Sandbox / South Park: Randy Marsh

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Randy Marsh

"Stanley, you call your friend an asshole this instant!"

"You're a lousy kid! I wish Jaden Smith was my son!"

Voiced in English by: Trey Parker

Voiced in Latin American Spanish by: Rolando Felizola (Seasons 1-16a and 2007-2011 redubs), Alejandro Toro (Seasons 16b-19 and 2015 redub), Ledner Belisario (Season 20 onwards and 2016 redub), Carlos del Campo (Mexican dub), unknown (Warner Bigger, Longer & Uncut dub), Hugo Navarrete (Paramount Bigger, Longer & Uncut dub)

Debut: "Volcano"

Stan's dad, a geologist (and thus the only non-mad scientist in South Park; sometimes) turned cannabis farmer. Deficient in common sense, but makes up for it with great passion and enthusiasm for... well, whatever happens to be the focus of the episode. The de facto leader of the town whenever they face a threat. He tends to be the main character in storylines involving the adults of South Park, and thus is the adult figure that most interacts with the boys in the main plot.

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A-K

• Abusive Parents: If there was any doubt before, he's become very much this of the emotional kind once the family moves to Tegridy Farms. He constantly belittles his family for not wanting to be involved in the business and ignores their own activities and needs in favour of getting high. It gets to the point where Stan and Shelley are positively gleeful about the prospect of Randy being given a lengthy prison sentence.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: A lot of Randy's dumbest actions come from him being completely and utterly wasted. He can be pretty stupid on his own, but whenever he's drunk or high he's prone to much more self-destructive and erratic behavior. Notable instances include punching out his own boss, getting into brawls with other parents at Little League games, and being arrested at one point for driving drunk and insulting the cop who stopped him once he realized Randy was drunk.
• The Alcoholic: Not as worse as Stuart, but he is frequently shown drunk. The plot of "Bloody Mary" focuses on him going to A.A., though they are useless, teaching him he is powerless to the "disease of alcoholism". Encouraged by Stan, he tries to learn discipline and self-control, but he continues to have unhealthy drinking habits, though he is in complete denial over having a drinking problem when confronted.
• Alcoholic Parent: The whole Marsh family has been revealed to have addictive tendencies. Marvin is a gambler, though at one point Stan also called him an alcoholic – something that Randy has inherited. He is frequently seen drinking, sometimes casually, sometimes engaging in binge drinking, often leading to irresponsible and stupid behavior. In one episode he gets a DUI, has to attend AA meetings, where instead of taking responsibility and controlling his behavior, he is told he has a "disease." At the end of the episode, Stan encourages him to learn discipline and self-control, but it doesn't stick, and Randy denies having an alcohol problem at all when Stan and Sharon confront him about it in "Freemium Isn’t Free".
• All Men Are Perverts: He's very into porn, masturbating and has some very disturbing fetishes.
  • A major part of "Overlogging" is the fact that he wants to masturbate, but can't without extreme Internet fetish porn.
  • In "Crème Fraiche", he masturbates to cooking shows. It Makes Just as Much Sense in Context.
  • In "Pandemic Special", Randy's "cure" for COVID-19 (which he unwittingly caused by having sex with a pangolin) is by jacking off into his weed and having people smoke it. However, this results in many people suddenly growing a mustache just like his.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: The show's crowning example of this trope, when accounting for the other degrees of uselessness of the adults. Highlights include: going out of his way to pick fights at Stan's Little League games, blurting out the N-word on Wheel of Fortune, and ejaculating a gallon of semen all over a mobile computer room after watching porn.
• Angry White Man: In season 26 Randy gets in the habit of using the word "woke" to describe things that don't appeal to him.
• Ascended Extra: Originally he was just Stan's dad, but nowadays it's not unheard of to have entire episodes focused on Randy with the boys relegated to background characters.
• The Atoner:
  • Near the end of Season 19, when he finally came to realize that South Park's gentrification was doing more harm than good (with some help from a beatdown courtesy of Caitlyn Jenner), he pledged to help undo the damage he helped cause.
