South Park has been gleefully offending everyone since 1997 — and somehow it keeps getting better. Trey Parker and Matt Stone created something that shouldn't work: crude animation, no-budget origins, and humor that swings wildly between toilet jokes and razor-sharp political satire. Yet here we are, 27 seasons later, still watching.
We asked real users on SendMeYourList.com to rank their favorite South Park characters — no algorithm, no editorial bias, just raw fan opinion. Here's who made it to the top of the mountain, m'kay?
1. Eric Cartman
No surprise here. Eric Theodore Cartman is one of the greatest characters in the history of television — animated or otherwise. He's manipulative, bigoted, narcissistic, and genuinely terrifying in his schemes. He's also somehow the funniest person on screen every single time he appears. That tension between monster and comedian is what makes him immortal.
"Respect my authoritah!" is a catchphrase, but Cartman's genius is that he actually does command authority — through manipulation, psychological warfare, and a terrifying willingness to go further than anyone expects. Episodes like Scott Tenorman Must Die and Make Love Not Warcraft show a villain operating at a level most dramatic characters can't match.
On SendMeYourList, Cartman won in a landslide. The character nobody should root for is the one everyone loves most. That's writing.
2. Stan Marsh
Stan is the audience surrogate — the kid who looks at the chaos around him and says what any reasonable person would say: "This is ridiculous." He's the moral anchor of the show, and the writers use him brilliantly as the straight man whose sanity collides with an insane world.
Later seasons gave Stan more complexity, particularly in the episode You're Getting Old, which turned his growing cynicism into genuine emotional territory. It's one of the most unexpected and affecting moments in the show's run — and it lives in Stan's character.
If you appreciate characters who hold the group together, you might also enjoy the Seinfeld characters ranking — another show built around one person desperately trying to maintain sanity.
3. Kyle Broflovski
Kyle is the moral conscience of the group — and Cartman's eternal nemesis. The dynamic between the two of them is the backbone of South Park's best episodes. Cartman provokes, manipulates, and schemes. Kyle pushes back, argues, and usually loses anyway. Their rivalry is a dark comedy about good intentions failing against pure, motivated evil.
Kyle's "And I learned something today..." speeches are a running joke, but they also reflect the show's willingness to actually engage with ideas — even when it's satirizing the very act of moralizing. He's funnier than he gets credit for and more principled than the show usually lets him be.
Head over to the South Park character ranking and let us know where Kyle belongs on your list.
4. Kenny McCormick
Oh my God, they killed Kenny! The running gag of Kenny's deaths is one of the most committed bits in TV history — and the writers found endless creative ways to execute it (pun intended). What's remarkable is that the joke never really got old, because the deaths kept escalating in absurdity and the show kept finding new angles.
What fans often forget is that Kenny, beneath the orange parka and the muffled voice, is one of the group's most loyal and genuinely kind members. His real home life — crushingly poor, chaotic — gives the character unexpected depth when the show chooses to use it. Mysterion episodes took that further than anyone expected.
Kenny's the underdog of the group. On the fan ranking, he consistently holds his own despite dying every other episode.
5. Butters Stotch
"Oh hamburgers!" Butters is the purest soul in South Park — an endlessly optimistic, hopelessly naive kid who somehow survives being the group's designated target, Cartman's primary victim, and his own parents' punching bag. He should be tragic. Instead, he's the heart of the show.
Butters' alter ego Professor Chaos is one of the show's funniest recurring bits — a supervillain whose schemes are too innocent to cause any real harm. But the episode Butters' Very Own Episode, and later Casa Bonita, reveal something more complicated: Butters is the character who most clearly represents the show's capacity for genuine feeling beneath all the shock value.
He deserves to be ranked higher than you think. Go prove it on the live South Park ranking.
6. Randy Marsh
Randy Marsh started as Stan's mildly embarrassing dad and became one of the most reliably funny characters on the show. His evolution into a man-child who pursues every obsession with unhinged commitment — Lorde, Tegridy Farms, Thanksgiving food fights — mirrors the way South Park itself evolved from kid-focused chaos to adult satire.
