Kids and playing go hand in hand—sometimes literally. Most of the time, when they do play a game, it usually involves kids running, chasing, and hiding. They all tire themselves out, laugh themselves silly, and maybe the worst thing that happens is someone skins a knee or breaks a window. It’s all innocent fun.

However, there are rare instances when a kid’s game gets way out of hand, and the lawsuits start flying, the cops show up, or something even worse happens.

Here are 8 examples of kid’s games that got way out of hand.

See Also: 10 Bizarre Things People Have Done Over Video Games

8 British Bulldog Game Leads to Girl’s Death

British Bulldog is a rough and tumble game popular among elementary-aged school children. In it, one or two “bulldogs” stand alone in the middle of a large field. A line of runners face them and stand at one end of the field. The runners try to get to the other side without being caught by a “bulldog.” If they get caught, they turn into a “bulldog” and join the other “bulldogs” to try and stop the remaining runners. The game goes on until there is only one runner left—he or she is the winner.

In February of 2013, a group of children played British Bulldog outside Trafalgar Junior School in Twickenham, England. An 8-year-old girl named Freya James played a different game close by when she was accidentally struck by one of the boys playing British Bulldog. She fell, stomach down, onto a recycled wooden railway sleeper. The fall caused a laceration of her liver which lead to internal bleeding. She was taken to the hospital, where she later died.

Freya’s parents, Anekke and Nick James, talked of what a good-hearted girl she was, “Freya was an angel and was loved by everyone who had contact with her.” They added, “She was so strong and determined in everything she did and always tried to help those that struggled.”

Sometime later, Freya’s parents called for a ban of the game that took their daughter’s life, “I hope our daughter’s death will lead to a more widespread ban.”^[1]

7 Snowball Fight Turns Into Race Brawl

Cole Harbour District High School is located in the province of Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada. Back in the winter of 1989, what started as a playful snowball fight between groups of grade 10 boys turned ugly as white students ended up fighting black students in a vicious brawl.

Apparently, the brawl was triggered when a, “…particularly large snowball showered one group with snow…”

Christa Webber, a grade 10 student at the time, who witnessed the brawl, said she saw a student’s face “…split open” from a punch and students getting kicked when they fell to the ground.

In the aftermath, 14 were charged, and the brawl led directly to the government of Nova Scotia creating the Black Learners Advocacy Committee. The committee, “…highlighted inequities in education for the African-Nova Scotian learner.” As well, “The BLAC report resulted in the hiring of cross-cultural understanding co-ordinators and African-Nova Scotian support workers in the province’s schools.”

30 years later, the brawl still haunts former Cole Harbour District High School student Corey Beals. Though he didn’t witness the brawl triggering snowball, Beals remains sad about the incident and feels it has had a lasting impact on the community, “Unfortunately, Cole Harbour has been scarred. Ever since. Thirty years later. And whenever there is an incident that takes place at that school, everyone reflects back to 1989.”^[2]

6 Dodgeball Leads to Felony

Dodgeball is a gym class staple. Use a ball to eliminate players on the opposing team by hitting them with it. The first team to hit all of the players on the other side with the game ball wins.

For Jacob Sigler and one other student of Ellsworth High School, that simple game turned into something much more ugly and much more complicated. The result was a facial fracture and a criminal complaint against Sigler.

According to the victim, who was 16 at the time, “When Jacob ran out of balls, Jacob closed his fist and punched (him) the face.”

When interviewed by police, Sigler, 18, said that he thought the other boy was going to tackle him. “Then, I punched him,” he told the police.

Months later, Sigler ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor battery. He was sentenced to 1 year probation and ordered to pay more than $1,300 in fines.^[3]

5 Hide-and-Seek Leads to Dead Body

Who hasn’t played hide-and-seek? A classic kid’s game that may go all the way back to the Greeks of the 2nd-century, hide-and-seek consists of one kid seeking and many kids hiding. After counting up from 1 to anywhere from 10 to 100, the seeker then goes out and tries to find the kids that hid. If found, that kid then becomes another seeker. The last kid left hiding is the winner. Simple and straightforward. Most of the time, yes, but every once-in-a-while, a kid seeking another kid, instead, finds something that turns the game into a crime scene.

Back in October of 2017, two kids were playing hide-and-seek in the wooded area of a park in Indianapolis, Indiana. There, in the midst of their bit of fun, one of them came across the dead body of 30-year-old Christopher Bradley. The kids immediately told an adult, who then alerted the police.

Detectives working the case believe that the death was suspicious.^[4]

4 Salt and Ice Challenge Burns

Most childhood games (including some on this list) have long histories and countless hours of enjoyment—like jumping rope, hide-and-seek, dodge ball, and kickball. While these are mostly harmless activities, kids and teens today have a new source for things to do to pass the time: TikTok. Unfortunately. TikTok, created in 2016, has recently become synonymous with something far more sinister: viral internet challenges.

Some of these idiotic—and sometimes dangerous and deadly—challenges include the cinnamon challenge, the Tide Pod challenge, and the salt and ice challenge. An Iowa woman learned about the last challenge the hard way after a horrific late-night phone call. Her daughter and several friends had tried an internet challenge that involved putting snow and table salt on their arms to see who could stand it the longest. The ice and salt formed a chemical reaction that induced frostbite, giving the girl and her friends second- and third-degree burns. They were taken to the hospital for treatment, where the doctor noted that he had seen several of these types of injuries in recent months.^[5]

3 Choking Game Claims Life of 12-Year-Old Boy

According to the Center For Disease Control and Prevention, from 1995 to 2007, at least 82 kids have died playing the Choking Game. 87% of them were boys aged 11 to 16. The average age was 13.

