• Adorably Precocious Child: All four of them are prone to possessing the knowledge of adults or teenagers in the recent seasons and voicing their opinions on real-life recent events, but still have a childish love of toys, cartoons, sports, video games and other things preteen boys are into.
• Aesop Amnesia: Due to Status Quo Is God being played straight prior to Season 18, the boys usually forget whatever lesson they previously learned and are back to their rebellious ways by the next week. However, they do go through Character Development over time and (apart from Cartman) become more mature over the course of the series.
• All of the Other Reindeer: At the start of the series, they were relatively well-liked by their classmates and were perfectly willing to bully their less popular peers. However, as the show went on, a combination of Character Development and Characterization Marches On led their social status to become much more fragile. According to Craig, all of the other kids think they're assholes. Even if he was exaggerating, it still isn't all that unusual for their popularity to dip beneath Butters. Though their popularity is constantly in flux, being despised by their peers in some episodes, and having sleepovers with them in others. Generally speaking, Stan, Kyle and Kenny are usually in good standing with the other kids, although they have a rivalry now with Craig, Clyde and Token who have their own little group. The lightning rod of the disdain is, of course, Eric Cartman, who is the most hated kid in school by far. As much as the other kids pick on Butters, their hatred of Cartman is exponentially greater.
• Anti-Hero: All four boys have different shades of anti-heroism.
  • Stan usually varies between a Pragmatic Hero to a Knight in Sour Armor.
  • Kyle varies between Pragmatic Hero to Unscrupulous Hero depending on how much he's fueled by his hatred towards Cartman.
  • Cartman is usually a Nominal Hero, though this only applies in seasons 1-4 as later seasons portray him more as a Villain Protagonist, though he still takes the role of the Nominal Hero occasionally.
  • Kenny could be seen as the most heroic of the four boys, but his numerous deaths have led him to become a Knight in Sour Armor and is definitely The Hedonist.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Even though they are a quartet, they could fit this trope whenever Kenny does or when Cartman’s not around, making them a trio.
  • Stan (sensitive, kind-hearted, friendly, calm, but shy pacifist) as the Beauty.
  • Kyle (Intelligent, logical, rational, outspoken, Book Smart) as the Brains.
  • Cartman (although not physically strong; cunning, manipulative, Jerkass, loud-mouthed, aggressive) and Kenny (although he always gets killed; brave, heroic, selfless, adventurous, daring) as the Brawns.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Excluding Cartman, they're generally well-meaning, if occasionally troublesome. But if you get on their bad side, you will regret it.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Kenny's the perverted Blonde, Stan and Cartman are the Brunettes, and Kyle's the short-tempered Redhead. Notable also: when Kenny was "permanently" dead in an earlier season, the replacement friends the boys picked to fill his fourth spot (Butters, Tweak, and Bebe) all were blonde as well.
• Boring, but Practical: Stan, Kyle, and Kenny were finally able to defeat Cartman in the revised future by simply cutting ties with him and ignoring him for the rest of their lives. Given what a massive Attention Whore Cartman is, when the boys decide to no longer indulge in his behavior anymore and stop hanging out with him, Cartman goes mad with loneliness and becomes a drunk and miserable hobo who has lost all of his skills as a Manipulative Bastard as a result of them refusing to interact with him. Thus, Cartman is no longer the menace he once was, while the trio are finally able to live happy lives free from Cartman’s influence.
• Butt-Monkey: All of them:
  • Cartman was perpetually on the receiving end of obesity jokes much to his chagrin. In addition, the very first episode is literally about Cartman having been anal-probed by aliens and farting flames before his eventual abduction. While he's still prone to bad luck in the recent seasons, he's become more deserving of it due to his tendency to commit immoral acts, though this is implied for him to have done so because of his continuous position on the receiving end of abuse.
  • Stan was infamously bullied by his sister Shelley for a while; even beyond that, he's dealt with depression, is one of the many victims of Cartman's manipulative tactics, and just straight up gets the short end of the stick, depending on the episode.
  • Kyle is a frequent target for Cartman's anti-Semitic jokes, slur-spewing, and humiliations like having to stick his finger up his ass to activate an anal probe, being continuously farted on (and being made to say he enjoys said farts in public) in order to keep Cartman from revealing information that could destroy peace in the Middle East), as well as being legally forced to literally suck Cartman's balls. At times, he also gets the short end of the stick in social situations (being the last to like Chinpokomon, getting beat up by his metrosexual classmates when he didn't feel right following the trend, and so on).
  • Kenny was the resident butt-monkey in the early years, sharing this role with Pip before Butters was introduced a regular character. His abject poverty was a frequent target for Cartman's ridicule. What's more, he had the infamous tendency to die in every episode, then get revived by the following week.
• Characterization Marches On: In the older seasons, they were all mischievous, foul-mouthed schoolyard kids who targeted the less fortunate and engaged in rebellious behavior for the fun of it. Fast-forward to Season 12, and they've become more opinionated and brutally honest in regards to the world's imperfections. Pretty much reaches its epitome by Season 18, where the show has developed a story arc.
• Childhood Friends: They have known each other since preschool... and even back then, Kyle and Cartman were Vitriolic Best Buds.
• Color-Coded Characters:
  • Cartman — Red, blue, and yellow
  • Stan — Brown, blue, and red
  • Kyle — Orange and green
  • Kenny — Orange
  • Additionally, the boys who wear blue are voiced by Trey Parker while the boys who wear orange are voiced by Matt Stone.
• Cruel Mercy: This is Stan, Kyle, and Kenny’s decision on how to finally deal with Cartman after childhood. Rather than seek revenge on Cartman for what he’s done to them, they just ignore him and leave him alone while they live their lives. However, since Cartman is a massive Attention Whore, this drives him mad with loneliness and misery to the point he becomes a homeless alcoholic who’s done nothing with his life, a fate far worse than anything the boys could come up with, which even causes Stan and Kyle to feel sorry for him.
• Cute Bruiser: With the exception of Cartman (though even he has his moments), all of them have shown remarkable hand-to-hand combat skills; they effortlessly toss around another group of kids in "Faith Hilling"; Kenny (as Mysterion) beats up an older girl in "The Poor Kid"; Kyle knocks out Cartman with a single punch in "Doubling Down"; Stan takes seconds to subdue the other boys fighting over Bebe with a femur almost twice his size in "Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society", among other examples.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Kid Hero; as the series progresses, they become incredibly exasperated by the town's collective idiocy and insanity. And even though they may be able to take on adult responsibilities, their "solutions" to problems are often either short-term or end up causing even more damage. This is best shown in "Lil' Crime Stoppers", where the boys play detective and get into all sorts of childish antics (trying to solve the mystery of a missing pie from a windowsill), after which they are asked to bust a meth lab. Stan simply knocks on the door of the lab and calls out: "uh, police. Open up". The frightened criminals open fire at the "police", killing themselves in the process and causing a great deal of property damage to the surrounding area.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • Their intelligence fluctuates, depending on the episode. In some, they are capable of taking on adult responsibilities and rant about the wrongs in society, which has become more prominent in the recent seasons, while in others they can't even tell the difference between TV and real life.
  • How close the boys are to each other also fluctuates depending on the episode. They can range from being True Companions who are firmly loyal to each other to actively screwing each other over for their own ends. The former is more consistent in later seasons, while the latter was the norm in Season 1.
  • The morality of the boys. Cartman is consistently the worst of the four, but Stan and Kyle can either be shown to have a much higher moral standard, compared to Cartman, or be shown to be not much better than him. Kenny tends to be the most heroic of the four but has acted as Cartman's right-hand man at times, especially in earlier seasons.
• Dirty Coward: At their absolute worst. If their actions unintentionally cause disastrous results and could make them face serious consequences, they will do anything, like lying to the authorities (which is perjury) and throwing anyone (mainly Butters) under the bus, to avoid responsibility and save their own hide. "Pre-School" and "Good Times with Weapons" are two good examples of this. Gets inverted at the end of "The Day After Tomorrow", where Stan, after hiding the truth for the whole episode, admits to everyone that he was responsible for breaking the Beaverton Dam... but everyone interprets it as a metaphorical admission, not literal, and Stan eventually gives up trying to convince them otherwise as the credits roll.
• Divergent Character Evolution: As kids, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny look no different from each other, and are almost impossible to differentiate by their design if they changed their attire in a way that covered their hair. This ambiguity comes into play for them (and their classmates) in a few episodes: "Super Best Friends" (when they all became Blainetology cult members), "The Coon" (with Mysterion's identity), and "Naughty Ninjas" (when they become the titular warriors). As adults, however, their facial structures have diverged to resemble Matt and Trey's in Kyle and Stan's respective case, with different designs for their nose, ears, and chin. On Kenny's part, though his facial structure is similar to Stan's, he also has a shaggy beard that differentiates him from the others. Averted with Cartman who was always distinguishable from the others with or without his clothes, both as a child and as an adult.
• The Dog Bites Back: Cartman usually takes advantage of his friendships with Stan, Kyle and Kenny to insult, manipulate, and abuse them for his own benefit, but there are times the trio manages to make Cartman pay for his actions, especially Kyle. They finally give Cartman a permanent punishment for his mistreatment towards them by cutting all ties with him which leads to him becoming a lonely, homeless, and miserable alcoholic, while the rest of the boys get to live much happier lives.
• Dysfunction Junction: All of their personal lives are heavily flawed at best:
  • Stan is prone to having depressive episodes, such as going Goth after Wendy broke up with him in "Raisins" or turning to whiskey to cope with his newfound cynicism in "Ass Burgers." His relatives include an impulsive and childish father, a Knight Templar mother (in earlier seasons), an aggressive and violent older sister, a suicidal and Alzheimer's-suffering grandfather, and a jingoistic uncle. He has to put up with townspeople, friends, and classmates with ludicrous and often demented trains of thought that clash with his more passive personality. Additionally, despite Kenny's infamously perverted attitude, Stan has to deal with the downsides of romance the most out of the four boys due to his on-and-off relationship with Wendy.
  • Kyle deals with daily anti-Semitic bigotry from Cartman in addition to the latter's ridiculous ploys to humiliate him. His adopted little brother (who's in kindergarten at the age of 3) went through "Canadian puberty" in "Taming Strange" and had a relationship with his teacher in "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy." He has a melodramatic and overprotective mother that went to war with said brother's home country because of a vulgar movie, a father that viciously trolls women on the Internet during his free time, and an extremely stereotypically Jewish cousin that occasionally visits the Broflovskis. Stan, and Kenny to a lesser, are the only people close to Kyle without a toxic need to embarrass him.
  • Cartman is frequently, and brutally, insulted for his weight (not that it's undeserved), has several mental problems that can only be broadly defined, and equally complicated views on sex and romance. Both the adults in town and his fellow kids, including his "friends", despise him (again, not without reason), and his physical health is so poor it gave South Park Elementary the worst fitness score in the whole country in "1%." None of this is helped by his mother, who validates her son's awful personality by giving him everything he wants out of desperation for friends. As of Season 25's "City People", Cartman and Liane live in an old hot dog-shaped diner because he made her quit her job, losing their house in the process. This eventually changes in Season 26's "DikinBaus Hot Dogs", when Butters forces Cartman into moving in his old house after he pushed Butters' buttons one too many times.
  • Kenny is part of South Park's poorest family, which consists of his alcoholic parents that always fight and abuse each other, his apparently equally alcoholic older brother, and a little sister that he is immensely protective of. His immortality doesn't prevent him from feeling pain when he dies, and to make things worse, no one remembers his deaths. Unlike the other kids, Kenny's superhero persona is not a game, and he genuinely tries using his superpower to his advantage for his vigilante work, meaning that Kenny, as Mysterion, is quite possibly one of the few competent "authority figures" in South Park, making the boy's life even more stressful.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Like the rest of the show, the boys were affected by the earlier seasons' quirks:
  • All four of them were much more childlike in the early episodes despite swearing like sailors and getting themselves into absurd, and often adult, scenarios. Nowadays, they are much savvier, and even mature compared to most adults in town.
  • Stan and Kyle were the interchangeable voice of reason, but they were nevertheless brats and part-time bullies. They were also known for their negative relationships with their siblings. Stan was routinely abused by Shelley, while Kyle regularly played "Kick the Baby" with Ike and disowned him once he found out they're not biologically related in "Ike's Wee Wee". Shelley now tends to direct her ire more towards Sharon and Randy (in typical teen girl fashion), and Kyle and Ike are much closer. In fact, Ike is probably the person Kyle cares for the most aside from Stan.
    • Stan was much more neurotic when it came to romance, and regularly vomited in front of his crush, while Kyle's relationship with his Jewish heritage was more ambivalent, especially during Christmas. Nowadays, Stan is as calm as ever around Wendy, and his love for animals, passive nature, cynicism, and frustration with his peers are just as important to his character as his status as the "normal guy", while Kyle's Judaism in modern episodes is only important when the plot revolves around family traditions or Cartman's bigotry. While Kyle's Judaism was his defining trait in the early days, and it still is to an extent, his strong moral compass, book smarts, and short fuse matter just as much now.
  • Cartman had a higher and much raspier voice, a plethora of catchphrases, and was generally more obnoxious and spoiled, i.e. he only bothered his mom for food and toys and he only teased Kyle for being Jewish because his family didn't celebrate Christmas. He was also much stupider, even for an eight-year-old. Modern Cartman has a much deeper voice with a more pronounced accent that barely sounds like his old voice. His catchphrases are only used for nostalgic throwbacks and have mostly been replaced with his vocal quirks ("skewl", "I'm seriously"). He is now a capable schemer, but his bigotry has become sincere and targets virtually anyone that is part of a marginalized or minority group. His relationship with his mother is also more twisted, mean-spirited, and manipulative.
  • Kenny was originally a Living Prop and a Phrase Catcher known for dying in every episode and being able to have raunchier dialogue than other characters because his parka muffled his voice. After his semi-permanent death in "Kenny Dies" and return at the end of Season 6, Kenny became more of an Advertised Extra, and barely contributed to plotlines. As the show evolved, he kept his perversion and vulgarity, but got more development. The show went from treating his deaths like an iconic Running Gag to actually providing an explanation for their existence. Kenny also became a superhero to both stop crime in South Park and improve his dysfunctional home life. While classic Kenny is more like a mascot, contemporary Kenny is arguably the most heroic character in the show.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The boys (except Cartman) get happy endings in the revised future, as a reward for all the hardships that they went through in the show; Stan becomes a successful astronaut, Kyle becomes a happy family man, and Kenny is still a successful scientist. Inverted completely with Eric Cartman, who becomes a homeless, lonely, miserable, alcoholic as punishment for all the villainous things he did in the show.
• Flanderization: With the exception of Kenny (whose perverted tendencies have been notably toned down), all three of their traits have become more prevalent as the show continues.
  • Stan and Kyle's statuses as the only sane men have increased either due to the adults' incompetence or Cartman's ridiculously cruel and sociopathic actions.
  • Cartman has become more sociopathic and malicious following the infamous "Scott Tenorman Must Die", also becoming more criminal and manipulative in the process. Compare him in the first four seasons, where he was a naïve bully with a good heart, and you'll notice how drastically he's changed.
  • Kyle and Cartman's rivalry went from childish teasing to full-blown hatred.
• Four-Man Band:
  • Stan — Only Sane Man
  • Kyle — Hot-Tempered Smart Guy
  • Cartman — Fat Comedic Sociopath
  • Kenny — Lovable Sex Maniac Butt-Monkey
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Stan: Phlegmatic. He's calm, sensitive, caring, easygoing, friendly, somewhat shy, and even-tempered, rarely losing his cool.
  • Cartman: Choleric. He's a loud, callous, and domineering brat who loves wearing his sociopathic instability on his sleeves.
  • Kyle: Melancholic. He's temperamental, morally-driven and the most compassionate and emotional of the group. In earlier seasons, he's occasionally seen as an outcast. Additionally, Cartman's shenanigans often get the best of his mood.
