Stan Marsh

Template:South Park character Stanley "Stan" Marsh is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. Voiced by series co-creator Trey Parker, Stan and Kyle often trade places as the protagonist of the four. Stan is arguably the most "normal" of the kids, and is generally honest, very mature for his age, and well-meaning. He is somewhat more assertive than his best friend Kyle. He is rarely impressed by adults, and although not troublesome, holds 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 or even been brought up since this episode. He is ambidexterous, though he uses his right hand more frequently.

Life

Stan was born on October 19 and he is the oldest of the four main boys. Stan is considerably the most sensitive of the four boys, like in the episode "Kenny Dies", he couldn't handle seeing Kenny. Or in "Raisins" when he went goth, due to his depression of losing Wendy to Token. Stan is often preachy and very critical of popular trends. This is evident in episode 407 "Cherokee Hair Tampons" when he challenged the character Miss Information and her shop of alternative medicine, he also showed some heroism in this episode by stating he would gladly donate a kidney to Kyle even "if it hurt a whole lot". In episode 504 "Super Best Friends" when he helped battle David Blaine's suicidal cult (in this episode, he saved Kyle's life again), and in episode 615 where he accuses psychic medium John Edward of being "The Biggest Douche in the Universe". In this episode he also gained possession of his own show (while trying to prove that cold reading was fake, the crowd believed he too was Psychic and demanded he get his own show) and battled with John Edward in a "Psychic Showdown". However, 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!", the Chinpokomon episode, and again in the episode "Raisins", in which he temporarily turns to the goth lifestyle after breaking up with Wendy. Stan's and Kyle's personalities tend to be similar, but are not quite interchangeable.

Stan is an avid animal lover - he resists the influence of his uncle Jimbo to hunt in "Volcano", became a PETA member in Douche and Turd (although he had the choice of joining them or being killed), tried to save baby cows in "Fun With Veal", and attempted to return a goat to its rightful owners in "Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants". Although well-intentioned, these interventions often lead him and his friends into serious trouble. Stan and Craig also went to Mexico and managed to get the Mexican Space Program to take an Orca to the moon in a bid to save it (with all the kids in South Park having been led to believe he was a killer whale from the moon), it was up to Stan and Craig since all the other boys had failed in enlisting the help of NASA, the Russians, or the Chinese. In "Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow", after he and Cartman crash the boat into the beaver dam and swim to shore, seeing the boat blow up, Stan says, "I hope we didn't hurt any beavers." In one episode he briefly turned to vegetarianism, but he quickly gave it up because "if you don't eat meat you become a pussy".

Stan is also quite empathic, most evidently seen in the episode "Manbearpig," in which he partially defends Al Gore because he feels sorry for him, due to him "not having any friends". However when this pity backfires and lands the boys in a cave where Al Gore nearly (un-intentionally) almost drowns Kyle and gets them killed, he lashes out and is the one of the four to bring Al Gore into a hard and cold reality, shouting "Stay away from us, asshole! I only felt sorry for you because you didn't have any friends! But now I know why you don't have any friends! You just use Manbearpig (representing Global Warming) as a way of getting attention for yourself because you're a loser!" This doesn't affect Al Gore however and he dons a cape and says he'll go and make a movie starring himself (An Inconvenient Truth).

When angered however, Stan is often quite reluctant to continue/do anything that will further contribute to the obscurity or direness of the situation. Shown when in Woodland Critter Christmas after he finds out the Critters, whom he helped, were giving birth to the Anti-Christ, he decided not to attempt to set things right (although did eventually after much nagging from the episode's narrator). Technically, though, this wasn't him - just a fictional him told by Eric Cartman.

For the first seven seasons of the show, Stan's girlfriend was Wendy Testaburger. In the early days of the series a running gag would be that Stan would throw up out of nervousness whenever Wendy spoke to him. As the show progressed, however, the Stan-Wendy storyline diminished greatly. In the penultimate episode of the seventh season, entitled "Raisins", Wendy had Bebe tell Stan that "she breaks up", causing Stan to go into extreme depression. No real reasons were given, but it was suggested that Wendy broke up with Stan to be with Token, shown when Stan holds a boom box playing Peter Gabriel outside Wendy's window and Token is seen with her when he draws the curtains. By the end of the episode however Stan was convinced by Butters, who had also "broken up" with his "girlfriend", to cherish life and the episode ends with Stan shouting "Wendy, you're a bitch!" and giving Token the middle finger. Wendy has played a much smaller part in the series since this episode. It became apparent that Stan had some lingering feelings for Wendy in the episode "Follow That Egg!" when he grew insanely jealous of Kyle working with Wendy, even going so far as to call Kyle's hat "stupid" (which was shown later in the episode to have offended Kyle rather deeply). He, however, decided to show her up by responding to her apologies, compliments and her appeal to him to take her back by replying, "As if I give a crap about what you think, Wendy." He is seen briefly talking to Wendy in "The Snuke", before Mrs. Garrison arrives the class. At the end of The List, however, it is heavily implied that Stan and Wendy get back together. During the episode, Stan and Wendy adventure about attempting to find out why Kyle was ranked 16th (last) on the list of boys cutest to ugliest, voted on by the girls. Together, they find the list was a fake, a ploy by the girls to get shoes at a discount price by putting Clyde (who's dad owned a shoe store) at the top of the list. Wendy admits to having a good time hanging out with Stan, and believe he's changed since they were last together. They lean in to kiss, but in a near-exact copy of a scene at the end of Cartman Gets An Anal Probe, Stan pukes on Wendy.

