Stan Marsh

Template:South Park character Stan is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. Voiced and based on series co-creator Trey Parker.Stan is one of the show's four central characters, together with Kyle Broflovski, Kenny McCormick, and Eric Cartman. Stan often trades places with Kyle as the protagonist of the show. Stan is left handed. Stan is arguably the most "normal" of the kids, and is generally honest, very mature for his age, and well-meaning. He is slightly more assertive than his best friend Kyle. He is often distinctly unimpressed by adults or adult influences, and although not particularly troublesome, holds very little respect for them. Stan also has asthma, as shown in "Sexual Harassment Panda" when Cartman wants to take his inhaler, although this condition has not affected Stan since.

Character

Stan is modelled after his voice actor, co-creator Trey Parker, also sharing the same birthday as him. Stan was born on October 19 and is the youngest of the four main boys.

Appearance

Stan wears a dark blue hat with a red trim on the bottom and a red poof-ball at the top. He wears a red-collared brown coat, blue jeans, and red mittens or gloves. He has a plain mop of thick, shaggy black hair, like his father, as seen in How to Eat With Your Butt. Stan also apparently has blue eyes, as noted by Kyle when Butters makes construction paper versions of the boys in "A Very Crappy Christmas", with light olive skin, as seen in some anime versions of him. In "The List", he ranked third in the initial corrupt list of who was cutest. However, he was not mentioned among those who had to change places due to the corruption, so it is possible that he is the second cutest boy, behind Token.

Personality

Stan is often considered the straight man of the four boys, normally the one having the most common sense. He is often skeptical of popular trends, such as in the episode "Cherokee Hair Tampons", when he challenged the character Miss Information and her shop of alternative medicine, in the episode "Super Best Friends", when he helped battle David Blaine's suicidal cult, and in episode "The Biggest Douche in the Universe" where he accuses psychic medium John Edward of being a fake. Stan is usually the one who is unaffected by the many scams, cults, and mass influences that South Park has been subjected to, and has a knack for seeing through falsely glorified practices and celebrities. He shares this trait with Eric Cartman, though Cartman usually exploits this for his own gain in some way, where Stan tries to rectify it. Sometimes Kyle takes on this role, and it is Stan who is the gullible one, such as with the metrosexual trend in the episode "South Park is Gay!". Stan and Kyle's personalities tend to be similar, especially in the earlier seasons, but are not quite interchangeable, and they have developed more distinct and complex personalities during the show's run.

Stan is frequently embarrassed or infuriated at the stupidity of his parents (mostly Randy) and the other adults of the town, and he often goes against what his parents do. This is prominently shown in "My Future Self n' Me" when he finds out about the actor portraying his future self and goes so far as to trick Randy to cut the hand off of the actor to try and get them to admit they lied. The rather displaced cynicism that he exhibits when dealing with adults, as well as his inability to be impressed by celebrities or fads may also come from the fact that, due to his parents, he has probably never respected or trusted adults (probably except for Chef and Jesus).

Stan seems to like animals. He has a dog named Sparky that he likes a lot, though it’s gay. In “Fun With Veal” he saved a lot of calves with the help from Kyle, Cartman and Butters. In that episode he also said that he would never eat meat again, but he had to give that up, because it was causing him to die. In “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow”, after breaking a beaver dam, he said “I hope I didn’t hurt any beavers” He also lived with PETA in the episode "Douche and Turd", though it was only to survive after being banished from the town. To Stan often shows heroism and kindness.

Family and Home

Stan is the son of Randy Marsh (a geologist with the United States Geological Survey) and Sharon Kimble Marsh (a receptionist at Tom's Rhinoplasty). Stan is frequently embarrassed by their stupidity. In "Bloody Mary" his dad asks, "How did I have such a smart son?", and Stan replies, "I had a great teacher." Randy says back, "Ah, thanks son.", but Stan instead says, "Not you, my karate teacher, he's really smart." He has an older sister, Shelley Marsh, who bullies him on a regular basis, although she probably does love him deep down inside, as in "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", she has been severely abusing him, but in "Pre-School" helps him when he was threatened by a bully. Stan's crotchety 102-year-old wheelchair-bound grandfather, Marvin Marsh, calls him "Billy" and often attempts to coerce Stan to kill him. He is also the nephew of hunter Jimbo Kern, Randy's half-brother.

Stan's parents share their names with Trey Parker's real-life parents, Sharon Parker and Randolph "Randy" Parker Jr. Incidentally, Trey also has a sister named Shelley, who behaved very similar to Stan's Shelley.

Stan's pets have included a gay dog named Sparky, and (temporarily), an evil goldfish who murders people and frames Stan, driving Sharon Marsh, who buries the dead bodies in her backyard and locks Officer Barbrady in the basement, to insanity.