  • Kenny: Sanguine. A perverted Dirty Kid who's shown to be light-hearted and hedonistic. Underneath his hood, he's heroically selfless, loyal, and can be surprisingly eloquent.
• Free-Range Children: They're old enough to wander outside without adult supervision and frequently travel outside of Colorado to places like outer space, Peru, and Canada.
• Gasshole: Being fans of Terrance and Phillip, the boys enjoy farting for their own amusement, moreso in the earliest seasons. Cartman, in particular, uses his as chemical warfare and torture implements.
• Guile Hero: In their Crapsack World, they tend to save the day by being smarter and having more common sense than the adults (though Cartman tends to border more into Manipulative Bastard territory).
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: They're Vitriolic Best Buds, but they're always on each other's side in the end and are not embarrassed to exhibit their emotional sensitivity should something bad happen to one another. Even Cartman still manages to gain some acceptance from the other three every now and then.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Stan and Kyle's adult selves in Post Covid look just like Trey Parker and Matt Stone, respectively. Kyle no longer having his Jew-fro is even similar to Matt Stone losing his Jew-fro in later years.
• Jerkass to One: Though they can exhibit differing levels of sympathy towards the school's underdogs, they were always consistently mean to their classmate Pip Pirrup up to the latter's death. It doesn't help that he became Out of Focus following season 6, right around the same time when the boys started maturing and cutting kids like Butters some slack.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: They're all foul-mouthed, selfish, bratty, and rude, but ultimately, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny are good kids at heart who will go out of their way to help others and protect their town. Even Cartman, the Token Evil Teammate of the bunch, has the odd Pet the Dog moment to show he's not all bad, and was essentially this in the first four seasons, before the infamous Scott Tenorman incident.
• Karma Houdini: Often due to the fact that the adults in town are either useless or just as immature and irresponsible, the boys tend to receive zero comeuppance for their Troubling Unchildlike Behavior.
• Kid Hero: They are (sans Cartman) often the ones who save the day.
• Kids Are Cruel: They are based on the suspicious belief parents hold about how their children would behave without the presence of an authority figure. The Boys are notorious for using foul language, disrespecting authority, watching vulgar media, and bullying the less fortunate. This becomes Downplayed around Season 12, where the show becomes more up to date in regards to Real Life events and the boys in turn become more aware (or as conservatives like Daryl Weathers would theoretically describe, "woke").
• Like Father, Unlike Son: They contrast their fathers in various ways.
  • Stan is exasperated by Randy's get rich quick schemes and desperate need to be on trend. While Stan is just as likely to hop from one idea to the next, he's far calmer about it and cooperates with the other boys rather than engaging in vanity projects.
  • Kyle is more emotionally expressive than Gerald, who later turns out to be an internet troll. Kyle also doesn't exhibit Gerald's senseless misogyny or his elitist attitudes.
  • Kenny doesn't exhibit Stuart's trashiness, violence, or lack of ambition.
  • Cartman is fat, immature, and grows up to be a Crazy Homeless Person while Jack Tenorman was an ex-football player and was functional enough to start a family and own a house.
• Mundane Solution: How do Stan, Kyle, and Kenny finally defeat the sociopathic Eric Cartman and put an end to his threat for good? Simply break ties with him and ignore them for the rest of their lives, where Cartman loses what manipulative skills he had and devolves into a screaming, miserable, homeless alcoholic who has done nothing with his life and has gone mad as a result of being alone for so long.
• Never Bareheaded: Except for Cartman (who is frequently seen without his hat), they almost never take off their hats. In Kyle's case, it's to hide a really embarrassing Jewfro. Kenny never took off his hood, so no-one knew what he looked like until he finally took it off in the movie.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between:
  • Of the three main boys (as Kenny is more Out of Focus than the others), there's the generally easy-going Stan (nice), the racist and manipulative Jerkass Cartman (mean) and the usually morally-correct Kyle who nonetheless has a short temper and sometimes grabs the Jerkass Ball (in-between).
  • Stan, Kyle and Kenny also sort of form a Downplayed version of, especially when Cartman isn't around. Normally, Stan is the most mature, level-headed and non-confrontational (nice), Kyle is generally good, but has the shortest temper out of the three (mean) and Kenny has a very hedonistic lifestyle, but he also has a very nice and even heroic side (in-between). However, if Stan catches the Jerkass Ball, he can be the mean one, with Kenny as the nice and Kyle as the in-between ones.
  • Ironically, "Post Covid" turns this on its head as Stan grows into a bitter and antagonistic adult who lashes out at everyone (mean), Cartman becomes a mellow and even-tempered rabbi (nice), and Kyle retains some of his optimism but becomes a little consumed by his jealousy for Cartman's new lifestyle (in-between). After the future is revised, however, they return to their original roles.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Downplayed, since all of the have a roguish side, having mouths of sailors, loving dirty humor and all of them have caused mischief, though Stan and Kyle are more noble, being significantly more mature and calculated than the other two, who are more chaotic and generally bigger trouble makers. Within the specific pairs they also form roguish and noble male roles respectively.
  • Stan is the most calm and mature from the group. Because of this and his social skills, he often fulfills the leader role and even acts as somewhat of a father figure towards his friends when he has to keep them in check, making him the noble male. While there are times where Kyle can be more level-headed than Stan, he has a hell of a temper and is more likely to let his emotions get the better of him, making him more roguish by comparison.
  • Kenny is a Thrill Seeker highly interested in sex and drugs, but beneath that he has a heart of gold and a strong sense of justice. He has also made high accomplishments through hard work. Cartman is by contrast the biggest jerk of the group and the Token Evil Teammate, often manipulating and hurting people for his own bidding. While he has redeeming qualities, they get overshadowed by his evil deeds, making him way less noble than Kenny.
• Out of Focus: After Season 18 the boys start hanging out less and less as new episodes focus more exclusively on Cartman, Butters or the adults. In the Post-COVID special they acknowledge that they drifted apart over the years.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • If the villain the boys must face proves to be very evil, make no mistake that they won’t pull their punches in giving them the most devastating form of retribution that they can think of. That said, Cartman tends to go way overboard on this.
  • Eric Cartman himself is on the receiving end of an act of retribution when the rest of the boys decide that they have had enough of his antics and decide to deprive him of what he loves the most: attention. By choosing to officially break ties with Cartman and ignore him for their entire lives, they give Cartman his most devastating comeuppance, where he becomes a drunk and miserable hobo, who’s gone mad from loneliness.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Downplayed. They are quite small (being pint sized kids) and while they do not possess superhuman strength, they are able to lift stuff just as big or even much bigger than them. For example in "Margaritaville" Stan was able to carry a mixer about as big as him through town and even to Washington with ease and in "Death" Cartman, Stan and Kyle were able to lift a cow together.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: They are quite an interesting group to say the least and they sometimes go out of their way to save the day. With mixed results.
  • Cartman displays a lot of narcissistic and sociopathic behavior, discriminates probably against all possible groups and is also The Friend Nobody Likes. He is very prone to Insane Troll Logic but can also be very manipulative. While he is capable of love and compassion, they usually get overshadowed by his evil deeds.
  • Kyle is The Smart Guy and a Nice Jewish Boy with a strong moral code, but he's also Hot-Blooded and his emotions can get the better of him, causing him to fall for certain tricks or overreact big time sometimes. He is also Cartman's Arch-Enemy.
  • Kenny is a poor kid who wears a parka that covers his mouth, causing him to sound muffled (though the people close to him have no problems understanding what he says). He is also a Dirty Kid, The Hedonist and a Thrill Seeker. Despite this, he has a good heart and even has a superhero alter-ego named Mysterion. He dies often but always comes back to life without anyone remembering his deaths.
  • Stan is the most normal, being The Everyman and the show's biggest Only Sane Man, but he has plenty of Not So Above It All moments. He is the most sensitive from the group and used to be prone to vomit out of stress when meeting his crush. He is also a Knight in Sour Armour and an Unfazed Everyman.
• Relative Button: The boys may find their families annoying, but will still get defensive if anyone badmouths them.
  • Stan told a sleazy salesman to kill himself for taking advantage of his grandfather's aging mind.
  • Kyle blows up whenever someone calls his mother a bitch or threatens Ike.
  • Cartman goes into denial when his mother's promiscuity is brought up.
  • Kenny will punch out anyone that bullies his sister.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: They form two pairs for who is sensitive and manly respectively. Zig-Zagged, considering all of them have both masculine and sensitive traits.
  • Stan is an animal lover and usually prefers making peace rather than fighting while Kyle holds the highest morals in the group and is generally the most compassionate of his friends (although he has one hell of a temper) (Sensitive Guys).
  • On the other hand, Cartman (despite his fondness for tea parties and dress-up) is forceful, aggressive, and sadistic (though he is mostly a wimp, with some exceptions), while Kenny is primarily interested in sex and drugs and perhaps has been seen crying the least among his friends (Manly Men). Kenny did cross-dress as a princess a few times though.
    • Within those specific pairs, Stan (Sensitive) is much less willing to get confrontational about things while Kyle (Manly) is pretty hot-headed, and Kenny (Sensitive) is laid-back, good-natured and quiet while Cartman (Manly) is abrasive, loud and inconsiderate. Stan is the most sensitive from the main boys, but he is also the only one of them who never cross-dressed, is good at sports, has plenty of traditionally masculine interests and often acts as the Team Dad.
• Signature Headgear: All of the main four characters wear iconic headgear which are recognizable outside of the show:
  • Stan's blue hat with a red poofball.
  • Kyle's bright green ushanka.
  • Cartman's teal beanie with a yellow poofball.
  • Kenny's orange hood, tied up tight enough so you can only see his eyes - in earlier episodes, he'd pull the hood aperture tighter when in a scary situation.
• Signature Laugh: Cartman has a loud and over the top guffaw, Stan has a deep and throaty chuckle that turns into a cackle if he finds something hilarious, Kenny has a soft giggle (with some exceptions when he finds something truly hilarious) and while Kyle has generally a more normal laugh than his friends, he is more likely to laugh hysterically than them.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Notorious for having the mouths of sailors, although Kenny's vulgarity is heavily implied since his mouth is covered by his hood, making his dialogue unintelligible.
• Sweet Tooth: Like most kids, all four of them love sweets and desserts.
  Cartman: I've never heard the words "only" and "candy" in the same sentence before.
• Team Kids: Zig-Zagged with Kyle, Cartman and Kenny. Stan often fulfills the role of the Team Dad, but sometimes he isn't responsible or he is on an equal ground with some or all o them. Also, while the other boys support or call Stan out on occasion, it is never to the point of treating him like a son. The three boys also do not always act like the team children at the same time.
  • Kyle would be the "oldest son". He is the most mature and responsible after Stan and finds himself on an equal level with him the most of the time. He is usually the one who assists Stan and he is likely to take charge when the latter is absent or incapacitated (though it is particularly hard for him to work with Cartman). Kyle can also be quite protective and supportive of Stan at times. However, he has a hell of a temper, not helped by his antagonism towards Cartman, which causes him to loose control usually resulting in Stan stepping in to calm him down. There are also instances of Stan scolding Kyle for wrong actions and offering him emotional support.
  • Cartman would be the "Unfavorite", The Friend Nobody Likes. While Stan doesn't antagonize him as much as Kyle does, he still clearly dislikes him and isn't usually keen on helping him. However, there have been times when Stan showed genuine empathy towards Cartman and the latter respects him somehow.
  • Kenny would be The Baby of the Bunch. While he isn't weak or innocent, he is the youngest and the quietest. Unlike Kyle, Kenny for the most part just goes along with the plan without offering his ideas. While Kyle is Stan's best friend, Stan seems more attentive towards Kenny (i.e. offering advice and instructions more often, and doing helpful gestures like putting a coat on his back once, something he never did for Kyle) and he has risked his life for Kenny multiple times, similarly to how he has done it for Kyle. In fact, all the boys had been caring towards Kenny on occasion.
    • Additionally, when their Broship was starting to sink during "South Par Q Vaccination Special), the group end up coming up with a schedule for them to share time with Kenny, allowing him to stay friends with all of them but minimizing their interactions with each other; sadly, anyone with children who has had to separate/divorce from their spouse will recognize the conflict and anger between the boys, the desire to do what's best for the child (Kenny), and the eventual coming-to-terms with shared custody (friend time).
• Took a Level in Cynic: Around Season 12, the boys become more aware in turn of the show staying on top of current events, and they start to abandon their childish ways in favor of a more mature outlook on life, especially, and ironically, in comparison to the adults.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Stan and Kyle in Season 6 toward Kenny's replacements (Butters, and later Tweek). It's no surprise that Cartman would manipulate others, but it's unusually cruel for them. Cartman in season 5 big time where he went from being usually a Nominal Hero to usually a Villain Protagonist.
• Took a Level in Kindness: They become notably less hostile to social outcasts like Butters and Scott Malkinson by Season 12, even allowing them into their extended group at times.
• Toxic Friend Influence: One episode after accepting Tweek as their fourth friend, they make him help cover up (what they thought was) the murder of their teacher. Occasionally, Cartman also manages to convince the other three to participate in his schemes or antics (such as "milking" a dog, which landed Stan in great trouble at home).
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Since Adults Are Useless, their main schtick is using foul language, outfoxing authority, watching vulgar media, and even engaging in criminality at times. Season 5 being the standout season, where not only does Cartman commit a truly horrific act of vengeance in a petty feud, but Stan and Kyle regularly fantasize about killing Jennifer Lopez.
• True Companions: Lampshaded in the episode "The Biggest Douche in the Universe", when Chef tells Stan and Kyle that Cartman is their friend whether they like him or not. This trope becomes more apparent in later seasons, once their Weirdness Magnet status has begun to wear old; the boys fall victim to All of the Other Reindeer more often, making it evident that, while their classmates may tolerate them, they don't really have any friends outside of one another. As much as they would hate to admit it, they're a textbook example of this trope. This became a key part of the Pandemic specials; thirty years in the future, the group fell apart during the pandemic, with Kenny in particular missing them so much that he invented a time machine just to give their younger selves a chance to become friends again.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Their most defining trait is using aggression and teasing to portray their friendship. They're also not above shunning individual members out of their group for a bit, only to come back together in the end.
• Vocal Dissonance: Despite being 8 years old (currently 10, except for Kenny who is 9) at the beginning of the series, the boys have always had a more pubescent inflection to their voices making them sound 12 or 13. Stan, Kyle, and Cartman in particular have gotten deeper in the more recent seasons, making them sound more like older teenagers than preteen boys.
• Weirdness Magnet: Lampshaded in South Park "Pandemic 2 — The Startling," when Craig gets sucked into the boys' adventure because they were using his birthday money for their scheme.
  Craig: That's a shock. I decided to follow you guys, and now I'm in the Land of the Giant Lost World.
  Stan: Craig, it isn't our fault! You make it sound like we always wanna be in situations like this but we don't have any choice!
  Kyle: Yeah! Stuff just happens!
  Craig: "Stuff just happens."
  Kyle: That's right!
  Craig: You just wind up being sent by the government to take down the city of Lima only to wind up in the Land of the Giant Lost World.
  Cartman: That's right.
  Craig: You know what stuff happens to most kids? They fall off their bikes. They get in fights with their parents. They get swindled out of their birthday money.
• With Friends Like These...: Cartman versus everyone else. He takes this further than most cases of this trope, as Cartman has almost no redeeming qualities. Also uncommon for the trope, the other characters will flat out tell Cartman that he is a monster. Not only do they state he's a horrible person but that they all hate him and the only reason he was ever with anyone was that they thought he was just always following them or that he was with someone else. After realizing this they decided to ignore him completely. The creators stated that Cartman's relationship to the others is based on their assumption that everyone has one friend that they don't really like. It's worth noting that in the early seasons, Cartman was just a Fat Idiot — his supervillainish disposition evolved over time.