Trey Parker's performance as Randy is one of the show's unsung technical achievements. The voice work captures a specific flavor of American delusion: a man who genuinely believes each new scheme is his finest hour. He's the id of Baby Boomer culture given a cartoon body and zero impulse control.
Randy fans are a passionate subgroup. If he's your #1, make your case on the South Park character page.
7. Chef
Isaac Hayes' Chef was the show's warm center in its early years — the one adult who treated the boys like people rather than inconveniences, who gave advice through soul songs, and who was genuinely, uncomplicatedly cool. His departure from the show in 2006 left a hole that was never quite filled.
Chef's greatest quality was his relationship with the boys. He dispensed wisdom about women, life, and the world with a combination of sincerity and absurdity that worked because Hayes' voice gave it genuine warmth. There's a reason fans remember him so fondly: he made South Park feel like it had a heart.
He's gone but not forgotten. Fans who remember Chef fondly tend to also love the classic TV characters on our Andy Griffith Show ranking — another show where a warm adult presence made everything work.
8. Mr. Garrison
Mr. Garrison is South Park's most transformed character — a journey from closeted fourth-grade teacher to gender-transitioning talk show host to a thinly veiled Donald Trump parody. Through every incarnation, the show used Garrison to explore American politics, identity, and hypocrisy with its characteristic lack of mercy.
What makes Garrison work is that the show never treats the transformations as jokes in themselves — the humor comes from the character's undiminished terribleness across every version of themselves. Some people are awful no matter what they look like. That's the joke, and it lands every time.
He's one of the show's most divisive characters — which means the fan ranking results for Mr. Garrison are always interesting.
9. Mr. Mackey
"Drugs are bad, m'kay?" Mr. Mackey, the school counselor with the enormous head and perpetual uncertainty, is a perfect distillation of ineffectual institutional authority. He means well. He genuinely tries. He accomplishes almost nothing. And he does it all with that distinctive elongated vowel that makes every sentence sound like a reluctant concession.
His episode-specific depths — including a genuinely wild plotline involving addiction and a trip to the 1960s — show that South Park uses even its supporting characters as vehicles for sharper satire than most shows manage with their leads.
10. PC Principal
PC Principal arrived in Season 19 as a satirical sledgehammer aimed at campus culture, political correctness, and virtue signaling — and immediately became one of the show's most successful new characters in years. His aggressive enforcement of progressive values through frat-bro intimidation is the joke, but it's a layered one.
Later seasons softened him into something more complex — a character who genuinely tries to be good, fails in predictable ways, and occasionally shows real heart. His relationship with Strong Woman and their children gave him dimensions that made him a permanent member of the ensemble rather than a one-season bit.
New additions to great shows always divide fans. Compare how this community feels about PC Principal to how fans feel about new characters in other classic shows — like the later-season debates in our Simpsons character ranking.
What Does This Ranking Tell Us?
Cartman's dominance is no surprise — he's the engine the show runs on. But the rest of the top five reveals something interesting: fans gravitate toward characters who represent genuine feeling beneath South Park's wall of irony. Stan's decency, Kyle's principles, Kenny's loyalty, Butters' warmth — these aren't accidents. The show's shock tactics work because there are actual characters underneath them.
Randy's rise to #6 reflects how the show changed over time. Early South Park was the boys' show. Later South Park became Randy's show. Fans who've been watching from the beginning feel both things at once.
For another look at how fans rank a long-running animated ensemble, check out our Simpsons characters ranking or the Family Guy ranking — two shows that raise the same question: which characters made you actually care?
Disagree? Build Your Own List.
Think Butters should be #1? That Randy has taken over the show and deserves the throne? That Kenny is criminally underrated? This ranking updates every day as new fans vote.
Head over to the South Park character ranking page on SendMeYourList and put them in your definitive order. Make your case. Start an argument. That's what lists are for — and it's what South Park would want.
And if you want to keep going, SendMeYourList.com has rankings for everything from Mario characters to Star Wars to The Office. Your opinion belongs in the data.