Comedy Central
South Park has now been on the air for so long that kids who were born when the series premiered in 1997 could, theoretically, have kids that are old enough to begin taking an interest in the series themselves, making it such a pop cultural staple that it spans generations.
As such, trying to compile a list of the funniest characters of all time is almost a fruitless task, as it’s difficult to compare, say, how funny Chef was then versus PC Principal now. Times change, and people change, with South Park, in particular, being a reflection of the world around it.
Ranking The 9 Funniest ‘South Park’ Characters Of All-Time
With that, we’re putting the cut-off line, and the definition of “current,” as characters who have featured prominently since the year 2010, which was Season 14 and thus the halfway point of the iconic series, which is now in its 28th season.
So with the rules all laid out, come on down to South Park and have yourself a time, as we’re going to be ranking the friendliest funniest faces in town.
9. Kyle Broflovski and Stan Marsh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ONipA5jS2c&pp=ygUNa3lsZSBhbmQgc3Rhbg%3D%3D
The avatars for series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Kyle Broflovski and Stan Marsh are — or, at least were — effectively the “leads” of the series as they’re the most normal characters in their insane world.
Given their status as the “every man” of South Park, they’re inherently less comical than the other characters. Still, the pair deserve credit for mining comedy out of how they *react* to the sanity around them — think about how funny it is when one of them simply exclaims “What the f—?!?” after something ridiculous happens.
8. Farmer Fred
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzJt_sdWKT4&pp=ygUWZmFybWVyIGZyZWQgaW5zZWN1cml0eQ%3D%3D
This is a totally personal choice here, but I’m including it nonetheless, because the usage of Farmer Fred is one of the purest examples of makes South Park so funny.
According to Fandom‘s South Park database, Farmer Fred — based on the character Jud Crandall from the 1989 Stephen King horror film Pet Sematary — has made just seven appearances in South Park history, with the most recent speaking role being in the Tegridy Farms Halloween Special from 2019. But it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality, and that’s what makes Farmer Fred such a hilarious character: the way he’s used.
Farmer Fred appears, often unannounced, as a harbinger of doom for the South Park community, warning the locals about the incoming doom — a doom that he seemingly only knows about via personal experience. In “Asspen,” he warns Stan about the dangers of skiing the K-13 run. In “Majorine,” he tries to ward Butters’ parents off from resurrecting him. In “Insecurity,” when all of the husbands of South Park think their wives are cheating with the local postman, Farmer Fred warns them about the UPS man rolling into town and how the best course of action is just to let him “go on f—— your wives and maybe he’ll get tired of it.”
While rankings are meant to be objective, comedy is subjective, and Farmer Fred makes me laugh as much as any character in the show.
7. JD Vance / Mark Zuckerberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfXImI1SZaQ
Putting political opinions aside, the very construction of South Park‘s version of JD Vance — using one of his over-exaggerated baby faces from social media memes and turning him into Tattoo from Fantasy Island — is an undeniably brilliant construction.
But whereas Tattoo was a trusty sidekick, Vance is a conniving, Cartman-esque figure that’s secretly pulling the strings from the shadows, backstabbing and manipulating those around him to climb his way to the top.
South Park has had a long history of skewering politicians, from the Clintons to the Obamas to the Trumps and everyone in between, but they’ve never done it quite like Vance — whose role will surely grow in the coming years as the series continues to navigate Trump’s second term.
The same can be said for Zuckerberg, whose South Park rendering is the perfect satirized skewering of his robotic ways, as his voice — mistimed to the movements of his mouth — is also auto-toned to sound like a machine. From an overwhelmingly basic point of view, South Park’s Vance and Zuckerberg are just funny to look at and listen to.
6. Detective Harrison Yates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbqLfNorYS0
Detective Yates is the show’s walking, talking indictment of cop-show confidence — a guy who barrels into every case with chest-out certainty and the accuracy rate of a blindfolded weatherman. He’s funniest when he’s sure he’s nailed it and absolutely hasn’t, weaponizing incompetence as if it were evidence.
Yates lets Parker and Stone satirize policing, media panic, and righteous authority all at once, and the comedy lands because he never thinks he’s the joke — he thinks he’s the hero.
5. Mr. Garrison
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkpRrtHzlVs&pp=ygULbXIgZ2Fycmlzb24%3D
Few characters have cycled through more identities and ideologies than Mr. Garrison, and that volatility is the point, as South Park uses him as a stress test for America’s whiplash in its various culture wars, forging laughs out that constant tonal oscillation — a petty classroom tyrant one season, a LGTBQ rights activist the next, and a full-blown avatar for national chaos the year after that — and the fact that he always insists nothing about him has changed all the while.
4. PC Principal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvc1nxlJb-o&pp=ygUMcGMgcHJpbmNpcGFs
The most recent iconic addition to the sprawling South Park world, PC Principal — previous Peter Charles but now “Power Christian” — PC Principal was originally set to have the same fate as Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman was, as the respective series creators planned on killing the character off not long introducing them. And just like Pinkman, the character had other ideas, and simply became too enjoyable to get rid of.
And how could you blame them? Taking an avatar of frat “bro” culture and imbuing him with far left-leaning “wokeness” creates the perfect subversion of our current societal framework, giving them a character that can begin a sentence with championing women’s rights and end it by screaming that he’ll kick your f—— ass.
3. Randy Marsh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-7KCRNLLzc
The rise of Randy Marsh into a main South Park character can be easily tracked alongside the age of creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone — as their views of the world became more middle-aged, so did the character through which they communicated them.
Marsh is very much how South Park sees most average American men: over-excitable, well-meaning, reactionary, behind the times, goal-driven, and a bit in over his head in a rapidly changing landscape, but a family man through and through, whose trying to make a better world for his kids even if he doesn’t understand it.
2. Butters Stotch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDLRxY8spAA&pp=ygUSYnV0dGVycyBzb3V0aCBwYXJr
Originally introduced as a replacement for Kenny McCormick, who had a temporary “permanent” death during the sixth season due to the season five episode “Kenny Dies”, Butters quickly became a staple as the de facto fifth member of “The Boys,” with his blinding innocence and decency providing a perfect foil to the core cast of characters that the series didn’t even realize it was missing.
1. Eric Cartman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z15erfLqNKo&pp=ygUMZXJpYyBjYXJ0bWFu
South Park simply does not become the pop cultural staple it is without the character of Eric Cartman — as Cartman goes, so does South Park.
He’s the show’s purest distillation of its ideas and sense of humor: manipulative, brilliant, petty, opportunistic, and, crucially, effective. Cartman plots actually work, which is why the laughter often arrives with a disgusted shake of the head, because you realize just how dark the thing you’re laughing at is. From small-stakes cons to operatic vendettas, Cartman is often the engine that drive the chaos, and comedy, of South Park.
The reason he tops the list isn’t just volume of classic episodes, nor the fact that he’s the series’ most quotable and recognizable — it’s that Cartman is the series’ clearest thesis statement: he’s heinous, but he’s absolutely hilarious.