Butters Stotch
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| Leopold "Butters" Stotch | |
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| Gender: | Male |
| Hair: | Blonde |
| Age: | 9 |
| Job: | Student |
| Religion: | Roman Catholic |
| First Appearance: | "Cartman Gets An Anal Probe" (background character) Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub (prominence) |
| Voiced By: | Matt Stone |
Leopold "Butters" Stotch (voiced by Matt Stone) is a fictional character in the animated television series South Park. Originally called "Poof Poof" and "Swanson", his nickname is a play on the word butterscotch. Butters has a large tuft of blonde hair on top of his head, and wears an aquamarine jacket with green pants. His birthday is September 11th. [1] He speaks with a distinctive, stuttering Southern accent. The character is loosely based on South Park director of animation Eric Stough, whom Parker and Stone regarded as a "goody-goody" because he always worried about causing offense.[2]; this is referenced at the end of the episode "Casa Bonita", where Stough's name in the credits appears as "Eric Leopold Stotch". He is directly referenced as the inspiration for the nickname of Veronica Mars character Vincent "Butters" Clemmons.
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[edit] Character history
Butters (as everyone, including his parents, call him) is the sweetest, most innocent, and most gullible character on the show. He is generally much nicer and much more naïve than the four main characters; unlike nearly all South Park characters, he rarely curses and instead uses euphemisms such as "aw, hamburgers" or "son of a biscuit". Sometimes, Butters minces words ("you guys can go to heck" and "yeah, you, uh, dumb girl" in "Raisins"). A few of the times he did use curse words were in the episodes "AWESOM-O", "Christian Rock Hard", "Hooked on Monkey Phonics", "Butters' Very Own Episode", "It Hits The Fan", "Simpsons Already Did It" and each instance was meant to be very shocking.
He is an only child and his parents, Chris and Lynda Stotch, are very authoritarian, strict and, at some points, abusive towards their son - often berating him for things that are entirely beyond his control - though it is obvious that they do love him. This has evidently affected Butters psychologically, as he often tells himself off when his parents are not around to do it ("Why, I oughta learn ta control my behavior! I should be ashamed of myself"). Because of his life in this environment where nothing seems to be good enough for his father, Butters refines himself in self-improvement in almost everything to perfection, such as dancing and operating firearms, but also has extremely low self-esteem, and therefore no judgement as to when or how to use his skills, and perceives everyone around him as knowing much more than he does. He is scared of his dominating and threatening father, whom he is obliged to respectfully refer to as "Sir", in contrast to the unruly Cartman, who gives his elders little or no respect. It would seem that the boys are sympathetic towards Butters concerning his parents. In How To Eat With Your Butt, Kyle remarks "that poor kid" when Butters is berated by his parents for pulling an apparent funny face. This may reflect the general consensus of the gang, as no-one offered any comments to the contrary. It should be noted, however that another kid responded to Kyle's comment with, "Yeah, we gotta be sure to kick his ass tomorrow."
Despite always being picked on by the other boys (mostly by Cartman) and abused by his parents, Butters keeps a generally optimistic attitude toward life. However, Butters does have his moments of insight towards life and human behavior, most notably in the seventh season episode "Raisins", in which he has his first crush on a girl, only to end up heartbroken when he realizes that she is just using him for money. Later, when he runs into Stan, who likewise has had his heart broken by his first love Wendy, Butters proclaims to Stan (who has joined a local Goth clique and spends his days whining about his former love) that he "love[s] life" and would "rather be a cryin' little pussy than a faggy Goth kid". Despite this, in Super Best Friends, he remarks that he is "unhappy", and that he "falls asleep to the sound of his own screams".
Butters has been in the show since the beginning, though initially only as a background character who never spoke (except for in the episode "Clubhouses" where he says, "Pass this up") and was referred to in scripts as "Puff Puff" and "Swanson" - Stan refers to him by this name in the opening scene of the Season 2 episode "Conjoined Fetus Lady". His voice can be heard in the original unused South Park theme song. He also is noted for fighting Pip in the early episode, "Weight Gain 4000". Butters had a very small role in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, being the only one to touch Cartman after he saw Asses of Fire and being the flag bearer for La Resistance who tripped. Butters was renamed and properly introduced in the Season 3 episode "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub" alongside Pip and Dougie stuck in a basement during a Meteor Shower Party. He was also featured alongside the boys in a fad idea test in Chinpokomon, and would later become a more prominent and even a main character like he was shown in the brief scene. He was seen sporadically from Season 3 through 5, going from social pariah ("Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub") to mean-spirited bully in "Hooked on Monkey Phonics" (episode 313) (which seems out of character for Butters, but is not entirely unlikely for an emotionally abused child), to abused kid who was constantly being punished and emotionally abused by adults for imaginary insults they believed Butters was engaging in with "How to Eat With Your Butt" (episode 510). This lead him to reclusion and self-loathing.