Kyle Broflovski

"Do you think kids in every town have to deal with this crap?"
^{Click here to see The Human Kite}

^{Click here to see his Panderverse self}

Stan's closest friend. He and his parents are Jewish, but his younger brother, Ike, is actually from Canada. He appears to be the smartest of the original four — at least academically — but has a tendency to get sucked into the latest fads/problems/social issues sweeping South Park. Kyle is also known as the moral compass of the otherwise chaotic town — although he has a nasty temper to go along with it that especially comes out during his many clashes with his arch-nemesis Cartman.

His role in Coon and Friends is The Human Kite.

• Academic Athlete: A young version. Kyle's favorite sport, in-series, is basketball; he is also seen participating in soccer, baseball, and football, all while demonstrating high scholastic intelligence (his wimpy cousin Kyle even calls him a "redneck jock stereotype" in one episode).
• Accidental Hero: In “Follow That Egg!”, Mrs. Garrison makes a deal with the governor of Colorado that she can get him a scientific study proving gay couples can’t raise children, said study being her students who are paired up and assigned to take care of eggs, with Stan and Kyle representing a gay couple. Despite her efforts to sabotage them (to the point of hiring a hitman to try and take out their egg), Stan and Kyle are able to get their egg safely to the press conference, and the governor declares that gay couples can get married. When Randy tells the boys he's proud of them, a confused Kyle asks, "What did we do?"
• Aesop Amnesia: Hits this hard after COVID, particularly in "Streaming Wars" and "The War on Obesity". He repeatedly forgets all the times Cartman has put his life in danger even when he had nothing to gain and bends over backward to his whim only for him to be screwed over by Cartman yet again.
• Affectionate Nickname: He'll sometimes call Sheila "Ma" instead of "Mom", which began around the second season. Likewise, she'll often call Kyle "bubbe" as shorthand for bubbeleh.
• All of the Other Reindeer:
  • In earlier seasons, Kyle would often feel left out by his friends around the holidays, him being a Jew and all. He even gets an Anti-Christmas Song, "The Lonely Jew at Christmas".
  • In general, while he's usually well-liked and has a number of friends, he has been ostracized and singled out by his peers on numerous occasions (ex. "Chinpokomon", "South Park is Gay", "Mystery of the Urinal Deuce", "The Problem with a Poo"). In the former two cases, it was because he was the last to get in on the latest trend and was ridiculed when he decided he didn't like it.
• Amicable Exes: Implied with Heidi after Season 21. While they haven't been seen interacting with each other since then nor is there any evidence that shows them having gotten back together, they don't seem to harbor any negative feelings towards each other. This is shown in "The Problem With A Poo" where the two are shown willing to sit near each other in the music room without showing any hostility, while in "Cupid Ye" Heidi doesn't listen to Cartman's anti-Semitic remarks about Kyle, nor does she gets arrowed/brainwashed by Cupid Ye into attacking Kyle like most of the other kids.
• And I Must Scream: In the episode "Humancentipad", Kyle's mouth is sewn onto a Japanese man's anus by Steve Jobs. This arrangement leaves him unable to speak and forces him to consume the Japanese man's explosive diarrhea on several occasions.
• Anti-Hero: Usually of Type 3, but can be Type 4 depending on how much he's fueled by his hatred of Cartman. However...
• Anti-Villain: By "Super Hard PCness", Kyle becomes this of Type 2 and Type 3. He believes that all the bullying and meanness appearing in South Park were a result of the vulgarness of Terrence and Phillip and Canadian media in general and tries to put an end to their shows so they can no longer corrupt the morals of people in other countries. It leads to Canada getting nuked by the President much to Kyle's horror.
• Apologetic Attacker: Often when he's forced to use violence as a last resort. He briefly retracts after grabbing Stan's coat too hard in "Prehistoric Ice Man", he apologizes to the "Super Adventure Club" security officers after striking them with a bat to rescue Chef in "The Return of Chef" and he also says sorry to Cartman after knocking him out in self defense in "Doubling Down".
• Arch-Enemy: For Cartman. The two clash with each other the most due to Kyle's strong moral compass and Cartman's complete lack of such. Plus Kyle's usually on the receiving end of Cartman's anti-Semitism.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Gives one to Heidi Turner that it makes her realize how far she has sunk ever since she dated Cartman. Doubles as a brief "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
  Heidi: Oh, what's the matter Kyle? You don't want me around 'cause you had the hots for me and I shot you down?
  Kyle: I would never have the hots for the person you are now. [Heidi is stunned by Kyle's answer]
• Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Briefly, in "The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000", due to a Logic Bomb (and several subsequent tangential bombs).
• Atrocious Alias: You probably shouldn't name yourself "The Human Kite" when you're Jewish and Eric Cartman is around.^ExplanationThe word "kite" is one letter away from "kike," an anti-Semitic slur.
• Author Avatar: He's a stand-in for Matt Stone, being one of the few characters in the series who isn't stupid or corrupt. Also, Kyle is Jewish like Stone and Kyle's red afro is based on Stone's hairstyle in the show's early years.
• Back from the Dead: In "Imaginationland", he is choked to death by ManBearPig, only for Cartman to resuscitate him. After getting nuked, Butters imagines everyone surviving, which brings Kyle back a second time.
• Badass Bookworm: On the outside, a potty-mouthed, short-tempered nine-year old boy who's also the smart one of the group and enjoys studying, but the movie demonstrated that he can hack into top secret military databases. He has also been shown to be fairly athletic at points of the show and fully capable of kicking Cartman's ass when necessary.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Kyle co-founded La Resistance to stop his mother from executing Terrance and Phillip over some crude humour. Years later, Kyle would stop finding Terrance and Phillip funny, gradually warming up to the idea of punishing them in a similar manner; unlike his mother, Kyle stopped short of implicitly demanding death: that was actually Mr. Garrison's idea.
• Being Good Sucks: Kyle always tries to do the right thing, even if it doesn't get him rewarded or gain happiness. It becomes more apparent when Cartman, a sociopath at the age of 10, is involved because, despite Kyle hating him with all his heart, he could never let Cartman suffer from his own stupid actions and wants to at least see him do the right thing once in his life.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't say he's from New Jersey. Or be Eric Cartman and do pretty much anything. At a certain point in the series, the latter starts bothering him much more, though recent episodes show him acting more annoyed and deadpan than angry around Cartman.
  • He apparently has a dislike of ninjas, as his Facebook profile mentions that he wants the world to stop talking about them
  • Questioning his ideals, accusing him of interference, or someone changing their mind midway through a plan often made him lose his temper, starting around season 7. He'd often do (and still does) things for moral reasons rather than pragmatic ones, which angered him when Cartman or the townspeople would start trying to invoke either of the two. For example, Cartman trying to claim the New Kid had a tragic backstory because his dad fucked his mom made him enraged enough to lose focus on their mission.
• Big Brother Bully: To Ike in the first season. "Kick the baby!"
• Big Brother Instinct: Probably to the biggest extent out of all the boys, even more than Kenny:
  • Ike has become one of Kyle's highest priorities sometime after "Ike's Wee Wee", from following him to Somalia and getting him home safe to worrying about Ike getting circumcised or keeping him from running off with his teacher to Milan. Could be Kyle's biggest drive after his antagonism towards Cartman.
  • He briefly played this role to Blanket in "Jeffersons" due to his father neglecting him - he's the first to notice the boy when he moves into the neighborhood. He steps in as a big-brother figure with cleaning and bandaging one of Blanket's scrapes, but steps it up a notch when Blanket is shown to be in actual physical danger from his father, Mr. Jefferson, and doesn't hesitate to stage a rescue to keep the little boy safe.
  • He feels like this, to a lesser extent, towards Kenny. Kyle can be protective towards Kenny, but in most cases when the other main boys, or at least Stan, are as well. However, he has a few moments by himself: in "Wing" he was determined to avenge Kenny's death, and, at the end of "Kenny Dies", Kyle beat up Cartman after he realized the latter used the collected stem cells to duplicate a pizzeria instead of saving Kenny with them.
  • Inverted between him and Stan. Stan is older (albeit not by much) and he is usually more protective towards Kyle as well as the rest of the group. However, if Stan is in trouble, expect Kyle to be the first to come to his aid. Some examples include: "Fun with Veal", when Kyle took care of Stan while the latter was sick; "Imaginationland Part I", when the boys found themselves in the middle of a war and Stan had a moment when he couldn't move due to shock, Kyle took his hand and brought him to safety; and in "Freemium isn't Free" Kyle did his best to comfort Stan and help him overcome his mobile-app addiction.
  • He'll occasionally act like this towards Butters. Kyle recognizes that Butters doesn't exactly have a lot of role models in his life, so he's prone to acting as an improvisational streetwise mentor of sorts. In "Sexual Healing", he becomes determined to fight the "sexual disease" rather than take time to understand it, trying to convince Butters that they have no other choice if they want to survive and fighting him just to get him to stop looking at "bush", before crying with him. Similarly, in "The Worldwide Privacy Tour", when Butters' OOC phase eventually culminates in the latter getting beaten to a pulp by Bebe for spewing misogynistic disses at her as part of his "brand", he returns with Butters to the branding company (CumHammer), even taking him by the hand the whole time, to demand that the company stop advising people to become what people want them to be, rather than be accepting of who they are (even if that person isn't perfect).
• Book Smart: Kyle is shown to get the best grades out of all his friends. In “An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig”, it’s mentioned by Mr. Garrison that Kyle is a straight-A student. It’s also mentioned in the song “You Gotta Do What You Wanna Do!” that Kyle likes to study.
• Bookworm: Kyle is shown to like reading more than his friends and he clearly reads for fun and knowledge as well. Out of all of the boys, Kyle is the one who is seen reading the most. In “You Have 0 Friends”, it's outright stated on his Facebook profile that reading is one of his hobbies. In "The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000", he becomes so distraught after finding out that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real. Kyle reads several books about philosophy, reality, and science. Cartman even says, "Will somebody take those books away from him?". His bedroom also contains more books and academically inclined things than the other kids’ rooms do.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Most notably in "Cartmanland". It's one thing being pushed into denouncing the existence of a God (or in this case a righteous God). It's another to be pushed to the point of giving up on life due to Cartman's constant Karma Houdini instances. It takes one major case of divine intervention to rectify. That case of divine intervention was Cartman needing to staff a fully operating amusement park, selling it back to the original owners, and seeing Cartman lose his cash because he was liable for Kenny's death since it took place while he was still the owner.
  • Also in "Pee" where he is forced to dive into a pool of pee and drink a jar full of pee, despite being extremely disgusted by it, ostensibly to save the day. This not only turns out to be unnecessary, but he is then forced on gunpoint to eat a banana, the only thing he finds more disgusting than pee.
  • In "Ginger Cow" Kyle lets Cartman humiliate him and is forced to endure Cartman sitting on his face and farting on him in order to keep the peace between the religions. This was all for nothing as the religions go back to fighting each other again at the end of the episode.
• Brutal Honesty: If he's not utterly exasperated with him (though on some occasions, even that doesn't stop him), Kyle has no issue pointing out Cartman's innumerable logical fallacies. In general, he's one of South Park's go-to characters for telling harsh truths, particularly in the later seasons.
• Butt-Monkey: Mostly having to do with being the center of Cartman's torment around him being a Jew. Key moments being when Cartman tries to play the legal system into forcing Kyle to suck his balls and farting in Kyle's face with no resistance after winning a bet.
• Calling the Old Woman Out: Kyle does this to his mom in "Fun with Veal" and in The Movie.
  Sheila: Kyle, if you don't do as you're told, I'm going to be very angry!
  Kyle: Well, you made me eat veal and didn't tell me what it was, so go ahead and be angry, you baby calf-killing bitch!
  Sharon: Very persuasive.
• Catchphrase:
  • "You bastards!", after Stan's "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!".
  • "You know, I've learned something today," although this is sometimes said by Stan, and other characters as well.
  • "Fatass" is something he says to Cartman in just about every episode they interact in, though Stan also calls him that or some variation from time to time.
• Character Development: He gradually developed from being just as indifferent and apathetic as the other boys to the most conscious about society's flaws and a moral crusader.
• Characterization Marches On: Early in the show's run, Kyle's personality was akin to Stan's; he was more childish, bratty, indifferent and a Big Brother Bully to Ike on a larger scale. As the series went on, his character got more fleshed out and unique to Stan's, and he also became much more kind-hearted (if you aren't Cartman, that is), and his love for Ike is a lot more manifested. On the other hand, he can be more overly-dramatic about social values (almost bordering on Soapbox Sadie in Seasons 19-20) and will move mountains to prove Cartman wrong about the silliest of things, something his earlier self wouldn't have done due to apathy.
• Chick Magnet: Kyle has attracted the most girls out of the four boys, including Bebe, Rebecca, Nichole, and Heidi. That said, it didn't stop Bebe from labeling him the ugliest boy for selfish reasons.
• Child Prodigy: He's regularly portrayed as the top student in his class, has the highest capabilities with the computer, including photoshopping a photo to fool the Japanese government to stop whaling and get his best friend out of trouble and single-handedly thwarting a terrorist attack with some inspired Google-fu. He's also shown more than a slight capability with philosophy and managed to remove himself from reality.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: He's locked into this since he never knows when Cartman is going to formulate a new, evil plan.
• Clashing Cousins: One sided with his cousin Kyle Schwartz, who embodies every Jewish stereotype Kyle constantly tries to defy. He even calls the him his Evil Counterpart when they both start cosplaying as the Human Kite.
• Cluster *Bleep*-Bomb: Kyle unloads one of these on the visitors when they ignore his heartfelt plea to return Ike.
• Competition Freak: Against Terrance Mephesto in "An Elephant Makes Love to A Pig", and against Cartman in many other episodes. He just can't stand to lose against Jerkasses.
  Stan: Kyle, aren't you taking this a little too far? I mean, do we really want a giant douche to be our school mascot?
  Kyle: Dude, I'm not going to lose to Cartman's stupid turd sandwich. [sees Cartman and Butters making a parade to promote their "Turd Sandwich" mascot] There. Do you really want that asshole to win?
• Compressed Hair: Kyle easily gets a Jewfro that's larger than his head into a small hat. Justified since it's just the art style exaggerating the size of it.
• The Conscience: Over the course of the show, he's evolved into this, as he's often stuck playing the voice of reason as well as the conscience in a show featuring Eric Cartman.
  • There's a definite pattern of Kyle acting as Butters' conscience, even when Cartman is out of the picture. "Sexual Healing" even shows him doing it under someone else's false pretenses^note Neither of them are actually psychologically disturbed; they were just told they had a "dangerous" sexual addiction by a quack doctor:
    Butters: There! It was like that! It looked just like that! [points to a bush, then walks over to it] Just like this, buh, but smaller, and right in the place where her underwear should've been. If I trim it down, it'll look right...
    Kyle: Butters! Butters, stop it!
    Butters: But this is what I keep seeing in my head! [lightly fights him and tries scrambling away]
    Kyle: [tugging him away] Butters, we are sick! Don't you get it?! We're gonna end up just like Kenny!
    Butters: [tries doing the same thing as before] No, if-if I can just see it again, uh, I'll be fine.
    Kyle: No! Butters, stop! [slaps him]
    Butters: [whimpering] Leave me alone!
    Kyle: Stop it! Stop! [pulls him back down, before they fight for a few seconds, soon breaking down into tears] Oh God! Oh God, help us!
• Cool Big Bro: After some character development, Kyle tries to be a protective and admirable brother to Ike.
• Create Your Own Villain: It's all but stated that the main reason Cartman is so hostile towards him was Kyle and the other kids' constant bullying of him for being fat leading up to the first four seasons. Notably, Cartman's antisemitism started as a way to get under his skin (much like his constant insults towards Sheila), before it eventually became genuine. "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000" shows Clyde coming close to falling victim to this as well after Kyle and Stan start mocking him.
• Curly Hair Is Ugly: Kyle keeps his hat on at all times to conceal his unflattering Jewfro. In "Elementary School Musical", Kyle has a more flattering moptop.
• Cute Bookworm: Subverted. Although he clearly enjoys reading, and is a little socially awkward, he doesn’t quite fit this trope. He’s very outspoken, assertive, and is always willing to stand up for his beliefs. He also has quite a temper.
• Cute Bruiser: Cute appearance aside, Kyle is one of the most proficient fighters among his peers, capable of delivering swift beat-downs upon Cartman whenever they engage in physical confrontations, even knocking him out with a single punch in "Doubling Down". He's also capable of holding his own whenever he fights Stan (who beat up his 22-foot-tall Facebook avatar and can literally channel the Prince of Darkness) and, along with the other three Boys, dishes out a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on a group of kids in "Faith Hilling" that was so bad they ended up in the hospital.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Kyle is noticeably much more unimportant in Season 23 outside of "Mexican Joker" and "Turd Burglars". In every other episode of that season, he only appears briefly with one or two lines per episode. He also does not speak in "Let Them Eat Goo".
  • Kyle also suffers from this fate in Season 26 after "The Worldwide Privacy Tour". He takes a backseat for the remaining four episodes, where he gets about one minute of screen-time in each, at most (whereas he's entirely absent from the season finale). He has a major role again in "The End of Obesity".
• Department of Redundancy Department: He never stops reminding everyone that Cartman's fat.
• Depending on the Writer: Kyle can either be the voice of reason to Cartman's schemes or an outright Jerkass to him.
• Determinator: All of the boys are this, but Kyle can occasionally outdo even Cartman in this department. In "The End of Obesity", Kyle goes as far as to navigate the American health care system, creating his own Ozempic medication by contacting an Indian factory to supply him, and even firing at a group of anorexic mothers and a gang of Sugar mascots when they try to steal a truck filled with the medicine, all to help Cartman lose weight and try to help lower the obesity rate in America.
  Insurance Worker: [after Kyle confronts him for denying Cartman's insurance] Okay, okay! Calm down! Calm. Down! I didn't realize I was dealing with someone who had so much determination!
• Deuteragonist: Strictly speaking, though he and Stan can switch roles from time to time.
• Did Not Get the Girl:
  • Unlike the rest of the boys, Kyle has never been in a serious relationship. In total he has been romantically tied to Bebe Stevens, Rebecca Cotswolds, Nichole Daniels, Leslie Meyers and Heidi Turner, and every time he gets romantically involved with someone, the world gives him the middle finger and the girl ends up dumping him for whatever reason — though in the case of Bebe he was not interested, running away after she kissed him, and Leslie only feigned her interest in order to manipulate him.
  • Possibly subverted in the Good Future where Kyle has two kids, indicating that Kyle finally found someone he loves enough to marry and have children with.
• Dirty Coward: Happens often. When Kyle, along with the rest of his friends, does something wrong (or even thinks that they did), he usually tries to frame it on Butters.
• Disney Death: In "Imaginationland Part II", he's choked almost to death by Manbearpig, but is then revived by Cartman using CPR during a scene parodying The Abyss'.
• Does Not Like Spam: You would have to hold Kyle at gunpoint to get him to eat a banana.
• Dogged Nice Guy:
  • In "Hooked on Monkey Phonics", Kyle fell for Rebecca, but as soon as they kissed she turned into a slut and didn't give Kyle the time of day ever again.
  • During "Cartman Finds Love" and "Doubling Down" both due to Cartman, the latter of which seemed to have mentally broken him.
• Driven by Envy: "Cartmanland" confirms that Cartman's successes bring Kyle despair, while his suffering brings him hope. As an adult, Kyle is unable to not compare his lonely and joyless lifestyle with Cartman's Happily Married one, which is part of what drives him to try and change the future to ensure he gets a happy life too. However, when this results in Cartman ending up a homeless loner, Kyle gets no joy from his misery.
• Dumbass No More: Downplayed since he was always Book Smart, but still suffered from a huge lack of self awareness and poor judge of character, especially in regards to the adults. Starting around Season 6 and especially 7, he became a lot more prone to second-guessing his authority figures, occasionally surpassing Stan in that regard.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Kyle tends to among those that suffer the most misfortune, but also the one who winds up having the most prosperous endings.
• Easily Embarrassed Youngster: Justified in earlier seasons as he was slow to catch up on trends with the rest of his peers and had to deal with his mother constantly hounding anyone she could find, but he does still show shades of this. He's generally much more bashful about how he acts around people of different cultures and some of his ordinary secrets than the other boys (maybe even as much as Butters), and doesn't always feel like he can be as sociable as possible, worrying about being lost when it comes to conversation.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • While he really was becoming like his mom, in his defense, he was far less of an extremist than she is. While Sheila was perfectly willing to start a genocidal war with Canada, with it taking the coming of the apocalypse to have her regret her actions, Kyle never had any murderous intent and was immediately stricken with guilt when he saw his actions had led to Canada being nuked (which, while horrible, is a bit less horrible than The End of the World as We Know It).
  • Kyle may have been Arch-Enemies with Cartman during their childhood and the original future, but even he is sad seeing Cartman grow up to be a friendless, miserable, and homeless alcoholic in the revised future. He also will sometimes rejoice if it looks like Cartman is going to get himself maimed or killed, but he draws the line at carrying out the action himself.
    • "I hate you, but I'm not going to help you kill yourself."
  • During "The Worldwide Privacy Tour", Kyle begins buying into CumHammer's fad of improving their brands... right until he learns that CumHammer influenced Butters to insult Bebe, resulting in Bebe giving Butters a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. Kyle becomes disgusted with CumHammer afterwards, to the point that he quits CumHammer and convinces the rest of the kids, including Butters, to do the same.
• Excellent Judge of Character: Post Season 11, after many instances of falling for his schemes, he's become a lot quicker to catch on Cartman's attempts to manipulate him and others, and always keeps his guard up around him or encourages other characters not to listen to him. This also extends to Stan, Kenny, and Butters, as Kyle is usually the first to point out when either of them are acting out of character or hiding an ulterior motive, such as in "Butterballs", "A Scause for Applause", "The Pandemic Special", and "Post Covid" for Stan, "Major Boobage" and "The Ring" for Kenny, and "Wieners Out", "Tegridy Farms" and "The Worldwide Privacy Tour" for Butters. Furthermore, while he's not as good as second-guessing the adults as Stan is, Kyle is still one of the more critical thinkers in his class, and is usually quick to doubt the motivations of the celebrities he encounters.
  Kyle: Butters, this seems really out of character for you.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Parodied. After realizing that Terrence and Philip didn't make him laugh anymore and becoming disillusioned with them, he shaves his hair to a smaller style (along with a new non-Terrence and Phillip shirt). Then he immediately puts his hat and jacket back on before admiring his "new" look in the mirror. The hat has remained on since (except in some promo material).
