Some brilliant tattoos featuring different incarnations of Cartman and so much more.

New South Park episodes start tonight. (I didn’t realize until yesterday either.)

In honor of the occasion I hunted down some of the most creative South Park-inspired tattoos that people have posted online.

As my usual disclaimer before tattoo-related lists, I’m not a tattoo person myself — however, I still marvel at the jaw-droppingly obscure niche tattoos that other people get. Here are the 11 most creative and clever South Park tattoos I could find…

1 | Who is The Coon?

Bravo to whomever went ahead and got this done. Cartman’s Watchmen/Dark Knight alter ego is one of his best characters — even when he’s trying to be a hero he can’t stop being evil. This is a very well done tattoo where it’s hard to tell who’s behind the mask… is it Cartman or Bruce Villanch? (Side note: For my analysis on which kid was Mysterion, I offered up my theory during an old Inbox-O-Rama.)

2 | Professor Chaos

When I was doing the search, I really didn’t expect anyone would get a tattoo showing the duality of Butters. There were some other Butters tattoos to choose from (him with a throwing star in his eye, or him just looking like plain old nervous Butters) but I went with this one because it’s so high concept. (Although it almost looks like a mashup between Butters and an evil Terminator.)

3 | Man Bear Pig

This is why I wouldn’t get a tattoo. Clearly, this guy went in, aiming to get a tattoo of Al Gore’s mythical monster ManBearPig. As the artist was adding the tagline, at the last second, the guy realized “Wait, Al Gore doesn’t say ‘I’m super serious’… he says ‘I’m super serial.'” So his body will forever have a bastardization of the bastardization — “serioul” standing in for “serial” standing in for “serious.” Which, fittingly, is as convoluted as a half man, half bear, half pig that symbolizes global warming.

4 | Do you like fishsticks?

This was the only Jimmy tattoo I could find. There was also a Timmy tattoo out there but I leaned toward Jimmy. Making Jimmy the go-to handicapped kid instead of Timmy was a very strong decision for South Park. Right up there with favoring Butters over Pip, Craig over Clyde, and Kenny not dying every episode over Kenny dying every episode.

5 | Cartman as a black African American

This tattoo is from an episode that’s over a decade old, where Cartman briefly believed that Chef was his father… thus making him a “black African American.” Going for the mix of a Run DMC/Kid n’ Play/Public Enemy look is a good touch.

6 | The Jonas Brothers?

Definitely the most obscure reference on the list. I pulled the screenshot for the top left corner to clear this up.

This is from one of last season’s episodes, where the South Park team went really, really hard against Disney promoting abstinence and purity rings while having the Jonas Brothers clearly sell sex to the audience. At one point, they have the head of Disney — represented as Mickey — beat up one of the Jonas Brothers for protesting that policy. (I’m proud to say I don’t know which Jonas brother it is.)

Inexplicably, someone decided to get that tattooed. I’d venture to say he’s the only person in the world who got a tattoo inspired by that episode.

7 | You’re a towel

Towelie has really grown on me. In fact, during the episode where the guys go to a water park, I was a little disappointed that Towelie didn’t make an appearance. It seems like it would’ve been really organic.

8 | Look at that guy’s balls

Absolutely brilliant tattoo from the recent episode about medicinal marijuana. The scene of Randy Marsh going to the marijuana dispensary, with his microwaved testicles in a wheelbarrow, singing Bob Marley songs, was one of my favorite South Park moments in years.

9 | Kenny doesn’t fear the reaper

There are plenty of basic Kenny tattoos out there. There are plenty of totally badass skull/reaper tattoos out there. The fact that this guy was willing to cheese up his ridiculously ornate and badass reaper tattoo by jamming Kenny in there vaulted him right onto this list.

[Edit 11/12/10 – I initially identified this as a guy but it turns out it was really a girl. Which makes it even cooler.]

10 | Step one: Tattoo

Step two: ???. Step three: Profit. (The Underpants Gnome episode and its three steps stand as, quite possibly, the single most spot-on and succinct summary of the dot-com era ever.)

11 | Cartman as the Tooth Fairy

I like this choice for a tattoo. I wouldn’t have thought of it, but Cartman did make a great, if not too fat, tooth fairy.

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If I was going to get a South Park tattoo it would be of one of the following 11 things: Cartman as a ginger… The Faith +1 album cover… Awesome-O… Kyle’s cousin Kyle… Butters as a tap dancer… Kip Drordry celebrating a Facebook friend… the cast as Simpsons characters… the kids with their newscaster hair… Willzyx dead on the Moon… Cartman and Butters infiltrating PF Chang’s disguised as Chinese people… or Rob Schneider as a stapler.

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