KYLE BROFLOVSKI

'Kyle Broflovski', also spelled 'Kyle Broflofski', 'Kyle Broflowski', 'Kyle Brovlofski', 'Kyle Broflofki', or in the earlier episodes, 'Kyle Brosloski', is a fictional character in the animated series ''South Park''.
Voiced by series co-creator Matt Stone, Kyle is one of the four central characters, all of whom are eight or nine year old boys. Stone has claimed that Kyle was loosely based on himself when he was younger. His most notable catch phrases are "You bastard(s)!" (following Stan's "Oh my God, you/they/we killed Kenny!"), and "I've learned something today" (usually before the end of an episode), or "suck my balls fat ass" as well as, "No we haven't, dude. No we haven't" after Stan's "Well, I guess we've learned our lesson." Kyle is mostly known for being Jewish, which was not officially revealed until Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo, though it was mentioned briefly in the second The Spirit of Christmas short (which pre-dates the television series) and in Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride. When angered or frustrated, Kyle has a tendency to clench his fists and growl or yell angrily. Kyle and Eric Cartman share the AB negative blood type, as revealed in the episode Cherokee Hair Tampons. It was also revealed in this episode that Kyle is a diabetic.
He also regularly shows his disdain for Eric Cartman, calling him names such as "Fatass" and the like. This, in return, only fuels Cartman's need to call Kyle out as well, taunting him about Kyle's religion.
Despite the fact that Jews are stereotypically portrayed as greedy and amoral, Kyle typically displays the highest moral standards of all the boys. Kyle also usually gets higher grades than his associates, and often provides the sober thought to plans or ideas made by the other boys. Since Kyle is the most rational of his peers, he is usually put in the shoes of the protagonist to Eric Cartman's antagonist. Kyle is on better terms with Stan Marsh although the friendship stops for a time in ''Prehistoric Ice Man'', when they argue over the name of the ice man. He is the most caring and compassionate of the boys. It is revealed that he has no rhythm in Rainforest Schmainforest. His friendship with Stan has probably got deeper due to the many times Stan has saved his life (Cherokee Hair Tampons, Super Best Friends and Cartmanland). This is shown in Smug Alert! when the two are seen hugging at the end.

Contents

Appearance

Family

Life

Religion

Talents

Athletics

Music

Science

Computer Skills

Weaponry

Language

Persuasion Skills

External link

Appearance

He wears a bright green hunting cap (or ushanka), a bright orange jacket with black trimmed pockets and dark green collar, dark green pants, and lime green mittens. He is rarely shown without his cap, but underneath it, he sports an auburn, curly 'Jew-fro', first seen in the episode "How to Eat with Your Butt", a hairstyle which he seems to resent (he is later seen again without his cap in Lil' Crime Stoppers, Quest for Ratings and Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina). This is a nod to Stone's character in ''Cannibal! The Musical'' in which he wears the same style hat with an afro underneath. A photorealistic version of Kyle's appearance was produced as a police artist sketch for the episode "Free Willzyx"; however, his mother, Sheila, comments that it is "kinda a bad drawing". in pre-school Kyle's curly hair hangs out below his hat.

Family

His mother, Sheila, is known to be very overprotective: she instigates a war between the USA and Canada in the feature-length movie '' because of (Canadian natives) Terrance and Phillip's extremely scatological R-rated movie. Mrs. Broflovski is prone to making a mountain out of a molehill whenever something threatens her son. Even so, in the "Cherokee Hair Tampons" episode she turns to holistic and nature medicine when Kyle almost dies of kidney failure because he is diabetic, although his diet is the same as the other kids. Stan is very upset about the possible death of Kyle (much more than about the many deaths of Kenny, much to Kenny's annoyance), and ultimately saves him by tricking Cartman into donating one of his kidneys to Kyle (Cartman asked for ten million dollars for it). Cartman had to because he was the only other one with the AB negative blood type.
Kyle's father Gerald is a lawyer but, Kyle reiterates, they are not as wealthy as the Black family, also headed by a lawyer (probably because Gerald has gambling problems). In Season Three's Emmy-nominated "Chinpokomon", Kyle attempts to join the Chinpokomon fad; however, he is always a step behind his friends, never having the latest toys or games. Kyle has an adopted younger Canadian brother, Ike. He also has a cousin from Connecticut (Kyle Schwartz, "The Entity", "The Losing Edge") who is a Jewish stereotype.
Within his family, Kyle seems to have the strongest relationship with his brother Ike. Ike follows Kyle around and generally imitates his older brother whenever possible. For his part—and despite actions such as playing "kick the baby" (which features Kyle punting Ike like a football, usually through a window) —Kyle is fiercely protective of his little brother, and tries on occasion to educate Ike in the ways of the Jewish faith.