Stan's dad Randy has also been depicted as a mild alcoholic in "The Losing Edge" and was later forced to become an AA member in "Bloody Mary", where Stan had to constantly object to Randy drinking. He told Randy he needed to learn some "disciprine" (a quote used in obviously poor English by his Japanese karate teacher earlier in the episode); this speech convinced Randy to drink in moderation. In the episode "Grey Dawn" it is stated that Stan's grandfather flew Spitfires over Germany. The Spitfire was used during World War II solely by England, and thus it is probable that Stan's ancestry is British, or that the creators of South Park made a mistake, or his grandfather was one of the American pilots sent to help the British during the early years of the war.

Since "Fantastic Easter Special", he has been a member of a group called "The Hare Club for Men", which his father, grandfather, and the entire male side of his family has been members in for generations.

Relationships

Relationship with Wendy

For the first seven seasons of the show, Stan's sporadic girlfriend was Wendy Testaburger. In the first few seasons, a running gag was that Stan would throw up nearly every time Wendy spoke to him, and whenever they tried to kiss. As the show progressed, however, the Stan-Wendy storyline diminished greatly. In the season seven episode "Raisins", Wendy had Bebe tell Stan that "she breaks up", for Token, causing Stan to go into extreme depression. Wendy's role in the series has decreased immensely since this episode.

It became apparent that Stan still loved Wendy in the episode "Follow That Egg!", when he grew insanely jealous of Kyle for working with her. She also showed feelings for him at the end, when she implied she wanted to take him back, calling him a "great dad". He, however, decided to show her up by responding to her compliments with, "As if I give a crap about what you think, Wendy." At the end of "The List", however, it is heavily implied that Stan and Wendy reconciled. During the episode, Stan and Wendy adventure about attempting to find out why Kyle was ranked 16th (last) on the list of boys from cutest to ugliest. At the end, Wendy admits she had a good time hanging out with Stan, and believes he's changed since they were last together. They lean in to kiss, but in a near-exact copy of the end of "Cartman Gets An Anal Probe", Stan pukes on Wendy. It is also noticeable that, at the start of the episode, when Stan asks Wendy if he can talk to her, she says "this is a nice surprise, I thought you were never speaking to me again" indicating that Wendy had tried offscreen to take him back, but had given up. It is also implied Wendy voted Stan the cutest in the list that the episode revolved around (even if it was a forgery). During an interview with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, when asked "Will Stan and Wendy ever kiss?" they said that, in one episode, Stan had lost his virginity to Wendy (they did not, however state which episode this took place, only that it was obscured by a tree: See Wendy Testaburger for details, including citation.) It is possible that this did happen, though it happened offscreen.

Best-Friendship with Kyle

A topic taken into account many times during the series is Stan's best-friendship with Kyle Broflovski. They have been best friends since the very beginning of the show. They have been known to end up working together in certain adventures, such as in "Fantastic Easter Special", and are often dragged into the same circumstances due to this, such as in "Imaginationland Episode II". Stan has saved Kyle's life on several occasions without hesitation, most notably in "Super Best Friends", and has once stated that he doesn't want Kyle to die until he does, as seen in "Cherokee Hair Tampons" (a tally reveals that he has saved Kyle's life three times (the third being Cartmanland)). He nearly always defends Kyle when Cartman's hatred of him goes over the top, such as in "Cartmanland" and "Cherokee Hair Tampons". Also, in the opening credits of the show, they sing the same lines together. Kyle was also incredibly worried about losing Stan to the K-13 mountain in Asspen, especially as he'd just lost Kenny.

In the twelve seasons the show has been on the air, they have broken up or had serious arguments eight times in episodes "Prehistoric Ice Man", "Super Best Friends", "Douche and Turd", "All About Mormons", "South Park is Gay!", "Follow that Egg!", and most recently, "Guitar Queer-o". They have reconciled on-screen in all of these episodes, with the exception of "South Park is Gay!" They are even shown hugging at the end of "Smug Alert!". The episode "Guitar Queer-o" arguably focuses more than any other on their friendship, as a big argument between the two forms the major conflict of the story. However, in the end they reconcile, with no lasting damage done to the friendship. Stan also had a great deal of concern when Kyle was voted the ugliest boy in the class in "The List". Their friendship is so strong that Cartman calls them "fags" and has even commented, "You wanna get a room so you can make out for a while?". It is also notable that in "Imaginationland Episode III", Kyle was the only person who could hear Stan's voice in his head when Stan was trapped in Imaginationland. In Tonsil Trouble, Stan stood up in Kyle's defense when Cartman was angry with him for laughing uncontrollably at his HIV. He and Kyle also stuck together to get Britney Spears to the North Pole in Britney's New Look. In the episode "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub, Stan's father, Randy Marsh, told him that he and Kyle shouldn't hang out to much together or else people would start to think they are 'funny', meaning Homosexual.