In the episode "Jared Has Aides" Butters was adopted by Stan, Kyle and Cartman as their fourth friend when Kenny died "permanently" at the end of the fifth season. The writer had given Butters his own spotlight episode as the season five finale to prepare fans for Butters taking Kenny's place on the show. The episode, titled "Butters' Very Own Episode", gave Butters a complicated backstory where his father was outed as being a closet homosexual and his mother, in an act similar to murderer Susan Smith, attempted to drown her son Butters in a fit of madness. They all made up at the end of the episode and nothing came of it. Since then, none of them have mentioned it ever again, most likely choosing to pretend it never happened through denial, with Chris repressing his homosexual tendencies, which would fit the prior psychotic behavior exhibited by the family. Perhaps this explains why Butters is mentally tormented, due to his discovery of his parents' secrets and their continuous abuse. Cartman once addressed Butters' father as "queer-bait" while posing as Butters on the telephone, bringing up Butters' confession to Cartman, Stan and Kyle that his dad was a closet homosexual at the end of "Butters' Very Own Episode".
Butters soon found himself, as the new fourth friend, being put-down and treated like a total outcast by his new friends. Kyle, Stan, and Cartman all openly bullied Butters, telling him how he's not cool like Kenny and that they want Kenny back. Cartman in particular took perverse pleasure in making Butters suffer, to the extent that, in "Freak Strike", he purposely arranged for Butters' parents to physically punish their son by pretending to be Butters on the phone bad-mouthing them, just so he could watch, and commented out loud that, "Aw man, if I was older I would totally start jacking off right now" . Butters did eventually get his revenge on Cartman in the episode "AWESOM-O" in which Cartman, disguised as a robot, is starved, shocked, forced to administer a suppository and exploited for money, only to end up humiliated in front of the entire town with footage of him cross-dressing as Britney Spears and dancing with a cardboard cut-out of Justin Timberlake.
The episodes with Butters as a main character were controversial to say the least; fans who wanted Kenny back hated them while many fans felt a great deal of sympathy towards Butters and his plight. Comedy Central even felt that Parker and Stone had gone too far with their treatment of Butters. In a rare bit of creative interference, the network told Parker and Stone that they were not allowed to do any episodes where Butters was physically abused by his parents and banned "Jared Has Aides" from being shown on the network ever again, though the episode has since been shown in syndication, and is regularly repeated in the U.K. Additionally, it was revealed that Butters was sexually molested by his Uncle Bud in "The Return of Chef" (it has also been implied in other episodes).
Butters would remain on as the fourth member of the gang for four more episodes; two of the episodes continued the plot of Butters being abused but downplayed it and in the case of "Freak Strike", ending the episode just as Butters was about to be beaten (with Cartman being beaten up instead). Ultimately, in the sixth episode of season six, "Professor Chaos", Butters is expelled from the group for being "too lame" and adopts his super-villain alter ego "Professor Chaos" as a means to get revenge against the group and society for rejecting him. Butters would run around for several episodes as Professor Chaos, only to have no one care much about his plots since many of them had, though Butters didn't realize it, already occurred on episodes of the animated series The Simpsons. This caused Butters to have a mental breakdown, before Chef was able to bring him back from the brink. Butters would eventually reveal his secret identity of Professor Chaos to Stan but the reaction he received was much less than he had anticipated as, much like when he committed his acts of chaos, Stan didn't care in the least. At the end of the sixth season, in the episode "My Future Self n' Me", Butters gets revenge on his parents for their abuse of him (culminating in them hiring an actor to pretend to be Butters's future self so as to scare him from doing drugs) by paying Cartman to smear feces all over his house. The act ironically leads to the Stotches to realize how badly they've treated their son and they apologize, an act that is contrasted by Stan Marsh's parents refusing to apologize for them hiring an actor to be Stan's future self, to the extent that they mutilate their actor when Stan tricks them into thinking he chopped off his own hand. Since then, the Stotches have not been shown hurting their son, but do nevertheless continue to seem to be somewhat terrifying to him; once intentionally frightening him with threats of super-AIDS, of which Butters becomes terrified.