Life

Kyle was born on May 22. While most of the South Park kids dislike Cartman, Kyle has a particularly strong hatred for him; the feud between the two has been a recurring theme. Cartman and Kyle often exchange insults, with Kyle the target of Cartman's antisemitism, and Cartman being taunted about his weight. Whenever making a point, Cartman will often try to outsmart Kyle but usually winds up the loser of the argument. There are exceptions, in "Die, Hippie, Die", Cartman saves the town from a hippie music festival, and Kyle is forced to watch Cartman play with his new Tonka bulldozer in the school parking lot every day. In "Smug Alert" it was revealed that without Kyle to irritate, Cartman's life is empty. In "Kenny Dies", Kyle seemed to show empathy towards Cartman, suggesting that despite being easily angered by Cartman's teasing, he still considers him a friend. However, at the same time, he does not invite Cartman to his birthday party at Casa Bonita because he naturally doesn't consider Cartman to be a friend. He does, though, state that Cartman is his friend in "Up the Down Steroid," and he refers to Cartman as "my sort-of friend...ish," in the episode "The Entity."
His friendship with Stan is obviously very strong. He has had his life saved 3 times by Stan (mentioned above) and, in the episode Fun with Veal, Stan got sores over his body which endangered his life, and Kyle did not leave his side for longer than to look out the window. They have only broken up six times (Prehistoric Ice Man, Super Best Friends (only because Stan didn't accept Kyle's new religion), Douche and Turd, Follow that Egg! (Stan suspected Kyle was dating Wendy) and South Park is Gay! (Kyle didn't conform to the metrosexual trend). In all these episodes, Stan has reconciled with Kyle (except South Park is Gay!). The depth of their friendship is taken into account on several occasions (and has been known to get a little physical): Stan's willingness to save Kyle in Cherokee Hair Tampons, both hugging each other after Kyle returned to South Park in Smug Alert, Kyle's grief over Stan's agreement to go over the K-13 in Asspen and the fact that they slept leaning their heads against each other in It's Christmas in Canada. They were also seen sharing a private moment at a sunset in a false "Previously on South Park" recap in the episode The Return of Chef.
Kyle's friendship with Kenny is not as strong as his friendship with Stan, nor is it adversarial (like that with Cartman) but is clearly existent, as he invites him to various arrangements of his and promptly beats up Cartman in defense of Kenny following his "permanent" death. Kyle has trouble accepting that Cartman is never sincere and keeps falling for Cartman's seemingly good intentions time and time again. This is seen in Casa Bonita, Cartoon Wars Part I, Kenny Dies, and other episodes. Kyle also seems to have the highest respect for Butters,he invites him to his birthday in Casa Bonita. Perhaps it is Kyle's idealistic optimism that there is some good in everyone, even in Cartman. Sometimes, in episodes like Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes and Fat Butt and Pancake Head, Kyle will make it very clear that he knows Cartman is manipulating before finally giving in.
Perhaps the best estimate of Kyle's moral character occurs in the recent episode "Manbearpig"; at one point, Kyle nearly drowns trying to save Cartman's life, despite their past history. Although, in "Butt Out" he did not seem to care that the anti-smoking group members were trying to poison him. Despite Kyle's best-friendship with Stan, there are occasions when he sides with Cartman or Kenny instead and may even insult Stan, as depicted in "All About Mormons". Kyle can also be intolerant of other religions even though he is the only Jewish child in South Park.
Kyle also becomes sick more often than any of the other boys, possibly due to his diabetes. He experiences a painful infectious hemorrhoid when Cartman inherits $1 million dollars from his grandmother and uses it to buy his own amusement park.(Cartmanland) He also needed a kidney transplant (that only Cartman could provide) in Cherokee Hair Tampons. Even so, in the episode Chickenpox he was the only person in his class who didn't catch chickenpox, even after playing a game in which Kenny (who had chickenpox) spat into his mouth and he had to swallow it while saying something like "ookymouth" (an activity suggested by his mother in hopes that her son would catch chickenpox). He did catch it in the end, but only because he was near Stan and Cartman, who both had chickenpox.
Kyle, unlike Stan, has shown little interest in girls or dating. In the episode "Clubhouses" Kyle is dared to kiss Bebe, however, after kissing Bebe he leaves spitting and cursing. The only instances where he has shown any kind of emotion or attraction to girls occurred in the episodes "Tom's Rhinoplasty" where he was attracted Ms. Ellen and "Hooked on Monkey Phonics". In "Hooked on Monkey Phonics" he developed a crush on Rebecca Cuttswald, which ended at the end of the episode. He also responds to Bebe's breasts in "Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society" the same way that all the boys in the class did.

