South Park has introduced plenty of messed-up characters over the years, with Eric Cartman being the most prominent monster. Cartman has started race wars and antagonized people for little more than his own amusement, while real-life celebrities, absurd demonic figures and vicious killers have appeared across the show. Then there’s the typically out-of-control townsfolk, who get themselves into all kinds of trouble.
But there’s one member of the cast who’s far worse than most other characters ever realize — and so far he’s largely escaped consequences for his terrible actions. Gerald Broflovski, Kyle and Ike’s father and a major recurring character (recently seen when the parents supported their kids in an Airsoft battle), is a genuinely worse person than anyone else in South Park.
Eric Cartman is a terrible person, a fact that South Park has frequently mined for comedy gold including in the current Season 25. Perpetually selfish and frequently short-sighted in his explosive anger, Cartman has enacted brutal revenge on mundane transgressions, spouted a litany of comically ridiculous views on race and religion, and murdered a lot of people — both indirectly and directly. His most infamous act is feeding Scott Tenorman the chopped remains of his own parents in Season 5’s “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” which was so villainous that it transformed the little boy into a cartoonish monster. But there’s ineptitude and childish ignorance to his evil that makes Cartman almost pitiable. Episodes like Season 10’s “Tsst” and the South Park: Post-Covid special suggest that under the right circumstances, Cartman could even be redeemed.
The same can’t be said for Gerald, a grown man who’s crossed multiple moral boundaries for selfish reasons. He’s typically treated as one of the more urbane and intelligent adults in the town, but that just makes his frequent crimes all the more problematic. In Season 3’s “Sexual Harassment Panda,” he took advantage of South Park’s laws to repeatedly sue the public school system to enrich himself — then constructed a criminal scheme by convincing the town to also repeatedly sue itself. After gaining a serious amount of power in Season 12’s “Major Boobage,” Gerald forced through laws that banned cats in an analogy for drugs. In reality, Gerald was using the cats for the same purpose — and ended up in an inebriated public brawl with Kenny, a child.
None of that compares to his actions in South Park‘s 20th season, in which Gerald ultimately emerged as the primary villain. Although he publicly professed to be a civil and progressive member of the community, Season 20 revealed that he’d adopted the online alias of “Skankhunt42” to become one of the Internet’s most vicious trolls. While the other trolls he encountered were bitter about their rejection from regular society and taking out their frustrations online, Gerald embraced trolling for the sheer enjoyment of it — utilizing hatred and verbal abuse as an outlet for his own personal failings and anger. That recontextualized all of his past kindness and added a dark motivation to his previous behavior.
Gerald’s actions in Season 20 directly resulted in the cyberbullying campaign that led a woman to commit suicide, and ultimately he found himself confronting an even more dangerous troll in the form of Lennart Bedrager. Although Gerald killing Lennart did help prevent a global conflict, he did so mostly to save his own skin and protect his reputation. Gerald was even able to fully escape consequences by placing the blame for “Skankhunt42” on his young son Ike. Season 20 ended with Gerald triumphant in his terrible actions; only a furious Kyle and Ike were aware of how twisted their father really is. Cartman doesn’t have an awareness of morality but Gerald does, often positioning himself as a religious and good man. But his actions show that in a town of pretty terrible people, Gerald is the cruelest.
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