• Extreme Doormat: There have been times where he's briefly given up hope to this degree, usually during particularly intense situations:
  • In "Ginger Cow", he lets Cartman fart on and otherwise publicly embarrass him in front of millions of people for what he thinks may be for the rest of the former's life, not even caring how much Cartman raises the stakes, all for keeping peace among Christians, Jews and Muslims lest Cartman reveal the true ginger cow prophecy. Outside of that, he doesn't even argue when Stan forces him to apologize to him and Kenny for supposedly acting sanctimonious, and when Cartman refuses to reveal that the prophecy was specifically based on "a fat child with a small penis" painting a cow red as a prank because he doesn't like people knowing about the size of his, well, penis, Kyle merely sports a dejected look and allows Cartman to smother whipped cream on his face after having farted on it.
  • The last few episodes of Season 21 see him reach the Despair Event Horizon due to Heidi dumping him, Cartman molding her into a bigot and her becoming his Distaff Counterpart, simply walking away or getting miffed every time they, and later the entire school, make fun of him. Even while he goes on a crusade against Canada, it's clear that he can't bring himself to admit how much Heidi hurt him emotionally. Their uneasiness does end after Kyle gives her a very brief Armor-Piercing Response, though, showing that deep down he still very much loathes what she's become.
  • "The Problem with a Poo" has him defend Mr. Hankey's increasingly psychotic actions even as he lashes out at Kyle and makes his life complete hell. While Kyle does eventually lose his patience, he soon can't take any association with Hankey anymore enough to tearfully ask him if he wants Kyle to be erased as well.
  • While he does later put his foot down by giving him a heartfelt speech, Kyle in "Taming Strange" generally obeys all of Ike's whims after he's accidentally prescribed and fed hormone supplements and more or less becomes a libidinous fratbro, mostly being concerned about making sure Ike doesn't take things too far and get himself in trouble. Even after Ike engages in some perverse activity on stage with Foofa at Yo Gabba Gabba! live, Kyle profusely apologizes on their behalf and takes full responsibility, explaining that Ike's going through a puberty craze.
  • This characterization of him is perhaps the most common around his mother, though it's somewhat understandable. He begs Liane to not call his mother in Fractured But Whole after he and his friends stay up way past their bedtime, and earlier seasons show him to be scared shitless when she gets angry around him, even if it's not directed at him specifically.
• Eye Beams: While The Human Kite's main superpower is, as his name would suggest, Flight, he also has a secondary superpower of shooting lasers out of his eyes.
• Fatal Flaw: As he himself admits in "The Worldwide Privacy Tour", he has his flaws, which affect him more than he wants to.
  • His short temper and irritable personality lands him in trouble a lot and makes it easy for Cartman to play on his emotions.
  • His fear of being grounded by his mother is also the catalyst of all his Dirty Coward moments. He is not above pinning his mistakes on Kenny in "Jewbillee", Butters in "Jared Has Aides", "Good Times with Weapons", and "The Tale of Scrottie McBoogerballs", Cartman in "Good Times with Weapons", and Trent Boyett in "Pre-School". However, he does become more willing to face punishment in The Movie and episodes like "Toilet Paper" and "Butt Out", after seeing the consequences of his unwillingness to do so.
  • Kyle can also be very clueless in social and survival situations, to his and others' detriment:
    • Played with in regards to Ike: while he's great at keeping Ike out of trouble and gives advice that the latter takes to heart, he tends to have issues understanding Ike's patriotism to Canada and his resulting oppositions, even if they're otherwise minor. Both "Royal Pudding" and "Splatty Tomato" have him needing assistance in locating Ike. (Ugly Bob in the former, Stan and Craig in the latter; though "minor" is a given definition for Ike trying to capture President Garrison in a local, not-too-hard-to-find area.)
    • In "The Worldwide Privacy Tour", Kyle cautiously approaches CumHammer to work on his image, but he doesn't question whether it's really best for either him or Butters in the long run and doesn't realize that Butters' naviete might lead to his "out-of-character" phase repelling and angering other people if he takes it too far. Played with in this case, as both of these things do become readily apparent to him after Bebe beats the shit out of Butters over him repeatedly insulting her, upon which he's both very remorseful and able to successfully sort things out by talking the issues through with the other CumHammer clients.
    • Downplayed in "Ginger Cow". He doesn't ask Stan for advice in how to handle the titular prophecy without Cartman constantly hovering over him (figuratively), though it's clear he's unsure what to do period now that Cartman has beaten him for an extended period of time. Stan does eventually get the hint from Kyle once he's done enough research on his own to try and intervene.
    • His outburst in "Buddha Box" over Cartman using anxiety as a "get out of jail free" card only convinces Cartman to raise awareness for that tactic, since he inadvertently hints at his own anxiety in the process.
    • He falls for scams and false promises more often than the other boys, as shown in "Super Best Friends", "The Biggest Douche in the Universe" and "Crack Baby Athletic Association".
  • His competitive side is also when he's at his worst. Though he tries to deny it, Kyle is unable to not compare himself to Cartman, and often compromises his own morals in order to best him, since he believes that his kindness and maturity makes him entitled to a better life than his Jerkass nemesis:
    • In "Clubhouses", the only reason he wanted to make a Clubhouse alongside Stan was to ensure it was better than Cartman's, even though he wasn't interested in actually putting it to use. Actually playing in it earns him an unwanted kiss from Bebe during a game of Truth or Dare, leaving him grossed out.
    • In "Cartmanland", he's so bitter over Cartman inheriting a fortune while he only got a haemorrhoid that he becomes sick and almost dies out of dispair, only getting better when Cartman goes bankrupt at the end of the episode.
    • In "Douche and Turd", this obsession with besting Cartman at the election of the new school mascot leads him to using his best friend Stan to vote for him, even calling in Puff Daddy to threaten him into voting, which gets Stan temporarily banished from the town for refusing.
    • Reaches its peak as an adult, when seeing Cartman as a happy Jewish family man (while he's lonely and jaded) gets to him far more than he intended to, and sees no problem in sabotaging him by going back to the past to stop the pandemic from happening, which causes Cartman to revert back to his evil ways.
      Kyle: [to convince his past self to listen to him] Kyle, it's true. Cartman gets a happy life but you don't. You lose everything when you lose this friendship.
    • Kyle has been showing this side of him since as early as "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", but against his fellow Competition Freak Terrance Mephesto, using Cartman's pig Fluffy (against Cartman's own will) and his own elephant to make a pot-bellied elephant offspring, dragging his friends into Dr. Mephesto's lab (which gets Stan cloned). Later in the episode, he ditches Stan to check on Fluffy, leaving him to deal with the consequences of his clone's rampage.
• Fiery Redhead: Mixed with his Hot-Blooded tendencies whenever his Chronic Hero Syndrome personality kicks in. As of "The Worldwide Privacy Tour", this is becoming slowly subverted as he seems to have significantly toned these traits down, becoming less rigid and angry in general, even where Cartman is involved. He does (understandably) retain dry annoyance around the latter, though.
• The Finicky One: He has shades of this at times, though his foil (typically Cartman), and more or less the entire world he lives in, is so immoral, he doesn't really need high standards to get wound up over it.
• Flanderization: His obsession with beating Cartman, to the point of occasionally leaning into Knight Templar territory. It reaches the point in Season 21 where his anger that a girl he liked rejected him for Cartman and basically turned into a female Cartman enraged him so much that he indirectly got Toronto nuked.
• Flight: The Human Kite's main superpower is the ability to fly.
• Friendly Enemy: Whenever they're not at each other's throats, Kyle and Cartman's relationship is a mix of this and Vitriolic Best Buds. Because Kyle's idealism pushes him to try to find the good in everyone, and Cartman's morality is occasionally more unconventional than flat out evil, they get along well enough now and again. This quote by Kyle himself pretty much sums it up:
  Kyle: This is Cartman. He's my sort of friend...ish.
• Girls Have Cooties: In early seasons, Kyle was outright repulsed by girls, mocking Stan's relationship with Wendy and planning to mess with her and Bebe during Truth or Dare. He also screamed hysterically when the latter gave him his first kiss in that episode. However, he outgrew this soon enough, falling for several girls over the years but never giving Bebe a second glance (until she grew boobs). In Season 20, he's one of the boys doing the most to stop the gender war (second only to Cartman of all people), and was sympathetic to the girls' plight of being harassed by Skankhunt42 (who was ironically his own dad).
• Good Is Not Nice: Especially where Cartman is concerned, though Kyle has shown plenty of shades of this in general. While he's very moral and isn't Enraged by Idiocy like Stan or hyperactive like Kenny, being challenged tends to make him lash out at people, even if they aren't directly involved (e.g. "Post-COVID", "It's a Jersey Thing").
• Green and Mean: Mostly in the earlier seasons, where he was more antagonistic towards others (alongside Stan). Downplayed in later seasons; his antagonistic traits are mostly toned down, but he still isn't above being the least morally sound (child) character in an episode, such as in "Good Times with Weapons", "Douche and Turd", and "Fatbeard".
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Kyle's frequently pissed off over whatever Cartman says or does, though it's pretty clear that he has a short fuse regarding a lot of things, even (or perhaps especially) when they aren't a big deal. "South Park Is Gay!" (where he tries to murder the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy cast), "Mexican Joker" (where he becomes incensed at the guards' using unwritten, alleviating morals for the detainees instead of them just coming up with improper conclusions), "It's a Jersey Thing" (where people seeing him with raw emotion that they dislike is enough for him to try and force them to dislike it or stop even the slightest chance of them imagining it), and “Tonsil Trouble” (Where he beats up Cartman and smashes apart his belongings after the latter infects him with AIDS out of spite) are probably the most notable examples of Kyle's ferocious temper flaring up.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: After Cartman starts a rumor in "Cartman Finds Love" that he and Kyle are together, Kyle tries his damnedest to express that he is not gay, least of all for Cartman.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Without death involved. "Margaritaville" has Kyle use his new credit card without a spending limit to pay for the town's debts, even if it means he will be in debt himself for the rest of his life. When the economy began to pick up again, Barack Obama got all the credit.
• Hero Protagonist: Either swaps this role with Stan semi-frequently or works with Stan (and sometimes the other boys) as a duo/team of sorts in undermining the numerous insane and evil plots they often (unwillingly) discover. In the later seasons where Stan has become more cynical and apathetic, Kyle becomes the closest thing to a hero in the school, though even then he's usually unable to meaningfully change anything, which still doesn't stop him from trying. In Season 21, he finally manages to indirectly "save" someone since he helped Heidi realize how bad of an influence Cartman had been on her, break up with him, and better herself.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Stan. Out of the other three boys, Kyle shares the closest bond with him and there have been many episodes focusing on the jeopardy of their friendship.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Has shades of this due to his antagonism toward Cartman. In some episodes he thinks nothing of having him dead. Although this also depends on how far Cartman has spent in monster territory in previous episodes.
• Horrible Judge of Character: In earlier seasons, he was prone to trusting the words of the adults around him unconditionally, and therefore was much more prone to falling to scams, cults, and "snuff films" than Stan was (such as David Blaine, John Edward, or Mel Gibson), or feeling betrayed for taking his parents at their word (such as in "The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000", "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell" and "Probably"). Up until around Season 11, he was also very susceptible to Cartman's manipulation, often believing his Bitch in Sheep's Clothing act despite having been let down again and again. In later seasons, though he's become a much more critical thinker, he still has made a habit out of reaching out or trusting the wrong people each time (Leslie Meyers in Season 19, his father Gerald in Season 20, and even President Garrison in Season 21), which usually ends in disaster.
• Hot-Blooded: As established in "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" Kyle yells and curses a lot when he's frustrated, and has had to be told to calm down by Stan on several occasions, especially when Cartman's involved. Fittingly, he dressed as Thor from The Avengers during Halloween in "A Nightmare on Facetime".
• Hypocrite:
  • In "Tonsil Trouble", he complains about Cartman making fun of HIV, despite laughing at his condition earlier. Even if he was laughing at the irony of the situation based on previous episodes where Cartman wished AIDS upon him, this episode alone frames him as this trope.
  • In "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs", when Butters gets famous for allegedly writing the titular book, Kyle asks him "Do you think it's fair to lie like this?" — except he and the others lied to him earlier that he wrote said book to avoid getting in trouble.
  • In The Stick of Truth, he requests a group of elves to kidnap your character and threatens to blackmail your character, even though you're already a member of Kupa Keep. Ironically, Cartman recruited your character in a much more polite manner. This example is more benign than the former, though, as the characters were playing a game and he puts his grudge towards Cartman aside to stop Clyde.
  • In "Doubling Down", he criticizes the concept of self-victimization. Come "Super Hard PC-Ness", he acts like the victim himself. Ike calls him out on this.
• Idiot Ball: Despite enduring twenty-six Seasons worth of seeing his Jerk with a Heart of Jerk side first-hand, sometimes Kyle is deceived by Cartman's false claims of changing, oblivious to his ulterior motives.
  • In "Casa Bonita", Kyle thinks that Cartman has made a Heel–Face Turn by accepting the fact that he isn't invited to his birthday party and moving on, so he allows him to take Butters' place if the latter is unable to attend. Little does Kyle know that he influenced Cartman to imprison Butters in a bomb shelter to sabotage his chances of showing up.
  • After Season 11 onwards had consistently shown Kyle as always wary of Cartman's (often deceitful) attempts to reach out, he falls for one of the latter's schemes once again in "The Streaming Wars", where he believes his story that his mother needed surgery without bothering to confirm, and agrees with the others to give all the money they earn from selling their crafted boats to the streaming services once they're paid, not knowing that said "surgery" was a boob-job that Liane didn't even want to have (Cartman was trying to set her up with a rich Dirty Old Man). As a result, when the streaming wars get to them, Kyle and the others are unable to pay back the money they made. Possibly understandable since Cartman had been more heroic the previous season than he ever had been, and the episodes following up to this one had shown him getting the short end of the stick each time, so Kyle might've decided to Throw the Dog a Bone at the worst possible time. He makes this mistake again in "The End of Obesity", where despite initially suspecting him of wanting to trick him, he still goes out of his way to get an Ozempic injection for him to help him lose weight, and then vowing not to insult his obesity again when it fails, which Cartman thanks him for by insulting his appearance in turn, knowing Kyle doesn't have a comeback anymore (though to be fair, Kyle at that point was trying to end obesity in general, not just help Cartman, but it still counts). It's heavily implied that these two episodes only reinforced the Karmic Shunning that adult Cartman would suffer at the hands of Kyle and the others in the revised future.
• Informed Judaism: For all the mentioning of his family's faith, Kyle rarely goes to temple or prays, or even wears a kippah. Plus, his family eats pork products (they had pork for dinner in "Conjoined Fetus Lady" and Kyle threw up bean with bacon soup in "Cherokee Hair Tampons"), which isn't kosher. Partial justification: early on, Kyle's family was the only Jewish family in town, and they're probably not very religious to begin with (as we've mentioned, he's a stand-in for Matt Stone, who is ethnically Jewish but was raised agnostic and is an atheist). At best, the Broflovskis' religiousness or lack thereof largely depends on Rule of Funny, though it can go either way with Kyle himself (in "Christmas Snow", there's a Christmas tree inside his house, but he mentions bringing a kosher lunch to school in "Ginger Kids"). However, Kyle does carry a bag of Jew gold around his neck with him at all times, as well as a decoy one in case anyone (read: Cartman) tries to rob it.
• Insufferable Genius: Sort of. Kyle, as The Smart Guy, is very intelligent, and when this is combined with Hot-Blooded and The Snark Knight, it becomes something of a subtle version of this trope. He occasionally believes himself to be on a moral high ground above others, especially Cartman.
• Irony:
  • Though in later seasons he's become increasingly frustrated with his inability to make an impact on the world around him, the time where he actually did change major events (bringing peace to Cuba) was done in the early seasons when he couldn't actually care less, only doing it to win a bet against his parents.
  • Despite having the least success of obtaining a romantic relationship out of the four boys as a child, Kyle's the only one of them who ends up getting married and having children during his adulthood in the revised future.
• Jerkass Ball: He and Stan are usually the Only Sane Men to the craziness of the world around them, and act as more moralistic foils to Cartman. At times however, often when Cartman is not in a starring role, they can act rather selfish or immoral, having nothing against using similar bullying or conniving tactics to Cartman to get what they want. This is toned down in later seasons, though it does pop up every now and then.
• Jerkass to One:
  • He's this towards Cartman. While Cartman is, of course, a Jerkass himself, there's times Kyle is one to him for no good reason, particularly in episodes like "Tonsil Trouble," where he openly laughs at Cartman for catching AIDS.
  • Though he's usually quite tolerant and loving with his family members, regardless of how annoying or antagonistic they might get, Kyle is this towards his stereotypical cousin. He tries to ship him back home several times in "The Entity" with no concern for his well being, and in The Fractured but Whole, he hires the new kid to bully him into leaving.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He can be stubborn and Hot-Blooded on occasion, mostly due to Cartman's behavior, and in earlier seasons he was cruel, hypocritical, self-righteous, and overall not much better than Cartman himself. Even now, he's still susceptible to Kids Are Cruel, but he's about as friendly as you'd expect a 9-year-old boy to be, and he's one of the more sensible and moral kids in his school. Despite his intense hatred and resentment towards Cartman occasionally causing him to steer away from his intended righteous path, he's still a Nice Jewish Boy, especially in later episodes, and always has a genuine interest in doing what he believes is right.
• Jewish and Nerdy: Downplayed. He's Jewish and the smartest kid in the group, but he's cool enough to bust balls with the best of them. He also hates his cousin's stereotypical nerdiness. In "Something You Can Do with Your Finger" Kyle strongarms Cartman into letting him be Fingerbang's token tough-guy band member, citing that Jews have been tough since the days of Abraham.
• Kids Are Cruel: In earlier episodes, Kyle was essentially a lower-scale bully. It was actually him that tormented Pip to the point of earning a broken nose and joined in exploiting and disregarding Butters and Kenny on numerous occasions. There are also subtle hints that his bullying turned Cartman into the anti-Semitic monster he is today. This is toned down in later episodes, though he can still act self-righteous or show Jerkass traits on occasion. He often calls Cartman "fatass" even when Cartman hasn't done anything wrong in that episode towards anyone.
• Kite Riding: The Human Kite lives up to his name by having a red-and-yellow kite tied to his back at all times.
• Knight Templar: Kyle gradually leans towards this trope in his rivalry with Cartman; some of their conflicts have shown his willingness to outright kill him. In "Fatbeard" for example, he attempts to convince Cartman to travel to Somalia in his ill-defined plan to become a pirate, and he is later seen gloating about assisting in Cartman's supposed death, unfazed by the fact that Butters, Clyde, and Kevin went along with him. Ike joining, however, is enough to change his mind. He must have picked up the trait from his mother. Also, in "The End of Obesity", he shows no qualms about taking a firearm and shooting at the people trying to steal his cargo, even if many of his enemies include some of his friends' mothers.
• The Lancer: Often, to Stan's The Hero. There are however plenty of episodes where Kyle is the more proactive of the two boys.
• Like Mother, Like Son: Kyle arguably takes a lot more after his mother than his father. They both have large red hair, both have Berserk Buttons against anti-Semitism and can go to extreme lengths for causes they believe in.
• Maybe Ever After: The fact that Kyle has children in the revised future confirms that he is married. That said there's no conformation on who Kyle married in the revised future, but there are several elements that point to the possibility of Kyle having gotten together with one of the following women:
  • The first possibility is Heidi Turner. Heidi is currently the latest girl that Kyle had romantic feelings for and while the two haven't interacted onscreen after "Splatty Tomato", her return to her old healthy Nice Girl self after breaking up with Cartman, sitting near Kyle in "The Problem With a Poo", and Heidi refusing to listen to Cartman's anti-semitic remarks about Kyle nor attack Kyle in "Cupid Ye" suggests the possibility of Kyle marrying Heidi.
  • The second possibility is Yentl. While Kyle has only interacted with Yentl twice in the Bad Future, given that Yentl is Jewish like Kyle, and Kyle's kids look similar to Yentl's in the previous timeline, does bring a different possibility that Kyle could have married Yentl instead of Heidi.
• Messianic Archetype: Blatantly so in "Margaritaville", where his preaching in favor of the economy is an allegory for the story of Christ. He eats pizza with his friends and discusses how one of them will betray him (it turns out to be Cartman, of course), and Kyle paying everybody's debts off with a platinum credit card, putting him in eternal debt, is set up like the crucifixion.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: While Kyle wanted Canada to pay for their influence its media has on children, he never expected his actions to start a nuclear war between Canada and the USA.
• Misplaced Retribution: The reason why Heidi chose Cartman over him was because the girls ignored Kyle's warnings and continued to mock Heidi for her choices. However Kyle blames Canadian TV shows for the reason why Heidi dumped him.
• Mistaken for Gay:
  • With Cartman in "Tonsil Trouble", whenever he exclaims that he's the one who gave him AIDS.
  • In "Cartman Finds Love", only perpetuated by Cartman.
• Mommy Issues: In earlier seasons, especially in The Movie. Kyle wholeheartedly disagrees with his mother on most things, but he still takes it personally when anyone — least of all Cartman — calls her a bitch.
• Morality Chain: Sometimes tries to be this to Cartman, though lately he's clearly given up on him.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Occasionally when he gets pushed too far.
  • In "South Park is Gay", he gets so upset about his classmates making fun of him for not being metrosexual that he takes a train to New York City with intent to kill the cast of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. This is before it's revealed that the show is actually a plot by the Crab People to destroy humanity, so that does not excuse him.
  • In "Good Times with Weapons", after accidentally injuring Butters with a shuriken, Kyle actually agrees with Cartman's suggestion that Butters needs to be killed to avoid getting grounded.
  • In "Fatbeard", Kyle tries to get Cartman killed by encouraging him to go to Somalia to be a pirate, knowing full well he'll be killed there. Cartman actually ends up becoming the leader of the pirates and Kyle is kidnapped by them.
• My Beloved Smother: Kyle on frequent occasions is shown to be outright terrified of his overbearing mother. He has been shown to betray every moral ethic he has in fear of provoking her wrath.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His face screams this at the end of "Super Hard PCness" after he gets Garrison to nuke Toronto in a fit of anger.