The point of the game is to go just far enough to get the “high” that follows after briefly squeezing off the supply of oxygen and blood to the brain. The game has a long history and also goes by the names “Pass-Out Challenge,” “Flatliner,” and “Space Monkey.”

One boy who went too far was Erik Robinson of Santa Monica, California. One day in April of 2010, he put a rope around his neck and hung himself from a pull up bar. He was only 12 years old.

His devastated mother, Judy Rogg, found her son collapsed in the kitchen doorway. “I missed him by a few minutes,” she said. Rogg tried to undo the complicated slipknots her son had tied but couldn’t. By the time she got help, it was too late.

In the wake of the tragedy, Rogg founded the non-profit “Erik’s Cause” to help educate other kids about the dangers of the game. She and her co-founder Stephanie Small spent years designing an 8-minute video and PowerPoint presentation now shown to kids in the Iron County School District in Utah. Iron County adopted the training program after 4 kids died in its district playing the Choking Game.

Rogg keeps the memory of her son close—some of his ashes are locked inside of a necklace she wears. She works tirelessly for “Erik’s Cause” and has travelled to speak in Pennsylvania, California, and Maryland. Rogg even flew all the way to New Jersey to help a family get through their own tragic loss from the Choking Game.

“This is the best way for me to preserve his legacy…I have to keep busy.”^[6]

2 Sack Tapping Game Leads to Testicle Removal

One night, a 14-year-old boy named David Gibbons woke his mother up at 1 am complaining of groin pain. Apparently, he had been playing a game called “Sack Tapping” with other boys at school that day. One boy punched him in the testicles so hard that it was still hurting badly.

His mother took him to the hospital, where doctors removed the boy’s right testicle. “This may be called a game, but it’s not a game,” the mom said. “It’s dangerous, and it needs to stop.”

Urologist Dr. Scott Wheeler told a Minneapolis TV station that he thought the problem had gotten “…way out of control.”

Dr. Charles Raison, an associate professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, believes he knows why boys play the game, “Games like this are to see how tough you are…It’s a way of establishing dominance, and because it’s hard to withstand being hit in the groin, it becomes a good measure of toughness.”^[7]

1 Hot Dog Eating Contest Turns Fatal

Jason Easterly/Special to the Daily News
Owen Houston, 7, of Naples starts the kids “Neat Eat” during the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog qualifying circuit for their annual hot dog eating contest held at the Mercato on Saturday, May 12, 2012.

In January of 2010, the Boys & Girls Club of San Pedro in California held a fundraiser for Haiti relief—a devastating earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, 2010. One of the activities was a hot dog eating game. Unfortunately, the fun turned deadly when one of the participants, 13-year-old Noah Thomas Akers started choking.

A male staff member performed the Heimlich maneuver, but it didn’t help. Paramedics arrived soon and tried to remove the obstructing piece of food using an extended pair of forceps. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful, and Noah later died in hospital.

Apparently, a staff member of the Boys & Girls Club did tell each child participating in the hot dog eating game to take their time and that it was not a game based on speed.

Lt. David McGill, of the Los Angeles Police Department, indicated that the initial investigation suggested that the children were appropriately supervised.^[8]

The Inca Empire was prosperous from the mid-1430s to 1572 when Spain’s Francisco Pizarro conquered them. This civilization spread from most of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and part of Southern Colombia. If you were lucky enough not to be part of the 25 percent of kids who died before age five, you would have had a tough upbringing. That doesn’t include all the strange and downright unsanitary things you’d have to endure.

10 The Ceremony That Killed Children

Yes, Incas sacrificed their kids! This may be more of how a kid died instead of lived in the Inca Empire. It’s crazy to think about, but this ritual (called capacocha) was used for special events like a ruler’s death or victory in a battle. It was actually an honor for the chosen child’s family to have their kid sacrificed on the highest mountaintop in Peru. Incas would also sacrifice children to the gods to prevent droughts, widespread illness, etc.

Before the ceremony began, the chosen children were brought to the city’s capital, Cuzco. Tons of citizens gathered to feast there before taking the child up the mountain to sacrifice him or her. Although they didn’t discriminate based on gender, most of the children’s mummies found by archaeologists have been girls.

The kid was given alcohol and poison to drink. This caused the child to vomit and slowly die on the mountain—which could have taken weeks or months to travel to. The child was left to freeze to death if extreme dehydration didn’t take her first. Sometimes, a child was suffocated or died from a massive blow to the head.

9 The Incas Were Ageists

The quipu (pictured above) was the Inca’s way of recording and keeping data. Although we still don’t know how to read a quipu, we do know that the Incas were kind of ageist. About twice a year, they took a census to record the number of people in the empire and to put each individual into one of 10 classes.

The Incas divided their citizens into groups based on age, with those 25–50 years old considered the most prosperous and important to the empire’s economy. The Incas counted them first and considered them higher in class. Next came those who were 60–70 years old, followed by 18- to 20-year-olds, then 10- to 17-year-olds, 5- to 9-year-olds, toddlers, and finally, babies.

This shows that young kids were not seen as beneficial to the Incas. It sounds terrible because the Incas did rely on sacrificing children. Their elders reportedly beat kids often until the children surpassed age nine—probably because kids really needed discipline in this empire.

