Mr. Garrison

In the ninth-season premiere, "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina", Garrison, unhappy with being a gay man, decides to try living as a trans woman. Following a vaginoplasty, Mr. Garrison becomes Mrs. Garrison, despite never having been established as having been married. In the episode "D-Yikes!" it is revealed that she had adopted the first name "Janet". Despite also receiving breast implants, she continues to have male-pattern baldness and a masculine voice. She often asserts her femininity, though in a somewhat unfeminine manner, including male-bashing and open proclamations of sexuality. After the sex change, she would state "I'm not gay, I'm a woman!"[7]

The gender transition leads to the end of her relationship with Mr. Slave, who had not been consulted before the operation and declines Mrs. Garrison's sexual overtures because of her current gender expression. Mrs. Garrison also realizes that there have been no menstrual periods after the operation, leading her to believe that she is pregnant. While attempting to have an abortion, Mrs. Garrison is told that a vaginoplasty does not result in the ability to have periods, pregnancies, or abortions, because sexual reassignment surgery does not include the creation of reproductive organs. She goes to go talk with Dr. Biber and demands her genitals back, but he says that he made her scrotum into a dorsal fin for Gerald and implanted her testicles into Kyle. She finally accepts her new situation after Kyle causes her testicles to explode during a basketball game, when they were used as kneecap implants that Kyle put too much stress on. Like many veteran characters, Garrison has appeared with less frequency following "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina", but was given an important role. In the episode "Follow That Egg!", she attempts to prevent legislation granting gay citizens the right to marry after discovering that her ex-lover, Mr. Slave, is planning to marry Big Gay Al.

In the episode "Go God Go", Mrs. Garrison was ordered by the school district to teach evolution to her class. Due to her personal aversion to the concept of evolution, she deliberately presents the theory in an extremely skewed light, and is subsequently replaced by another teacher, Richard Dawkins. Although Mrs. Garrison continues to inject snide and insulting remarks into Dawkins' lecture, Dawkins becomes drawn to Mrs. Garrison's masculine boldness and directness. He does not find out about Mrs. Garrison's gender history until later. They start to date and are even shown having sexual intercourse. Dawkins converts Mrs. Garrison to atheism, and they subsequently decide to eradicate all religion from the world. However, due to Mrs. Garrison's influence, there is also the belief that mere logic will not work, but one must be "a dick" about it, leading to wars about the answer to "The Great Question". During that same episode Cartman cryogenically freezes himself so he can skip the wait to purchase a Nintendo Wii in the future. When he finally wakes he discovers that he actually slept for 500 years, and that the entire world now embraces atheism.

In the following episode, "Go God Go XII", Cartman calls Mrs. Garrison's home from the future. Dawkins answers the phone while he and Mrs. Garrison are in the middle of having sex, and in the course of asking to talk to Mrs. Garrison, Cartman reveals that Garrison previously lived as a man. Repulsed, Dawkins runs from Mrs. Garrison's home and ends the relationship. Mrs. Garrison then returns to her own religion. It is revealed that Mrs. Garrison was the motivation that convinced Dawkins to teach atheism to the world, and now that they had broken up, the future changed again.

In the episode "D-Yikes", Mrs. Garrison starts to have lesbian relationships. After being dumped by an unnamed boyfriend, Garrison goes to the local "Curves" gym in a huff, cursing men for the entire time. It is there that she meets Allison, a lesbian who is quickly attracted to Garrison's "strong-woman" attitude. Garrison, unaware of Allison's sexual orientation or growing affection, unwittingly joins her at a lesbian bar. When Garrison discovers the truth, she is initially shocked and repulsed, but quickly becomes attracted to Allison and begins a sexual relationship with her. By the end of the episode, Garrison has had sexual relationships with at least two women (including one who attempted to take over the lesbian bar earlier in the episode) and now openly identifies as lesbian.

