Eric Cartman

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

- Cartman "Respect my authoritah!"

- Cartman ''

Eric Theodore Cartman, more commonly known simply as Cartman is one of the main characters of the cartoon series South Park and is often portrayed as one of the shows main villains - showing a number of evil traits including, but not limited to, antisemitism, racism, extreme selfishness and psychopathic behaviour.

In spite of his three friends (Kenny, Kyle and Stan) have no bad intentions, and are, of course, heroes, Cartman is arguably the most evil, vulgar, vicious and cruel of the four.

He has an intense rivalry with Kyle Broflovski due to his constant scheming and disrepect for other cultures - the rivalry has intensified over the course of the series and the struggle between Kyle and Cartman can be seen in some ways as a struggle between good and evil in some later episodes. Also, no matter how much Kyle keeps telling Cartman the truth, the fatass refuses to believe the Jewish boy, and totally nothing ever gets through his fat head. Cartman is shown to be 100% delusional to which makes him believe that he is awesome and better than anyone, but he is too ignorant to see that he is sociopath. He has an ego the size of a universe making it totally impossible to convince him that he's pathetic in every way. He has a habit of saying the word "a$$#%@!(s)" more than any other South Park characters, he even called himself an asshole from the past. He's always been in denial about the fact that he is really fat. However, he was truthful about the fact that he loves being a racist (making funs of Jews and ripping on black people, and doesn't care if he's being rude) It is also shown that he worships Adolf Hitler as seen in the episode, Pinkeye, and how he believes that the German dictator was the most awesome guy around as mentioned in Make Love, Not Warcraft.

Cartman is often portrayed as very immature and quite cowardly, being reduced to tears once with a single passive hit from Kyle - however despite this he has also shown remarkable intelligence when he wants to, sometimes verging on the role of an evil genius and master manipulator as he has managed to gather large crowds to his will via impressive speeches and charisma.

Cartman's plans vary from story to story but are often small-scale and petty, such as cheating someone out of money or obtaining a new toy/gadget - though he has also had grander plans, some of which have verged on world-domination, though he always fails to achieve his goal (with one noteable exception).

Cartman is mostly portrayed as a spoiled brat who will do anything to get what he wants-denying Cartman of his goal is a dangerous game as he easily develops obsessions over such things and can be extremely vindictive when he feels wronged and if sufficiently annoyed he can develop an almost psychopathic glee in destroying his percieved enemies, despite this Cartman has no qualms about whining, begging and manipulating people as well and he has a foul temper that can explode at any moment.

The cause of Cartman's seemingly endless list of flaws seems to be a product of his environment, having been given everything from an early age he has come to expect such treatment and his lazy, selfish behaviour is often rewarded rather than punished by his mother - who also seems incapable of disciplining her demonic child regardless of the abuse she recieves.

Unlike the other central characters (Kyle, Stan and Kenny) Cartman doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes and thus continues to do incredibly stupid things that often backfire and blames everyone except himself for the results.

Another recurring theme in the series is that if Cartman is ever seen doing something good or selfless it is almost always a cover-up for some selfish plan - the effort put into these masterplans show that Cartman is not as stupid as he often acts but are usually doomed to failure due to either the actions of the other characters (especially Kyle) or some other factor.

He has become less evil in Season 16, notably Jewpacabra, where he finally stops ridiculing jews. But he then goes back to being more of an antagonistic protagonist in I should never have gone ziplining.

Villains similar to him

 * Ren Höek - Like Ren, is also a greedy, aggressive and selfish. Both have friends who are his opponents: Cartman has Kyle as antagonist hero and Ren has Stimpy as antagonist hero. Both are also very intelligent when it comes to material things or money. And both have committed unimaginable atrocities for the hearing, Eric killed the parents of a child and turned them into sauce, Ren as child torturing and killing tiny animals for fun, after her psychologist does not support his sadistic madness, he challenges him to fight and Ren kills him with blows with a pistol.
 * Zim - Like Zim, is also a character who is a complete monster and an anti-hero at a time. The personalities of both characters have varied for long, and are represented as morally "ambiguous". They also gain from cheating.

Trivia

 * Although rarely Cartman becomes aware of his evil deeds, if it was self-redemption in the episode "The Death of Eric Cartman" where he thought he had died and had left on earth like a lost soul because of his wrongdoings, he made every effort to do good.
 * Possibly the most heinous crime of Cartman is in the episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die", killing the parents of Scott and feed them to him as the chili. This was the most important indication of progression of a spoiled and selfish jerk of a truly evil from the start of the series, making it widely in a complete monster.
 * Cartman has much parodied the character Tony Montana in the 1983's film Scarface, the first time was in a play imitating him, and the second was in the episode "Medicinal Fried Chicken", parody in the character completely.
 * He is involved in the death of several childrens / teens, on one occasion killed Kenny (accidentally) with a pan, tried to kill Scott Tenorman, but eventually killed his parents. He ordered the Cthulhu to kill Justin Bieber.