8 Learning Advanced Skills As A Little Kid

Inca children, especially girls younger than nine, knew how to spin yarn made from llama and alpaca fur. Spanish drawings of the civilization show representations of Inca girls doing household chores at around five years old. They also knew how to brew beer.

Still, kids could not drink beer or eat certain foods like sugary, fatty types. They needed to be as healthy as possible for marriage. Teen boys were like shepherds to their llamas while the younger boys started learning how to trap birds and guinea pigs. Incas ate guinea pigs as a common dish.

Unsurprisingly, young girls were expected to be submissive and had to stay away from men until they were put in arranged marriages. They probably didn’t appear to be very feminine at first to the Spanish conquistadors because these girls had to keep their hair cut short and didn’t wear shoes. Their entire lives were spent in preparation for marriage and taking care of a family.

7 Sick Kids Had To Sit In Pee

If a child was very ill, the Incas believed that he could suck on the umbilical cord (that the parents had preserved) since the umbilical cord soaked up any evil from within the child. It’s unclear how they kept the umbilical cords. However, like the Egyptians, the Incas probably preserved body parts like this by keeping them cold in freezing mountain streams.

Getting a fever, like all kids do at one point or another, was a dreaded thing. At least, it probably would be for us now. This is because soaking in a huge tub filled entirely with the family’s urine supposedly healed kids who had a fever.

6 The Babies And Toddlers Were Treated More Like Things

A Spanish priest recorded how mothers took care of their babies. For fear of giving the babies too much attention or causing them to be constantly needy, the mothers would take the babies to a cold stream in the mountains and bathe them for days.

It wasn’t until the toddlers were two that they earned a name and official place in the family. This was probably because so many newborns and toddlers died in 15th-century Peru. The baby would continue to be taken to these “freezing baths” until they were about two years old. The mother would refrain from even hugging the baby in these early years of the baby’s life.

Of course, a mother would make a pouch sling that wrapped around her back. The baby would sit in the sling while the mother gathered herbs and did other outdoor chores. Once the baby turned two, he or she had a ceremony called rutuchicoy where family members and neighbors gathered to watch the child’s hair be cut for the first time.

5 Schooling Was Surprisingly Not Sexist (Sort Of)

Inca children between the ages of about eight or nine were taken from their homes to attend different schools. The girls and boys may have had different and separate learning to do, but they were fairly equal in their training.

Boys learned Quechua, the language spoken by the Incas. Meanwhile, the girls learned about brewing beer, Inca religion, cooking, and other special skills they would have to use every day.

Of course, only the prettiest girls were selected to go to these special houses for the aqllakuna, which is the word for these chosen women. The boys were also taught about their religion and history at these four-year schools in Cuzco.

It’s not uncommon for some cultures now to separate their females and males. The Incas seemed to be all about class status. Those pretty aqllakuna either became priestesses or wives to men in higher stations. The Sapa Inca, who was their leader, had hundreds of wives.

Noble or not, boys had to go to school to become warriors or husbands and trappers. It was common for boys to know how to farm. It should be noted that only the richer families could send their kids to school.

4 Changing Clothes Was Important If You Were A Kid

At about age 14, boys changed out of their rags (if they were poor) and wore loincloths to symbolize that they had become men. This is largely because children could marry by the time they were in their teens.

At this age, boys also started putting large plugs in their earlobes. As the years went on, they continued to slowly increase the size of the plug earrings so as to stretch out their ears.

As boys continued to grow into men, they carried around pouches that were like purses. There, they kept coca leaves to chew on. The leaves were also good luck charms that were held close to their persons.

This shows that the girls were not given as much in terms of accessories or clothing. Nowadays, women are the ones who wear earrings and carry purses. Of course, young women wore dresses longer than the men’s tunics.

Fun fact: The Sapa Inca only wore a new outfit once. Then it was burned. Some nobility (such as the wives and sons of the Sapa Inca) wore clothing more than once but still wore many outfits. The Incas were masters in textiles and clothing, so they had many tunics and dresses along with blankets.

3 Kids Wouldn’t Have Normal-Shaped Skulls

From the time that Incas were babies, their parents would wrap their heads to deform them to look like cones. Since younglings have soft skulls, it is easy to transform them into any shape.

It’s believed that the Incas did this out of the belief that the higher the head, the higher the mind and the closer to their gods. In some cultures, this practice is still in use today. It was very common among the Maya and other ancient civilizations.

Archaeologists found holes in some of the Incas’ skulls due to head injuries. Carving out a hole helped with the swelling if the Incas fought each other too violently with clubs. Surprisingly, this was a common practice.

2 Kids Were Probably Introduced To Sex And Marriage Too Young

The discovery of pots and statues of people in sexual positions shows that the Incas were accepting of all sexual activity. It was a cultural understanding that the Incas would have sex before marriage with their prospective spouses. It was also expected that young Incas would have a few lovers before marriage. Homosexual sex was also depicted on pottery.

Although it may seem that the Incas were more progressive in the areas of marriage and sex than some of today’s cultures, chastity was still expected of those chosen women (aqllakuna) until they were married. Knowing that girls were married between the ages of 12 and 14, this means that most of them must have been sexually active before then.

In fact, the Incas separated genders into three groups without much evidence of discrimination. There were straight men, straight women, and a third gender group that included transgender and homosexual individuals. This group was called Tinkuy. So it was possible to be a young homosexual child without feeling the need to hide from society.

