South Hell Monster Guide: Recognize Cartman and Ike

Quick answer

Cartman is the monster that hunts you in South Hell. The game says so itself: the tutorial card 'HE HUNTS YOU' reads 'Cartman is coming? HIDE in a locker. Running is LOUD.' You recognize an encounter when a large, deformed Cartman character charges at you — and you recognize the endgame when the screen flashes red with 'CARTMAN: GIVE ME THOSE KEYS!!'. A second threat named Ike exists, but he is a flashlight jump-scare, not the hunter chasing your keys.

• Cartman patrols the map and charges the player; a catch costs a life and drops the key you were carrying.
• Hiding in a locker and completing the shrinking-circle minigame ends a chase — he walks past a hidden player without noticing.
• The tutorial names the basement and the safe room as places 'Cartman can't come in.'
• After the fourth key, the game declares 'NOWHERE IS SAFE NOW - RUN TO THE EXIT!'

Two threats share South Hell's halls, and they work nothing alike. Cartman is the pursuer — the one the tutorial, the key warning ('If Cartman gets you, you DROP it.') and the endgame text all name. Ike is a jump-scare tied to your flashlight. Telling them apart matters, because the answer to each is different: lockers and safe rooms for Cartman, a disciplined flashlight for Ike.

The two threats at a glance

Key huntPrimary hunter

Cartman

A large, deformed Cartman character that patrols and charges the player. Named outright by the tutorial card 'HE HUNTS YOU'. A catch costs a life and drops the key you were carrying.

FlashlightJump-scare threat

Ike

A separate threat described by players as a creepy kid. The tutorial warns 'DON'T SHINE YOUR LIGHT ON IKE'. The results screen counts him separately ('Ike screamed at you'), so he is not part of the key hunt.

The hunter is Cartman — the game names him itself

South Hell does not leave you guessing about its monster. The tutorial's second card is titled 'HE HUNTS YOU' and reads: 'Cartman is coming? HIDE in a locker. Running is LOUD.' That makes Cartman the game's own name for the pursuer, not a nickname invented by video titles.

In Medium-mode gameplay footage he shows up exactly as advertised: a large, deformed Cartman character that charges the player. Duo-commentary players keep reaching for the same words — fat, nasty and gross — and one mid-scream outburst of 'HEY, GET OFF HIM, YOU FATTY' sums up the reaction most first encounters get. His pattern is patrol and charge: he moves through the building, and when he closes in, the encounter becomes a straight chase. The tutorial's advice for that moment is not to run — 'Running is LOUD' — but to hide in a locker.

How to recognize a Cartman encounter

Each stage of an encounter announces itself, so you can tell exactly how deep into it you are:

• The charge. A big, deformed Cartman model coming straight at you is the encounter itself. He patrols first, then charges the player.
• Noise before the charge. Encounters often start with sound. The tutorial and in-run text flag 'Running is LOUD', 'Walking on glass is loud', and more bluntly, 'He can hear your mic'. In one recorded duo session, a single accidental whistle pulled him right to the players.
• The endgame flash. Picking up the fourth key ('KEY FOUND 4/4') triggers a red screen with 'RUN', 'CARTMAN: GIVE ME THOSE KEYS!!' and 'HE KNOWS YOU HAVE THEM ALL. NOWHERE IS SAFE NOW - RUN TO THE EXIT!'. That is the game switching him into his aggressive endgame chase state.
• The catch. The screen cuts to black and shows '2 LIVES LEFT' — that was a catch, and it cost one of the three lives a run starts with.
• The aftermath. You respawn in the basement — one of the areas the tutorial explicitly calls safe — with the message 'Oh my God, they killed Kenny!' and the objective 'Pick up the dropped key'.
• The tally at the end. The results screen counts your encounters for the run: 'Times caught', 'Cartman in your traps', 'Times you hid' — and tracks Ike on his own separate line.