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. In the episode Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow he admits to breaking the dam, and the adults assume he meant they all broke the dam, after several failed attempts to explain that it actually was him who broke the dam through everyone saying "I broke the dam," he shouted, "I BROKE THE FUCKING DAM" and explained the exact sequence of events without any effect on the adults. 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.

In the episode "Trapped in the Closet", Stan was discovered to be the leader of Scientology having scored the highest thetan levels since L. Ron Hubbard and was quickly approached by Tom Cruise, whom Stan called an average actor. After hearing this Tom Cruise shouted "I'm a failure in the eyes of the prophet!", ran into Stan's Closet and locked himself in. After unsuccessful attempts to get him out, Stan shouts down the stairs to Randy, "DAD! Tom Cruise won't come out of the closet!" (This is a reference to the rumors that Tom Cruise was gay, with "coming out of the closet" meaning when a gay man admits he is gay.) Stan is later told that Scientology is a fake, and that if he writes anything almost everyone would believe it and he could make up to $3 million. Later on when he reads his new writings to his loving public; however, his morality objected to it and he told everyone that Scientology was fake and that it wasn't the right way to answer the many questions. Stan was sued by almost everyone after saying this and he replied with "Well go on then! SUE ME!" to which everyone just replied "we will!" with no one getting anywhere.

In the episode "Are You There God? It's Me, Jesus" Stan is led to believe he is the only boy of the four that hasn't yet had his period (Cartman had his first, due to a stomach infection, and was followed by Kenny due to the same reason and later died of his infection due to using a tampon, which wouldn't allow the blood to escape and eventually imploded, and Kyle eventually felt left out and pretended to have had his period) and Stan is left out by the other three due to him not being "mature enough" (neither of the four has the slightest idea that boys don't get periods), and goes to Dr. Mephisto to get some hormones (he tells Dr. Mephisto the hormones are for his dad because he never went through puberty), and by the end of the episode has a low voice, breasts, and facial hair but no period. He later uses the only question available for thousands of years to ask God (who had come down to Earth briefly) why he hasn't given him his period, Everyone is silent for about 20 seconds and eventually God states the obvious: that he is a boy and shouldn't get periods. The episode ends with everyone chasing after Stan for using the only question on something so dumb.

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

Friendship with Kyle

A topic taken into account many times during the series is Stan's best-friendship with Kyle. They have been best friends since the beginning. They have been known to end up working together in certain adventures, such as "Fantastic Easter Special". 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. He nearly always defends Kyle when Cartman's hatred of Kyle goes over the top, such as in "Cartmanland" and "Cherokee Hair Tampons". They are almost always seen together, even in the absence of Cartman or Kenny, and have very similar opinions of most things, making them almost like twins. Also in the opening credits of the show, they sing the same lines together. In the 11 Seasons the show has been on the air, they have broken up a number of episodes, being "Prehistoric Ice Man", "Super Best Friends", "Kenny Dies", "Douche and Turd", "South Park is Gay!", "Follow that Egg!", and most recently, "Guitar Queer-o". They have reconciled on-screen in these episodes, with the exceptions 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.

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." And then 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 helps him when he shows misery at the thought of having to be sent away and 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 'Engrish' by his Japanese Karate teacher earlier in the episode); this speech convinced Randy to drink in moderation.

Stan has a movie poster for "The Street Warrior" hanging on the wall of his room. "The Street Warrior" is a parody of The Road Warrior, starring Mel Gibson.

Appearance

He wears a dark blue hat with red trim on the bottom of it and a red poof-ball at the top of his hat. He wears a brown coat (similar to his mother's, but less frilly), blue jeans, and red mittens. He has a plain mop of thick, shaggy black hair, like his father. In the episode "Cartmanland" he had brown hair when he was trying to get into Eric's amusement park. Like Kyle and Kenny, Stan rarely takes off his hat, but has been shown on those occasions when he removes it (the first being during the episode "How to Eat with Your Butt",and then, "Fun with Veal", "Jared Has Aides", "Trapped in the Closet" and most recently "Imaginationland", although, in the episode "A Very Crappy Christmas" it is noticeable that he has black, shaggy hair, when his hat is partially loosened off. Also in the episode "The Losing Edge" his hair is visible under his baseball cap. All of the boys' hats are removed and their hair is seen for an extended period during the shower room scene in the episode Lil' Crime Stoppers, although Kenny's head is only seen from behind. Stan also apparently has blue eyes, as noted by Kyle when Butters draws their cartoon forms in "A Very Crappy Christmas". Even at a young age Stan has always worn his blue hat, and even sleeps in it. 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. Also in the episode "Tom's Rhinoplasty" Wendy Testaburger tries to get the new hot lesbian substitute teacher out of Stan's mind by telling him her left arm is bigger than her right.