1 Marriage Was More Of A Business Trial

Men married at a reasonable age (around 20–25 or in their late teens), but women were often married before ages 14–15. The marriage ceremony was more of a business agreement between the two families. There was a feast, though, and a bit of a celebration. It’s believed that this ceremony was fast and not necessarily happy.

Every year, the leader of each village in the empire would line up all the available boys and girls and pair them off in arranged marriages. If two men wanted to marry the same woman, the parents would have to present reasons to the leader why their son should win her hand. The leader made the final decision, though.

Men of a lower status could only marry one woman. Luckily, the spouses were given a trial period of a few years. If the girl was not happy, she could return home. If the husband wasn’t happy with his wife, he could send her back to her home. It was the custom for the girls to move in with the husband after the husband’s family built them a home.

After studying anthropology at Purdue University along with video production and creative writing, Kate decided to go to LA to earn a graduate degree in writing and producing for television. She strongly believes that everyone can learn a lot from informational television, especially from those programs that focus on history.

What are kid’s movies these days without a dark fan theory or two? What is happy ever after without a demonic twist? What is a cute fluffy monster without a bleak future? On this list are ten theories about some of the most popular kids movies that might just make you see them in a different light.

10 Notable Fan Theories About Popular Children’s Stories

10 Mufasa was the bad guy

“Can you feel the love tonight?”

That phrase will probably make you think of The Lion King first and then Elton John. The Lion King is known for catchy tunes and perhaps the saddest death scene in any kids movie, barring the demise of Bambi’s mother.

This beloved movie also has a host of fan theories surrounding it, some weird and some fairly dark. Some fans believe that The Lion King and Planet of the Apes have the same kind of future or that Nala is Scar’s daughter. There is also a theory that says Zazu was actually in cahoots with Scar to get rid of Simba.

One of the most persistent fan theories has it that Mufasa was the real bad guy, not Scar. According this theory, Mufasa banned all other male lions to ensure there is no one left to challenge him for the throne. He is physically superior to Scar, so he tolerates him. Therefore, when Mufasa was killed, Scar became an unlikely hero who saved the hyenas and became the ‘best ruler’ over the pride lands.^[1]

9 The Minions are based on adopted Jewish children

Minions are those little capsule-shaped minionese-speaking henchmen who can supposedly understand Spanish, English, French, Italian, Russian and Korean. Their design was inspired by Jawas and Oompa Loompas, and their colours (evil: purple, good: yellow) were inspired by the fact that yellow and purple are opposite to each other on the color spectrum.

A freaky theory connected these cute characters to Nazi experiments. The rumor had it that the Minions were inspired by Jewish children adopted by Nazi scientists who wanted to use them to practice their poison gas experiments on. To perpetuate the theory, a photo has been circulating the internet of what looks like children wearing Minion-type masks. Fortunately, it turned out that the photo has nothing to do with Jewish children being experimented on but is instead a photo of people in 1908 dressed in submarine escape suits.^[2]

8 Toothless got revenge on Hiccup

Toothless is just about the cutest dragon in a movie. He is a rare Night Fury species and is faster and more powerful than other dragon species. He is Hiccup’s best friend and is extremely protective of him. Toothless also has a special power in the form of ‘radar.’ When he issues a plasma blast and it bounces off his immediate location, it gives Toothless an accurate reading of the surrounding area.

In the first How To Train Your Dragon film, Toothless damages his wing when Hiccup shoots him from the sky. At the end of the film, Hiccup loses a foot. This gave rise to an almost immediate theory that Toothless had ripped off Hiccup’s foot in revenge for his damaged wing. The theory also says that this makes the two more dependent on each other, which is what Toothless ultimately wanted. Hiccup would have to keep using Toothless for transportation purposes and he would have to help Toothless fly without problems.^[3]

Another, slightly sweet, slightly less terrible theory has it that Toothless was desperately trying to save Hiccup during the final battle and he bit off his foot in his haste to get him to safety.

7 Moana is dead for most of the film

The Moana character has been described as a modern heroine who doesn’t need a male companion to help her navigate life. She decries the title of princess but revels in calling herself the daughter of the Chief. The movie also received high praise for its animation and musical performances.

In the movie, Moana can’t seem to stay away from the ocean, even as a toddler. She eventually braves the waves, befriends a demigod, has a crazy adventure and returns home to her family at the end. Or does she?

A dark theory has it that Moana actually dies during the storm that sees her wash ashore on Maui’s island. It states that there is a barrier between Moana’s world and that of Maui and the rest of the magical creatures that appear in the movie. In order to communicate with them, Moana either had to be magic herself or dead. Moana interacting with her dead grandmother and other long-gone spirits after the storm is said to be more ‘proof’ of this theory.^[4]

6 Sulley is turned into a toilet seat cover

Monsters, Inc. took the world by storm in 2001, becoming the third highest-grossing film of that year. The movie’s plot is centered around monsters from Monstropolis going into the human world at night to scare children and ‘harvest’ their screams. The energy of the screams power the city of Monstropolis. When a door on the ‘scare floor’ in the energy factory is left open, a human child enters Monstropolis and the main monster, Sulley, tries to get her back home.

The ‘villain’ of the story comes in the form of Randall who allegedly at one point tells Sulley that humans are dangerous and love slaying monsters because they turn their skins into toilet seat covers. Sulley naturally laughs this off as nonsense.

However, in Partysaurus Rex (a short film about the dinosaur from Toy Story), there is a bathroom scene depicting a toilet seat cover that looks suspiciously similar to Sulley’s fur… Coincidence?

