Stan Marsh

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*South Park* character
Stanley 'Stan' Marsh

Gender:	Male
Hair:	Black
Age:	9 (8 until the episode "4th Grade")
Job:	Student
Religion:	Roman Catholic
First Appearance:	The Spirit of Christmas (Jesus vs. Frosty)
Voiced By:	Trey Parker

Stanley "Stan" Marsh is one of the central characters in the animated television series South Park. Voiced by series co-creator Trey Parker, Stan and Kyle Broflovski often trade places as the 'leader' of the four main characters. Stan is arguably the most normal of the kids, and is generally honest, very mature for his age, and well-meaning. He is somewhat more assertive than his best friend Kyle.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Life
2 Family
3 Appearance
4 Catchphrases and Mannerisms
5 Athletics
6 Address
7 Music
8 External Links

[edit] Life

Stan is often preachy and very critical of popular trends. This is evident in episode 407 "Cherokee Hair Tampons" when he challenged the character Miss Information and her shop of alternative medicine, in episode 504 "Super Best Friends" when he helped battle David Blaine's suicidal cult, and in episode 615 where he accuses psychic medium John Edward of being "The Biggest Douche in the Universe." However, sometimes Kyle takes on this role, and it is Stan who is the gullible one — such as with the metrosexual trend in the episode "South Park is Gay!", the Chinpokomon episode, and again in the episode "Raisins", in which he turns to the goth lifestyle. Stan's and Kyle's personalities tend to be similar, but are not quite interchangeable.

An avid animal lover, Stan resists the influence of his uncle Jimbo to hunt in "Volcano", has 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.

For the first seven seasons of the show, Stan's girlfriend was Wendy Testaburger. In the early days of the series a running gag would be that Stan would throw up out of nervousness whenever Wendy spoke to him. As the show progressed, however, the Stan-Wendy storyline diminished greatly. In the penultimate episode of the seventh season, entitled "Raisins", Wendy announced that she had broken up with Stan, who eventually learned to cope with his loss.

Stan's recent interest in Wendy was apparent in the episode "Follow That Egg!" when he grew jealous of Kyle working with Wendy. He, however, decided to show her up by telling her off at the end of the episode.

[edit] Family

Stan is the son of Randy Marsh (a geologist with the United States Geological Survey) and Sharon Kimble Marsh (a receptionist at Tom's Rhinoplasty). Stan is frequently embarassed by their stupidity. He has an older sister, Shelley Marsh, who bullies him on a regular basis. Stan's crotchety 102-year-old wheelchair-bound grandfather, Marvin Marsh, calls him "Billy" and often attempts to coerce Stan to kill him. He is also the nephew of hunter Jimbo Kern, Sharon's brother.

Stan's parents share their names with Trey Parker's real-life parents, Sharon Parker and Randolph "Randy" Parker Jr.

Stan's pets have included a gay dog named Sparky, and an evil goldfish.

[edit] Appearance

Image:StanWithoutHat.jpg

He wears a dark blue hat with red trim and pom-pom, a brown coat, blue pants, and red mittens. Like Kyle and Kenny, Stan rarely takes off his hat, but has been shown on those occasions when he removes it (the first being during the episode "How to Eat with Your Butt") to have shaggy black hair like his father. He also apparently has blue eyes, as noted by Kyle when Butters draws their cartoon forms in "A Very Crappy Christmas". A photorealistic version of Stan's appearance was produced as a police artist sketch for the episode "Free Willzyx".

[edit] Catchphrases and Mannerisms

Since its beginning, the series has had a running gag where when Kenny is killed, Stan will announce "Oh my God, you/they/we killed Kenny!" Kyle will then respond: "You/those/we're bastard(s)!" Stan once used this to find Kyle in "Super Best Friends". He went looking for Kyle to try and stop him from killing himself. When he saw that Kenny had killed himself, Stan shouted out "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" and Kyle shouted out "You bastards!". Stan heard Kyle and kept shouting this out until he was led to Kyle.

Stan's often-used catchphrase during the early seasons was "Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here" which originated in the second Spirit of Christmas short.

In many episodes, Stan often sums up the episode's main points in a small speech that often begins with, "You know, I learned something today." Occasionally Kyle will fill this role in some episodes.

Stan also has a habit of holding the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes tightly when frustrated or exasperated.. A good example of this is in the episode "ManBearPig" were he is on the phone to Al Gore, when talking to him, he does the motion during the conversation.

Stan often says "Aw, AWW!" when he's upset and so does his father on some occasions. In the sixth season if the boys were trying to get Butters or Tweek to do something and they wouldn't do it Stan would say "Kenny woulda dunnit" which would convince them to do it.

In early episodes, Stan would often vomit due to nervousness caused by his girlfriend Wendy Testaburger's presence, however he has since been able to interact with her successfully.

[edit] Athletics

Stan is quite athletically proficient, and is regularly the captain or star player of his school's sports teams, except in basketball where Kyle is the best player in the school. He was the quarterback of the school football team in "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" and the pitcher of the baseball team in "The Losing Edge". He was also number 4 on the South Park dodgeball team that won the world championship and was on the pee-wee hockey team when he was 4 years old. His favorite sports team is the Denver Broncos.In Stanley's Cup he coached a Pee-wee hockey team.

[edit] Address

In episode 509 ("Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants"), Stan's counterpart in Afghanistan holds a letter bearing Stan's address, which is "Stan Marsh, 2001 Bonanza Street, South Park Co. 80439". 80439 is the zip code for Evergreen, CO

[edit] Music

Although not as musically inclined as Kyle or Cartman, Stan did manage to write and perform a song about the importance of hybrid cars in "Smug Alert!". He can play the guitar rather well, though lyrics do not appear to be a strong point. (In a perhaps deliberate contrast, his "alter-ego" Trey Parker is the musical half of the South Park creator duo.) Like Kenny and Kyle, he plays the violin and also managed to write a song with Elton John entitled "Wake Up Wendy". Stan is also, according to the episode "You Got F'd in the A" (a parody of the film 'You got served'), a talented line dancer, instructed by his father.