Religion

Kyle is one of the few Jewish kids in the town. Kyle's last name has been alternately given as Broslovski, Broflofski, Broflovski, and Brovlofski in the series, though the characters say "Broflovski" or "Broslovski" the most often. The name comes from the maiden name of Matt Stone's mother, Sheila Belasco (Broslovski had been changed to Belasco when her ancestor immigrated to America). In "Spontaneous Combustion" there is a shot of Kyle's father Gerald's law office - on the façade it says 'Brovlofski'. In "Sexual Harassment Panda" his name is shown as 'Broflofski'. The various spellings may be due to some confusion in trying to transcribe the Cyrillic surname ''Бровловский'' into the Latin alphabet; the letter в is normally transcribed "v" but when voiceless is often written as "f" in English, like in the name "Rachmaninoff". Parker and Stone have confirmed that Kyle's last name is indeed Broflovski, which is also the spelling used in the "4th Grade" intro, seen in episodes 412 to 513. [1]
Kyle appears ambivalent toward his Judaism, although his parents are somewhat observant (Sheila Stone, mother of Matt Stone, was herself a secular Sephardic Jew). This is most likely part of his effort to fit in with his friends, who are Roman Catholic. Kyle is often more defensive than proud of his Judaism, and though he regularly attends such functions as "Jew Scouts", he often has a poor grasp on the history, traditions and rituals of his religion. This could also be the fault of his parents, who, in a misguided attempt to shelter their son, generally refuse to discuss with him the finer points of their religion. For example:

★ When he heard that his brother Ike was going to have a bris, he was under the misapprehension that it involved cutting off the entire penis rather than just the foreskin. This was despite the fact that Kyle got circumcised himself.

★ After seeing Mel Gibson's ''The Passion of the Christ'', he told Cartman that Cartman was right about Jews all along and stood up in his synagogue to demand that Jews apologize for the death of Christ. Ironically, he killed Jesus personally in a later episode, though the act was not due to malice but Jesus' own request, so that he could resurrect himself and save Stan and the "Hare Club for Men" from being boiled alive like rabbits, but this act, at the request of Kyle, was only done because Jesus promised to never let Cartman know about it.

★ When he learned of Catholicism's conditions for getting into heaven, he renounced his faith on the basis that if the Jews were right about the matter, it would make no difference if he were a Catholic, but if the Catholics were right, he would go to hell for not accepting Christ (see Pascal's Wager).

★ In Chickenpox, when his dad told him about how society works, he thought of 'a better idea', send all the poor people to concentration camps so only rich people would live. Kyle's father promptly realised he was being intolerant of people less fortunate than himself and stopped this. He therefore at least in this episode did not have a very clear grasp of the Holocaust or other forms of Genocide .
Kyle also sometimes expresses feelings of self-loathing. Kyle is always saying that Jews are just like everyone else, and is often distressed when they display behavior that is stereotypically Jewish. He is often brought to anger by Jews who conform to such stereotypes, namely his cousin (also named Kyle) from Connecticut who has hypochondriac tendencies, is very good with money, and is a poor athlete.
Also, Kyle seems to use the phrase "Jesus Christ!" more than most Jews, and sometimes even more than his Catholic friends. He is also able to acknowledge Jesus in the many episodes when he meets him.
He and Stan alternate as leader of their group/voice of reason (while their fathers are normally the leaders/instigators of mass hysteria in the town). Kyle is witty, but unlike his best friend Stan, he tends to be cautious and is less likely to want to get involved in uncertain situations.
As revealed in the episode commentary for the episode "Kenny Dies", Stone and Parker were going to kill off Kyle for a whole year instead of Kenny but decided not to.
In Season Eight, Kyle was the center on one episode—"The Passion of the Jew"—which parodied the controversy surrounding ''The Passion of the Christ''. In the episode, he sees ''The Passion'' because of Cartman's continuing use of it as an excuse to pick on Kyle more than usual. It was also revealed in this episode that Kyle is afraid of Alan Alda, the reasons for this are unknown. Kyle was also featured prominently in the episodes "Cartman's Incredible Gift" and "Woodland Critter Christmas". In the former, he attempts to convince the local police that Cartman's "psychic powers" are entirely false; at the end of the episode, it is implied that Kyle has real psychic powers. In "Woodland Critter Christmas", the Satanic woodland animals attempt to use Kyle as birth vessel for The Antichrist because he is a "heathen" and is not baptized because he is Jewish. Stan attempts to stop this by teaching young mountain lions to give abortions, but Christmas is eventually saved by Santa Claus, who shoots all of the critters with a shotgun. However, the entire "Critter" episode is really just a story written by Eric Cartman, which ends with Kyle dying of AIDS.
In the October 27, 2004 election-based episode, "Douche and Turd", Kyle leads the campaign for Giant Douche to be elected the new school mascot at South Park Elementary after PETA leads a campaign against Mooey, the cow.
In the March 9, 2005 episode "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina", Kyle wanted to play basketball for the all-state team, but could not because the coach said he was not built for the game due to fact he is Jewish. Frustrated, Kyle gets a "negro-plasty," to make him black and tall. However, the surgery is a failure, as it was only purely cosmetic; after trying to perform a slam dunk, Kyle's knees explode as the plastic surgeon had made his knee joints out of Mr. Garrison's former testicles.
In "South Park Is Gay!" Kyle's friends make him over into a metrosexual, as being metrosexual was the "cool" thing to do. Kyle then decides to not conform with the rest of South Park and goes back to dressing normally, despite teasing from his schoolmates. After Kyle gets beat up by the boys in his class and is rejected by his friends, he travels to New York with Mr. Garrison and Mr. Slave to kill the ''Queer Eye for the Straight Guy'' guys. They then discover that the Queer Eye people are actually crab people in disguise that are trying to take over the world.
In "Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow", Cartman seemingly knew that Kyle, and all Jews for that matter, carried Jew gold around their necks (as well as a Jew gold decoy bag). Ironically, Kyle tosses a bag off a railing that may have actually contained gold.
In "Fantastic Easter Special", Kyle had to kill Jesus because his superpowers only work when he is dead. Kyle was very reluctant, saying "I'm a Jew. I have a few hang-ups about killing Jesus." However, Kyle does eventually kill Jesus saying "Eric Cartman can never know about this."