Friendship with Cartman

Although Stan does not share Kyle's deep-seated hatred of Cartman, Stan will defend Kyle whenever the two get in a fight. He does however remain friends with Cartman unless the four agree as a group that Cartman is not welcome to hang out with them, such as in the episodes "The Death of Eric Cartman" or "Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society", notably. He and Cartman, when the others aren't present, have also been shown together in a couple of episodes, playing and enjoying themselves at it, like in “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow”, where Cartman said that it was nice to be together just the two of them. In the episode "Hooked on Monkey Phonics", Stan even admitted that he and Cartman were friends. Contrarily though, in the episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die", Stan claimed that he along with Kyle hated Cartman.

Friendship with Kenny

Not much is shown about his relationship with Kenny, but it's probably strong, as he mourned Kenny's death in Kenny Dies. Stan spends his time with Kenny, when Cartman and Kyle are having one of their usual arguments, but when Kyle finishes his fights with Cartman, Stan returns to Kyle's side, being the "Super Best Friends." that they are.

Catchphrases and Mannerisms

Since its beginning, the series has had a running gag where, when Kenny is killed, Stan will announce a variation of the line, "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" Kyle will then respond: "You bastards!"

Stan's often-used catchphrase during the early seasons was, "Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here," which originated in the second Spirit of Christmas short (the profanity was bleeped out). In recent episodes however this catchphrase faded.

In many episodes, Stan often sums up the episode's main points in a small speech that often begins with, "You know, I learned something today." In different episodes Kyle does this instead, and a few other characters such as Cartman or the Mayor have as well.

In the late episodes, Stan also has a habit of pinching the bridge of his (unseen) nose and shutting his eyes tightly when frustrated or exasperated (as the actor Lino Ventura). A good example of this is in the episode "ManBearPig" where he does this motion when on the phone with Al Gore. Another example is in the episode "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", when he does it all the way home from the TV show. The gesture seems to be a learned habit developed by his constant frustration with his father.

Stan often groans, "Aw-awww!" when he's upset, as does his father which is an exasperation used by Trey Parker who voices the characters.

Whenever he gets mad, frustrated or gets dragged into something he often says, "God damn it.", not to be confused with Cartman's catchphrase, "Aw! God-damn-it!"

When he is in total disbelief he'll say something like "You gotta be shittin' me!" as shown in My Future Self 'n Me and the The Passion Of The Jew episode when he tries to get his money back from Mel Gibson, and ends up being chased by him in a run down tanker truck from "Mad Max"

Talents

Athletics

Stan is quite athletically proficient, and is regularly the captain or star player of his school's sports teams, except in basketball where Kyle is the best player in the school. He was the Quarterback of the school football team in "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" and the pitcher and apparent Captain of the baseball team in "The Losing Edge". Stan proved to be quite knowledgable in football, as shown in "Raisins (South Park episode)". He was also on the South Park dodgeball team that won the world championship, and was on the Pee-wee hockey team when he was 4 years old, revealed in "Stanley's Cup".

Music

Although without the musical ability of Kyle or Cartman, Stan did manage to write and perform a song about the importance of hybrid cars in "Smug Alert!", playing the guitar rather well. He wrote a song for Wendy, which was sung by Elton John in the episode "Chef Aid". Like Kenny, Kyle and Cartman, he plays the violin. He is seen strumming a guitar in the episode "Die Hippie Die". Stan is also, according to the episode "You Got F'd in the A", a talented line dancer, instructed by his father. Of course he can also be seen playing instruments with his classmates in "Summer Sucks" and "World Wide Recorder Concert". Stan was the electric guitarist in the boys' band "Moop" in the episode "Christian Rock Hard". Stan also discovered his talents in the video game "Guitar Hero", and eventually pursued the goal of scoring 1 million points in the episode "Guitar Queer-o" with the help of Kyle.

Driving

Stan has been shown to be quite able to drive in quite a few episodes, despite his age and height, such as in "Towelie" (with Kenny operating the gas and brake pedals, he drove a pickup truck to "Tynacorp" in order to get Towelie out of reach of the military), "Bloody Mary" (when he drove Randy to the Virgin Mary statue), "Night of the Living Homeless" (when he drove a modified bus through the hordes of homeless and then lured them away to California), and "Guitar Queer-o" (when he played a driving video game in a very serious manner).