• Nice Guy: Post-Season 18, he has become a lot more self-reflective and genuinely altruistic than he used to be, even surpassing the other boys on occasion. While still imperfect, he is as approachable and kind-hearted as he can possibly be and is always happy to solve disagreements with a dialogue instead of his previous Knight Templar tendencies.
• Nice Jewish Boy: Probably the best modern version of the stereotype (outside of some Ambiguously Jewish examples). Although he borders on Jerk with a Heart of Gold at times due to his short temper, he is well known for being a moral and compassionate boy who tries to do the right thing.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Near the end of "Stunning and Brave", Cartman utilizes a plan for getting rid of PC Principal and his friends (and shockingly doing so for Kyle's benefit, no less), only for Kyle to intervene by saying he changed his mind about Caitlyn Jenner, foiling the plan and allowing the PC Frats to be able to stay. Subverted in that it actually manages to start PC Principal's Redemption Quest.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Kyle tries to help Heidi get out of an emotionally abusive relationship with Cartman, only for Cartman to use Kyle's interference to make Heidi reject Kyle and become anti-Semitic. Though this gets Subverted when Kyle gives Heidi an Armor-Piercing Response for rejecting his help, which causes her to end the abusive relationship for good.
  • In "The Problem With a Poo", Kyle tries to help Mr. Hankey because he was his friend. This causes the town to shun him just for being associated with Mr. Hankey.
  • His continued willingness to put up with Cartman farting on him as blackmail in "Ginger Cow" so as to prevent the latter from disrupting peace across the Abrahamic religions ends up getting him ostracized, due to the other kids sensing that him constantly acting like he's doing what's best for everyone is because he enjoys being a martyr and seeing him as sanctimonious.
  • His faux-uprising gambit in "Mexican Joker" so as to set the other ICE detainee kids free and his angry explanation of how traumatic flashbacks can be prevented by making good decisions in the present to the guard, Jeff, who's about to unlock the gates while still being delusional about the titular Mexican Joker's "flashbacks", just ends in Jeff trying to go to the right flashback after he already killed all the guards that could have freed them.
  • When he tries to protect his family towards the end of Season 20 (and does a rather good job in the end), including Gerald who caused Denmark to all but wage war on the US, Gerald calls him a pussy for wanting to know why he's causing so much destruction, Sheila goes into a berserk rage due to a misunderstanding involving both him and Ike, and his dad gets off scot-free, which leaves Kyle and Ike unsatisfied and angry.
• No-Respect Guy: He usually gets this treatment from Cartman. Season 19 makes a Running Gag about people getting fed up with his speeches.
• No Sympathy: Though he subverts this on occasion when his conscience gets the better of him, Kyle will usually feel anything but sympathy when Cartman suffers a Humiliation Conga, even if he hasn't done anything to warrant it, though this hasn't stopped him from helping him out on several occasions when the stakes are high, especially in the later seasons.
• Not Good with Rejection: Kyle didn't take Heidi's rejection well, especially when she went back with Cartman and became like the latter.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Kyle on occasion can show similar moments of greed (although not nearly on the same scale) as Cartman. This is highlighted in "Crack Baby Athletic Association", where Kyle agrees to exploiting crack-addicted babies for profit, and spends the entire episode obsessively trying to justify himself, beginning to sound more and more like Cartman as Stan nonchalantly points out.
• Number Two: While never directly stated, Kyle is usually the one to take charge of the group when Stan is absent or incapacitated (unless Cartman comes up with a plan), though he often fails to convince Cartman to cooperate. That being said, Kyle does occasionally do a decent job at leading without fighting much with Cartman, if at all. In "Freemium Isn't Free", while Stan wasn't available due to his addiction to the Terrance and Phillip app game, Kyle was the one who led the boys into finding information about the app from Jimmy in order to help Stan. In "Nobody Got Cereal?", he managed to convince Cartman and Kenny to hide at the school while ManBearPig was terrorizing the town and the police were searching for them. Stan and later the police found them there, and Cartman and Kenny complained about going to school on the weekend, but the fact that Kyle managed to get the team there safely in the first place despite their unwillingness to do so is no small feat.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. He shares names with his cousin Kyle. Unfortunately for our main Kyle, his mother calls him "Kyle 2".
• Only Sane by Comparison: He has quite a temper and his emotions can cloud his judgement from time to time, but there are many instances where he's the sanest of the quadrio and the town as a whole, often trading this role with Stan or sharing it with him at the same time, and he almost always is this to Cartman. Episodes like "You're Getting Old", "Butterballs", and "Post Covid" have him playing this to Stan of all people.
• Out-of-Character Moment: In "Woodland Critter Christmas", he willingly becomes the human host of the Antichrist, just so that the Jews could "take control of Christmas once and for all". He comes to his senses soon after when he feels his soul burning. Justified, as it turns out that episode was only a story Cartman wrote.
• The Paragon: Kyle tries to invoke it. He would succeed... if the town wasn't so stupid. He actually manages to become a Messianic Archetype in "Margaritaville" by saving the economy, but Obama is credited for his actions instead.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: His general view of how he deals with Cartman. Even in early seasons, where he was a Jerkass himself and was more Vitriolic Best Buds than an actual rival for him, he still justified messing with him because he was an Insufferable Imbecile and "sucked as a friend". After Cartman became less bumbling and more overtly malicious, Kyle became a lot more active in trying to put an end to whatever he's doing, sometimes even reveling in his torment, as shown in "Cartmanland", "Ginger Kids", and "Tonsil Trouble".
• Perpetual Frowner: Kyle, while a bit more optimistic and jovial than Stan, hardly ever smiles, mainly due to his exasperation with how dysfunctional his environment is. Cartman's amoral and antagonistic tendencies don't help either.
• Phrase Catcher: "Fuck you, Kyle!" has been thrown his way several times, especially from Cartman.
• Please Keep Your Hat On: Inverted. Kyle considers wearing his hat to be how he "looks natural" rather than showing off his very large Jewfro, and protests when he's forced to take it off for class picture day.
• Politically Incorrect Hero:
  • Downplayed. He gets the most flak from PC Principal due to some of his opinions on controversial subjects, which PC perceives as transphobic or racist. However, Kyle's intolerance doesn't go beyond not seeing Caitlyn Jenner as a hero and wanting the old Cartman back after he's forcibly replaced with an equally obnoxious black woman. Outside of that, he's shown to fight against Cartman's bigotry the most, though even he has his moments of being Innocently Insensitive.
  David: Where I come from, we settle things with our fists!
  Kyle: But this isn't Mexico.
  David: I'm not from Mexico, dude! I'm from Idaho! (Kyle looks away, embarrassed)
  • He shows signs of ableism in some episodes like "Ass Burgers" and "Buddha Box" calling Stan's diagnosis of Asperger's "poison" to him and when he chews out Cartman for faking anxiety issues to not have to talk to people, his word choice makes it sound like anxiety is just a generic human trait and those suffering from anxiety disorders just need to "get over it" like those without it handle their own anxiety.
• Positive Friend Influence: Wants to be this for Heidi in Season 21 trying to convince her to leave Cartman and be a sweet boyfriend to her. It doesn't plan out as Kyle intended as Cartman manipulates Heidi into rejecting Kyle, going back to Cartman and becoming his Distaff Counterpart but in the end he gets to be this for her as his Armor-Piercing Response causes Heidi to have Heel Realization, break-up with Cartman, and by Season 22 returns to her old self.
• Pragmatic Hero: This is how Kyle deals with Cartman's schemes most of the time. In some cases however, he is fueled more out of personal hatred for Cartman, making him more a case of He Who Fights Monsters.
• Promotion to Parent: His situation isn't quite as bad as Kenny's, but he has to act as the adult towards his younger brother Ike when their parents are acting crazy or oblivious. In "Child Abduction Is Not Funny", after the parents hear from the news that most children kidnappings are done by their own parents, the parents don't trust their spouses anymore and send their children away to live by themselves. Gerald and Sheila tell Kyle that he has to become Ike's parent from then on. However, the children eventually return home.
• Redhead in Green: He has red hair and his hat, collar, pants and mittens are green. Unlike most examples, his hair is rarely shown.
• The Rival:
  • Alternates between this and Arch-Enemy with Cartman. Though he's often happy to just put an end to whatever scheme he's planning, Kyle has often attacked Cartman without any direct provocation, sometimes out of a Gut Feeling that he's going to do something horrible. This comes to bite him in the ass in "Post Covid", where adult Kyle keeps his guard up around Cartman due to thinking his Faith–Heel Turn is a façade, eventually leading to Cartman reverting back to his usual self.
  • He was this to Terrance Mephesto in "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" for the "cloning wars", and Kyle took beating him very seriously, to the point of making his pet elephant have sex with Cartman's pig to get a pot-bellied elephant, though they seemed to stop minding each other's presence after Kyle won.
• Save the Villain: Though he has tried to kill him more than once, Kyle has still unhesitatingly rescued Cartman on several occasions, such as "ManBearPig", "It's a Jersey Thing", and "Jewpacabra". In the latter two episodes, Cartman is even thankful, though in "Jewpacabra" he didn't know it was Kyle who saved him.
• Secondary-Color Nemesis: Kyle wears green and orange and is the arch-enemy to Cartman, who wears primary colors. In a twist on the trope, Kyle is the more upstanding of the two.
• Signature Headgear: He even made a big deal out of it when getting his school picture taken:
  Photographer: Take off your hat, please?
  Kyle: But I never take off my hat.
  Photographer: Come on now, I bet your parents want a picture of you lookin' natural.
  Kyle: This is how I look natural.
  Ms. Choksondik: Kyle, we're taking pictures without hats today!
  Kyle: (taking off hat) Crap!
• Significant Birthdate: His birthday is May 26, the same as Matt Stone.
• The Smart Guy: The smartest of the group, at least academically. In the Season 1 character commercials, Kyle was described as “the smart one”.
• The Snark Knight: One of the most sarcastic characters this series has. Mostly directed at Cartman for being fat and stupid.
• Soapbox Sadie: As he became more aware of the world's problems, he became more unwilling to let them slide, and he became particularly angry with apathetic people (like Stan on occasion), hopelessly naïve people (like Butters or sometimes Clyde), or people who took advantage of a problem for their own benefit (like Cartman most of the time). He's been called out for being this on multiple occasions. It becomes defied several times in Seasons 19, 20, and 21, though. Even though Kyle is one of the most sensible and aware kids at his school, he switches between calling people out for catering to peer pressure and then begrudgingly betraying his own ideals by catering to himself, usually after suffering a Humiliation Conga for his opinions^note Calling Caitlyn Jenner a hero in Season 19 after vehemently refusing to, joining the Wieners Out movement in Season 20 after trying to quell it, and then victimizing himself in Season 21 after criticizing Cartman for doing the same. Though he always has good intentions, his inability to meaningfully impact the world around him frustrates him to no end; the few times he does, he unwillingly ends up making things worse for everyone.
• Socially Awkward Hero: It's subtle, but taking great risks for the people he loves and South Park in general tend to be in his comfort zone more often than talking to people about emotional issues or readily being able to come across as casual and reliable. "Doubling Down", "Lil' Crime Stoppers", "A History Channel Thanksgiving", "Let Go, Let Gov", and even the early episode "Hooked on Monkey Fonics" are some good examples.
• Sociopathic Hero: Despite the fact that Kyle is not nearly as malicious as Cartman, he has proven to be less sensitive than Stan and has had several moments where he has proved to be cold, callous, and willing to do reprehensible things, especially when his Character Development comes into play. One example being in "Cow Days", when he forced Cartman to train for a rodeo and sustain repeated head trauma all so Kyle could use the prize money to buy some dolls.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: Kyle feels this way towards his neurotic cousin. As Cartman's stereotyping of Jews tends to be proven right, Kyle fears that he might not be any better.
• Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard: Kyle's given many variations of this over the years, usually in response to something Cartman says.
• Sucks at Dancing: In "Rainforest Schmainforest," he can't keep up with the other kids' choreography during the choir performance, which upsets him since not having rhythm is a Jewish stereotype.
  • However, later episodes, such as "Elementary School Musical," depict him as a decent dancer. He must have been practicing.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Kyle's Jersey self is treated as this. While it's not explicitly super powered, it is the only way to take on people from Jersey on their own terms.
• Third Wheel: Since he rarely is successful at maintaining relationships himself, this is his default role when it comes to episodes involving romance.
  • Kyle serves as one for Stan and Wendy, especially during the earlier seasons. In the latter ones, however, he seems rather apathetic of the status of their relationship, even being baffled that Stan would have a Heroic BSoD over her dumping him in "Raisins". "Follow That Egg" also shows that Kyle would never think of going out with Wendy regardless of how close they get, out of loyalty for Stan.
  • Cartman tries to invoke this regarding his relationship with Heidi in Season 20 by bringing him along to their dates and asking for relationship advice. Kyle has none of it, since he has other more important matters at hand. By Season 21, when their relationship has taken a turn for the worst, Kyle tries to intervene in the relationship and briefly "steals" Heidi away from Cartman.
  • He also briefly acts as this between Butters and his bitches in "Butters' Bottom Bitch" and Kenny and Tammy in "The Ring", trying to steer both boys in the right path when he feels they're falling out. However, it's downplayed as Kyle does try to put an end to both "relationships" at first (Butters' because he was essentially conducting a sex business, Kenny, because Tammy had been revealed to have given another boy oral sex).
  • In "InSecurity", Kyle acts as this towards his own parents when he believed his mom was cheating on his dad with an UPS man, essentially behaving like a marriage counselor at the end.
• Those Two Guys: Is usually this with Stan in episodes where they're not the main focus.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • Given how later seasons have made Kyle a Butt-Monkey, Season 25 decided to give Kyle some slack and not have him suffer any Trauma Conga Line, slapstick, or discrimination. In fact, the worst thing to have happen to Kyle in that season was that he had to deal with an obnoxious teenager, which is something the rest of the boys also have to endure.
  • Despite Kyle's attempts to pursue a romantic relationship have always failed when he was a kid while Kyle remained single and alone in the Bad Future, the universe decided to give him a win where Kyle does find a woman that he loves enough to marry and have children with, while still retaining his friendship with almost everyone, with Kyle's kids considering Stan to be their Honorary Uncle.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: After several seasons worth of being a bitter Ignored Expert and Butt-Monkey, and growing up to be a bitter and resentful single man in the Bad Future, the future boys managed to change the past to make his and the others' lives better, and by Season 25 he is now able to enjoy the little things again, with "Help, My Teenager Hates Me!" in particular being a highlight of this newfound cheerfulness. This trait carries over to his adult self in the revised future, where he's a happy family man whose mood can only be slightly lowered by the sight of Cartman's sorry adult lifestyle.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • After four serialized seasons of being the show's resident Ignored Expert, and having to witness people he cared about Take A Level In Jerkass themselves, Kyle becomes a Moral Guardian in the penultimate episode of Season 21 reminiscent of his mother and goes on a moral cruisade against Terrance & Phillip which ends with Canada getting nuked as a result of his actions. Though he's left completely remorseful after this, Kyle still continues to justify himself up until Ike tells him to "stop being a victim" the following episode, whereupon Kyle spends the rest of the season finale trying to make amends by tracking down Ike and helping him hunt down the president.
  • In Post-Covid, though not as poignant a change as Stan, Kyle also grows to become more self-righteous and resentful in the Bad Future. Though understandable considering everything Cartman put him through as a kid, Kyle shrugs off or bites back at any of the latter's attempts at reconciliation, gets quite temperamental around him, and at one point attempts to expose him in front of the latter's wife. He becomes worse in this regard after convincing the others to go back in time and stop the pandemic from ever happening, not caring that it might ruin Cartman's happy ending. In the following special, even after witnessing how much Cartman is willing to sacrifice for his family's sake, Kyle still denies any wrongdoing and later attempts to convince his past self to reconcile with Stan, saying "Cartman gets a happy life, but you don't."
• Took a Level in Kindness: More or less the same evolution as Stan. He still has occasional self-righteous moments, though they are much more rare. The seasons following this change also show him being a lot more self-reflective and patient, even agreeing to pay for the surgery of Cartman's mom and trying to help him lose weight (even if both these actions come back to bite him later). "The Worldwide Privacy Tour" is a crowning example of Kyle dealing with being the episode's Butt-Monkey in a mature and nuanced way, later even agreeing to play with the Prince of Canada despite the latter being an asshole to him for most of the episode.
• Tragic Hero: Kyle wants to do the right thing and convince others to do the same, but he often gets No Sympathy from others who believe him to be a Soapbox Sadie. On his side, his antagonism towards Cartman and obsession in beating him tends to override this and put his own morals into question, an issue which he's aware of and tries to address on occasion but is constantly overshadowed by Cartman's massive Jerkassery, which is directed at him most of the time, making him double down on his morals.
  • It reaches its climax in Season 21 when he tries to "save" a girl he liked who was in an abusive relationship with Cartman, only for her to dump him and not only return Cartman but also become his Distaff Counterpart and start treating Kyle like dirt too, so Kyle promptly goes on a moral crusade against Canada (or specifically Terrance & Phillip, whose humor now reminds him of Cartman's bullying) so no one else will become like Cartman, only to get the country nuked when he reached out to the president with his complaints.
  • Happens again in "Buddha Box" when Kyle's furious rant at Cartman for using anxiety to avoid facing problems causes Cartman to convince everyone to use Buddha Box to ignore the world around them, though this is far less severe compared to Kyle getting Canada nuked.
• Tragic Mistake: Accidentally causing President Garrison to nuke Canada. It plagues him until the end of the season and damages his relationship with Ike.
• Trans Nature:
  • According to "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina", Kyle felt he was black all his life. However, this was never mentioned again. Kyle apparently accepted the way he was born.
  Kyle: I've listened to Hip-Hop, I watch UPN, and I love playing basketball.
  • As the Human Kite, he identifies as an "Asexual Gender-Neutral Kite Alien".
• TV Genius: Kyle consistently demonstrates high intelligence, often outsmarting his peers and even adults. His sharp mind allows him to quickly grasp complex concepts and devise clever plans. Kyle’s academic excellence and love for reading are evident throughout the series. His bedroom is full of books and academic materials, showing his dedication to his studies, learning, and knowledge. He’s also been shown on several occasions to be excellent with computers, an example of this is when he fixed the internet in the episode “Over Logging”. However, Kyle can sometimes act a little egotistical and arrogant about his intelligence. Butters also calls him out in “Going Native” for believing that he knows everything. Kyle also hates being wrong, and it’s hard for him to accept that he doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does.
• Undying Loyalty: To his baby brother Ike. Regardless of how annoying or patriotic he can get, Kyle always goes out of his way to help out his little brother, and he's often at his most sympathetic and mature when around him. Even in the first two seasons, where he was a Big Brother Bully towards him and had to be prompted to help him by others, he still ended up sticking by him at the end, standing up to aliens, Cartman, and his own mother when he thought his life was on the line. In later seasons, he's almost a Parental Substitute for him when his own parents are oblivious to his needs.
• The Un-Favorite: Kyle is implied to be this, especially towards his father who mockingly tells Ike that he doesn't want him to be like Kyle.
• The Un-Reveal: Kyle has two biological children in the revised future, all but confirming that he's married. However the audience is never shown who Kyle married in the new future.
• Unwitting Pawn: Cartman's final revenge gambit in "Scott Tenorman Must Die" hinged on Kyle and Stan backstabbing him.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Kyle finally gets his revenge on Cartman for everything that latter put him through in the show when he and everyone else decide to cut all ties with Cartman, so Kyle gets to be a happy family man while Cartman ends up becoming a lonely and miserable homeless alcoholic. However rather than feel satisfied that he got the happier life, Kyle just feels sad upon seeing how low Cartman has sunk.
• Vocal Evolution: Over time, Kyle's voice has gotten increasingly lower and less childlike, due to Matt Stone's digital pitching being relaxed.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: It's implied Kyle is one to his father, Gerald. He's regularly ignored in favour of Ike just barely running circles around him in the intelligence department, despite Kyle (usually) being more independent and determined. After Season 21 Kyle loses whatever respect he had for Gerald, knowing that his online attitude almost doomed everyone.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Often the one to deliver these towards other characters, but he has been on the receiving end on occasion, most notably in "Ginger Cow".
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Even compared to his more observant peers who are more often thrust into the leadership role (Stan, Cartman, Craig, Wendy, sometimes Clyde, etc.) Kyle is very intelligent. Wendy seems to be an exception, however, and this doesn't stop both her and Stan from being insanely successful in the revised future.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Kyle tends to not deal well with Trauma Conga Lines. Some episodes in which Cartman puts him through too much abuse sometimes culminate in Kyle attempting to kill him or make him suffer as retribution.
  • In "The Wacky Child Molestation Adventure", after being forbidden from going to a concert by his parents even after he brought peace to Cuba, Kyle decides to follow Cartman's idea and frame them for child molestation.
  • In "South Park is Gay", he is ditched by the boys and bullied by Craig's gang for not following the metrosexual fad. When he learns that the fad was started by the group of the TV show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"
  • In "The List", Kyle is falsely voted the ugliest kid in class and is left feeling ostracized as a result (with Cartman and Butters not helping matters at all), after some prompting from one of his fellow ugly kids, Kyle tries to burn down the school a few days later.
  • After Cartman gives him HIV for laughing at him in "Tonsil Trouble", Kyle tries to break all his toys, and still vows to finish the job even after Cartman gets him cured.
  • After all the shit he had to endure in South Park for the last seasons, it seems that Kyle finally reached his breaking point in Season 21 after Heidi breaks up with him for anti-Semitic reasons, goes back to Cartman and becomes a more extreme version of the latter, as well as the subsequent bullying that Kyle faced afterwards. He blames Canada for all his suffering and the meanness of South Park, which leads to him to getting the country nuked.
• You Are Fat: This is Kyle's favorite insult towards Cartman, and his first canonical line directed at him is "Shut up, fat boy!" in "Jesus vs. Santa". As of the end of "The End of Obesity", Kyle made a vow to never insult his obesity again, but considering how Cartman thanked him for this gesture, it's unlikely that this will last and it's proven true in "Conflict of Interest" when he calls him "fatass" once again.