Fortunately, this remains just a wild theory, considering the chat between Randall and Sulley never actually happened. Or did it?^[5]

Top 10 Bizarre TV Shows For Kids

5 Personality traits absorbed into cars

Lightning McQueen is just about the cutest Corvette-looking car there is. Pixar crushed the box-office yet again in 2006 with Cars starring McQueen, a truck named Mack and several others, raking in over 460 million and receiving two Academy Awards nominations.

Much the same as with the other entries on this list, fans couldn’t leave well enough alone and came up with a decidedly disturbing theory about this beloved kid’s film. The theory starts off with questions including ‘why do the cars have doors if there are no people around’ and ‘if the cars have tongues, doesn’t that mean they also have internal organs?’

It then goes on to claim that the reason for the ‘no people around’ situation is because the cute little cars wiped out the human race and absorbed the personality traits of their owners.

Also, the reason the cars have doors is to keep their internal organs such as eyes and brains from tumbling out.^[6]

4 Rug made from Mama Bear

There have been a host of fan theories over the years about Shrek, the lovable green ogre, and his friends. These include Farquaad’s subjects being overjoyed when the overlord dies, Shrek being exiled from other ogres because he refused to eat human meat and Fiona living off the remains of dead knights.

Clearly that last bit wasn’t horrible enough for some fans, because another disturbing theory soon started making the rounds. This time involving the three bears that can be seen towards the beginning of the first Shrek movie. The three bears consist of ‘Mama Bear’, ‘Papa Bear’, and ‘Baby Bear.’ They are locked up in cages and are very unhappy.

Later in the film, Papa and Baby are sitting around a fire with some of the other fairytale creatures and Papa is consoling Baby. Mama Bear is nowhere to be seen.^[7]

Then… the unthinkable… a shot of Lord Farquaad’s castle reveals Mama Bear as a rug on the floor.

Luckily, the fact that she returns at the end of the film, to take part in the singing, seems to throw this theory out the window… except some fans believe the Mama Bear singing at the end isn’t ‘Mama’ at all. Instead she is the new lady in Papa Bear’s life.

3 Death before afterlife

With a title like The Nightmare Before Christmas, it probably wouldn’t take a lot to come up with some disturbing details for this movie. It was released in 1993 and was the first animated movie to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects. The Nightmare Before Christmas was released through Touchstone Pictures, even though it is a Disney movie, because Disney feared that the film would be too scary for children. Considering what the characters look like, they may have had a point.

One theory surrounding the movie is that Sally, the ragdoll, was a witch when she was alive and was dismembered for it. This, according to the theory, would be why her limbs are stitched back together in the afterlife. Lock is said to have frozen to death, hence his white skin and blue lips, while Zero may have been electrocuted, hence his nose lighting up as if by electric current.^[8]

Some fans have also ruminated that Halloween Town’s citizens may represent basic human fears: Dr. Finkelstein represents the fear of aging while Jack represents the fear of death and Oogie Boogie fear of the dark.

2 What happened to Sven’s mom?

Frozen has had its fair share of wacky theories including Anna representing Summer and Elsa representing Winter (as in the seasons), Hans buying the stolen crown from Tangled’s Flynn, and Kristoff being Santa Clause. Not to mention the one that says Joan of Arc is an ancestor of Anna and Elsa.
And while all these theories are cool to think about and then forget, fans of the movies have come up with an incredibly dark theory that is bound to stick around for a while.

Throughout both films, there is evidence of a very strong friendship between Sven and Kristoff. They grew up together and stuck by each other’s side through thick and thin. When you take the time to think about it, you may start wondering what happened to Sven’s mother and what would have caused him to be with Kristoff instead of his own family.

Well, according to the aforementioned theory, the ice harvesters killed Sven’s mother, handed baby Sven over to young Kristoff to look after and then gave Kristoff a pelt to wear… made from the mother’s fur.^[9]

According to the theory this would also be part of why Sven loves Kristoff so much: the smell of the pelt reminds him of his mother.

1 Kingdom called Corona

Some theories are more intricately tangled than others. Tangled the movie has been the centre of many such rumors, including that it is linked to Frozen and The Little Mermaid. One of these have it that Elsa and Anna’s parents were on their way to Rapunzel and Flynn’s wedding when their ship went down. Ariel and Flounder then came across the shipwreck in The Little Mermaid.

Another far-out theory reared its head on social media in 2020: Tangled predicted the current coronavirus pandemic.^[10]

But…how, you may ask. Well, since Rapunzel is locked away (read: quarantined) from her kingdom (called Corona) is any more proof needed that this 2010 animation film somehow predicted the disaster that is 2020?

10 Disturbing Stories Behind Your Favorite Songs For Kids

Parents would like to think that the content that is advertised as child friendly is child friendly, but unfortunately that is not always the case. Throughout the history of children’s television, many programs have been produced that contain explicit content that is not meant for children. While these productions have been called out by parents and media organizations, sexual content in children’s media continues, and seems to only be getting worse and worse. These are 10 of the most explicit children’s TV shows to ever air.

Top 10 Truly Terrible Television Series

10 Adventure Time

Animated tv show Adventure Time has always been a home to many dirty jokes. Set in a post-apocalyptic world and centering around the adventures of a boy named Finn, and his magic dog Jake in the magical Land of Ooo. The show was broadcast on Cartoon Network, and ran from 2010 to 2018. Throughout its 8 year run, the show was always a source of controversy for parents due to the content of some of its jokes. Some of the controversial jokes included Jake and Lady Rainicorn getting naked running through cabbage fields, Jake implying he has a foot fetish and Finn being suggestively invited into a bouncy castle to watch the princess bounce. All of these adult moments took place in a television show that was all in a show marketed to children and tweens. It is no wonder that parents were against their children watching the show.