The only other consistent thing that seems to trouble Butters is anything that is sticky/gooey. There are many mumbled remarks about items that may potentially come into contact with Butters and he consistently laments that he "hopes they aren't sticky."
Though not anymore a member of the main four's group, Butters was nevertheless kept as a prominent member of the boys' extended circle, and his background and relationship with the boys was explored further. In "Pre-School" their acquaintance is shown to date back to pre-school. In more recent episodes, Kenny's role has declined to an extent due to lack of ideas for the character and Butters has taken on a more prominent role again. Despite their ill-treatment toward him, Butters stays loyal to his friends, perhaps in hopes that they'll accept him. In a way, this has worked as recently there seems to have been some shift in the balance of friendship. The most obvious case of this being in the episode "Tsst", where Butters is calmly playing along with Stan, Kyle and Kenny, with Cartman being much more alienated than usual. In a surprising move, Cartman (with no place to live at the time), despite what he has done to him, asks Butters if he can sleep at his house.
In the episode "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset", Paris Hilton offers Butters's parents US$200 million for him, because all of her pets have committed suicide. She passes out on Butters' bed while the two of them wait for his parents' decision and Butters again shows his naïveté by touching Hilton's vulva, believing it to be an animal that lives down her pants. Eventually, his parents tell Paris that they'll sell him only for US$250 million. Butters tells them that he does not want to go and is eventually allowed to stay, where he is grounded by his parents for costing them the money.
[edit] Talents and Interests
[edit] Dance
As revealed in the episode "You Got F'd in the A", Butters is, or at least was, a very talented tap dancer, but his fondness for dancing was cut short at the National Tap Dancing Championship when Butters' tap dancing set off a chain reaction leading to the death of eight people (nine, including the unborn child within a pregnant victim, and eleven including the suicides that resulted). This freak accident has left Butters quite scarred, although this isn't immediately apparent. In the same episode he was further terrified as his tap shoe again started another fatal chain of events, leading to the death of five rival dancers (and their instructor) who Butters and Stan were set to face in a dance contest. He also seems to have some break-dancing ability, as seen in the episode "Asspen". Additionally, Butters exhibits some impressive free-style dancing ability, dancing to Justin Timberlake's "Rock Your Body" in the episode "Marjorine". He showed off more dance moves at the end of "Hell on Earth 2006" during Satan's party, imitating Michael Jackson.
In the episode "Asspen", Butters is seen dancing in a fashion identical to that of several Peanuts characters.
[edit] Television
It is implied in the episode 4th Grade that Butters knows a surprising amount of Star Trek information, and he may be a "Trekkie". He also watches BET, according to the episode Hell on Earth 2006.
[edit] Music
Butters is often seen singing, usually a disturbing song: "Loo loo loo, I've got some apples, loo loo loo, You've got some too" before he is cut off. When he does finish, the ending is "Loo loo loo, Let's make some applesauce, Take off our clothes and loo loo loo", or "Loo loo loo, Let's get together, I know what we can do loo loo". In Awesom-o he sings about his robot friend in a song that resembles the theme song of "The Courtship of Eddie's Father", and he seems fond of the Chicago ballad "If You Leave Me Now". Apparently, Butters can also play the drums quite proficiently, as he is seen doing so for Cartman's Christian rock group "Faith+1", featured in the episode "Christian Rock Hard". More recently, in the episode "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy", Butters is heard singing a song while using the urinal in the boy's bathroom: "Hey there Mr. Weiner, whaddaya know. Do you need to tinkle tinkle? Yes, I do think so"
In the aforementioned "You Got F'd In The A" episode, Butters tap-dances to a risqué song entitled "I've Got Something In My Front Pocket For You," which features lyrics like "Won't you reach into my pocket and see what it is / Then grab onto it, just for you / Give it a little squeeze and say 'How do you do'", implying an erection.
[edit] General intelligence and memory
Butters' innocence and artlessness pull him easily into Cartman's cruel plans, often not realizing the truth until the end. Butters, however, openly joins and helps with some of Cartman's schemes, and is usually shown doing well at it.
Butters is also shown in "Christian Rock Hard" to be highly talented in mental calculation, instantly supplying the correct answer to 180,000,000 × 12.95, "2,331,000,000". The context suggests this is a talent of Butters' that is well known to the others. (He also tutors Stan, at his request, in "My Future Self n' Me" — although it isn't clear in which subject, possibly more than one.)
In "Cartman's Incredible Gift," he reveals that he knows the Icarus myth.
