Stan Marsh

Stan attends South Park Elementary as part of Mr. Garrison's Fourth Grade Class (formerly Third). Stan's father Randy is a geologist, and his mother Sharon is a secretary at Tom's Rhinoplasty. Since its beginning, the series has had a running gag where when Kenny is killed, Stan will announce, "Oh my God, you/he/she/they/we killed Kenny!" Kyle will then respond: "You/that/those/we're bastard(s)!", or vice versa. Stan's often-used catchphrase during the early seasons was "Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here," which originated in the second The Spirit of Christmas short, though the profanity was bleeped out. In recent episodes, however this catchphrase has faded. Stan often groans, "Aw-awww!" when he is upset or in disbelief, which seems to be an inherited habit; his father does this sometimes as well. This is the same catchphrase Trey Parker used in the 1998 sports comedy film BASEketball. If he agrees with someone or is unsure of something, he will often state "sure" or "yeah" in a very dull, unimpressed manner. Whenever he gets mad, frustrated, or gets dragged into something, he often says "Goddamnit!", not to be confused with Cartman's catchphrase, "Aw! God-damn it!" Often in school, he would say "Oooooh....." with a slightly higher pitched tone than his normal voice. He will often express shock with "Jesus Christ!" This is evident in "Super Fun Time" and "About Last Night...". Stan is mostly shown wearing a brown jacket with a red collar, a blue hat with a red puffball and rim, and blue jeans. Under his jacket, he either wears a red and blue baseball shirt or a white T-shirt/v-neck. He also wears a blue Terrance and Phillip shirt to bed and a green suit for special occasions. In some episodes, it is clear he has black hair (like his father Randy) when his hat is partially or completely removed - this was first seen in "A Very Crappy Christmas". In "The List", he ranked third in the initial corrupt list of which boy was cutest. However, he was not mentioned among those who had to change places due to the corruption, so it is possible that he remained the third cutest boy, behind Clyde (who was actually in the bottom five somewhere) and Tolkien. Stan is generally the most tender and sensitive of the four boys. For example, in "Kenny Dies", he finds it difficult to see Kenny in his ill state, and in "Raisins" he becomes depressed after losing his girlfriend to Tolkien. Also, in "Fun with Veal", Stan is the only one who stopped eating meat completely when the boys found that veal was actually "tortured baby cow meat". However, in some episodes he does not seem to care when people die, as in "Dances with Smurfs" and "Chef Goes Nanners". Stan is often very moral. This is evident in "Cherokee Hair Tampons", when he, Kenny, Timmy, and Butters challenged the character Miss Information and her shop of alternative medicine, in "Super Best Friends", when he helped battle David Blaine's suicidal cult, and in "The Biggest Douche in the Universe" where he accuses the psychic medium, John Edward, of being a fake. In this episode he also gained possession of his own show (while trying to prove that cold reading was fake) and battled with John Edward in a "Psychic Showdown". He also showed some heroism in "Cherokee Hair Tampons" by stating he would gladly donate a kidney to Kyle, even if it "hurt a whole lot". In "Whale Whores", he was also the only one in South Park to stand up and help whales and dolphins that were being slaughtered by the Japanese. He was angry that the cast of Whale Wars was not doing enough to help whales and dolphins and took matters into his own hands. It also shows Stan is a whale and dolphin lover and he tells the Japanese that it was a cow and a chicken that nuked Hiroshima, not a whale and a dolphin, in order to save them all being wiped out by the Japanese. Stan's depression is also a recurring theme throughout the show. He became terribly depressed when Wendy broke up with him in "Raisins", briefly joining the Goth Kids. Stan also became incredibly depressed and adopted a cynical world view in "You're Getting Old" and "Ass Burgers", where everything to him literally sounded and looked "like shit". In "Ass Burgers", he uses alcohol to make the world seem happier. Stan may suffer from asthma, as an inhaler was shown among the things Cartman claims in "Sexual Harassment Panda", although this was never mentioned in the series again. Stan is an avid animal lover - he gets a dog in "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride". He resists the influence of his uncle Jimbo to hunt in "Volcano" (he mentions this in "Death"), became a P.E.T.A. 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 (as well as the rest of the boys from 4th grade) 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) in "Free Willzyx". In "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow", after he and Cartman crash a boat into a beaver dam and swim to shore, seeing the boat blow up, Stan says, "I hope we didn't hurt any beavers." In "Fun with Veal" he briefly turned to vegetarianism, but he quickly gave it up when he was plagued by a disease that literally "turned him into a pussy", sprouting actual vaginas on his body, a disease called Vaginitis. He also sets out to save the whales and dolphins from the Japanese in "Whale Whores". It is revealed in "Rainforest Shmainforest" that he is afraid of snakes. Stan is shown to sympathize with others, most evidently seen in "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 him in a cave where Al Gore almost (unintentionally) drowns him, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny, he lashes out and brings Al Gore into a cold, hard 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 as a way of getting attention for yourself because you're a loser!" This does not affect Al Gore, however, as he dons a cape and says he will go and make a movie starring himself (An Inconvenient Truth). Ironically, Al Gore is also responsible for the deaths of Stan and everyone else in "Imaginationland, Episode III", even though they were revived by Butters. When angered, Stan is often quite reluctant to continue/do anything that will further contribute to the obscurity or direness of the situation. Stan is frequently embarrassed or infuriated at the stupidity of his parents and the other adults of the town, and he often goes against what his parents do. Randy Marsh Randy is Stan's father. They generally have a good relationship, although Stan often gets annoyed by Randy's obsessiveness (this is especially true with the video camera), pushiness, and melodramatic antics. Randy also tends to be very naive, which exasperates Stan all the more. Sharon Marsh She is Stan's mother. His relationship with her is often more stable than that with Randy. Stan is very similar to Sharon in the way he is level headed, and it is likely that they have a good, loving relationship with each other. Shelley Marsh She is his violent and abusive teenage sister. She frequently insults him by calling him and his friends turds and physically harms him. However, she refuses to let anyone else harm him, as seen in "Pre-School" when Stan asked for her advice on what to do about the bully Trent Boyett. After asking for her help, she seemed to genuinely listen to his problem.