Eric Cartman

Eric Cartman is one of the main characters from South Park. He has the distinction of being one of the few characters in the show to be both a mostly protagonist, but occasionally he plays as the main antagonist.

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

Personality
Cartman is described in various terms, in short, he is an evil, vicious, angry, self-absorbed, immature, destructive, sarcastic, snooty, 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 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 supposedly real motives were revealed, knowing how Cartman typically is, Kyle promptly fights him in Kenny's defense, although Cartman was genuinely distraught over Kenny's illness before and after he learns that he can benefit from it. This clearly shows that Cartman went through Congress for Kenny and reveals that he does not have a healthy way of dealing with the death of his friend.

Cartman can, on rare occasions, show compassion towards cats, as in "Major Boobage" in which he hides cats in his attic from the authorities. This compassion hints that he has not progressed to be a full sociopath. It should be noted how Cartman's personality varies by season. In the first four seasons he was only a jerk or bully who while really bratty was more anti-hero and had a heart of gold. By Season 5 onward, he was sociopathic villainous protagonist. In Season 15 onward was an anti-hero again until Season 21 where he is more cruel and selfish.

Appearance
Cartman wears a red sweater, 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".