Kenneth "Kenny" McCormick

"You never seem to care when I die!"
^{Click here to see him hoodieless}

^{Click here to see him as Mysterion}

^{Click here to see his Panderverse self}

An immortal, hedonistic, vulgar, but courageous and selfless boy that comes from a very poor family that often has to struggle to survive. He used to get killed off Once per Episode only to come back to life later, but that's not the case anymore... usually, since the creators were getting tired of killing Kenny off in every episode and running out of original ways to kill him. He almost always speaks with a muffled voice, with various levels of intelligibility.

His role in Coon and Friends is Mysterion.

• Alliterative Family: With his brother Kevin and sister Karen. His mother Carol's name is also pronounced with a hard "k" sound.
• All Men Are Perverts: One of the prominent young examples on the show. He's the most sexually knowledgeable of the boys and often fantasizes about the female body.
• Ambiguously Human: He has the habit of hiding almost his entire face and is the only character in the show to consistently die and be reborn again to the point where a trope was even named after him. As of the Coon & Friends trilogy, it's generally accepted that Kenny is implied to be some sort of Eldritch Abomination larva in human skin or is one due to him being able to do things humans aren't capable of, such as his Resurrective Immortality.
• And I Must Scream: Kenny dies again and again, only to wake up in bed absolutely fine. He remembers each and every one of his deaths, no matter how painful, and furthermore, no one remembers when he dies.
• Animal Motif: Downplayed, Kenny is associated with rats, who appear to consume his body whenever he dies and he is able to summon them in Stick of Truth. Kenny is also known to live in abject poverty, like how rats are known to live in unhygienic environments. In an accidental case, rats are also known to have strong maternal instincts, and Kenny is comfortable with cross-dressing as "Princess Kenny" and is known to be protective of his little sister.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Downplayed, but the few times we see them interact, he seems to be this for his older brother Kevin, as they occasionally fight over waffles and blankets. Despite Kenny being "the adult" of the family, he rarely seems to worry about Kevin much, despite the latter being apparently as much of a drunk as their dad.
• Anti-Hero: Kenny has the most heroic personality of the four main kids, as evidenced by his heroic sacrifices and general selflessness, though is also cynical to go with it, and he's not above acting childish or bratty when the stakes are low (or when they're high and he's not invested in the outcome). Before Butters, he was also the most prone to willingly helping in Cartman's schemes, though he's never malicious about it unless he's playing a role like Princess Kenny, and is often more honest and straightforward about his intentions than Cartman is, as shown in "Whale Whores" (though he probably only admitted his intentions, so that Stan would let him stay on the boat). He has a lot of vices too, but not to the extremes of the others, and he doesn't deny them. In "Return of Covid", it's revealed that as an adult, Kenny made the historical breakthrough to go back in time and try to stop the pandemic from happening by using illegal NFT money with the help of Butters (who's a con artist in the future), though nobody holds this against him.
• Anti-Villain: In his Image Song, Kenny’s Dead, where he undergoes Adaptational Villainy and commits a robbery, in order to sustain himself (and presumably Kevin and Carol) after his father died.
• Apathetic Student: He can often seen playing around in class instead of doing his homework, and according to Stan and Kyle in "Kenny Dies", he routinely skips class alongside Cartman. Otherwise, he's happy to participate in cheating or create a GoFundMe project to get off school for good alongside the others, but is rarely the one to propose such idea.
• An Arm and a Leg: In "Pinkeye", his zombie gradually loses both arms as he decays. It gets worse in "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow", where all of his limbs are gradually chopped off by environmentalists, and he was still alive by the episode's end.
• Ascended Extra: Despite being nominally part of the main cast, his character in early seasons was mostly relegated to the Running Gag of him dying, his family being poor, or being a Dirty Kid, and he didn't get much development. After the original shtick was semi-retired, he was fleshed out considerably into a much more complex individual.
• At Least I Admit It: Butters admits that Kenny is the only one of his classmates who he respects, since he's honest about his vices and flaws and makes no bones about who he is, unlike the rest of the boys' hypocrisy and self-righteousness.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Zig-Zagged. Kenny isn't an innocent or weak child by any means and even serves the role as the leader as Mysterion. However, due to his generally quiet and often raunchy personality, sometimes the other boys from the group would boss him around (like trying to forcefully pull out his remaining baby teeth in "The Tooth Fairy Tats 2000") or talk down to him, and Stan in particular seems to feel some Big Brother Instinct towards him going as far as putting a coat on Kenny's back when they dressed him like Mr. Jefferson's son and go out of his way to save him on several instances. Sometimes he would let the other boys solve the problem, while he lounges or even plays in the background. The straightest example of this role is in "The Vaccination Special," when the other three boys treat him like a son and try to placate him with animated movies and ice cream while they discuss their crumbling friendship. Additionally, while the rest of the boys are 10 years old, "Cock Magic" reveals that Kenny is only 9.
• Back for the Dead: Some episodes like "Volcano" or "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut" will have Kenny revived from his initial demise only to be killed again through circumstances. The former is the biggest example, as he doesn't last ten seconds onscreen before getting accidentally shot by Ned.
• Back from the Dead: All the time. It's apparently his superpower.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Downplayed. Despite being a charitable guy at heart, his kindness does not extend to animals: He's the most excited to hunt and fish with Jimbo in "Volcano", allegedly set Mr. Garrison's cat on fire sometime before "Do the Handicapped Go To Hell?", repeatedly squeezed cats for their urine in "Major Boobage", outright told Stan that he didn't care about whales and dolphins in "Whale Whores", and the card for Inuit Kenny in South Park: Phone Destroyer shows him ripping a tusk out of a dead walrus. The song "Hell isn't Good" from The Movie also implies that one of Kenny's hobbies was throwing rocks at birds. Despite this, "Cock Magic" shows him displeased with the use of roosters being forced to play Magic: The Gathering for human amusement, and he warms up to McNuggets in that same episode alongside the rest of the boys.
• Beautiful All Along: You'd never think he looked so adorable under his hood, especially considering how dirty the rest of his family members usually look.
• Being Good Sucks: When it comes down to it, he will do the right thing, but due to how his immortality works, no one remembers his Heroic Sacrifices.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Whilst Kenny is normally one of the more kind-hearted of the boys, that changes when you press one of his buttons.
• Big Brother Instinct: You don't want to mess with Karen McCormick. Mysterion will come and kick your ass. In "The City Part of Town", when his father screams at Karen to get a job if she wants stuff and she runs off in fear, he death stares his dad as he walks off to comfort her. At the end of the episode, Kenny gets her a new doll just to make her happy.
• Big Damn Heroes: In The Movie, when he convinced Satan to end his relationship with Saddam and was granted a wish of his choice, which he used to undo the American-Canadian War that had been kickstarted by Sheila early in the film. Other examples with lesser stakes are "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut", "Jewbilee", "Best Friends Forever", "The Coon", "The Poor Kid", and "The Scoots". Despite this, he's failed at saving the day just as many times, such as in The Coon & Friends Trilogy, "A Nightmare On Face Time", "Bike Parade", and most meaningfully in "Post Covid", when his attempts to go back in time and undo the Pandemic caused him to accidentally bring a new variant of COVID to the future.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: His eyebrows are longer and thicker than most kids in the show.
• Born-Again Immortality: Every time he dies, his mother gives birth to him again. He then ages into his current age overnight and wakes up fully restored. This is because his parents, while trying to score some free food, took part in a Lovecraftian ritual.
• Born Unlucky: His repeated, traumatic deaths are almost always Played for Laughs.
• Break the Cutie: Played straight in The Movie at first, where Kenny's fatal death sends him into the fiery pits of hell in which he suffers perpetual abuse at the hands of Satan. Thankfully, his fate ends when he realizes that Satan is a actually a misunderstood nice guy who's suffering an abusive relationship with his boyfriend Saddam, which thereafter sends Kenny into Heaven like he initially desired.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Kenny is extremely intelligent and talented in a variety of fields, but he's content to just hang around with the boys and chase after sex and drugs. Post-COVID reveals he becomes a world-famous scientist and philanthropist in the future, all the while staying a party animal.
• Broken Masquerade: He's the only one (besides his parents) who knows/can remember that he keeps dying, and is aware of (and remembers) some of the Eldritch Abominations that the cast encounters. He also hates it when other people don't remember him dying.
• Brutal Honesty: He's extremely blunt and almost never minces his words. He's rather unabashed about being a pervert and will always say his opinion on people to their faces, especially if they piss him off.
• Butt-Monkey: Kenny used to be the show's resident Chew Toy/Butt-Monkey. In much earlier seasons, he dies at the end of nearly every episode. It's lampshaded in the Thanksgiving short with Jay Leno making a guest appearance. Not only was Kenny dying every episode, but he and his family were constantly mocked by the other characters because they were so poor. It was mostly Cartman who joked about it, but the others would always laugh along.
• Came Back Strong: A gradual variation. In seasons 1-5 he was mostly characterized as a perverted tag-along with the occasional moment of heroism, but who could also be Too Dumb to Live. After his death and revival, he had more episodes focusing on his skills and heroism, and he became the town vigilante, a famous Japanese princess, and a guardian angel for his sister.
• Came Back Wrong: Whenever Kenny is resurrected by means outside of his curse, his revival won't be a clean one. The first time he became Patient Zero in a zombie outbreak. The second time was when Cartman consumed his ashes, causing Kenny to be reborn in Cartman's mind until he was exorcised, causing his soul to possess a potroast that was then eaten by Rob Schneider, who was soon killed off.
• Camp Straight: Downplayed. Kenny has definitely shown attraction to girls and does regular boy activities, yet he willingly dresses up as a princess during the Black Friday Trilogy.
• Carpe Diem: Yes and no. Kenny's awareness of his immortality gives him the audacity to try things the other kids would be too timid to do. The downside is that Kenny feels the pain of every death.
• Catchphrase: "Woo-hoo!", usually said when excited about something; it being sometimes sexual.
• Censored Child Death: Averted for black comedy purposes, but played straight in "Kenny Dies" where his death is taken very seriously and happens offscreen, which causes Stan a lot of grief because he wasn't there to see Kenny off.
• Character Development: He starts off as the most bland one of the four and merely a prop. Nowadays, he has a fully fleshed out character and even has a superhero alter-ego.
• Characterization Marches On: In early seasons, Kenny was nothing but a little pervert, a Butt-Monkey of fate and a Yes-Man for many of Cartman's schemes. While bits of this is still present, since he's started dying less often he's become slightly more intelligible for regular viewers and with him disagreeing often to Cartman's more unpleasant schemes, it has since moved on to Butters. Once we learned that his superpower is real and not just a continuity reset, he's become slightly more virtuous, more assertive, and more respected by the boys themselves. He still doesn't like dying, though.
• Character Tics: Pulling on the drawstrings of his hood when he's scared.
• Chick Magnet: Despite being poor and a bit of a pervert, Kenny is rather popular with the ladies.
  • They all collectively say goodbye to him in "Tweek vs. Craig", and didn't seem to mind his presence at Home Ec as much as their teacher did.
  • He also had a number of girlfriends over the course of the series: Kelly from "Rainforest Shmainforest" (which was implied to have lasted a while), Tammy from "The Ring", and an unnamed girl (possibly either of them) in Season 20.
  • This was implied to have died down somewhat in later seasons, as the girls are all collectively skeptical of him when he asks to join them for Halloween in "The Scoots", although this is implied to be because they were secretly planning to use the e-scooters to gain an advantage over the other kids and didn't want him to find out. Regardless, Season 22 implies he's not as popular at school as he used to be.
• Cluster *Bleep*-Bomb: A majority of his implied vulgar and/or profane dialogue is muffled and unintelligible due to his mouth being covered by his orange parka almost all the time.
• Cool Big Bro: This guy puts on his superhero alter-ego just to cheer his little sis up, and in "City Part of Town" used the money he's earned to buy Karen a new doll. South Park: The Fractured but Whole implies that he's sometimes too busy to spend time with her, but he vows to make up for it after he sees her turn to the Vamp Kids for friendship.
• Cosmic Plaything: The universe really hates him. It may be due to the universe not liking having the spawn of Cthulhu in it.
• Creepy Child: As Mysterion. Also is this if you consider his usual obscured face and quietness a bit on the creepy side.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Kenny's deaths will always be as gory and horrifying as possible, with poor Kenny doing nothing at all to warrant such a fate.
• Demoted to Extra: After a few years of resurgence (especially with the Mysterion arc), he eventually ended up as background decoration by Season 20, in which he had one line; even Annie and Red, living props in their own right, have more lines than him. In fact, Kenny had more prominence in Season 6 (you know, the time when he stayed dead for a whole season) than he did in Season 20. He retains his spot in the opening credits over the much more prominent Butters and Randy, however. This trend was reversed again during Seasons 21 and 22, when he had as much screen time as the other three boys, multiple lines in many episodes, A Day in the Limelight episode in "The Scoots", and his first deaths since Season 16, though it still seems that Butters and Randy remain de facto more prominent than Kenny.
• Depending on the Writer: The exact nature of his curse tends to vary depending on the episode:
  • Whether other characters are aware of the fact he's died and came back before or suffer Laser-Guided Amnesia and remain completely oblivious is inconsistent.
  • Sometimes his mom has to give birth to him again before he quickly grows from a baby to his usual form, and other times he simply pops back into existence on his bed.
  • The exact time it takes to respawn varies too, with some episodes having him be fine by the next scene and others having him stay dead for the rest of the episode. He usually respawns a day later, but after "Kenny Dies", he stayed dead for an entire season before finally respawning.
• Devoured by the Horde: His corpse is often feasted on by rats, and in "Starvin' Marvin", he gets plucked to death by a pack of turkeys.
• Die Laughing:
  • In "Scott Tenorman Must Die" he died laughing at the embarrassing video of Cartman.
  • During the "Everybody Laughs" Ending of "Chickenpox", he suddenly stops laughing and dies, presumably of chickenpox.
• Dies Wide Open: Several of his deaths has him with his eyes open or half open.
• Dirty Coward: Happens often. When Kenny, along with the rest of his friends, does something wrong (or even think that they did), he usually tries to frame it on Butters. He can also be rather cowardly in life-threatening situations, even though he will always come back to life and he knows it. To be fair, as Kenny mentioned it, dying is painful and he is just a kid.
• Dirty Kid: While the other kids suffer from Ping Pong Naïveté, Kenny is dirty through and through!
  • Established right in the show's intro where his muffled part of the song is something perverted.
    Season 1-2: I like girls with deep vaginas, I like girls with big fat titties!
    Season 3-5: Hey I've got a 10-inch penis, use your mouth if you wanna clean it!
    Season 7-10: ^note His abscense from Season 6 had Timmy replace his lines in the intro. Someday I'll be old enough to stick my dick up Britney's butt!
    Season 10-present: I like fucking silly bitches 'cause I know my penis likes it!
• Distressed Dude: Due to his bad luck, he's often captured by the Monster of the Week, including terrorists, the government, the Germans, the Tooth Fairy mafia, ginger kids, and Burger King robbers, and is usually executed after his friends fail to save him. However, he was successfully rescued by Stan in "Super Fun Time".
• Doom Magnet: In addition to inadvertently dooming others along with his friends, he also attracts doom to himself, of course.
• Double Standard: Violence, Child on Adult: Completely Played for Laughs in "Cartman Joins NAMBLA". First he tries damaging his father's testicles before he can impregnate Kenny's mother, then when that doesn't work he chases his mother around the house with a plunger to begin an abortion procedure on her.
• Dreadful Musician: Like seemingly every child in the United States, Kenny has no talent with the recorder. Averted with every other musical instrument he's been seen playing, which includes (among others) drums, bass, and zampoña. With some training he also becomes a talented singer.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: In the Big Damn Movie, Kenny drops his hood and says goodbye to his friends before setting the world back to the way it was and reviving all the dead.
• Dysfunctional Family: While most South Park families have their fair share of problems, his is one of the more stand out examples. His parents; while they have their moments, are alcoholic, drug addicts. They also tend to beat each other a lot, are in poverty, and generally neglectful. This forces Kenny to be the 'adult' of his family sometimes, as he tries to make things more bearable for his siblings, especially his little sister. His older brother is implied to be a drunkard as well.
• Even the Guys Want Him: As "anime" Princess Kenny, he can apparently make men fall in love with his cuteness just by being there, though it's debatable whether the Sony Princess Box turns him into an actual girl.
• Everyone Has Standards: He's a Dirty Kid of the highest calibre, but he doesn't seem to enjoy himself in Bebe's Stupid Spoiled Whore party in "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset", running away from Annie when she kept trying to kiss him. Considering he doesn't show the same restraint in other similar scenarios, his might be because he Likes Older Women and doesn't like watching girls his age acting like whores (his girlfriend Tammy Warner was 1-2 years older than him).
• Extreme Doormat: Though he's perfectly capable of being a leader, and tends to be the one to get the boys out of trouble when things go south, Kenny is mostly a follower for his friends, for better or for worse, and rarely proposes a plan of action himself. Even when separated from them, he's still this to other characters like Craig in "Sponsored Content", Butters and the Hawaii "natives" in "Going Native", Mr. Kim in "The City Part of Town", or Mr. Mackey in "The Scoots". The only times he's shown actively leading others are when under one of his alter-egos, such as Mysterion, Princess Kenny, or Cyborg Kenny in Phone Destroyer.
• Extreme Omnivore: There's a few times where he'd ingest things he shouldn't. The episode "Fat Camp" had him do this for money.
• The Faceless: Downplayed. His eyes are visible but everything else is covered by his hood, except in a small handful of episodes^note The Movie, "Good Times with Weapons", "The Losing Edge", "Broadway Bro Down", "Meet the Jeffersons", "You're Getting Old", "Major Boobage", "Turd Burglars", and "DickinBaus Hot Dogs". Also in "The Coon" and the "Coon and Friends" trilogy as Mysterion. His princess outfit in South Park: The Stick of Truth would apparently have been another example, but was scrapped for the current design that puts the costume over his parka (most likely because the linked design would have made him unrecognizable and, due to the art style, too much like an actual female). The times he's appeared without his hood on the show (following The Reveal from the movie) have all happened without any attention being drawn to it, to the point that it takes many viewers a little while to realize that the messy-haired blond kid is actually Kenny.
• Fatal Flaw: His addictive tendencies are the second biggest source of his self-inflicted deaths (next to Heroic Sacrifices):
  • As early as season 4's "Chef Goes Nanners", he overdosed on anti-acid tablets (thinking they were mints), which causes him to explode when he goes for a glass of water. "Fat Camp" also shows him sinking to all possible lows to get some money, from eating a manatee's spleen to giving Tom Green a blowjob. This pattern surely would've gotten him killed had he not been arrested for the latter, forcing Stan and Kyle to find a replacement for his next stunt who actually does get killed.
  • His obsession with sex has gotten him killed twice: Once by syphilis in "The Ring" and once by auto-erotic asphyxiation in "Sexual Healing".
  • He has also taken the most drugs out of the group, which "Coon vs. Coon and Friends" implies is in order to deal with the bleakness of his immortality: He snorted an unknown alien drug in "Cancelled" without blinking, apparently got high on paint regularly according to "The Ring", smoked a pack of cigarettes alongside the other boys in "Butt Out", and became a crippling addict to cheesing in "Major Boobage", which, while not fatal, left him a complete mess with complete dependency on the drug, at least until he recovered at the end of the episode. He has also gotten high on flowers in that very same episode.
• Flanderization: Think about how poor he is or how often he's ignored. His perverted nature has also been exaggerated, though granted this has arguably broadened his character as well. Subverted with his deaths, which went from Once an Episode to Once or Twice a Season.
• Forced Transformation: Kenny is turned into a duck-billed platypus by Damien. The kids are only mildly impressed. He eventually gets shot by Jimbo and Ned just for being an animal.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend:
  • Zig-Zagged, as due to Cthulhu's curse, their friends only forget about his death once he comes Back from the Dead, making him a "Forgotten Revived Friend". However, several episodes show the boys completely forgetting or ignoring his existence after their They Killed Kenny Again line (if they say the line at all). Furthermore, while he has been given a few funerals, his corpse is almost always left behind to be eaten by rats. However, considering them being apathetic towards Kenny's deaths happened only in the first few seasons, it could be a case of Early-Installment Weirdness or the boys were influenced by the curse or something else. Nowadays the boys (besides Cartman sometimes) always react with shock and grief when Kenny dies.
  • It becomes a point of discussion in "Cherokee Hair Tampons", where Kenny calls Stan out for crying while Kyle was on the verge of death while showing apathy at Kenny's deaths. Then Kenny gets crushed by a piano and Stan continues to cry for Kyle.
  • In "A Very Crappy Christmas", Kenny is run over by a car during the production of the boys' film. Stan simply quips that they can just make his character die in the film as well, and him and Kyle carry on with the production regardless.
• Four Is Death: Kenny's the least focused upon of the four boys, which means he's typically the last to be counted. He also dies repeatedly.
• Good Is Not Nice: He's the most profane and outwardly lazy of the boys (at least before Cartman Took a Level in Jerkass) and also the most heroic.
• Good Is Not Soft: He may be ready to pull out all the stops to get high or get laid, but he's honestly a Nice Guy who cares about his friends, and when it comes to other people, he will do the right thing including being willing to die for people, and has executed a Heroic Sacrifice on more than one occasion. But if he gets the chance to take revenge on some bastard who pissed him off or did the wrong thing (mostly Cartman), he will take it, and he will fuck up anyone who threatens his little sister.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Downplayed. He has blond hair and is the most selfless of the boys, but he's coarse, unabashedly perverted, and a drug addict. As Princess Kenny he even parodies this trope by using a blonde wig for the outfit, with golden-haired princesses being the most significant examples.
• Hates Their Parent: Kenny has no love for either of his alcoholic deadbeat parents, is often apathetic to their advice (as shown in The Movie, "Best Friends Forever", and "Bike Parade"), enjoyed watching them fight in early seasons, and has no reservations over manipulating them or hurting them if it suits his needs, especially as Mysterion. When trying to stop them from having another baby in "Cartman Joins NAMBLA", he breaks Stuart's balls and tries to force an abortion unto Carol with a plunger. Additionally, when they're both arrested for dealing meth in "The Poor Kid", Kenny seems to adapt quite easily to the new environment (at least until the foster parents start dousing the kids with Dr. Pepper), and spends most of his time comforting his younger sister Karen (who did not adapt that easily). Notably, they are not even invited to his “final” funeral in “Post Covid”, possibly hinting at him disowning them in the future. However, "Quintuplets 4000" has his mom support his attempts at a singing career, and "Help, My Teenager Hates Me!" shows him bonding with his dad in airsoft.
• The Heart:
  • Downplayed, but present in Season 5 onward. Though he's the second biggest troublemaker of the team behind Cartman, he's usually the one who brings the four boys together, and usually brings out the Big Brother Instinct in them, such as in "Kenny Dies", "Best Friends Forever", "Super Fun Time", and "The Ring". In Season 6, his semi-permanent death causes all three of them to take a level in jerkass, treating their Replacement Goldfish Butters and Tweek like crap due to not being as good as Kenny.
  • "The South ParQ Vaccination Special" cements him as this. It's shown that dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic for a year has caused the group to splinter and Kenny is only thing holding it together. Stan, Kyle, and Cartman are all reluctant to end their "broship" because they know how much it will hurt Kenny. Exemplified in the Post-Covid specials, where his desire to heal their friendship spurs him to research time travel and change the past so they never fought and split up in the first place.
• The Hedonist: Kenny's far too interested in sex for his own good and will do anything to get high, probably because his immortality means it's impossible for him to suffer long-term consequences like STDs or brain damage.
• Hero Antagonist: In "Poor and Stupid". The episode focuses on Cartman trying to become a NASCAR driver and, in the process, starting to ruin the business's reputation. Kenny goes as far as to risk his own life to end this. Ironically, he doesn't get killed in this particular episode.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He has died this way a few times, including at the end of The Movie. Knowing that he'll come back to life might have something to do with his reasoning, though it causes him great pain each time.
• Hidden Depths: Several episodes imply that underneath his crass and hedonistic personality, he's actually very intelligent and is capable of doing great things if he applies himself. The Post-COVID special confirms it, showing that 40 years in the future he becomes an award-winning scientist.
• Hollywood Genetics: Kenny's blonde, even though his mother is a redhead and his father has brown hair. It doesn't help that his siblings also have brown hair. It is possible that his father has a recessive blond gene, which would be dominant against the red hair of his mother.
• Honorary Princess: In "A Song of Ass and Fire", the Japanese make Kenny a princess.
• Horrible Housing: Kenny's house was originally a clubhouse that his and Kyle's fathers built in their childhood.
• Humanizing Tears: Kenny may be a foul-mouthed pervert, but the sight of him bursting into tears because Cartman deprived him of some KFC skins is a tragic reminder that he's still a dirt-poor child.
• Humanoid Abomination: The source of his immortality has something to do with the Cult of Cthulhu and R'lyeh.
• Image Song: The song Kenny’s Dead, from South Park’s album Chef Aid. The song is all about the background of Kenny about how he’s become accustomed to violence on his street, leading to him becoming a Fearless Fool who skips class to smoke weed, hang out with drug fiends, and commit a robbery leading to him getting arrested and serving 3 years in jail for as a result in search of fortune and success. This culminates in an untimely death by a shotgun.
• Immortality Hurts: One of three major sources of pathos for him. The other two are the fact that no one remembers his many painful deaths, and the fact that it keeps happening.

