Throughout the run of South Park, Eric Cartman has been the butt of virtually every possible joke. Yet, nothing has ever seemed to impact his massive and incredibly undeserved ego. How he manages to maintain that ego has never added up, as nothing Cartman believes about himself is remotely true. But in one Season 13 episode, Kyle perfectly laid out how Cartman’s mind works with the help of Kanye West and a fish joke.
Eric Cartman takes being egotistical and arrogant to another level. This was evident as early as Season 1, Episode 2 when he started eating weight gain shakes but not working out. Eric genuinely believed he had become a muscle-bound beefcake. In reality, he had gained hundreds of pounds and could no longer move under his own power. This was a prime example of how delusional the kid can be.
As funny and self-destructive as Cartman’s egotistical ways genuinely are, there’s also a devastatingly dark side to it. Scott Tenorman learned this the hard way in Season 5, Episode 4. He embarrassed Cartman by tricking him into buying his pubic hairs, convincing him that’s how people get them. Eric responded by arranging for Scott’s parents to be killed, then fed them to Scott as chili.
When it comes to Eric’s ego, it’s best not to poke the proverbial bear too often. As such, Kyle took his life into his own hands when he called Eric out in Season 13, Episode 5. In this episode, South Park’s resident comedian Jimmy Valmer came up with a joke about a fish that went viral before going viral was a thing. The only person who didn’t like the joke was Kanye West, who simply could not get it and may have gone insane trying to figure it out.
This should have been the high point of Jimmy’s young comedy career. Unfortunately, Cartman was also part of the story. He was in the room when Jimmy created the joke, but had nothing to do with it. But as Cartman told the story, he took an increasing amount of credit for the joke. His story got to the point where he won the Super Bowl with John Elway and fought a dragon. Keeping in mind that stranger things have gone down on South Park, none of that happened.
As is often the case, Kyle was the one who stepped up and tried to correct Cartman by calling his lies out. Naturally, this did not work at all, as Eric has an impenetrable reality distortion field around his ego. While Kyle might not have corrected Eric’s behavior, he did finally explain it in such a manner that everything about Cartman makes a lot more sense.
It was in this episode that Kyle broke down how Cartman’s mind rewrites the world around him to support his massive ego. Eric wasn’t just telling insane stories about dragons and John Elway while taking credit for a joke he didn’t write. The kid genuinely believed all of this happened. He had to, or his mind would be crushed by the unbearable weight of his overblown ego.
Adding to this issue is Cartman’s mother, Liane. She has long been an enabler of Eric, supporting if not encouraging his egotistical behavior, in order to maintain her relationship with him. Even Cesar Milan couldn’t fully fix that problem in Season 10, Episode 7. The combination of Liane’s enabling ways and Kyle’s accurate assessment of Eric’s delusions pretty much explains why Cartman is the way he is. And there may be nothing anyone can do about it.
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