In the episode "Eek, a Penis!", Mrs. Garrison becomes tired of living as a woman and wants to start living as a man again. After seeing a news report on TV about using genetic engineering to grow human body parts on mice, she pays all of her money to the laboratory to grow a penis on a mouse. The mouse escapes when she opens its cage and throughout the episode Mrs. Garrison looks around various places. But the penis eventually comes to her and Mrs. Garrison completes the procedure. Upon returning to the school, he then proclaims that the key difference to anyone being male or female is whether they can get pregnant or not. He even claims that whoever cannot make babies is a male, including infertile women. When a man tells Garrison about his wife's ovarian cancer, Garrison dismissively tells him "your wife's a dude, faggot" and that he should get tested for AIDS, indicating a return to his previous homophobic behavior.[8] In the following episode, "Over Logging", Garrison can be seen smoking a pipe and parading around in a red smoking jacket, à la Hugh Hefner, and this could indicate an attitude of "straightness". Also, in the episode "About Last Night...", he is shown to be a John McCain supporter, playing on the tendency of LGBT Americans to be more politically progressive than politically conservative. He also does not appear with the South Park gay people in "The F Word". In "200", he at first assists Stan, Kyle and Cartman in angering Tom Cruise, but also later is consulted by Cartman regarding the events of "Cartman's Mom Is Still a Dirty Slut", after Mitch Connor tells Cartman that the allegations Ms. Cartman was intersex and Cartman's father are a lie – while Garrison tries to steer Cartman away, Cartman convinces him to bring out Mr. Hat, and Mr. Hat confesses the declaration of Ms. Cartman being his father (and intersex) was fake and that Eric Cartman's real father was in the room. The episode ends with an abrupt cliffhanger while Garrison is about to reveal the identity of Cartman's father.

After his return to the male gender, Mr. Garrison's behavior was shown to be less eccentric than before, with significantly fewer acts of deviant sexual behavior, outrageous outbursts, racism, or psychotic episodes.

Garrison as the President of the United States as of season 20.

In the Season 19 episode "Where My Country Gone?" however, following Principal Victoria being dismissed by the school, Garrison becomes frustrated with the recent immigration of Canadians to the town and begins to verbally bash them and declare they should leave their country, and is fired from his teaching job. He begins a political campaign to get rid of all the Canadians by "fucking them all to death," and by building a wall, in a parody of the Donald Trump presidential campaign. After discovering Canada has already built such a wall, Garrison travels to Canada and rapes the Canadian prime minister (a caricature of Donald Trump) to death. Feeling he has proven that his policies work, he decides to go to Washington, D.C. to run for president, with Caitlyn Jenner as his running mate, and is absent from subsequent episodes. The episode "Sponsored Content" features Garrison and Jenner being approached by Principal Victoria and being convinced by her to return to South Park for the remainder of the season.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone had expected the Donald Trump presidential campaign to end before the eventual election. They worried that a direct portrayal of Trump would be "dated" if the campaign ended quickly, and felt it would be more appropriate to use one of their characters in his role, having already decided Garrison would come into conflict with the new principal.[9]

During Season 20, Garrison has received the nomination of the Republican Party and continues his campaign, still representing Donald Trump. Garrison realizes that he will be incapable of actually performing his duties as the president if he were to be elected, and tries repeatedly to sabotage his own campaign, even outright telling his audience to vote for Hillary Clinton instead of him. While his attempts are initially unsuccessful, he eventually manages to tank his poll numbers by making some inflammatory comments about women, a reference to a controversial audio recording of Trump leaking. As he attempts to tell his supporters that the election is rigged against him (also a reference to statements made by Trump), they realize that he had never intended to actually make it as far as he did and chase after him. Seeking refuge in a support group run by Randy Marsh, Randy tells Garrison that the reason people want him to be president is because J. J. Abrams has brainwashed people into liking his new Star Wars film using the Member Berries, linking the nostalgic themes of the Garrison campaign to the film's rehash of older material. After failing to destroy the Member Berries, Garrison makes a speech urging Americans to vote for Hillary Clinton in protest of the new Star Wars film.

Despite Trey Parker and Matt Stone's expectations while producing the season[10] Garrison is elected president anyway and brainwashed by Caitlyn Jenner, who has become brainwashed by the Member Berries herself. Upon becoming president-elect of the United States, he undergoes a transformation that gives him a toupee (solidifying the Trump comparison) and uses his newfound power to force people with whom he has had altercations (such as the new school principal who fired him and a grocery store employee who refused to allow him to double bag his groceries) to perform fellatio on him. Garrison plays a role in the season's conclusion by helping to defeat the season's other antagonists, but remains in power, flanked by member berries.

Parker and Stone had expected Hillary Clinton to be victorious in the election, and described themselves as waiting for the election to end to focus on other storylines, intending for Garrison to return to teaching, humbled by his experiences. Garrison was intended to play a role in resolving the conflict between the male and female students in his classroom that had developed over the course of the season, taking responsibility for causing their behavior. Parker and Stone were, however, forced to rewrite the season's final episodes to accommodate Garrison (and Trump) being elected as president, and felt that they could not resolve some of the season's storylines in a satisfying way as a result.[10]

In Season 21, though stating how he can handle societal psychology despite being informed his approval ratings are very low as depicted in the episode "Doubling Down", a desperate Garrison ends up running back to South Park after launching a nuclear weapons at Toronto that killed a million Canadians in the end of "Super Hard PCness". Garrison was absent in Season 22 with the exception of a scene in the season finale, "Bike Parade" where he was in handcuffs.[11]

President Garrison reappears in "The Pandemic Special" episode as an antagonist who wants the virus to continue killing people, because it is also killing Mexicans. At the end of the episode, the pangolin needed to create a cure for the virus—and the doctor holding it—are burned to death by Garrison with a flamethrower.