• In his adulthood it's stated that Kenny's scientific aptitude has grown into Sesquipedalian Loquacity, which makes him seem unintelligible to the layman.
  

• Intelligible Unintelligible: His dialogue in early seasons is made up of muffled grunts, but the other characters respond as if they understand.
• In the Hood: A defining example. Not counting his time as Mysterion, he's dropped his hood on less than 10 occasions, and when asked by a nurse while he was dying this one time why he insisted on wearing it, he only shrugged. His hood has also been suggested to attract bad luck to him, and although he has died without it, you really have to wonder why he's insistent on keeping it on.
• Ironic Name: "Kenneth" means "handsome", yet Kenny always keeps his face covered.
• Irony: Kenny is often killed when there is no danger present. However some episodes place him in serious danger that would get just about anyone killed (school shootings and suicide attacks are just a couple examples in the series), yet he survives just fine.
• Jerkass Ball: Much like Stan and Kyle, he'll have his moments of being mean-spirited when the situation calls for it. In "Good Times with Weapons" and "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs", he willingly joins the others in throwing Butters under the bus to avoid getting in trouble.
• Jerkass to One: Kenny really doesn't like Madonna, and the first thing he does upon hearing her name in "Kenny Dies" is give her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech through Kyle and the "Make a Wish" representatives.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's foul-mouthed, perverted, dirty, and laughs the most at Cartman's mean-spirited jokes. He's also died protecting his friends more than once, and is the most invested in their friendship, as shown during "Post Covid". At home, he has many vices (like the PSP or cat urine) and has had several fights with his parents and older brother (with varying degrees of justification), but he has a Morality Pet in the form of his little sister. As Mysterion, he's usually Good Is Not Nice, but he's the most heroic and selfless of the group.
• Kawaiiko: Again as anime Princess Kenny. Apparently he's so cute that his cuteness is his superpower.
• Kids Are Cruel: Zigzagged. Despite often being as cynical and profane as the other boys, his heroism has not gone unnoticed — by the audience at least. The characters are another story, which may well explain his "less-than-heroic" traits. Also, he's mostly light-hearted and sane and doesn't get involved in the other boys' bullying or fighting in the early seasons aside from some occasional muffled snark, slapstick, and teasing.
• Killed Off for Real: Subverted. In the episode "Kenny Dies", he is hospitalized, and nearly the entire episode is taken seriously (at least as seriously as South Park can be taken). He dies at the end of the episode and remains dead throughout the entire next season, showing up only as a ghost or in flashbacks, before returning again in the season finale like nothing happened.^note The original intention actually was for him to be Killed Off for Real, since Matt and Trey viewed him as a gag character, and found it increasingly difficult on thinking of ways to kill him in each episode, but ultimately decided to bring him back at the end of Season 6. Since his return, he dies way more seldom than before.
• Kill the Cutie: The universe loves to break or kill him. And then bring him back again.
• Likes Older Women: As he's a big fan of the female body, he prefers women who are already developed, likely because it's what he sees in his porn magazines, so he's much less prone to flirting with his classmates as he is to commenting on a Hot Teacher or one of the other boys' moms. He also reaches out to a pair of adult prostitutes in "The Ring", and gets an older girlfriend in that same episode.
• Limited Wardrobe: Rarely wears anything other than his orange jacket. Several episodes show him even wearing it while in bed. His newborn sibling/reincarnation was actually born wearing his orange hood.
• Living Prop: One of the reasons for his eventual replacement. He came back, though.
• Logical Weakness: His Resurrective Immortality is due to his parents being involved with the Cult of Cthulhu while his mother was pregnant with him. As a result, every time he dies, his mom gives birth to him again and he wakes up the next morning with his memories intact, having aged back to his current age overnight. When he dies from Covid at the age of 50 in South Park: Post Covid, his mother has long since hit menopause, preventing him from coming Back from the Dead.
• Loners Are Freaks: Recent seasons have begun portraying Kenny as an alleged loner, to the point where he was voted the most likely kid to shoot up the school alongside Cartman on account of being lonely and poor. This is something of an Informed Flaw and a gag based on Kenny being Out of Focus in recent seasons; in practice his personality hasn't changed much, although his future self in South Park: Post Covid (both timelines) is the only one of the main kids to not be in a relationship nor have a Ship Tease (though he's shown surrounded constantly by sexy research assistants).
• Lovable Sex Maniac: He's obsessed with the female body, reads porn magazines, and is sexually knowledgeable despite his age. One episode even medically 'diagnosed' him as a "Sex Addict", and he was the most nonchalant about it out of the boys diagnosed. He's also well received among the fandom on the "Lovable" part through his general selflessness, his sacrifices, his bond with his little sister, Karen, and his heroic alter-ego, Mysterion.
  • Kenny's lines in the opening song tend to have the most sexually explicit lyrics that only get past the radar due to his muffled voice. Contrast that with Stan, Kyle and even Cartman having ridiculously wholesome lyrics.
• Loved by All: As an adult, he's a renowned Wealthy Philanthropist whom even NASA holds in high esteem. Because of this, there's huge turnout at his funeral. He apparently remains as this even in the revised future, as everyone cheers for him when he shows up at South Park alive.
• Mauve Shirt: Nowadays, he tends to only get killed off once a season or so, and has more episodes fleshing him out than he used to.
• Messy Hair: Of course, he is poor after all. That he constantly wears a hood only contributes to this further.
• Middle Child Syndrome: Any attention his parents actually do give the kids is often split between his delinquent old brother and emotional younger sister, leaving Kenny the odd one out. Best shown in "The Poor Kid" when Kenny just watches TV bored as his dad fights with his brother as his mom is tries to comfort his crying sister. Though he doesn't seem to mind not getting attention.
• Morality Pet:
  • Kenny seems to be a student Mr. Garrison has a soft spot for, as he spoke a heartfelt eulogy for him in "Kenny Dies" and tried to feed him when he was off life-support in "Best Friends Forever".
  • He also serves as one to Cartman on occasion. Unlike Kyle and Stan, who can at best hope for misguided Condescending Compassion from Eric, Cartman genuinely seems to view Kenny as a friend (albeit one he mocks for being poor) and tries to be polite and nice to him; in "The Ring," he's the one who gently tells Kenny that his girlfriend Tammy has been with other guys, and in "The Scoots," he seems genuinely upset about breaking the news to Kenny about the latter not being able to join the boys in trick-or-treating that year. Its subverted with their roles as the Coon and Mysterion, who are bitter rivals. There are also various episodes in which Cartman cares more about his own interests than Kenny's well-being, sometimes actively trying to hurt him too, such as "Best Friends Forever", "The Poor Kid" and "Poor and Stupid".
  • A downplayed for Stan, who is usually a Nice Guy, but also a very cynical Knight in Sour Armor and sometimes he acts like a jerk. Sometimes, Stan is passive towards the dangers around, but if Kenny is in trouble, he immediately rushes to save him, or shows great sorrow if he can't do it. In "Super Fun Time", when the terrorists were planning to kill Kenny, Stan made the "ultimate sacrifice", that being looking like dork in front of Wendy, his girlfriend that he adores, to get the villagers to tell the safe codes so that the terrorists wouldn't kill Kenny. Keep in mind, that Stan has gone through depression when she broke up with him the first time, and he didn't plan to do anything about the terrorist attack until he heard Kenny was in danger. Also, while Stan generally gets along well with others, he usually offers them help if they are in serious trouble or very unhappy, while he generally shows a nurturing side towards Kenny, even if the latter doesn't need or asks for help. In "Nightmare in Face Time" after Stan wasn't able to take place in the Halloween costume competition, he told his friends to win for him, but he also tells Kenny in particular to "stay gold". In "The Jeffersons" he put a coat on Kenny's back when they dressed him up, something he was never shown doing for anyone else. Stan is sometimes more protective towards Kenny than towards his best friend Kyle, such as in the "Vaccination Special", when he told Kenny to walk away when the latter almost saw that Kyle was making fake vaccines and like the rest of the group, kept Kenny away from their arguments until they decided on how to plan their custody on Kenny. That being said, Stan doesn't almost treat Kenny right, but in his defense, those moments became rarer and less malicious over time (Compare the forst few seasons, when he would often act aloof or even pick on Kenny like the rest of the group, to more recent cases, like in "The Scoots", where he along with Kyle and Cartman decided to not go Trick or Treating with Kenny, due to not being able to get a scooter for the latter, but feeling guilty about it to the point that Stan even threw up eventually).
• Mr. Vice Guy: He's a foul-mouthed, hedonistic drug and porn addict, but he's generally the nicest of the boys and the most selfless.
• Mundane Luxury: Having a dinner that wasn't prepared in a toaster. Kenny cries when he finds out that Cartman ate the skin off his KFC.
• Mundane Utility: If Kenny ever feels tired, he can just kill himself and wake up after a night of sleep.
• Never Bareheaded: Until the movie, his head was never seen without being covered by his parka. There are select scenes where he's unhooded (such as at Stan's birthday party in "You're Getting Old", at the pool in "Broadway Bro Down", and on the baseball team in "The Losing Edge"), but he doesn't speak and the audience is left to pick him out of the crowd.
  • As an adult, Kenny grew a large bushy beard and wears a hat and sunglasses at all times, including while in a spacesuit.
• Nice Guy: Very much so. Kenny's usually the most light-hearted of the four boys and will go to almost any lengths to do the right thing, especially as Mysterion. Despite this, he can be just as cynical and rude as the other boys if he needs to.
• Not Afraid to Die: Since he knows he will come back. However, it still really fucking hurts.
• Not So Above It All: While he's usually the most good-natured out of the four boys, there are times where he's more than willing to engage in Cartman's selfish behavior. In "Whale Whores", like Cartman, he didn't remotely care about protecting dolphins and whales, but pretended like he did in order to get on television. And in "DikinBaus Hot Dogs" he's perfectly willing to go along with Cartman's idea to take portions of Butters' earnings from his job, ostensibly to start a business of their own, but truly just so that he and Cartman could live comfortably off someone else's paycheck.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: You wouldn't guess how capable he is by hearing him talk (if you could understand him, that is), especially in the first five seasons where his dialogue was mostly composed of obnoxious suggestive comments or raunchy insults.
• Odd Friendship: With Cartman. Kenny is the closest thing Cartman has to a best friend, even though they couldn't be much more different in terms of morality.
• Only Sane by Comparison: Despite being a perverted weirdo whose words and face are near-constantly muffled, Kenny is one of the most self-respectively and un-hypocritical people in the entire titular town. He also looks better than his family, being that his parents are drunken louts and his brother is implied to be mentally handicapped.
• Out of Focus: While still one of the main characters, Kenny gets the least amount of individual spotlight out of all of the four boys (and even some other regulars), especially after his Running Gag deaths were omitted. He tends to get A Day in the Limelight about Once a Season to moderate it, and gets a high amount of focus in season 14 between "Poor and Stupid" and the "Coon and Friends" trilogy, though from Season 20 onwards, he's fallen squarely back into this trope, which other characters have Lampshaded on several occasions.
• Perpetual Expression: Sort of. His emotional range is typically implied to be about on par with Stan and Kyle, but his outward expression rarely changes from a blank stare since his parka covers his mouth, making him hard to read.
  Cartman: What do you think, Kenny? Would that make you feel better? Huh? Come on, where's that smile? Where's that smile, Kenny? [to Stan and Kyle] I think he's smiling, you guys.
• Phrase Catcher: "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" (You Bastards!)
• Poverty Food: Poptarts for dinner. Kenny gets defensive about this when Cartman says that girls find him repulsive for this.
• Pretty Boy: He is very cute and good-looking for a poor.
• Promotion to Parent: Since his parents are neglectful, Kenny often finds himself having to be the "grown up" for his younger sister. He's also had to be the grown up for his own parents, scaring them with his Mysterion identity into being more responsible towards their kids.
• Put on a Bus: His death in "Kenny Dies" had a permanent effect for the remainder of Season 5 and Season 6. He was "revived" and resumed his role in "Red Sleigh Down" onwards.
• The Quiet One: He doesn't talk nearly as much as Stan, Kyle, and Cartman, presumably because his muffled speech limits what he can actually add to conversations. Most later episodes limit him to a few generic lines at most, and in many others he simply doesn't speak at all. In the Post-COVID special, Kenny is the only one of the boys whose adult counterpart is unable to get a single word in.
• Refuge in Audacity: Owing to being muffled, Kenny is able to say some truly profane things without setting off the censors. Turning on the subtitles in certain DVD regions or just listening very closely is enough to uncover what he's saying.
• The Reliable One: Even when he’s not particularly invested in a subject matter, you can rely on him to get things done. Him alone is designated “Team B” in “Cartman’s Mom is Still a Dirty Slut” and still manages to accomplish his task of restoring the power of the hospital on his own (at the cost of his own life), and in “A Ladder to Heaven”, he’s the one the boys entrust with the lottery ticket for their shopping spree, with not even his death preventing him from keeping the ticket safe.
• Resentful Guardian: Some time ago, when his mother first announced her pregnancy and that he would have a younger sibling, Kenny was unhappy about it, because it meant that he would no longer be able to have his own room. In the present, Kenny loves his younger sister Karen and would do anything for her.
• Running Gag:
  • His most iconic one are his deaths, constantly dying in a hilariously gruesome manner only to return the next episode like nothing happened. This originally happened Once per Episode, but has been downplayed more and more post Season 7.
  • Many later episodes also tend to make elaborate gags about his face and his voice, always ensuring one or the other is at least partially obscured. To date, The Movie remains the only time his face was completely uncovered, whether it be through his signature parka, a snorkel, a mask, or simply facing his back to the camera.
  • Another more subtle visual gag is that due to his economic status, he'll usually have a "poorer" version of whatever the other kids have, barring a few exceptions where he actually gets something rather expensive.
    Cartman: [laughs] Look at Kenny's lunch! A bologna sandwich and water! [laughs more] Goddamn, your family's poor, dude!
• Sealed Good in a Can: Possessed Cartman's body after his ashes were consumed towards the end of the sixth season.
• Shōnen Hair: Downplayed. He has spiky hair under the hood, but not an improbable hairstyle and it's more messy than spiky.
• Sibling Rivalry: Downplayed between him and Kevin. Though they share the occasional laugh, most of their interactions involve them fighting or being apathetic to each other’s plights, and Kenny doesn’t have as much sympathy for him as he does for Karen, possibly on account of his alcoholism. “Post Covid” seems to imply that he outright disowned him as an adult as Kevin is shown to maintain his rugged appearance despite Kenny being a millionaire in the future.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: One of the raunchiest of the kids. Just about a majority of his sentences include some form of swearing, though it's barely audible and difficult to hear due to his muffled voice. Interestingly enough, due to the fact that the word's use of hard consonants means it's more intelligible than most in Kenny's muffled voice and that he says it so much long-time viewers are used to hearing it, "fuck" is one of his most intelligible words. Despite this, he doesn't curse every time nor in every episode since he's The Quiet One.
• The Slacker: Zig-Zagged, as once he's invested in something, he can put all he can in his work, but he's this at school, and on several episodes where the stakes are high, he's content lounging around or playing in the background while the other boys solve the problem. While in prison in "Nobody Got Cereal?", he casually lays on the jail bed while the others bribe a cop to let them out.
• Sophisticated as Hell: While he's typically a foulmouth like his friends, Kenny is capable of making profound statements, which are often left muffled and with the characters just giving generic agreements that give no hint to what he was actually saying.
  • Kenny's letter from Hawaii in "Going Native" is a shining example:
    
