BUTTERS STOTCH

'Leopold "Butters" Stotch' (voiced by Matt Stone) is a fictional character in the animated television series ''South Park''; his nickname is a play on the word ''butterscotch''. Butters has a large tuft of blond hair on top of his head, and wears an aquamarine jacket with green pants. His birthday is September 11, after the September 11, 2001 attacks.^[1] Having a birthday that's the same day as a national tragedy is one of the many misfortunes Butters has suffered. Butters speaks with a distinctive stuttering Southern accent, and has a wholesome attitude despite suffering greatly at the hands of his friends and family. The character is loosely based on ''South Park'' director of animation Eric Stough, who Parker and Stone regarded as a "goody-goody" because of his reluctance to offend.^[2]
The creators have said in multiple DVD commentaries that Butters is one of their "top 3 favorite characters". Butters is directly referenced as the inspiration for the nickname of ''Veronica Mars'' character Vincent "Butters" Clemmons.''

Contents

Personality

Family

Character history

Talents and interests

Dance

Television

Music

General intelligence and memory

Sexual knowledge and sexual interests

Art

Sports

Gaming

Professor Chaos

References

Personality

Unlike nearly all ''South Park'' characters, he avoids profanity, instead using phrases such as "Aw, hamburgers" or "Son of a biscuit". Butters is occasionally portrayed as being insane, and has stated that he goes to sleep and wakes up to the sound of his own screams. Of course, this could be due in part to the severe emotional and physical abuse he has endured from his parents and others.
In the episode "Raisins", Butters first falls in love with a girl, only to end up heartbroken when he realizes that she is just using him for money. Stan is also heartbroken for the loss of his first love Wendy. Stan dons a pessimistic, antisocial attitude. Though Butters is equally sad, he tells Stan that such immense sadness only comes after losing immense happiness, and it makes him feel alive to know he loved someone that much.

Family

Stephen (referred to as 'Chris' in the episode "Butters' Very Own Episode") and Linda Stotch, are very authoritarian and strict Catholics. Stephen and Linda are often psychologically abusive to Butters, such as recurrent berating and grounding him for things that are entirely beyond his control (e.g., in How to Eat with Your Butt for having an "unappealing" face), but they have also physically beaten him up in Jared Has Aides. This has evidently affected Butters psychologically, as he often tells himself off when his parents are not around to do it. It is also hinted that the justification for this abuse lacks sound foundation, with Butters saying "If I dress up as a dog with a star in my eye, I'm gonna get grounded!" ^[3] In the episode "Marjorine," as Butters pretends to threaten suicide, Stephen yells up to him "just come down now, son; we promise not to ground you for more than a couple weeks." Other examples of the abuse Butters has received from his parents include his mother trying to drown him in a car when she wants to commit suicide ^[4], being physically beaten after Eric Cartman prank calls his parents ^[5], and being sold to Paris Hilton for $250 million. ^[6]
Butters is scared of his dominating and threatening father, whom he refers to as "Sir". His father uses fear as his primary parenting tactic with Butters, once intentionally frightening him with threats of super-AIDS. His habitual, reflexive harshness towards Butters can be seen in "Butters' Very Own Episode", when Butters greets his parents as they are agonizing over the difficulty of covering up his apparent murder, his father immediately reprimands him, saying "Not now, Butters," before recognizing that his son is alive and his wife is not a murderer. Linda, however, has been shown to be much more tender to her son, hugging and kissing him often. She seems to go along with Stephen's harshness believing that it is for the best of her son.
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' future self so as to scare him from doing drugs) by paying Cartman to smear faeces all over his house. The act leads the Stotches to realize how badly they've treated their son and they apologize.

