Top 20 Times Cartman Got What He Deserved on South Park

So your grandmother passed away and left you a million dollars in her will. What would you do with it? If you’re Eric Cartman, you blow the whole thing on an amusement park exclusively for yourself. Sure, he enjoys it for a short time, but as the park falls into disrepair, his excitement quickly sours. What was supposed to be self-indulgence backfires and becomes a successful park for everyone else. Cartman’s distaste for sharing forces him to sell the park, but even then he can’t reap the benefits. After paying back-taxes and a lawsuit settlement, Cartman has nothing to show for it but sad memories of his famed Cartmanland.

Tourette Syndrome is an illness related to the central nervous system which can cause “tics” in people who have it. One of these tics can be the uncontrollable spouting of obscenities. Thinking this is his “golden ticket” to say whatever he wants, Cartman begins blasting all kinds of hate speech and other nonsense to everyone around him, all under the guise of having been diagnosed with Tourette’s. His foolproof plan falls apart however when he suddenly starts randomly spouting embarrassing truths about himself. From secret crushes, to tears, and bedtime follies, Cartman’s plans are foiled by his own insecurities. The lack of a filter causes him more embarrassment from his own truth than the harmful obscenities he’s enjoyed spouting.

You know it has to be bad if you annoy even yourself. Too impatient to wait for the Nintendo Wii, Cartman freezes himself and wakes up 540 years in the future. After having to deal with a conflict between futuristic humans and sea otters, he wants nothing more than to undo his entire trip. He manages to call himself in the past in an attempt to stop himself from being frozen. The joke’s on him: his past self doesn’t believe him and hangs up. It’s made even better when Cartman finally does return to the past, except it’s two months earlier than when he left. We’d like to think he learned to be more patient, but come on, it’s Cartman!

It’s the greatest restaurant in the world as far as Cartman is concerned. Yet, when Kyle opts to take his friends there for his birthday, Cartman is left out in the cold. Kyle makes it clear to him that given how badly Eric has treated him over the years, he has no interest in bringing him. There’s a certain amount of satisfaction in seeing Kyle finally have a moment to put one over on Cartman. Given the fact that he hides Butters in a bomb shelter so he can take his place, we’re glad Kyle stood his ground. We’re also glad that Cartman got a week in juvie, even if he didn’t learn his lesson.

While out helping Al Gore find ManBearPig in the Cave of Winds with the other boys, Cartman stumbles upon what he believes to be a stack of unclaimed treasure. Not wanting to share it with the others, he proceeds to eat as much of it as he can. Horribly bloated, Cartman emerges from the caves with the other boys, insisting he’s perfectly fine, all while trying to escape with his intestinal haul. However, his body very quickly ejects the treasure in front of everyone, spoiling any chance of cashing in. It’s only made better when he finds out the trove was all fake and worth only about $14. Sucks to be your poor stomach, Cartman.

Yet another entry on this list related to Kyle. These two have certainly had their share of arguments, but punches were actually thrown this time. Well, correction: one punch is thrown. Through a series of misadventures, Stan, Cartman, Kyle, and Ike end up in Canada on Christmas morning. Mad for missing out on his holiday gifts, Cartman wants to fight. After a couple of empty threats, Kyle lightly hits him and Cartman bawls like a baby. It’s nowhere near as bad as other fights Cartman has lost, but it certainly was well deserved.

We’ve done lists before on how badly poor Butters has been treated in this town. But no one has been worse to the Stotch kid than Cartman. This time around, he puts on a robot costume and pretends to be Butters’ new “robot friend” hoping to learn something embarrassing he can tease him about later. It all backfires when Eric finds out Butters has a videotape of him singing like Britney Spears. Stotch learns the truth about his robot, and everyone sees the tape. It’s not very often that the boys in town get real revenge on Cartman for his antics, so this is a sheer delight.

If this list has shown us anything, it’s that audiences enjoy both Cartman’s antics, and seeing him pay for his misdeeds. As season 19 opened, viewers were treated to a new principal at South Park Elementary. Obsessed with political correctness, he irks the boys enough that they encourage Cartman to take him down, and he gladly obliges. The problem is that Eric has never dealt with the likes of Peter Charles, AKA PC Principal. Cartman uses his typical underhanded means to try and frame Charles for inappropriate behavior with a student. That effort is quickly destroyed as Cartman takes a serious beating in the washroom. Ironically, the assault has nothing to do with his accusations, and more about his use of language.

He spit in a nanny’s mouth and tormented another so much she ended up in a mental health hospital. How is Cartman’s mom ever going to get him under control? The answer: treat him like a dog. Famed dog trainer Cesar Millan manages to turn Cartman into a respectable, decent kid by using the same methods he uses on bad behaved canines. Although it doesn’t last, thanks to Cartman’s mom, it’s both satisfying and disturbing to see Eric as such a well-adjusted kid. Is it weird that we prefer him being the sociopath he is.

When Cartman disagrees with Kyle about the direction of their band “Moop”, Eric makes a bet about who can make a platinum album first. What follows is Cartman’s attempt to capitalize on the Christian rock genre. He ropes both Butters and Tolkien into forming “Faith +1” and producing a CD filled with religion inspired songs. Their huge success becomes marred when Cartman believes the band will be awarded a “platinum” album, only to discover Christian acts can only receive Myrrh records. As he yells religious obscenities to a crowd of thousands who have come out to see the band play, Tolkien attacks him in a fit of rage. As Cartman lays on the stage, Butters flips him off, leaving Cartman to wallow in defeat.