    To wit, I have found nothing wrong with this remote place, and I must admit it will be with some melancholy I will leave this island and return home. I saw this chick in a bikini on the beach too. She had the nicest boobs ever.
    Humbly yours,
    Kenneth.
• Staying Alive: No matter how many times he dies, he always comes back from his deaths so he can die in another hilariously twisted manner.
• The Stoner: He doesn't have the "surfer accent", but Kenny has had an entire episode dedicated to him getting high on cat piss, and Cartman once mentioned that he enjoys getting high by paint-sniffing. He's also engaged in auto-erotic asphyxiation and inhaling opium directly out of poppies.
• Super-Strong Child: He's been shown to be pretty strong on quite a few occasions, especially as Mysterion. According to him in "The Fractured But Whole", he apparently works out. There's also a few Bait-and-Switch moments where he's able to survive incidents that should have killed him.
• Sympathy for the Devil: It's mentioned in one episode that he's only friends with Cartman out of pity.
• They Killed Kenny Again: You Bastard! But seriously, there's a reason why he's the Trope Namer. He dies in nearly every episode during the first five seasons. Thereafter, he's only killed sporadically.
• Token Good Teammate: While none of them are bad people (besides Cartman), Kenny, despite his perversion, is not only the most good-natured person in the group, but he's one of the most good-natured people in the entire show, even committing suicide on multiple occasions to save the day (though, he knows he always comes back anyway, but still...). Also, he is very rarely, if ever seen bullying someone, something which even Stan and Kyle are sometimes guilty of, especially in the earlier seasons.
• Too Desperate to Be Picky: In "Fat Camp" Kenny agrees to do all sorts of disgusting things once the kids offer him money. Jesus calls him a prostitute for doing so and Kenny eventually sinks to performing sex acts.
• Troll:
  • In The Movie, he's the only one of the four boys to say "fuck" in school deliberately For the Lulz (at least before Cartman pulls out a megaphone to tell Mr. Garrison to suck his balls).
  • He intentionally screws up his class photo by putting his parka on upside down so that his butt shows through the face hole. What's better, he doesn't get caught at first.
  • As a way to get back on track after the Pandemic, him and Cartman decide to start the school year by putting ketchup on Mrs. Nelson's seat to make it look like she's had her period. This particular prank costs everyone dearly when she quits (and later dies) and Mr. Garrison is rehired as a result.
• Tuckerization: Kenny is named after a childhood friend of Trey Parker's, who was the poorest kid in the neighborhood, always wore an orange hoodie that muffled his speech, and would sometimes disappear for days at a time, leading the other kids to joke that he'd died.
• Undignified Death: Kenny's deaths tend to be played for laughs, the one exception being his final appearance in Season 5, which lasted well into the next season.
• Undying Loyalty: To his friends and his sister. "His Mysterion Re-rising" ability from The Fractured But Whole reveals that he always has the chance to go to Heaven and surround himself by beautiful women after he dies, but he always chooses to come back because his friends need him.
• Unexplained Accent: Inverted. The rest of his family (sans Karen) have strong Southern twangs, but when unmasked, it's shown he lacks such accent.
• The Unintelligible:
  • Usually Kenny's speech is muffled by his parka, allowing his dialogue to be far more profane than the other characters' at times. However, there have been a few occasions where he has taken off the hood and been able to speak intelligibly, such as the end of the movie, "The Jeffersons", and whenever he appears as Mysterion. Later episodes tend to get rather creative in using Kenny's voice unmuffled while still maintaining his ambiguity.
  • A couple of episodes have people who've known Kenny for a while, such as Kyle, translating Kenny's mumblings for people who've just met him. People who've known Kenny for a long time can often learn to understand what he's saying, even including longtime viewers.
  • Oddly enough, even though Kenny still wears his hood as "anime" Princess Kenny (complete with female wig), he can speak intelligible (but purposely mangled) Gratuitous Japanese. "PURINSESU KENNI ASSISUTO!" Additionally, when Kenny dressed up as Iron Man for Halloween, the mask simply added a metallic reverb to his voice rather than muffling it completely (the voice was provided by Matt Stone himself).
  • If you watch certain episodes on DVD however, turning on English subtitles can provide translations to most of his dialogue.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In early seasons, Kenny's deaths were treated as a normal occurrence to the point that the other characters are aware or weren't phased by them at times. Certain episodes like "Cartman's Mom Is Still A Dirty Slut" and "Cartmanland" even make light of it. In "Cartman's Mom Is Still A Dirty Slut", Kenny simply appears out of thin air. Nobody even notices except Stan, who simply greets Kenny as if he'd just walked into the room. When he returns from his extended death in "Red Sleigh Down", the other boys again simply greet him as if he'd just walked up to them. However, from Season 7 onward and as of the Mysterion arc, the only ones that can remember his deaths anymore are Kenny himself and his parents since they now cause a mind wipe to everyone else whenever he resurrects.
• Vocal Evolution: In the earliest episodes, his speech was almost impossible to understand even when paying very close attention. Nowadays, sharp-eared viewers can usually make out the gist of what he's saying, although his longer utterances still require subtitles.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Decides to be a princess in the Game of Thrones episode trilogy and the game "The Stick of Truth". Not so wholesome in the latter though, considering he betrays the group and ends up being the Final Boss.
• Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: Kenny's reward at the end of The Movie is that he's allowed into heaven, where he's given a halo and wings upon entry.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Despite his hedonism and general lack of self-preservation instincts, Kenny is one of the most level-headed characters in South Park when it comes to serious situations and is usually the one that the characters can trust with their life decisions. From the main boys, he might have the most responsibilities of being an adult even when he is just a 9-year-old boy.
• With Friends Like These...: While Cartman has always mocked Kenny for how poor he is, in earlier seasons, Kyle and Stan were just as guilty of this. All three were also very dismissive of his well-being at times. This changed in the later seasons.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: A rare literal example in "Quintuplets 2000", which depicts Kenny and Stan nearly being neighbors except for the railroad tracks between their houses.

Mysterion

Kenny's heroic alter-ego.

• Archnemesis Dad: He's the spawn of Cthulhu, whom he called a pussy.
• Badass Adorable: Mysterion is hardcore, and his entire story arc shows the true nature of Kenny's character. Yet he's only nine years old and wears a regular pair of his underwear over his costume.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Kenny, who is normally both The Quiet One and The Unintelligible, certainly qualifies as of the "Mysterion" story arc. He says the most he ever does during these few episodes, and his Berserk Button is revealed; do NOT mess with his little sister.
• Big Damn Heroes: Does this a couple of times, most notably in the Cthulhu trilogy and at the end of The Movie. As of "The Poor Kid", he is this to his little sister.
• Big Good: As Mysterion, he's the unofficial leader of Coon And Friends, despite Cartman thinking that he's the leader.
• Blessed with Suck: His super power is being unable to die, and people don't remember that he died. He does, however, and when Kyle remarks that being immortal would be cool, Kenny snaps that it's not cool, because he remembers every single one of his deaths and he remembers how much it fucking hurts.
  Human Kite: What's the big deal? I mean, I think it'd be pretty cool not to be able to die.
  Mysterion: PRETTY COOL?! Do you know what it feels like to be stabbed?! To be shot?! Decapitated?! Torn apart?! Burned?! Run over?!
  Toolshed: Kenny, Kenny, calm down.
  Mysterion: It's not "pretty cool", Kyle! It fuckin' HURTS! And it won't go away, and nobody will believe me! Remember this time! Try and fuckin' remember! [pulls out a gun and shoots himself in the head]
• Captain Ersatz: Mysterion is one for Batman in the Coon episodes. He has the black mask, dark cape and grey bodysuit (with a question mark theme a la the Riddler). Ironic considering how Batman is a Badass Normal who uses his wealth to keep up with superheroes and supervillains while Mysterion is a Token Super that lives below the poverty line.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: Mysterion wears his underwear on the outside of his costume.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Underneath his hedonistic exterior, Kenny is hardcore as Mysterion.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Mysterion wears black and talks in a (bad) Nolan Batman-like gravelly voice but is a legitimate superhero — unlike the Coon. Notably, the Mysterion persona downplays Kenny's hedonistic and perverted qualities and rather shows another side of Kenny's character... His character's true nature.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Pretty much literally, when he yells at Cthulhu (essentially his biological father) to kill him. "Come on, Cthulhu! Kill me, you big pussy!"
• Face of a Thug: Mysterion wears a constant scowl and his mask emphasizes his Death Glare, but he's unambiguously heroic.
• Harsh Vocals: Kenny's usual, unmuffled voice is the highest pitched of the boys. As Mysterion, he masks it with a deep, raspy voice to hide his identity and sound intimidating.
• Humble Hero: In direct contrast to the Coon, Mysterion couldn't care less about any attention or rewards he gets for being a superhero. He only cares about being a hero to help others.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Don't mess with his little sister Karen, or you will face the consequences.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Played so straight that Mysterion may as well be the first "Lovecraftian superhero".
• Not So Stoic: He's introduced as being a lot more even-tempered than the Coon, but when his superpower is brought up, he completely loses it.
  • Mysterion also elects to keep the name of the town's superhero team "Coon & Friends" even after ousting the Coon because he knows it will piss Cartman off, giggling as he explains this to the others.
• Oh, Crap!: The reveal that his parents were members of the Cult of Cthulhu causes Kenny to let out a "What the fuck?" in his real voice before recomposing himself and repating the line in Mysterion's voice.
• Only Sane Man: Mysterion is the one member of Coon & Friends that's actually a superhuman and struggles to explain this to his friends who just assume he's really getting into the roleplay.
• Only Six Faces: Played for laughs with his unmasking. Since Mysterion only removed his mask but retained his hood, he looks no different from the other caucasian boys with standardised body types.
• Perpetual Frowner: Mysterion rarely smiles as part of his tough guy persona.
• Precision F-Strike: Upon learning that his parents were part of a cult, Mysterion lets out a "What the fuck?!" using Kenny's natural voice, which he's quick to correct. It's the first time in the series Kenny drops the F-word without being muffled.
• Scare 'Em Straight: Kenny uses his Mysterion identity to scare his parents into not getting high or fighting so much and being more responsible towards their kids.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When he's had enough, Mysterion will shoot himself in the head knowing he'll wake up the next day alive and well in his bedroom with his friends and family unable to remember what happened to him.
• Secondary-Color Nemesis: Mysterion wears purple with green accents and is the enemy of the Coon, Professor Chaos and Cthulhu. Subverted in that he's a heroic figure who just happens to invoke a sinister image.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: As Mysterion, and even sometimes as himself, Kenny is the most dour of the four boys, only finding brief pleasure with his hedonistic behavior. That his immortality is never remembered by his friends is a source of deep angst for him that sometimes bubbles to the surface when provoked.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Kenny is a master of this when he's dressed as Mysterion. It helps that he's typically out of focus.
• Super-Powered Alter Ego: Mysterion definitely counts, as he's also shown to be Super-Strong Child at times.
• Three-Point Landing: His favourite method of entering a scene.
• Token Immortal: After over a decade of being an implied superpower, Mysterion is revealed to be immortal in the "Coon and Friends" Trilogy. This takes the form of Resurrective Immortality where he never stays dead and nobody remembers him dying after his rebirth the next day. No explanation is given for why he stayed dead for so long in Season 6.
• Took a Level in Badass: As Mysterion, Kenny went from one of fiction's most (in)famous Butt Monkeys to the show's equivalent of Batman. While his fight with Professor Chaos (Butters) was a slap fight, he may have been holding back to not hurt him, as he easily beat up a larger bully to protect his sister later on.
• Underwear of Power: Parodied, as he wears a pair of plain white underwear over his otherwise dark superhero costume. Even when drawn in a badass manner, Mysterion is still shown wearing his whiteys on the outside.
• The Un-Reveal: Mysterion is forced to go public with his true identity, unmasking himself before the entire town. Since he keeps his hood on, he looks just like the majority of able-bodied caucasian kids. Everyone in-universe is still able to recognize him though.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Mysterion explains how horrible it is to die over and over again in disturbing detail.
• Working-Class Hero: Mysterion comes from the lower rungs of society, yet fights for justice. It's not hard to assume his poverty is what fueled his desire for justice.

Evil versions of the boys from a parallel universe.

• The Bad Guy Wins: Though they're defeated and sent back to their universe, Evil Stan and Evil Kyle succeed in bringing Evil Cartman back with them, thanks to mainline Cartman's ingenuity.
• Beard of Evil: The evil versions of the boys all sport goatees.
• The Bully: According to Evil Cartman, both Evil Stan and Evil Kyle are usually really mean to him for no reason. Later in the episode, the two of them endeavor to get their Cartman back, apparently only out of a desire to continue tormenting him.
• Dying Curse: As he's being sent back to his universe, Evil Cartman yells out his first and last "screw you guys!" directed at the boys. Downplayed since he's just being sent home via an apparently painful method.
• Enemy Mine: Despite a rocky start, Evil Stan and Kyle work with mainline Cartman to take Evil Cartman back to their universe.
• Evil Counterpart: How they're designated, though the definition of "evil" is pretty vague to the point of parody. Evil Stan and Kyle are more aggressive towards Cartman, but then again their good counterparts aren't that different. Evil Cartman on the other hand is an unambiguous Nice Guy.
• Foil: To the mainline boys. While Stan and Kyle dislike their Jerkass Cartman and want to get rid of him, their evil versions want their Nice Guy Cartman to be theirs to torment, and are willing to travel to a parallel universe to get him back. Same with the two Cartmans: While the mainline Cartman wants to stay in his universe to continue messing with his friends, the evil Cartman wants to escape his universe because everyone his friends are very mean to him.
• The Ghost: Evil Kenny was presumably killed before he could cross into the main universe. According to Evil Cartman he's quite affluent since he'd just bought a new car.
• Jerkass: Evil Kyle immediately resorts to wrecking the Indian burial ground pet store and freeing all the evil pets into the town when its owner didn’t immediately give him the information he wanted concerning Evil Cartman. Evil Stan is also quite unpleasant and callously tries to shoot Evil Cartman with a portal gun to get him back, almost shooting the wrong Cartman in the process.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The evil Stan and Kyle wreck the Indian burial ground pet store and release all its evil pets into the town. During the ensuing skirmish, one of said pets knocks Evil Stan's portal gun out of his hands, which his counterpart uses to send him back to his universe.
• Nice Guy: Evil Cartman could rival Butters when it comes to this, being genuinely charitable and kindhearted to everyone around him, even mainline Cartman.
• Out-of-Character Alert: The mainline boys quickly figure out that Evil Cartman with the goatee isn't their Cartman when he starts acting nice to them. Meanwhile, the evil Stan and Kyle realize that mainline Cartman isn't their Cartman when he reacts strongly to their insults and hits them back.
• Perpetual Frowner: Evil Stan and Kyle are always shown with angry expressions on their faces.
• Privilege Makes You Evil: Mainline Kenny is dirt poor and a good kid, but his Evil Counterpart can afford to buy a new car, though it is never directly stated that this is the cause of the latter being evil.
• Stylistic Suck: The Evil variants look exactly the same as the boys save for their beards, which given they're meant to be exact opposites gives them a certain "cheap" vibe. The visible picture seam that appears whenever they stand next to their counterparts makes it all the more obvious that we're meant to laugh at the hokeyness of the multiversal gimmick.
• Villainy-Free Villain: Evil Cartman is actually nice, outright helpful and much better than his counterpart. In fact, he is Villain in name only. Evil Stan and Kyle meanwhile are only slightly ruder than their non-evil counterparts and don't have any greater ambition than to drag Evil Cartman back home. Their only crime was releasing all the cursed pets, but then again those pets were a ticking time bomb that a later villain could have exploited just as easily.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: In a flipped version of Cartman's relationship with Kyle. Evil Stan and Evil Kyle treat their Cartman like garbage, but when he disappears, they're willing to cross into a different universe to bring him back home with them.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: When Evil Stan and Kyle cross into the mainline universe to get their Cartman back, the mainline boys vow to defend him, as they like him more than their Cartman. After defeating their counterparts, the boys then turn the gun on Cartman, who then manages to trick them into shooting Evil Cartman, sending the latter back into his universe where he can be tormented by his Stan and Kyle.

Versions of the boys from a universe where everyone is a woman of color.

• Ambiguous Gender: They all appear to be biological women, but their universe doesn't appear to even have biological men in it, and not only do they constantly refer to each other in masculine terms but they aren't surprised when they encounter biological men by crossing universes.
• Ambiguously Gay: It's not clear if all four of them are lesbians or if it's just Kenny.
• Badass Arm-Fold: The quartet all assume tough girl poses, with Kenny and Cartman folding their arms as if to establish that these are strong independent women.
• Dawson Casting: Invoked. They're clearly too old to be elementary school students and possibly too old to even be high school students. Given the special is mocking Disney's casting choices, it's most likely a dig at how they cast 20-something actresses as protagonists who are canonically in their mid-late teens.
• Distaff Counterpart: They are all Gender Flipped versions of the boys.
• Gamer Chick: Panderverse Cartman shares her prime counterpart's love of video games, and similarly puts playing Baldur's Gate III above anything else going on.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Gay?: Panderverse Kenny is confirmed to be a lesbian due to inheriting her mainline counterpart's obsession with titties.
• Hotter and Sexier: They're adults who dress far more stylishly and Panderverse Cartman is a Big Beautiful Woman rather than obese.
• It's All About Me: Panderverse Cartman doesn't care about what universe she's in as long as she can play Baldur's Gate III in a quality PC (and at Kyle's house), and only agrees to switch universes when she realizes her save file didn't translate to the mainline universe.
• Jerkass: Being a black woman doesn't stop Panderverse Cartman from being... Cartman. The other "girls" generally seem to be quite callous and snarky as well.
• Manipulative Bitch: In order to continue playing Baldur's Gate III in the new universe, Panderverse Cartman manipulates the mainline boys into buying and building a high-tech PC and makes them believe that it's for the purpose of bringing her back to her universe. She also successfully manipulates Sheila (whose credit card they used to buy the PC) into believing that her unwanted purchase was due to credit card fraud, and makes her up her internet speed in the process, to better play video games at her house.
  Stan: Wow. It really is Cartman.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Despite this being the "Pandering" universe, that doesn't stop Panderverse Cartman from calling Panderverse Kyle a "heathen" and attempting to steal the impoverished mainline Kenny's brownie. She also clearly looks down on whites like her counterpart would on blacks, but tells Panderverse Stan that "you can't be racist towards white people" when she calls her out on it.
• Race Lift: Played for laughs. They come from four non-white ethnic groups. Stan is Latin-American, Kyle is South Asian, Cartman is African-American and Kenny is East Asian.
• Sassy Black Woman: Panderverse Cartman is African American and shares his trademark brattiness.
• Skewed Priorities: Panderverse Cartman doesn't care that she's trapped in another dimension until she realizes that her progress on Balder's Gate III wasn't saved in this one.
• Soapbox Sadie: Panderverse Kyle complains about white males and the patriarchy, despite neither being visible in their world.
• Squashed Flat: Panderverse Kenny is smashed under Panderverse Cartman's weight during the latter's forceful return to their world.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Just like their Prime counterparts, the other three trade insults with Cartman and frequently argue with each other.
• You Bastard!: A variation. When Panderverse Cartman accidentally kills Panderverse Kenny, Panderverse Kyle says "You fat hoe!"

Leopold "Butters" Stotch

Tweek Tweak

Barbara "Bebe" Stevens