9 Good Luck Charlie

Good Luck Charlie had a simple and traditional premise. Too many kids, overtired parents and plenty of wholesome family moments and jokes to keep child audiences coming back again and again. Sprinkled in with the child friendly humour, are a few jokes that only the adults in the audience could understand. In the episode Teddy on Ice, parents Amy and Bob find out that their toddler daughter Charlie is using curse words, and they don’t know how to stop her. Although we actually do not see Charlie, curse, the implication is more than enough for a children’s program. In several other episodes including Snow Show Part One, and Take Mel out to the Ballgame, characters stripped in front of the camera. These are just a few of the dirty jokes and moments within the show, fans have picked up many more both during and after the show’s run. Despite this, Good Luck Charlie ran from 2010 to 2014 with 97 episodes and a tv-movie being produced as well. Today it remains a Disney classic, with its dirty jokes largely forgotten by the general public.

8 Johnny Bravo

Johnny Bravo was an animated series on Cartoon Network about the life of Johnny Bravo, an overconfident playboy that ran from 1997 to 2004. From its first episode, the show was chalk full of adult references despite it running on a children’s network. Many of the sexual references in the show included such extremes as a virgin sacrifice, and such regular inappropriate actions such as Bravo not respecting women’s personal space. In regards to the show’s controversial moments, the show’s creators said that they were not overly concerned with the adult content and that they did not believe anyone was watching the show.

7 6Teen

This animated tv show about 6 sixteen year olds hanging out at a local mall focused on coming of age experiences that all teenagers experience, such as finding a part time job and starting to date. The catch was that these stories were told from a child friendly perspective, or at least they were meant to be. Mostly. Like teens in real life, the animated teens on this show pushed the boundaries of what was appropriate and what is not. The Halloween special Dude of the Living Dead’s plot was focused on a peephole in a lingerie store changing room. Another suggestive episode was Over Exposed, which featured the characters accidentally and purposely seeing each other naked. Needless to say, plot lines of this nature on a show that was airing on children’s television attracted criticism from parents and networks. These controversies among others, were the reason why the show was eventually cancelled in 2010.

6 Total Drama Island

The Canadian animated tv show featuring teenagers on an island doing extreme challenges had no shortage of dirty moments. Censored nudity was common throughout the series, despite the fact that the animations were meant to be of 16 year old children. In addition, many of the actions the animated teens were forced to do such as eating Bull testicles attracted controversy or were even censored in areas such as the United States, where it was changed to Bull meat balls. Although the following seasons of the show did contain censored nudity and teens performing extreme actions, it was much more sparse and toned down than in the first season.

5 The Suite Life of Zack and Cody

The Suite Life of Zack and Cody was one of Disney’s most successful shows of the early 2000s. The show centered around 2 brothers who lived in a luxury hotel with their mother and the various exploits they found themselves in. While most of these exploits were child friendly, many of them crossed the line. For example in the episode Forever Plaid, the boys, aged 14 drilled holes into the wall to spy on a High School girls soccer team in the next room as they changed and gossiped. Another episode featured a joke where 16 year old London began to strip naked when being told to, “strip and make the bed,” in reference to removing sheets. These sexual jokes, among others, were mostly ignored by viewers and the show avoided controversy throughout its 3 run and its 3 year long spin off series, Suite Life on Deck.

4 Spongebob Squarepants

For a show to have been on the air as long as Spongebob Squarepants, controversy is almost guaranteed. Some of the controversy has surrounded he show includes a virus themed episode and an episode that conservative groups said promoted homosexuality in children The worst, and arguably most justified of the controversy surrounds the various dirty jokes in the series. In one episode Spongebob told Patrick that his genius was showing. In response, Patrick covered his private area, implying he thought Spounhebob had said penis. In another episode Spoungebob quickly changed the channel on his TV when Gary walked in, saying he was looking for the sports channel, despite him looking intently at the tv. This implies that the images on screen were a form of fish themed pornography. These moments have drawn the attention of the Internet and some parents groups. Despite this, Spongebob remains a popular kids show to this day.

3 Jessie

Disney’s Jessie, which told the story of a small town girl who moved to New York to pursue her dreams of acting only to wind up a nanny for one of the city’s most elite power couples, did not have an occasional dirty joke which spiraled out of control unlike most of the entries on this list, but seemingly relied on adult humour altogether, despite being a show meant for children. The show’s adult humour includes a scene in which an underage Luke, when asked if he had an off switch after making sexually suggestive comments, challenges the adult Jessie to, “find it,” in an obviously suggestive way. In another episode, when they discover the family’s pet lizard is pregnant, 10 year old Ravi remarks that it must have been more than friends with another lizard of the same species that they had encountered in a previous episode, heavily implying sexual relations took place.These blatantly inappropriate moments caught the ire of several parental organizations who demanded that the show be taken off of the air. This fell on deaf ears as the show continued for a run of 98 episodes, one of the longest ever Disney shows, and produced a spinoff series Bunked, which remains on the air today.

