Since the dawn of fandom, television viewers have been cherry-picking moments shared between their favorite characters and insisting that there is some subtext of romance and/or explicit sexual energy. ’Shipping, as it’s known, often goes hand-in-hand with dedicated social media accounts, endless fan-fiction, and DeviantArt pages so X-rated they’ll make you go blind. Along with all that fun, of course, you need at least a trace of textual evidence.
In the first episode of his new series Investigation: Animation, YouTube user and avid South Park fan Johnny 2 Cellos presents his evidence for why he thinks Eric Cartman is actually in love with long-time rival Kyle Broflovski. The whole theory stems from the idea that when little kids like somebody they’re usually mean to them, which assumes that the characters in South Park ever act like normal kids. But the sexual nature of much of Cartman’s aggression toward Kyle does certainly hint at something more.
As Johnny mentions this theory is already well recognized in the South Park fandom and even has it’s own unfortunate portmanteau: Kyman. This is not to be confused with Style (Stan + Kyle), or Clutters (Clyde + Butters), or Twenny (Tweek + Kenny), or Ranald (Randy + Gerald), or literally dozens of other forced romances. So, whether you believe this particular fan theory or not, just keep watching the show and apparently you’ll start to think everyone wants to have sex with everyone.