  • In Season 23, when Towelie (and legal trouble) demonstrated how unethical his business had become, he makes some genuine efforts to return to the roots of Tegridy.
• Author Avatar: Trey Parker has said that Randy has become more prominent, due to the fact that he has started to get older and identifies with the character more. This is most clear during the Tegridy Farms arc, where his marijuana business is often used as an allegory for the show itself and seems to reflect the creators' creative process (such as in "Christmas Snow" when he struggles to come up with a good product in time for Christmas).
• Ax-Crazy:
  • In "T.M.I.", he goes insane and is the spearhead of the movement to take over the Federal Express.
  • In Season 23, he becomes increasingly fixated on his Tegridy Farms profits, to the point that he starts committing murder in an effort to help boost sales.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: In Season 22 Randy fancied himself and Towelie to be the sole legal drug company with integrity, and crusaders against big business. In Season 23, he becomes just as unethical as the other drug companies, if not more so.
• Becoming the Mask:
  • In "Sarcastaball," he loses control over his ability to be sarcastic and can't stop doing it.
  • Lorde was originally just an excuse to use the girls' bathroom.
• Been There, Shaped History: Double Subverted. In "The Pandemic Special", it initially seems like he and Mickey Mouse had caused the COVID-19 Pandemic when the two of them had sex with a bat, resulting in Randy becoming patient zero. Then it turns out that the actual cause of the disease was a pangolin... that they also had sex with.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: During a bender in China, he had sex with a bat and a pangolin, which somehow, created the COVID-19 virus.
• Berserk Button: The multiple people he fought at every baseball game he went to are this to him.
• Big Bad: Of Season 23, until he has a Heel Realization in "Season Finale". He becomes part of the Big Bad Ensemble in "The Pandemic Special", due to having created COVID-19 and his attempts to cure it making things worse.
• Big Bad Slippage: He started off as a simple Marijuana peddler, but his greed starts consuming him making him commit unethical crimes to increase his business and effectively becomes the Big Bad for Season 23.
• Big "NO!": Does Picard's and Vader's, with the sound taken directly from Star Trek: First Contact and Revenge of the Sith.
• Big "OMG!": He gets two separate big "oh my god"s when he realizes every senior citizen in town is driving at the same time.
• Body Horror: In "Medicinal Fried Chicken", he deliberately gives himself testicular cancer so he can legally buy weed, which causes his balls to swell up to such a ridiculous size he has to carry them around in a wheelbarrow. Eventually they get so big he can't even fit them through the door of the weed dispensary.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Particularly when he's drunk, Randy will very loudly challenge people to fights and boast about his combat prowess. He's not joking either; he's a very competent brawler who is dangerously good at slugging it out.
• Breakout Character: Randy has become increasingly more important lately due to a mix of popularity and Trey Parker identifying with Randy more as he gets older.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Played with. Randy is genuinely intelligent and talented in various fields, but he rarely thinks his actions through and his decisions tend to be erratic at best.
• Bumbling Dad: His stupidity embarrasses Stan at every turn, whether it's well-intentioned or selfishly motivated.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite his obvious quirks, he is good at his job as a geologist. He also proves to be an excellent musician and agriculturist during his stints as Lorde and the owner of Tegridy Farms respectively.
• Butt-Monkey: Seems to have gained this status to a certain extent in Season 21, where more and more people view him with contempt and regard his antics strictly as being immature and absurd, and treat him accordingly. Sharon even seems to call him out on his selfish behavior much more often.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: In the episode "Overlogging" Randy has gone for weeks without masturbating to Internet porn, eventually near the end he sneaks into the camp's computer room, looks at a bunch of perverted things, and eventually ejaculates all over the room, everyone comes in thinking he was grunting in pain and with his pants down, he tells them that he was doing that because "a ghost was attacking him and left his ectoplasm everywhere".
• Cerebus Retcon: "You're Getting Old" sheds some very harsh light on Randy's zany moments. It turns out the reason he's been acting increasingly bizarre is because he's suffering depression and wants to distract himself from his humdrum existence.
• Character Catchphrase: "Stan? Staaan?", "Hey, Sharon," "(Oh my) Gawl!", "Well, that sucks", "Score!", and a few of his son's.
  • In Season 23, he gains two new ones, "Hey, fuck you," and "It just so happens" when he finds a new chance to sell his weed.
• Character Development: Over the course of the Tegridy Farms arc, Randy becomes increasingly abrasive and immoral. Even after he gives up the business, he's still generally depicted as more of a Jerkass.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • He used to be the more laid back of the Marshes earlier on, and one of the saner adults overall. Now... not so much...
  • While his political views were subject to Depending on the Writer, Randy was primarily depicted as a condescending limousine liberal during the show's early seasons. By Season 26, he's depicted as an Angry White Man and an Andrew Tate fanboy who complains about wokeness.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Especially during the obsession phases, but even outside of that Randy's out there even by South Park standards. He's prone to nonsensical and poorly thought-out Zany Schemes, has utterly bizarre fetishes (including for cooking shows, of all things), and is generally completely divorced from reality on a good day.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: In Season 23, after Tegridy Farms becomes a successful weed company and a major corporation, he becomes greedy and unethical, committing countless murders for Tegridy to thrive and engaging in numerous unethical business ventures, like selling vegetarian burgers made out of the unusable parts of weed to the citizens of South Park and selling weed to the Chinese government so they can plant them on student protesters to arrest them.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Randy is certainly an excellent marijuana farmer, as everyone who tries his Tegridy Farms weed loves it for being a quality product. However, it's shown that when it comes to the actual business end of the farm, he's completely incompetent as he drives up the costs with unnecessary and expensive expenditures that cut into his profits. Things get worse after Steve Black starts a competing farm, as Randy is continually outmatched by Steve's business acumen.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite his dim-witted nature, he's demonstrated multiple times to be a highly competent brawler.
• Deadpan Snarker: Speeds faster than a jet in "Sarcastaball".
• Depending on the Writer: Randy frequently alternates between being a liberal and a conservative. He'll act smug and self-righteous about his position irregardless, but which side he's schilling depends on the plot of the episode.
• Dirty Coward: In "Fantastic Easter Special", he gets captured and interrogated by the American Catholic League's ninjas over the location of a rabbit, which he gave to his son to hide in a good place. When they ask him where it is, he responds:
  I don't know, and even if I did know then... I'd probably just tell you because I don't want to be here anymore.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Though it appears that Randy will become the Big Bad for Season 23, he gets a Heel Realization in "Season Finale" where he reforms and becomes Out of Focus for the rest of the season, while a Big Bad Shuffle will occur between Heather Swanson and Clark Malkinson and eventually Santa Clause becomes the Final Boss.
• Doting Parent: Even at some of his least sane moments, he absolutely adores both his kids and often goes to outrageous lengths whenever he thinks they need help, even if they'd disagree, usually for good reason.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Randy had a different look back in Season 1, most notably in his hairstyle. He was remodeled into his permanent design come his first Season 2 episode, "Chickenlover". He also has no eyebrows in "Volcano".
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Randy can be impulsive, but he was creeped out by Mr. Jefferson's inappropriately childish behavior.
  • In "Broadway Bro-Down" (wherein musicals use heavy subtext for women to want to give men blowjobs) he freaks out when Shelley goes to see one with her new boyfriend. He is also disgusted when an elderly man says he's trying to enjoy the musical with his young granddaughter.
  • Even he thinks Bob White is a delusional blowhard that treats his kids like shit.
  • He actively ignores the annoying Jerseyites like the plague, only starting to get violent with them when they mindlessly take over the country.
  • Along with everyone else, he's shocked and appalled by the Japanese slaughtering dolphins and whales.
• Expy: Season 23 turns him into one of Walter White, both being scientists who began selling drugs with the help of a partner and justifies it and the horrible crimes he commits to sell the drugs as providing for his family. The only difference is that the drugs Randy sells are legal, and he lacks most of the intelligence Walter has.
• Face–Heel Turn: While Randy was always something of a Jerkass, his selfishness and immaturity reach their apex in Season 23, where he becomes a monstrously self-centered asshole whose redeeming qualities are gradually outweighed by his own ambitions.
• Fan Disservice: Being a middle-aged alcoholic, Randy's not in the best of shape. Doesn't stop him from getting into various scenarios where he loses his clothes, occasionally going as far as to expose his penis where children can see it.
• Fetish: Randy has some really odd fetishes like Japanese girls puking on each other, bestiality, and so forth. Oh, and murder porn, but every adult in South Park seems to be into that.
• Fetishes Are Weird: Randy's numerous bizarre and disturbing fetishes are used to paint him as a perverted moron and deviant, and highlight how he's very much stuck in his teenage years despite being well into his middle-age.
• Fallen Hero: He went from the hero that drove Jeff Bezos out of South Park in Season 22, into becoming just as amoral, corrupt, and greedy as Bezos, if not more.
• Flanderization:
  • Randy started out as one of the smartest characters on the show. His 'wild side' stemmed from a desire to connect with his son, and he simply failed to grasp the idea of fads changing rapidly, a frequent plot point in South Park. As the series progresses, he evolves into a hyperactive, extremely paranoid and idiotic Manchild.
  • Even within his earlier stupid bouts, he was still usually a Knight Templar Parent, genuinely having the best intentions for Stan and only spearheading the same hysteria the other parents succumbed to. From about Season 9 onward however, Randy's motives became more selfish and childish, having his family in collateral damage for whatever fad he takes to and leaving even the other brain-dead residents of South Park dumbfounded by his behavior.
  • Season 23 flanderizes him again by upping his selfishness, neglectfulness, and stupidity to insane degrees, essentially turning him into the adult version of Cartman.
• Foil:
  • Stan, the sanest kid, has the craziest parent.
  • To his Closer to Earth wife Sharon, see Mars and Venus Gender Contrast.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: By the time of The Streaming Wars special, the entire town has become so fed up with his obnoxious behavior that they've all started calling him "Karen" to his face.
• Genius Ditz: He is a brilliant scientist and is capable of a lot of amazing musical feats (culminating in being Lorde), but otherwise he's an alcoholic with barely any common sense.
• Good Parents: Before taking a level in jerkass, Randy was quite a Doting Parent who wholeheartedly loved his kids. Later seasons depict him as emotionally abusive and cruel even to his own children, and obsessed with forcing Stan to adopt Randy's toxic masculinity.
• The Heavy: Randy serves as this for Season 23. Most of the conflict in the season can be traced back to Randy's antics where commits more and more crimes to preserve his drug business. Even when Santa serves as the Final Boss for the season, Randy would still be this as his decision to sell cocaine to the adults is what drives the plot for the episode.
• Heel Realization:
  • While in prison for the bombings he committed, withdrawal from his weed results in him realizing he's become a monster and been a Jerkass to his family. He resolves to let himself go to prison and accept the consequences for his behavior, and even after being set free, he resolves to stick to small-scale farming.
  • In The Pandemic Special it seems to have become a downplayed Ignored Epiphany; Tegridy Farms is still a big business and he humblebrags about how the pandemic has caused his business to expand, but he made the Pandemic Special because he genuinely wanted to help people take their minds off the pandemic and give them a sense of normalcy. When he learns that he had caused the pandemic, while still covering it up, he does genuinely try to cure it.
  • It's fully subverted in Post Covid, which shows he went back to his old ways sometime after and became obsessed with Tegridy Farms once again.
  • It's finally played straight in The Streaming Wars, where after realizing he's become a Karen he gives up on Tegridy Farms and goes back to his old job.
• Hidden Depths:
  • His talent as a musician is impressive as he was in a successful boy band, writes and edits his own song as Lorde, and is a very competent guitar player, as seen in "Guitar Queer-O".
  • As his management of Tegridy Farms shows, he’s also fairly knowledgeable of agriculture as he produces a good deal of marijuana that actually becomes fairly popular. If he wasn’t always blowing money on some dumb marketing gimmick, he’d likely be very rich from the farm’s profits.
• His Own Worst Enemy: Season 23 shows that Tegridy Farms would be printing money were it not for Randy's insistence on throwing away money on unnecessary, expensive marketing gimmicks.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His idea to make the town more PC and get wholesale foods ended up making everything so expensive that it's no longer possible for the Marshes to live in South Park. As usual Randy blames someone else until Caitlyn Jenner beats him up.
• Hypocrite: Randy is frequently the most hypocritical character in the show. He yells at Stan for having an addiction to freemium games while denying any addiction to alcohol.
• Idiot Houdini: Thus far, Randy doesn't seem to have learned any real lessons from being an idiot. He also tends to get off scot-free whenever his actions are motivated by well-meaning stupidity; it's when he's deliberately being a Jerkass that he gets struck with Laser-Guided Karma for the most part.
• Ignored Epiphany: In Season 23, after breaking off his partnership with MedMen and the Chinese government and vowing to stop being greedy and return Tegridy Farms to its roots, the very next episode has him sell vegetarian burgers made of the unusable parts of weed (which still get people high) and run every other restaurant in South Park out of business by taking away their customers.
• Insufferable Imbecile: Despite being an educated scientist (a geologist, to be exact), he often acts like an incredibly airheaded and selfish Manchild. His tendency to impulsively engage in crazy antics to satisfy his hedonistic desires caused endless grief for his wife and children, often stubbornly and willfully ignorant to their protests.
• It's All About Me: In newer episodes, Randy is far more likely to be self-obsessed and selfish, stubbornly refusing to listen to anyone else. In Season 23, he thinks anyone who has the same business idea as him should give it up and let him reap all the profits. Also, whenever the rest of the family makes it clear they don't enjoy living/working on Tegridy Farms and want to go back to their old life, he accuses them of not caring about the family.
• Jaded Washout: He was once in a boy band, got fired because he aged out at 19, and was mocked by the town once he returned. He has also had dreams of being a proper rock star that never went anywhere, at least until he became Lorde.
• Jerkass: At his worst, he can be a spoilt, irrational Manchild who often disregards his son to erupt into chaos over everything. He's at his worst throughout Season 23 up to The Streaming Wars, where his increased egomania and rampant weed addiction cause his worst traits to take over.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Aside from the insane things he has been a part of, he is a normal, well-meaning father. He can be selfish but he has shown that he genuinely loves his wife and children. This fades away during Season 23, as he grows increasingly selfish and cruel, before he starts zigzagging between being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and a total Jerkass as he has numerous Heel Realizations, then forgets about them after a while, then has another one, rinse and repeat.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: While generally a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Randy descends into this territory in Season 23. His propensity for get-rich-quick schemes and his general selfishness overwhelm his love for his family with him being downright emotionally abusive toward them at times, and most of his genuine moments of humanity are subverted by him doing something cruel and unethical. He mostly reverts back to his old self after having a Heel Realization in "Midseason Finale".
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: While Randy was always prone to acting like a Jerkass and causing chaos through his various zany (and often illegal) antics, Season 23 sees him descent into increasingly unethical, almost Cartman-like behavior on the regular. He mostly reverts back to normal after "Midseason Finale", although he remains much more acerbic afterward for a while.
• Karma Houdini:
  • He becomes one of these in Season 23, where he gets away with selling out to the Chinese government by killing Winnie The Pooh, letting them use his weed to frame student protesters, and killing numerous homegrown weed owners to get a monopoly on the weed business, at least until Post Covid....
  • Played straight and Double Subverted in the revised future, where everyone forgives him for starting Covid and, even at the very end of the bad future, taking credit for having sex with the pangolin in every timeline despite it absolving Clyde for being selfish and time traveling specifically to aid Randy's whims as an excuse, and making Kenny's lucidity-induced research harder to fill without any bystanders other than Tolkien and Stan, effectively dooming the town even more. Had Stan not thought to do multiple Diving Saves on Kyle in each timeline while filtering (and later fully repairing) the current one through blackmailing Heather Williams and helping to "cut each other some slack", they would have been stuck there.
• Karma Houdini Warranty:
  • In “Let Them Eat Goo”, him unethically murdering cattle causes him to lose his customers when the Goo Man shows a video tape of it to the whole town, turning everyone against him.
  • In Post Covid, his dreams are destroyed when Stan burns down his barn, and he's trapped in a miserable nursing home for decades.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Randy Taking a Level in Jerkass following Season 23 is accompanied by people becoming increasingly sick of his antics and him being subject to increased misfortune.

L-W

• Large Ham: Randy pretty much embodies this trope. He's prone to melodramatic fits and loud screaming at the drop of a hat.
• Lethally Stupid: He even accidentally killed his daughter’s boyfriend!
• Manchild: Randy has the intelligence of an adult, yet the behavior of a child.
  • These traits show in his taste for children's programs: he's the only adult thinking "Terrance and Philip" is Actually Pretty Funny in the first season, his son surprises him laughing at an episode in the second, and after having watched a single episode of "Chinpokomon", he feels the sudden urge to catch them all.
  • That being said, his taste in music is standard for someone of his generation, as he hears literal shit when listening to tween wave and doesn't badmouth music from the '70s until the kids start calling it lame.
  • "You're Getting Old" gives a darker tone to it, revealing this is a response to him being unhappy with his current life.
• Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: With his wife, Sharon. Sharon is generally far more levelheaded and less impulsive than her husband, with a much more restrained wild side. Increasingly, she becomes the only real adult in the house, with Randy devolving more and more into a man-child.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He has this reaction after realizing what an ass he's been throughout Season 23.
• Never My Fault: While he shares this with the other adults, he's by far the worst offender. He almost never acknowledges his fault in anything, and childishly clings to his own delusions. Subverted in the midseason finale of Season 23, where he realizes that his going to prison is a consequence of his own actions, and after how much of a Jerkass he's been, he decides to face the consequences with grace. During his trial he apologizes to his family for what he's done (except Shelley, who he forgot exists), and after getting set free he resolves to stick to small-scale farming.
  • In the Bad Future he blames Stan for the deaths of Sharon and Shelly, even though it was Randy's obsession with selling weed that drove the whole family towards such extreme circumstances.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Randy's fetishes are bizarre and disturbing at best. He's expressed a predilection for Japanese girls puking on each other, bestiality, hentai, and a laundry load of others.
• Not Himself: Downplayed. Much of Randy's increasingly cruel and amoral behavior throughout Season 23 is caused by his rampant weed addiction severely impairing his thought process. By his own admission, a lot of it is down to his own natural egotism, but his addiction kept him from seeing how bad he'd gotten until it was nearly too late.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: In Season 23 he justifies his murders and unethical and underhanded business ventures as him doing desperate things to provide for his family. However, its clear that Tegridy Farms has more than enough money to thrive and his family would be more than happy to leave, but Randy just wants to live his dream of being a weed farmer and is just greedy and wants a monopoly on the business. Also, most of Tegridy Farms’ genuine money problems are caused by him spending massive amounts of money to make expensive and unnecessary advertising gimmicks, and he refuses to stop doing so after Sharon points this out to him because of his Never My Fault tendencies.
• Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Randy Taking a Level in Jerkass from Season 23 onwards reaches its apex in The Streaming Wars, where he begins acting like and being referred to as a Karen.
• Oh, Crap!: In "Pandemic Special", when it was reported the creature responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic was a bat, he has this reaction as he remembered he and Mickey Mouse had unprotected sex with one. He has another one of these when it came out that the real creature responsible for the spread of the virus was a pangolin, which he and Mickey also had sex with.
• Old Shame: In-Universe. He joined a boy band before finishing high school.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Parodied or subverted. A few episodes ("Spontaneous Combustion," "T.M.I.") have him take on non-geology jobs on the ground that he is a "scientist." In the first case it's lampshaded, though he actually turns out to be competent; in the latter it's not, but he does poorly. "Die Hippie, Die" has him volunteering in Cartman's plan to dig through the hippies because he is the only scientist the city has.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: In "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", he is forever known for saying the n-word on national television.
• Papa Wolf: In "Die Hippie, Die", "Pee", and "Broadway Bro Down".
• Parental Favoritism: While Randy often over-involves himself in Stan's life, he has little interest in Shelley, at one point even forgetting her as he lists his family.
• Parents as People: Despite his stupidity and recklessness, he means well for both his kids.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Randy is supposed to be a geologist, but rare is the time we actually see him doing any geological work. Instead, we see him trying to set the world's record for taking the biggest crap, aiming to become a TV chef, giving himself testicular cancer so he can smoke medical marijuana, etc.
• Porn Stache: He has a mustache. Apparently anyone who consumes his semen will develop the same mustache. This would explain why Randy can instantly recognize the taste of cum.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Randy is a central character in season 23, possibly the main character of the show at that season. The show shows him going from a jerkass that is trying to make a living with farm life to an outright amoral sell-out who is willing to do acts of terrorism and murder to protect his bottom line.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He develops into this in Season 23. He's just as childish as ever, but also far more willing to commit acts of violence. He mellows out after "Season Finale", though he's still more of a Jerkass than he was prior.
• Rabble Rouser: In a more literal case than most, he has managed to start a rabble at least once by shouting "Rabble!" a few times.
• Running Gag: His pants falling when he gets drunk. There's also him getting arrested by the cops for picking a fight with the people who root for the other sports teams.
• Sad Clown: As revealed in "You're Getting Old", Randy is actually a very depressed person and much of his childish behavior is his way of coping with it.
• Sarcasm Mode: In "Sarcastaball", he is diagnosed with a mental condition that causes everything he says to be a sarcastic comment.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • "A Nightmare on FaceTime" makes it very clear he's lost it.
  • Season 23 shows that he's utterly lost it, with the first episode alone having him bomb homegrown weed owners in an act of domestic terrorism and seriously wondering if he is actually a towel. "Season Finale" reveals that this was partially a result of him repeatedly using his own weed, and he gets better after his Heel Realization.
• Selective Obliviousness: Randy constantly ignores that his family is very much annoyed with his latest Zany Scheme, to the point of actively deluding himself into believing that they're totally on board with it.
• Serious Business: Whatever the focus of the episode is, he's taking it waaaay too seriously.
• Shameless Self-Promoter: He takes every opportunity possible to sell his weed in Season 23 no matter how unethical or counterproductive (read: expensive) it is.
• Snap Back: Quits/gets fired at least 4 times. Even his seasons-long stint as a weed farmer ends with him going back to his old job.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: So much so that he became The Protagonist of Season 23. Even the opening theme was changed to reflect Randy and Tegridy Farms for the season's first six episodes. Randy finally took a backseat for the next three episodes, only for the season finale to focus on him again.
  • He is also part of one with Butters for Season 25, being the only adult to have two episodes focused on him while the other adults (PC Principal; Liane; Mr. Mackey; Gerald) only had one episode revolving around them.
• Stage Names: He performed his interpretation of Tween Wave music as "Steamy Ray Vaughn".
• Status Quo Is God: The Streaming Wars 2-parter made it seem like Randy would quit Tegridy Farms and go back to his geology job after realizing how far he'd sunk. Season 26 shows he's restarted the farm once more.
• The Stoner: On top of his alcoholism, later seasons have Randy develop an addiction to marijuana. Throughout his ownership of Tegridy Farms, Randy frequently samples his own supply and spends a good chunk of the time buzzed out of his mind. At least part of his increasingly Jerkass behavior throughout Season 23 is because he's utterly blitzed out on weed and not thinking straight.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: A recurring arc throughout the series is Randy feeling out-of-touch with South Park's rapidly changing culture, especially during the 2020s where he finds himself flustered with the changing definitions of masculinity.
• Straw Character: Randy is frequently used as a strawman to satirize political views or talking points that the writers disagree with. Randy's role has shifted over the years, having evolved from a smug and preening limousine liberal into an Andrew Tate fanboy who despises "wokeness".
• Supreme Chef: In "Crème Fraiche", he's shown to be a very talented chef, being capable of replicating dishes he sees on cooking shows. Much to the chagrin of his family, who have to clean up the resulting massive pile of dishes. However, it's implied that his food still doesn't taste very good, and he's just imitating the flashy "gourmet" style popular on cooking shows without really understanding it.
• Too Dumb to Live: Has become this post Flanderization, but his biggest moment comes in "Medicinal Fried Chicken" where he gives himself testicular cancer just to be legally qualified to have medical marijuana.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Takes a level every episode he appears in, and probably the ones where he doesn't appear, too. Given his first ever appearance showed that he didn't know how to read a seismograph, that's quite an acheivement.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • At the beginning of the series, Randy is one of the most level-headed adults and was much more laid-back than Sharon. However, he became increasingly self-absorbed and immature as he acts out over his dissatisfaction with his life, constantly rabble-rousing and dragging his family along in his own moronic efforts to go along with the newest fad.
  • He takes another level in Season 23, where he becomes obsessed with profiting off of Tegridy Farms, and commits an act of domestic terrorism by blowing up houses with homegrown marijuana and killing numerous people to take out the competition, and brutally garroting Winnie the Pooh to curry favor with the Chinese government. He also starts to neglect his family, and even emotionally manipulates Stan into wearing a Tegridy Farms shirt at a concert in "Band in China", and accuses them of not caring about the family whenever they make it clear they hate Tegridy Farms. He realizes how much of an ass he's been in "Season Finale", and by "The Pandemic Special", he's mainly reverted to his old self.
  • During the "Streaming Wars" two-parter Randy hits his lowest, having grown so insufferable and entitled that everyone in town starts calling him "Karen" straight to his face. When Randy sees a video of himself acting melodramatic, he realizes that his character has taken a turn for the worse and gives up on being a weed farmer.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In Streaming Wars 2, after realizing how much of an ass he's been for the past few seasons and giving up on Tegridy Farms.
• Toxic Friend Influence: He's an alcoholic, and none of his friends try to keep him from getting drunk (even encouraging him on occasion).
• Trademark Favorite Food: His preferred beer brand is Pabst Blue Ribbon, and ever since the gluten scare, he has been exclusively drinking gluten-free beer.
• Tuckerization: Parker named Randy after his own father.
• Unfazed Everyman: His initial characterization was of a laid-back guy who reacted to the bizarre events around him with a blasé, unfazed attitude. This quickly changed.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In "Pandemic Special", he and Mickey Mouse unknowingly caused the spread of COVID-19 by having sex with a pangolin.
• Villain Protagonist: He would serve as this for Season 23 which mostly focuses on Randy's committing crimes to keep his business afloat.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: To Stan. Randy is an over-the-top, sex-crazed, alcoholic and drug addict, while Stan is the Straight Man who is wise beyond his years.
• What Have I Become?: Randy eventually realizes how low he's sunk when he sees a viral video of himself looking and behaving like a stereotypical Karen. This is the wakeup call he needs to finally liquidate Tegridy Farms and go back to his geology job.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: As revealed in "Gluten-Free Ebola" and "The Cissy", he has a double life as Lorde, using Auto-Tune to make himself sound like a teenage girl.
  Clyde: Lorde sucks.
  Jimmy: Yeah, she isn't as hot in person.

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