Mr. Garrison was commonly known as "Mr. Garrison" without a first name until the episode "The Entity", where it was revealed as "Herbert Garrison". However, in the episode "Cherokee Hair Tampons", when he wrote his book The Valley of the Penises, his name on the cover read as "Ethan Garrison", though this may simply be a pen name. As of season 21, he is generally not referred to by name at all, with characters only referring to him as "The President". In Season 23, Randy calls him Mr. Garrison before correcting himself with "Mr. President", reminding viewers that he is still Garrison and not Donald Trump.

Mr. Hat (left) and Mr. Twig.

Mr. Hat initially appeared to be simply a puppet used by Mr. Garrison as a teaching aid. However, it was soon apparent that Mr. Hat was able to perform activities that would not have been possible if he were merely a puppet. It is not entirely clear how much autonomy Mr. Hat and Mr. Garrison have from each other. In the episode "Chef Aid", Mr. Hat is able to drive a car through a prison wall to rescue Mr. Garrison and Chef, to which Chef remarks, "How the hell did he reach the gas pedal?".

Further evidence of Hat's autonomy includes that Mr. Hat has been able to move his eyes and blink towards Mr. Garrison and Brett Favre, and that in "Worldwide Recorder Concert", where Mr. Hat beats up Mr. Mackey, but also in the South Park video game, where Mr. Hat owns and runs a robot factory by himself, or in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, when Satan picks up Mr. Hat as a companion to replace Saddam Hussein. Satan speaks Mr. Hat's lines in a voice very similar to Mr. Garrison's.

Mr. Hat is also a racist, as seen in "Chef Goes Nanners", where he is a member of the South Park branch of the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Hat argues with Mr. Garrison and seemingly disappears to attend a meeting without him. Mr. Hat also appears to be somewhat psychotic. In "Weight Gain 4000", furious at Kathie Lee Gifford for a talent show he and Mr. Garrison had lost years ago, Mr. Hat convinces Mr. Garrison to kill her, which he attempts to do. Again, whether this indicates that Mr. Hat is independent or if Mr. Garrison's own psychosis is simply projected to his puppet is impossible to say.

In a fictional crossover psychotherapy session with Dr. Katz (from another Comedy Central series) in "Summer Sucks", Katz suggests that Mr. Hat was a personification of Mr. Garrison's "gay side". Garrison rejected this, and Katz was never able to counterpoint because he was killed shortly afterward by a gigantic novelty firework. Despite this suggestion, Mr. Garrison retained use of Mr. Hat even after coming out as gay, during the period when both were seen to be teaching kindergarten. Mr. Hat is permanently abandoned in favor of Mr. Slave once Mr. Garrison begins teaching fourth grade.

Mr. Hat was not seen again until the climax of the episode "200", when Eric Cartman demands to speak with him, at which point Mr. Garrison produces Mr. Hat from a dresser drawer, and despite his initial reluctance, Garrison again seems to illustrate an inability to control Mr. Hat, and again addresses him separately. At the conclusion of the storyline, Mr. Hat is again discarded, and only appears again in the game South Park: The Stick of Truth, where he can be discovered inside Mr. Garrison's former boyfriend Mr. Slave's anus, and adds the player as a friend on social media.[12]

Parker and Stone have said that the removal of Mr. Hat was symbolic of the show abandoning its original style as a surreal comedy in favor of its current format of satirizing real-life issues and events.

Mr. Garrison temporarily replaced Mr. Hat with Mr. Twig (starting in the episode "Summer Sucks"), who consisted of a twig wearing a purple shirt with a pink triangle symbol. His voice was identical to Mr. Hat's until his final scene in "Chef Aid", where he spoke with a French accent. Mr. Twig was not well received by the children in Garrison's third grade class, who repeatedly called for the return of Mr. Hat and suggesting Mr. Twig would be better used as a coat rack, to which Garrison took much offense. Eventually, Mr. Hat returns in "Chef Aid", heralding the fact by some psychopathic attacks on Mr. Twig. Though Garrison constantly assured himself that Mr. Twig was a better choice than Mr. Hat, he came to terms with his attachment to Mr. Hat at the end of the episode upon being broken out of jail by him. Garrison got back with Mr. Hat after Mr. Twig advised him to follow his heart.