What a catch actually costs

Getting caught is survivable, but it stings twice: once for the life and once for whatever you were carrying. In the recorded Medium run, Cartman caught the player in a corridor moments after they found the third key:

Catch, respawn, recover

1. 1

   Cartman reaches you

   He closes the distance and makes the catch — in the recorded Medium run, in a corridor right after the player grabbed the third key.

2. 2

   A life is lost

   The screen goes black and shows '2 LIVES LEFT', down from the 3 lives the run started with.

3. 3

   You respawn in the basement

   You wake back in the basement with the message 'Oh my God, they killed Kenny!'.

4. 4

   Retrieve the dropped key

   The key you carried drops where you were caught — 'If Cartman gets you, you DROP it.' The objective becomes 'Pick up the dropped key', and in the recorded run the player walked back to that same corridor and collected the red key.

That drop rule is what turns a catch into a detour rather than a disaster: the key waits where you fell, so the recovery trip leads straight back through the area where he caught you. The key hunt itself — what you are carrying and why he wants it — is covered in the South Hell keys guide.

How encounters end without damage

Hiding in a locker. Lockers marked 'HIDING PLACE' are the tutorial's answer to a chase. Press E to hide and a shrinking-circle minigame begins — the tutorial describes it as 'click the circles to stay hidden'. Finish it while he is near and he walks straight past the locker without noticing the player inside; that evasion was completed successfully in the recorded Medium run. Duo-session players add one caution from experience: one reported being pulled out of hiding for breathing too much.

Safe rooms. The tutorial's 'SAFE ROOMS' card promises: 'The BASEMENT and the SAFE ROOM are safe. Cartman can't come in.' Observed gameplay backs that up — Cartman reached a closed safe-room door, could not enter, and the player inside took no damage. When a chase is going badly, these are the places he cannot follow.

Noise is how he finds you

The game's text gives his hearing its own rules: 'Running is LOUD', 'Walking on glass is loud', and the tutorial's most unusual line, 'He can hear your mic'. That last one is easy to dismiss until you see him react. In one duo-commentary session, an accidental whistle drew him toward the players, teammates kept hissing 'Stop talking' and 'Don't look at him' at each other, and one player blamed a locker ejection on breathing too much. Those specifics come from that single recorded session, so treat them as reported examples of him reacting to sound rather than exact limits.

Traps catch him too

Lockers sometimes hold more than hiding places. A hallway locker in the recorded run produced a trap with its own instructions: 'You found a trap! Take it out (5), aim at the floor and click to place it.' Selecting slot 5, aiming at the floor and clicking sets it down — and the run's results screen later showed 'Cartman in your traps: 1', confirmation that a placed trap can catch Cartman.

Ike is a separate threat — don't confuse the two

Ike appears in the tutorial's 'THE DARK' card as a warning rather than a chase: 'DON'T SHINE YOUR LIGHT ON IKE.' Players describe him as a creepy kid character. His interaction with you is a jump-scare tied to your flashlight — nothing to do with the key hunt Cartman pursues you for. The results screen keeps the two apart as well, tracking 'Ike screamed at you: 1' on its own line next to 'Cartman in your traps: 1'.

So the recognition rule is simple: if a creepy kid screams at you, that was Ike — watch where you point your light. If a giant, deformed Cartman is charging you down a corridor, that is the hunter, and it is time for a locker or a safe room.

The short version

The South Hell monster is Cartman: a huge, deformed figure who patrols the building, charges the player, and takes a life plus your carried key when he catches you. You'll recognize his encounters by the charge itself, the noise that summons him, the red 'GIVE ME THOSE KEYS!!' flash after the fourth key, the black '2 LIVES LEFT' screen of a catch, and the basement respawn that follows it. From there, South Hell survival tips cover staying alive run to run, the full South Hell walkthrough traces the whole route, and the South Hell ending picks up where that final red-screen chase to the exit is heading.