2 ICarly

Ever since accusations of abuse and sexual deviancy were leveled against once celebrated Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider, all of his productions were analyzed under a more critical lens. His particular alleged deviancy was said to be an attraction to underaged girls feet. Some of the content in his shows seems to back this up, with regular gags centered around girls’ feet existing across several of Schneider’s shows. His most famous show, Nickelodeon’s ICarly, received even more scrutiny after star Jeneatte McCurdy said that she was embarrassed by her acting career, which was mostly spent under Schnieder, and acting on ICarly. While she did not go into the particulars about Schneider and the allegaAnd it is true that many scenes in ICarly featured underaged actresses bare feet, said feet being massaged, licked and filmed close up. Controversy surrounding the show continued when Noah Munck, who played Gibby on the original show, said in and gave his version of events involving Schnieder on a podcast shortly after the accusations were made. He said that when he was 15 he didn’t notice anything amiss on set, but from an adult perspective he said that there was a lot wrong, but would not elaborate. While ICarly was once an innocent kids show beloved by many, the recent critical analysis of the show darkens what was once a classic children’s show of the millennial era.

1 Sam and Cat

This short lived ICarly spinoff is not Dan Schneider’s most well known or beloved work, but it is the one in which he most showed his true depravity for the whole world to see. In addition to the aforementioned foot scenes and allegations of on set mistreatment from Schneider, what makes this show so perverted is what happened on its Twitter account and how it affected many of the show’s fans. In a 2013 tweet made by Schneider, the show’s account requested that young fans write Unfortunately, many young fans followed Schneider’s request and sent him photos of their feet with #SamandCatSaturday written on them so that they could be retweeted by the show’s account. In a 2018 press statement after these allegations, among numerous others, were brought to light, Schnieder responded by saying he found children’s feet “funny,” and that the images were not meant to be sexual. Even if this statement were true, Schneider still broke the cardinal rule of internet safety, and requested images of young children through the internet, using his show’s Twitter account to do so, much to the dismay of those following the scandal. So while most kids shows that contain inappropriate content only last 20 minutes with easily reversible damage, but Sam and Cat caused negative effects on its following that could last forever.

Top 10 Best TV Miniseries Ever

Oh, Halloween, you’re nothing like the original holiday. But that’s okay(ish). Because thanks to our socioeconomic ideologies, we’ve found several ways to capitalize on the holiday and enhance the absolute best part of it all—the mass consumption of candy. There’s nothing like knocking on people’s doors, asking for candy, and coming home with a full pillowcase or basket of sugary treats. And we all know that there is an unspoken hierarchy to Halloween candy.

There’s the good stuff: King Size Snickers, Twizzler Pull n’ Peels, and AirHeads. You’ve got the candy bars you’re willing to trade: maybe that Three Musketeers Bar or Milky Way. And don’t forget the candy you give to your younger brother because he doesn’t know the difference between a delicious Reese’s peanut butter cup and a not-so-thrilling Mounds bar yet.

Then there’s the candy that your parents suspect has been tampered with. Though we’d rather enjoy our candy without fear that someone has done something malicious to it, we can’t. There are some creeps out there who delight in doing it. Here are the top 10 creepiest things people have done to kids’ Halloween candy.

10 Milk Dud Bullets

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/march-30-2019-minneapolis-mn-shopper-1354301834

It’s bad enough eating Milk Duds that get impossibly stuck to your molars, but finding bullets where your candy was supposed to be is probably worse.

Back in 2014, a mother from Ohio discovered bullets in her 4-year-old son’s boxes of Milk Duds. What made this an even more troublesome discovery was that her son’s preschool had handed them out during a Trick-or-Treat event. And they were certainly not duds. There were three rounds, all .22 caliber.

Though the school didn’t have anything to tell the press about the incident, they were not the ones who brought in the bullet-filled candy boxes. Parents brought in the candy from home, which means this is either a sick prank or a scary message. 

Whatever the case, it was not a mistake.

9 Something to Snicker About

States one by one are legalizing marijuana for recreational use. But before the prohibition on pot was lifted, people had to resort to clever ways of transferring drugs from dealer to user. One dealer from Hercules, California thought of the perfect plan: transport them in Snickers candy bar wrappers.

Great idea!

Unfortunately, if you are attempting to mail said marijuana, totaling five ounces, and you get the address and postage wrong, your plan can backfire. Call this one unintentional, but any mysterious appearance of drugs in an edible substance is creepy.

As the letter was left stranded at the post office, the worker decided to hand out the Snickers bars to kids. And that’s how four weed Snickers bars ended up in someone’s Trick-or-Treat bag.

Police noted that the Snickers bars were so perfectly resealed that anyone could have mistaken the “candy” for actual candy. Nobody did, though, obviously. When you opened the wrapper, you found marijuana buds wrapped tightly in a plastic baggy. And I’m pretty sure it didn’t smell like chocolate.

The post office worker was not charged for being an unintentional drug dealer to minors.

8 Sticking it to Your Cheek

Another 2014 Halloween candy horror story, a young boy from Spokane, Washington found a rusty nail in his Halloween candy. But it’s not like he was pulling apart his candy. No, Halloween candy is not an arts and crafts project. 

He was eating it. 

Yes, he bit down on the nail, and yes, it poked his cheek. Fortunately, he was not seriously injured, and he did not get tetanus. However, I’d personally be terrified of biting into a piece of candy from then on. 

The mother of the young boy’s friend proceeded to open up the rest of his Trick-or-Treat candy and found several other pieces of metal inside them. These included nails, staples, and what looked to be watch parts.

7 Arsenic and Old Laced Halloween Candy

Halloween is for kids, maybe high school teenagers, but definitely for kids. So when we see that person who looks questionably too old to be trick-or-treating, a part of us judges them hard. How dare they take the candy away from the children!