Catchphrases and Mannerisms

Since its beginning, the series has had a running gag where when Kenny is killed, Stan will announce "Oh my God, you/they/we killed Kenny!" Kyle will then respond: "You/those/we're bastard(s)!"

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 holding the bridge of his (unseen) nose and closing his eyes tightly when frustrated or exasperated (As the actor Lino Ventura). A good example of this is in the episode "ManBearPig" where he is on the phone to Al Gore, when talking to him, he does the motion during the conversation. A better example is in the episode "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", when he does it all the way home from the TV show. His mother is also seen doing the motion in that scene. He also does it the whole time when the reporter is talking to Randy in Goobacks. This is also extremely evident in Bloody Mary. The gesture is probably a learned habit developed by constantly dealing with his parents.

Stan often says "Aw, AWW!" when he's upset and so does his father on some occasions. In the sixth season, when Kenny was "permanently" dead, if the boys were trying to get Butters or Tweek to do something, Stan saying "Kenny woulda dunnit" would convince them.

One of Stan's most frequent mannerisms is his tendency to vomit. While it was only when he tried to talk to Wendy, he may also vomit in other situations. Such as being slowly rotated on rope in "Prehistoric Ice Man", watching an independent film displaying homosexual exploration in "Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls", and seeing Cartman's mom in a sick fetish internet video in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. He also can't stand watching surgery, he helps a doctor, and he vomits in a patient's open chest. As with his older catchphrase "Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here", this gag has also faded into non/rare-use. Recently, in The List, he vomited all over Wendy when she was about to kiss him. From evidence in Tom's Rhinoplasty, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and The List, his vomiting is a sign he's in love.

He also makes use of the word "sure" if he agrees with someone or something or sometimes "yeah", usually in a very dull, unimpressed manner.

Whenever he gets mad, frustrated or gets dragged into something he says "Goddamnit!"

Address

In episode 509 ("Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants"), Stan's counterpart in Afghanistan holds a letter bearing Stan's address, which is "Stan Marsh, 2001 Bonanza Street, South Park Co. 80439". 80439 is the zip code for Evergreen, CO.

Talents

Stan (in some episodes) has been seen playing his guitar every so often, like in the episode "Die, Hippie Die" he is seen playing his guitar outside, with his Mother asks him to go to the mall. Also in "Smug Alert!" he makes a song called "Come on people now" and to get everyone to drive Hybrid cars to get Kyle to move back to South Park.

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 Broflovski 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". He was also number 4 on the South Park Dodge ball team that won the world championship and was on the pee-wee hockey team when he was 4 years old in which it was revealed in "Stanley's Cup". He coached a Pee-wee hockey team that episode, and showed Stan quit from hockey after failing to win the hockey game for the team on a 'breakaway'. His favorite sports team, regarding the setting is in Colorado, is the Denver Broncos.

He also manages to go from a beginner skier to a near-professional in only two days in the episode "Asspen" (thanks to the timely use of a montage). The episode ends with him successfully skiing the K-13, "the most dangerous run in America", in order to beat Tad, win back Heather (Stan's apparent older girlfriend who Stan had never met before she was stolen by Tad) and save a Youth Center from demolition.

Weaponry

For his age, Stan appears proficient with weaponry. In "Red Sleigh Down" he was able to hold an M16 assault rifle (but he didn't actually use it). Finally, in "Mystery of the Urinal Deuce", he was able to get hold of a hand gun and hold it up to Kyle's head. In "Good Times With Weapons", Stan wields a pair of tonfa. As far as marksmanship goes, however, he is not as accurate as Pip and is clearly not as good as Kyle.

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. Like Kenny, Kyle and Cartman, he plays the violin. He may also be 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 also the electric guitarist in the boys' band "Moop" in the episode Christian Rock Hard. He can also sing, as seen in the episode "Something You Can Do with Your Finger". He was also seen briefly playing drums in Spontaneous Combustion. Stan also discovered his talents in the video game Guitar Hero, and eventually pursued the goal of scoring 1 million points. He and Kyle achieved this goal at the end of the episode, which went all for naught as the game called them fags for recording this milestone. This was in the episode Guitar Queer-o.

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), Red Sleigh Down (he piloted Santa's back up Sleigh (Red sleigh 2) after Santa was shot down over Iraq), Bloody Mary (when he drove Randy to the Virgin Mary statue) and Night of the Living Homeless (when he drove a modified bus through the hordes of Homeless and then lured them away to California with help from a song sung by Kyle and Cartman).

Death/Revival

Stan was briefly killed at the end of Imaginationland Episode III when a nuke went off inside the Imaginationland, killing everyone but Butters, who imagined everyone back to life.