Talents

Athletics

Not only is Kyle the halfback and back up quarterback on his school's football team (as seen in "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride"), he is also apparently the best basketball player in South Park within his age group. Although he aspires to someday play for the Denver Nuggets, Kyle suffers from the "handicap" of not being tall and black, which he attempted to rectify with cosmetic surgery (with grisly results, in "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina"). His favorite sports team is the Denver Broncos.

Music

Kyle can play both the acoustic and bass guitar (as seen in the episodes "Hooked on Monkey Phonics" and "Christian Rock Hard"). He also showed his ability to play the flute in the episode "The Red Badge of Gayness". Despite this, Kyle is shown to have no rhythm in "Rainforest Schmainforest". However, as a member of a boy band on "Something You Can Do With Your Finger", he can do the routine along with Cartman, Stan and Kenny, and he is also able to sing the song "Fingerbang" with the other 3 boys. He concurrently played the violin (badly) in "Summer Sucks" with Stan and Kenny. Kyle is able to play the recorder in the episode "World Wide Recorder Concert". Kyle seems to be a fan of the goth rock band, The Cure, going as far as declaring in the episode "Mecha-Streisand" that their 1989 album Disintegration is "the best album ever". He is also said to like hip-hop in Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina.

Science

Kyle seems to have a good understanding of genetics; in 'Ginger Kids' he uses his class presentation to explain the genetic inheritance that leads to red hair, freckles and light skin.

Computer Skills

Kyle is quite a proficient hacker, as seen in the feature '' and plays World of Warcraft with the other boys in "Make Love, Not Warcraft". He also helped the CIA with his computer skills in the episode The Snuke, although here his only input was searching through various blogging and networking websites (Facebook, etc.).

Weaponry

Weaponry is the most surprising of all Kyle's skills. He seems to be able to handle weapons well for his age. Kyle is seen using an energy weapon in "Towelie", with surprising effectiveness. In the episode "Wing", Kyle is able to wield a Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle somewhat better than Cartman, despite both of them firing on full automatic and firing most of the rounds into the ceiling. In Red Sleigh Down, he was able to wield an M4A1 assault rifle (though he didn't use it). In Good Times with Weapons he bought a pair of Nunchucks and handled them a lot better in his Ninja form. As far as marksmanship goes, however, Kyle is still nowhere near as good as Pip.

Language

As seen in the episode "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000", Kyle is proficient, if not fluent, in Pig Latin. Kyle also has a talent for the Haiku, as seen in "Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods". He is, in fact, able to come up with Haikus insulting Cartman off the top of his head in a freestyling sort of way.

Persuasion Skills

Kyle is quite adept at persuading others to "do the right thing," through empassioned speech-making, which he usually does at the end of an episode, where he often starts with the words "I've learned something today...". The most notable use of this skill is in Cartoon Wars Part II, where Kyle convinces "Bart", who hates Family Guy, not to go along with Cartman's plot to take down the show, stating he was on a slippery slope to becoming a monster just like him. Cartman, of course, has had many of his plans foiled by Kyle in this manner, leading him to call them "gay little speeches" in frustration.

External link

★ Kyle Broflovski at South Park Studios