Character history

Butters has been in the show since the beginning, though initially only as a background character who rarely spoke and was referred to in scripts as "Poof Poof" and "Swanson" - Stan refers to him by this name in the opening scene of the season 2 episode "Conjoined Fetus Lady". Butters had a very small role in the feature film '', 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 seen sporadically from seasons 3 to 5, going from social pariah ("Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub") to mean-spirited bully in "Hooked on Monkey Phonics" (which seems out of character for Butters, but is not entirely unlikely for an emotionally abused child), to abused child 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." This led 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 writers 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 an experimenter with homosexual activities, 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.
Butters found himself, as the new fourth friend, being put down and treated like an outcast by his new friends. Kyle, Stan, and Cartman all openly bullied Butters, telling him how he's not cool like Kenny. ^[7] Cartman in particular took perverse pleasure in making Butters suffer, to the extent that, in "Jared Has Aides", 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". Cartman often manipulates Butters to do whatever he wishes.
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. ^[8]
Though not any more a member of the main four's group, Butters was nevertheless kept as a prominent member of the boys' extended circle. Despite their ill-treatment towards him, Butters stays loyal to his friends, perhaps in hope 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. There is no doubt that the three of them prefer Butters to Eric and are by no means advocates of his mistreatment of Butters. This was shown in "Cartman Sucks" when Cartman shows them his photo album of debasing photos he has taken of Butters while he is asleep. Stan, Kyle, and Kenny do not find the photo collection in the slightest bit amusing and rather feel annoyed that they have been dragged to Eric's house just to see them.
In "Casa Bonita" Kyle decides to take Butters with him on his birthday to Casa Bonita, but when Butters goes missing, Kyle also postpones his birthday until he is found. Cartman had led Butters to believe that a meteor is going to strike the Earth, and kept Butters down in a bomb shelter for three days before transferring him to an abandoned refrigerator to be taken to the dump so that he can go to Casa Bonita with Kyle, who was also manipulated into allowing Cartman to go with him if Butters didn't show up. In the episode "Quest for Ratings", Butters gets high on cough syrup and goes streaking. 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 and having sex with a cardboard cut-out of Justin Timberlake. Cartman's most recent attempt to mock Butters with a photograph backfires horribly, but this is due to Cartman losing the photo and his subsequent paranoia that Kyle will humiliate him with the picture since Kyle tried to stop Butters from being humiliated by Cartman.
Despite their history, Butters has recently taken on the role as Cartman's sidekick. Cartman often takes advantage of Butters' niceness and desire to be accepted in order to fulfill his schemes.

Talents and interests

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 a freak accident caused by 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 two relations of the deceased who committed suicide after the incident). 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, particularly in a manner similar to that of 555 95472 from ''A Charlie Brown Christmas''.

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". As stated in "My Future Self n' Me", Butters is not a fan of ''Becker''. Butters' future self is constantly watching the show, which present Butters calls "stupid."

Music

Butters is often seen singing, usually a 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 apple sauce, take off our clothes and loo loo loo" (as heard on "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset"), or "Loo loo loo, let's get together, I know what we can do loo loo", which, either way, could be a strange euphemism for sexual intercourse.
Butters often sings a song to himself about brushing his teeth, although most of the words are unintelligible due to the fact that he is usually brushing his teeth at the same time.
In the episode "Erection Day", Butters participates in the South Park Elementary talent show, singing his "Loo Loo Loo" song, but halfway through the song he forgets the words and consequently ends up wetting his pants.
In "Something You Can Do with Your Finger", Butters auditions for Fingerbang by singing "Little Bunny Foo-Foo". 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". In the season five episode, "Butters Very Own Episode," his theme song "Everybody Knows It's Butters" is a play off a song from 1967 called "Windy" by The Association.
In "You Got F'd in the A", in the flashback of the horrible accident Butters caused during the championship competition, the song Butters dances to is an upbeat, yet obviously 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'".
In the episode "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy" (a.k.a. "Nice"), Butters is heard singing a song while using the urinal in the boys' toilet: "Hey there Mr. Weiner, whaddaya know? Do you need to tinkle tinkle? Yes, I do think so".
And more recently, in the episode "Cartman Sucks," Butters sings Joni Mitchell's song "Help Me" while playing with his army figurines.
Also in the episode "The Losing Edge" he sings a song: "I see a ladybug / Hello little ladybug."

General intelligence and memory

Butters is 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.
In "Professor Chaos," Butters manages to override the imaging at a baseball stadium and broadcast a doomsday threat to the audience, reflecting a high degree of intelligence, or at least developed hacking abilities. Despite this, the next phase of his plan for "destruction" is very childish and not well thought out, though he still manages to convince his audience that the world will end.
However, in "Go God Go", he did not realize that Cartman may die if frozen in snow for several weeks - he had to get Dougie to inform him of these facts. However, this may reflect his innocence, his deference to Cartman's judgement, or he is a mathematical prodigy and, while extremely talented in mathematical computation does not necessarily possess scientific or even commonplace knowledge.
He also fails to realize that his "girlfriend" from the Raisins restaurant (a parody of Hooters) is not actually his girlfriend just because she touched him, also failing to notice that she does not know his name, only "spends time with him" by inviting him back to Raisins to "hang out", and doesn't listen or pay attention to anything he is saying.