Like other entries on this list, here we find Cartman using deceit to gain attention from others. This time he’s pretending to be psychic and has convinced local law enforcement of his new abilities. Instead of looking at hard evidence, the cops go purely on Cartman’s advice, leaving a real threat to the town. Eric’s ruse falls apart when the real culprit kidnaps him out of anger. He’s upset that Cartman has pinned his criminal activities on others in town, robbing him of his glory. It’s a far darker comeuppance than many of the others, but still gives viewers hope that maybe this will be Cartman’s last lie. Spoiler alert; it wasn’t.

Timmy and Jimmy are going all in for the Special Olympics. While Jimmy faces his own demons about competing, Cartman is convinced he can pretend to have a disability, just so he can enter and win the cash prize. It’s an incredibly offensive idea, but coming from Eric, it’s more status quo than anything. Expecting to be a sure thing, Cartman never considers that you actually do need to have talent. Eric loses in every event simply because he’s out of shape and was never prepared to tackle a competition like this. It’s his sheer ignorance of all things that keeps the $1,000 prize away from him. Maybe next time try training for it, Eric!

If the history of this show has shown us anything, it’s that Cartman plows through life never once considering the consequences of his actions. Going back as far as season four’s “Cartman’s Silly Hate Crime 2000”, we catch him destroying the “sticks and stones” idiom as he tosses a rock straight at Tolkien’s head. What seems like a playground fight turns truly dark as Eric’s assault is perceived as an attack on African Americans. In retaliation, they throw the figurative book at him and Cartman lands in jail. The sheer look of terror on Eric’s face as he approaches the prison is priceless. We must say, it is refreshing to see him confronted with some type of punishment for his actions.

Seriously, who eats all the skin off the KFC chicken your friend’s mom bought for all of you? As revenge, all the boys, save for Butters, decide to completely ignore him. Given that he now thinks he’s dead, we wonder if this is where the term “ghosting” came from. All jokes aside, this entry is unique in that it’s a perfect form of punishment for a kid who’s overly selfish. Cartman’s the kid who always wants the attention and goes to extreme lengths to get it. It’s incredibly satisfying to watch him jump through all these hoops in the hopes of being redeemed.

Perhaps one of the saddest examples of Cartman getting what he deserved was shown in the “South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid” special that aired during season 24. Both this special and its predecessor showed the life of the boys 40 years in the future after having made poor decisions around their treatment of others during the pandemic. After they travel back in time to correct their mistakes, we get a glimpse into how Cartman’s life really turned out. After all his terrible antics from his youth, he ultimately ended up with no home, suffering from alcohol problems and raging at the world for being wronged. His fate is both sad, and somewhat deserving given everything he’s done.

You know you’ve done something horribly wrong when God decides to strike you down with a bolt of lightning. After spending much of this episode accusing his mother of inappropriate behavior, Cartman takes his anger out on God. Yelling at the sky in front of a Best Buy, every viewer watching is just hoping something will happen to give this kid a taste of his own medicine. So, when the shot does come down, and Eric ends up in the hospital, audiences are left smiling knowing justice was served and Cartman’s paying a price for being so rude.

Knowing what we know now about Eric Cartman, it’s not implausible that his alien encounter in the pilot was indeed a form of punishment. We get a few glimpses of what happened to him, and later witness an explosive growth from his behind. At this point, fans didn’t know him or his antics, so it was easy to see his entire ordeal as just funny. Looking back at it now, it seems somewhat appropriate that the meanest kid in town would end up being the one abducted and experimented on by aliens.

After taking a photograph of Butters in a compromising position, Cartman mistakenly believes he can use the picture to misrepresent Butters’ sexual orientation. This quickly backfires as he learns that others may believe it depicts Eric’s own feelings instead. When Cartman misplaces the image, he mistakenly believes Kyle has stolen it with the intent of showing it to everyone to embarrass Eric. Thinking he’s beaten him to the punch, he includes his photo in a slideshow for a school project. When Mr. Mackey reports that Cartman’s mom found the picture, he very quickly realizes he just went to extreme lengths to embarrass himself. It’s a perfect example of Eric’s antics backfiring with hilarious results.

When Cartman fed Scott Tenorman his parents in Season 5, we learned how truly dark and disturbing Eric is. Everything that happened later was built upon the idea that this is a kid who will stop at nothing to get revenge. However, it looks like it may have run in the family. In Season 14, we learn Scott was actually Cartman’s half-brother and in taking his rage out on him, Eric inadvertently offed his own dad. We love how the show found a way to take Cartman’s darkest moment and turn it on him. This may not be our number one entry, but it’s certainly the most psychological comeuppance he’s seen.

She may have been Stan’s girlfriend, but that certainly never stopped Cartman from taking every opportunity to mock her. So it comes as a bit of a surprise how freaked out he gets when Wendy finally challenges him to a fight after school. It’s clear from Eric’s desperate efforts to get out of it that he knows it’s not going to end well. Cartman’s done a lot of terrible things by this point in the show, so it’s both the school kids and viewers who want to see him finally get punished. Wendy delivers punch after punch until he finally goes down. It certainly isn’t elegant or civilized, but for this oversized meanie, it’s exactly what he deserved.