Eric Cartman

**Eric Theodore Cartman** is one of the main characters in *South Park*.

## Origin

Eric Cartman is a main character in the animated sitcom, *South Park.* He is a self-centered and hostile child who is spoiled by his mother, Liane Cartman. He also seems to take pleasure from the misfortune of others and rarely shows empathy or remorse. Despite this, Cartman possibly doesn't view himself as a bad guy and seems to regard himself with immense narcissism. Most of the characters in the series tolerate his presence at best and will often hold contempt against him. His closest friends are Kenny McCormick and Butters Stotch, who are two of the few characters that follow Cartman's schemes. His other "friends" are Kyle, and Stan, but they mostly tolerate him and won't hesitate to insult him.

Cartman holds a particularly strong hatred towards Kyle mainly on account of his Jewish ancestry. This has led to many altercations between the two, involving fistfights, scheming back and forth to undermine the other, and public humiliation. Eric's mother is Liane Cartman, a promiscuous woman that claims to be a hermaphrodite. It was not originally revealed who Cartman's father was, although in the episode titled *Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut*, it was falsely stated that Liane Cartman was his father. However, later episodes revealed that Cartman's true father was Jack Tenorman, who is also the father of his bully, Scott Tenorman.

Cartman attends South Park Elementary as part of Mr. Garrison's class. During the first 58 episodes, he and his classmates were in the third grade, before transitioning to the fourth grade during the fourth season. Cartman is distinguished from other children by his wider girth, triangular eyebrows, and characteristic double chin.

A precursor to Cartman first appeared in the first *The Spirit of Christmas* short, dubbed *Jesus vs. Frosty*, created by Parker and Stone in 1992 while they were students at the University of Colorado. In the short, the character resembling Cartman was named "Kenny", and a variation of the catchphrase "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" was exclaimed when this character was killed by an evil snowman. Eric Cartman was composed of construction paper cutouts and animated through the use of stop motion.

When commissioned three years later by friend Brian Graden to create another short as a video Christmas card that he could send to friends, Parker and Stone created another similarly-animated *The Spirit of Christmas* short, dubbed *Jesus vs. Santa*. In this short, his character first appears as he does in the series, and is given the name "Cartman", while the character of Kenny appears as the character is depicted today and given Cartman's name from the previous short. Cartman next appeared on August 13, 1997, when *South Park* debuted on Comedy Central with the episode "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe".

Cartman is partially named after and based on Matt Karpman, a high school classmate of Parker who remains a friend of both Parker and Stone. Cartman is also inspired by the character, Archie Bunker. While developing the character, Parker noted that everyone either remembers "an annoying fat kid in their pasts", or "they were the annoying fat kid". Stone has observed that "kids are not nice, innocent, flower-loving little rainbow children ... they don't have any kind of social tact or etiquette, they're just complete little raging bastards".