However, in Go God Go, he did not realise that Cartman may die if frozen in snow for several weeks - he had to get Dougie to inform him of these facts. Again, this may reflect his innocence.
[edit] Art
In episode 417 "A Very Crappy Christmas" where the boys wanted to make a new "original Christmas cartoon", Butters was the one who drew the characters. Butters also shows his artistic talents in "AWESOM-O" drawing a picture of himself and his robot friend (Cartman). In "Kenny Dies", he sends a letter to Kenny in the hospital and it contains a drawing of them both in an airplane with the words "ME AND MY FRIEND KENNY" written above. As well, in the episode "Toilet Paper" where the four boys get into trouble by their teacher, Stan claims that "art is for gaywads" when Butters is seen in the background stating that he loves art class.
[edit] Sports
He played with the rest of the boys on their baseball team in The Losing Edge.
[edit] Professor Chaos
Butters' alter ego is Professor Chaos, a Doctor Doom style supervillain/mad scientist he became when the boys kicked him out of their group. Butters seems to use Professor Chaos to express his repressed carnality in much the same way as Mr. Garrisson used Mr. Hat to express his homosexuality. He spreads chaos with his sidekick General Disarray (a younger, perhaps even geekier character named Dougie) and his minions (his pet hamsters). However, at first, his so-called "mayhem" is very minor: switching soups at Bennigan's, and hiding erasers from a classroom. Butters' Professor Chaos costume consists of a dark green cape, bracers and a helmet. His bracers and helmet are constructed of lightly crumpled aluminum foil. In "Good Times with Weapons", we can see that he visualizes the costume as being much more impressive and making him resemble a cross between Doctor Doom & the Street Fighter character Sagat. His supposed super powers include levitation, immunity to fire, super strength, and more. Although Professor Chaos is supposed to be a secret identity, his cover is somewhat rumbled after Kenny throws a shuriken into his left eye, knocking his mask off. At this point, Butters breaks down crying and screaming in agony.
Early in his career as Professor Chaos, Butters was successful at bringing chaos to his fourth grade classroom when he stole the erasers from the chalkboard. During the process of changing into his Professor Chaos costume Butters was discovered by Dougie. Dougie chose to join Butters as his sidekick, General Disarray, after being eliminated in the boys' quest to find a new fourth member. Together, Professor Chaos and General Disarray hatched evil plots that included trying to flood the world with a garden hose and destroying the ozone layer with aerosol spray. However, soon Butters began coming up with schemes similar to plots from episodes of The Simpsons, which led to Butters having a complete mental breakdown, seeing the characters and places of the show as if they were on The Simpsons. In "My Future Self n' Me", Butters reveals his alter-ego to Stan who, seeing Butters dressed in a silver costume, assumes Butters' big revelation is that he is gay.
In "Krazy Kripples", Professor Chaos and General Disarray join the Legion of Doom, but decide not to get too deeply involved, as a continuation of a running gag in the episode that used actor Christopher Reeve as a plot point. Professor Chaos appears with General Disarray are seen in Go, God. Go! fighting army figures.
[edit] External Links
[edit] References
- ^ South Park episode, AWESOM-O
- ^ VH1 special about the show, VH1 Goes Inside: South Park
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| Main characters | |||||
| Stan Marsh | Kyle Broflovski | Eric Cartman | Kenny McCormick | Butters Stotch | |||||
| Family members | |||||
| Gerald and Sheila Broflovski | Grampa Marsh | Ike | Jimbo Kern | Stuart and Mrs. McCormick | Richard and Mrs. Tweek | Liane Cartman | Randy and Sharon Marsh | Shelley | Stephen and Linda Stotch | Kyle Schwartz | |||||
| List of other South Park residents | |||||
| Big Gay Al | Dr. Doctor | Dr. Mephisto | Mayor McDaniels | Ned Gerblansky | Officer Barbrady | Priest Maxi | Sergeant Yates | Tuong Lu Kim | Mr. Slave | |||||
| South Park Elementary staff and students | |||||
| Students: 6th Graders | Bebe | Clyde | Craig | Dougie | Jimmy | Kevin | Kindergarteners | Pip | Timmy | Token | Tweek | Wendy Staff: Chef | Mr. Adler | Mr. Mackey | Mr. Slave | Mrs. Garrison | Ms. Choksondik | Ms. Crabtree | Nurse Gollum | Principal Victoria |
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| Occasional characters | |||||
| Jesus | Mr. Hankey | Saddam Hussein | Satan | Terrance and Phillip | Towelie | Chef's parents | |||||
| Minor characters | |||||