Sexual knowledge and sexual interests

Butters is seen getting an erection in "The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers", whilst watching a pornographic film (Backdoor Sluts 9) that Stan's parents accidentally got mixed up with a video tape of The Lord of the Rings. Butters showed a great deal of interest in this film, claiming it to be "his precious" (an obvious reference to the character Gollum).
Butters also has some knowledge of sex itself, as seen in "Erection Day", where he explains to Jimmy about the concept of putting his penis in a girl's vagina, and also in "Casa Bonita" where he tells the lady at the dump that they can repopulate the Earth. However, in "Erection Day", Butters explains intercourse in quite a childish way saying that the penis "sneezes milk into the lady's tummy and the man loses interest in the lady." This might reflect what he had seen in the porno from "The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers".
However, in the episode "Proper Condom Use", Butters doesn't know what STDs are (but neither do the rest of the boys, so this can be forgiven) and in "Cartman Sucks", Butters seems to be oblivious to what it means to be bi-curious (though in "Butters' Very Own Episode", it's implied that he knew after he spied on his father) and doesn't understand the sexual connotations behind underwear when his 'accountabilabuddy' got caught with a Sears men's underwear catalog from 1979.
Butters also masturbated for the first time in the episode "Lil' Crime Stoppers", when after two days of Cartman telling him to "pull on his weiner until white stuff comes out", he finally succeeds by thinking about "Stan's mom's boobs".
Butters has been sexually abused. When an official is demonstrating the "stuff" Chef may have done to them during the episode "The Return of Chef", one demonstration was licking the doll's crotch. Butters immediately replies that "My uncle Buck did that to me once!"
In the episode, "The Death of Eric Cartman", his parents take him to a doctor to receive treatment for his psychological problems, because they think he has been trashing the house (although it is Cartman doing this). The treatment he is given consists of a large machine forcefully sticking a probe up his anus and pulling it out, repeatedly. Butters is clearly shaken by the whole experience.
In the episode where Paris Hilton visits South Park, Butters is interested by the "squishy thing" between Paris' legs and repeatedly pokes at her vagina. ^[6]
In the episode "Marjorine" Cartman tells Butters to "just roll with it" if the girls start "lezzing out" to which Butters replies "Lezzing out, wha what's lezzing out?" Later when the girls start to do "Light as a feather stiff as a board" Butters asks the group if they're going to start lezzing out.

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 aircraft 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. Briefly in the episode "It Hits the Fan" Kyle interrupts Butters tagging a building with chalk with his name in the style of a well-practiced graffiti artist.

Sports

He played with the rest of the boys, as the center fielder, on their baseball team in "The Losing Edge". He was also number 99 on the dodge ball team in "Conjoined Fetus Lady" and is also seen playing football with the others in "Raisins". In "Butters' Very Own Episode" one of the lines in the theme tune states that Butters loves John Elway (this was also alluded to in the episode "The Wacky Molestation Adventure" when Butters is excited that he's going to be sacrificed to the John Elway statue during Carousel).

Gaming

When the boys hold a meeting in order to discuss their battle plans in "Make Love, Not Warcraft", Butters reveals that even though he's been turning on his computer the whole day long, he wasn't playing ''World of Warcraft'' but instead the fictional ''Hello Kitty Island Adventure''. When he does enter the game (after recieving a death threat from Cartman), he signs in as Dwarf character similar to Cartman's own, but was forced to switch to a Gnome after Cartman proclaims that "you can't be the Dwarf, Butters - ''I'm'' the Dwarf.". He later gets set on fire by Jenkins the griefer and is not seen playing ''WoW'' since then.

Professor Chaos

Butters' alter ego is ''Professor Chaos'', a supervillain/mad scientist that appears to be inspired by Marvel super-villains Doctor Doom and Magneto. He adopted this personality after the boys kick him out of their group in the episode "Professor Chaos".
Butters seems to use Professor Chaos to express his repressed rage, in much the same way as Mr. Garrison used Mr. Hat to express his closet homosexuality. He spreads chaos with his sidekick General Disarray (a younger, perhaps even geekier character named Dougie) and his "minions" (his pet hamsters). However, their "mayhem" is initially very minor: sabotaging soup orders at Bennigan's and hiding chalkboard erasers from a classroom, for example. Although they develop more sinister plans, such as flooding the Earth with a garden hose, the group has yet to succeed in exacting revenge upon society.
Butters' Professor Chaos costume consists of a dark green cape, bracers, and a helmet: all self-made. His bracers and helmet are constructed of lightly crumpled aluminum foil with a red jewel in the helmet. In the episode "Good Times with Weapons" he turns into an anime version of Professor Chaos, demonstrating he sees his alter-ego as much more intimidating and powerful than he actually is. Butters plays into the "ninja" game the boys are playing (although they do not know it is him), only to get a ninja star (thrown by an anime Kenny) stuck in his eye, at which point the game instantly ends to show the real Butters in horrible pain. Many assumed this was the end of Professor Chaos. This was dispelled in the episode "Go God Go!" during season ten. Butters and Dougie were seen in their alter-egos Professor Chaos and General Disarray.
Professor Chaos and General Disarray were also indicted into Christopher Reeve's Legion of Doom in the episode "Krazy Kripples".

References

1. ''South Park'' episode "AWESOM-O"
2. VH1 special about the show ''VH1 Goes Inside: South Park''
3. "Good Times with Weapons"
4. "Butters' Very Own Episode"
5. "Jared Has Aides"
6. "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset"
7. "Freak Strike"
8. "My Future Self n' Me"
9. "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset"