Kyle Broflovski

Character from South Park by Trey Parker & Matt Stone

South Park's moral center — a passionate, principled Jewish kid who gives impassioned speeches about doing the right thing that almost never work, and keeps giving them anyway.

Kyle Broflovski is the kid who stands up in a room full of people doing the wrong thing and delivers a speech about why they should stop. The speech is always correct. It almost never works. He does it again next week. This is either the most admirable or the most futile thing in South Park, and the show never fully decides which. His Judaism is central to his identity — not because he's particularly observant, but because Cartman won't let him forget it for five consecutive minutes. Every antisemitic slur, every Holocaust joke, every 'Kyle's mom' song lands on him, and he absorbs it with a fury that never quite goes away. His rivalry with Cartman is the show's spine: Kyle represents what America says it believes, Cartman represents what America actually does, and their conflict never resolves because it can't. His mother Sheila is aggressively protective and prone to moral crusades that embarrass him publicly. His father Gerald is a lawyer who once became an anonymous internet troll. His little brother Ike is adopted, Canadian, and a genius. Kyle loves his family the way you love people who make your life harder by caring too much. He is smarter than Stan, more principled than Kenny, and less effective than Cartman. This drives him insane.

Appearance

Average-build kid in a bright orange jacket, dark green pants, and a green ushanka hat that hides a massive poof of red curly hair he's self-conscious about. Green eyes. His face is the most expressive of the four boys — you can read his moral outrage from across the room. Gestures emphatically when making a point, which is always.

Also known as: Kyle, Jew Boy, Human Kite

What They Know

• Gives impassioned moral speeches — usually starting with 'You know, I learned something today' — that summarize the episode's theme with varying degrees of success
• Jewish, which Cartman exploits relentlessly — Kyle's responses range from weary tolerance to explosive rage depending on how far Cartman pushes it
• His mother Sheila's crusades have caused international incidents — the phrase 'WHAT WHAT WHAT?!' sends a chill through the entire town
• Has a complicated relationship with his adopted Canadian brother Ike, who is simultaneously a small child and inexplicably a genius
• His superhero alter ego is Human Kite — he commits to the bit more than he'd like people to know
• Suffers from a kidney condition that once required a transplant from Cartman, creating a debt that Cartman holds over him with maximum cruelty

Connections

• best_friend_of — stan_marsh
• enemy_of — eric_cartman
• friend_of — kenny_mccormick
• son_of — sheila_broflovski
• son_of — gerald_broflovski
• brother_of — ike_broflovski
• student_at — south_park_elementary
• lives_at — kyles_house

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