosty kills 'Cartman', Kyle yells "Oh my god! They killed Kenny!"
* According to "1%", Cartman has the cholesterol levels of a 70-year-old man. Cartman's bigotry and greed has actually saved people. In "ManBearPig", his intent to sneak all of the "treasure" he found actually gave Stan, Kyle, and Kenny a head start before Al Gore flooded The Cavern of The Winds, which had probably saved them from drowning. In "The Snuke", Cartman's bigotry against the Muslim student Baahir led to the discovery of the snuke in Hillary Clinton's vagina, as well as the British Plan to invade America and unend The American Revolution, which prevented a nuclear device from going off in South Park, saving thousands of lives, most likely more, and even possibly saving America from being taken over by The British.
** In "The Poor Kid", Cartman's greedy nature also led to Child Services being alerted to Kenny's Foster Families abusive nature, as he tried to go to Hawaii by using Child Services and getting his mother arrested. This led to him ratting out his foster parents, the same ones as Kenny's, and helping the foster children get sent back to their homes. However,Mysterion's interference would have probably led to the same thing, as he did get them drunk off of a can Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.
* Cartman gave only Clyde Frog a funeral in "1%", but neglected to give one to Peter Panda and his other stuffed toys after they died. This could be due to Cartman's favoritism of Clyde Frog, or due to his panicking from Peter Panda's death and trying to protect his other stuffed animals, only for them die one by one throughout the night.
* Cartman's fear of being branded as "The Poor Kid" is actually very legitimate, as in "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000", after he is arrested for hitting Tolkien Black with a rock, Clyde Donovan is then branded as "The Fat Kid", and is thus treated just as Cartman was, being called several names.
** Also, in "Here Comes the Neighborhood", Tolkien Black is ridiculed for being "The Rich Kid", and thus not be like the other kids, who cannot afford everything he has. Tolkien then invites several black families to South Park, and is left out again. When Tolkien goes back to the others, they tell him how they make fun of his being his rich because they make fun of everyone for being something else; Cartman being fat, as well as many other things, Stan being in love with Wendy, Kyle for being a Jew, Kenny for being poor, and Butters for being a wuss. This shows that the children go out of their way to find something that can insult and rip off each other for, and will transfer that insult to the next person if the present one is not around.