But it’s not like we ever do anything about it. Unless you’re Helen Pfeil.

Helen Pfeil had been passing out candy to young kids all day, but when she started seeing people who were too old to be trick-or-treating, namely the 14-16-year-olds, she got a little too wrapped up in a “practical joke.”

Pfeil took a dog biscuit, some steel wool, and ant buttons (ant trap poison), wrapped it up like a candy bar, and handed it out to a total of 12 teenagers. Five of the candies were discovered that evening.

When confronted by police she swore she meant it as a joke; there was supposed to be nothing malicious about it. But the judge had her admitted to a hospital for a psychological examination. He states that he didn’t understand how someone with reason could poison children as a joke.

6 The Parent Tax on Halloween Backfires

Your candy isn’t yours until after your parents sift through it. That’s just how it goes. They reach in, look for the best things, and take them. It is the mommy and daddy tax. But as seemingly unfair as it is, we’d never wish ill on them.

But I guess this one is karma?

Salinas, California, 2013, a mother was eating some of her daughter’s Trick-or-Treat candy when she started to feel some curious side effects. It started as anxiety and then quickly changed to euphoria. After feeling ill, she checked the candy wrapper for its ingredients. She notices a small hole in the wrapper that wouldn’t normally be there.

She checked herself into the hospital where the doctor told her she was tripping on LSD.

The woman didn’t suffer any long-term side-effects following the incident but had it been her daughter, that may have been another story. The lesson here is to always let your parents take the Halloween candy tax; they double as taste-tester.

5 Mystery Pills

After a fun Halloween night in Lloydminster, Canada, two children found pills in their candy. One had a full blister pack of pills. The other found an individual pill after biting into his Snickers bar. Though reports didn’t include what kind of pill it was, its markings, “APO,” indicated that it was a prescription of some kind. When the parents looked at the Snickers wrapper, it was evident that someone had tampered with it.

4 Nightmare Ingredients

Halloween candy tastes so good, but the ingredients that go into it are not. No, we’re not talking about caramel, chocolate, or even high fructose corn syrup. We’re talking about far worse ingredients.

If you were given instructions to make some of your favorite Halloween candy, it might include the preservative TBHQ. TBHQ, also known as Tertiary butylhydroquinone is a byproduct of butane; it is essentially lighter fluid.

The substance’s antioxidant properties are great for preventing the discolorization of candy that contains iron. But for humans, it’s been shown to cause behavioral problems and cancer. Preserves your food, but not you.

Of course, the FDA regulates TBHQ so we don’t exceed dangerous levels in what we eat. But if you ask me, it shouldn’t even be there, to begin with. 

3 Meth-Coated Candy

In 2018, a couple reported feeling ill after ingesting their children’s Halloween candy. The Sour Patch Kids had seemed fine before they opened the package, but it was obvious that they were not fine. The candy ended up testing positive for meth. Thank goodness their kids didn’t eat any of it.

2 This Candy Will Get You Going

Meet William V. Shyne, a quiet dentist from Fremont, California. On Halloween 1959, he handed out 450 pieces of candy to Trick-or-Treaters—that happened to be heart-shaped candy-coated laxatives. No one knows why he did it. But if he was out to make these kids sick, he succeeded.

Thirty kids fell ill. Parents traced the candy back to the man living at 4844 Norris Road, who was none other than Shyne himself. When Shyne found out the police were looking for him, he skipped town. Police arrested his good friend Hazel Engelby, who was handing out candy with him that night.

Shyne eventually turned himself in on November 11. He was charged with “unlawful dispensing of drugs” and “outrage of public decency.” The court dropped the drug dispensing charges and let Engelby off the hook. Shyne still faced a $500 fine and spent six months behind bars.

A few years later, he was arrested for insurance fraud and spent two months in county jail. Shyne passed away in 2007, but he left a legacy of laced Halloween candy that would haunt us to this day.

1 The Candy Man

Dr. Shyne may have started the laced Halloween candy trend, but this next guy made the idea of getting dangerous Halloween candy in your bag terrifying.

On October 31, 1974, Ronald O’Bryan tragically gave his five children Pixie sticks laced with cyanide. Ronald’s eight-year-old son, Timothy, was the only one to consume the poisoned Halloween candy. 

Timothy died not soon after.

No one saw Ronald lace the candy. But when investigators discovered that he had recently taken out life insurance policies on the kids, they made a critical connection. The court found him guilty of murder. Ronald received the death penalty via lethal injection. He was executed in 1984.

When we think of kids, it often brings to mind images of laughter, playgrounds, and first days of school…not graphic scenes of murder. However, there are always exceptions, particularly in the realm of fiction. Whether they fight for the side of good or evil, these ten kids prove you don’t have to be an adult to leave a trail of bloody carnage.

Here are ten killer kids from film and TV who definitely deserve a time out or two or three…hundred!

CAUTION: Spoilers ahead!

Related: Top 10 Things Children Do That Are Considered Insane In Adults

10 Brandon Breyer (Brightburn)

Brightburn (2019) is a Superman-style horror film that follows the story of young Brandon Breyer and his parents. Brandon is like any other kid his age, except his parents found him in a small alien ship that crashed on their farm late one night. Besides that, he’s a totally average, well-adjusted preteen. That is until puberty hits, and everything falls apart. (A common experience for many adolescents.)

As Brandon’s birthday approaches, he begins to develop other-worldly powers, such as super-strength, flight, super-speed, and, yes, laser vision. These new powers also bring some major attitude changes and a taste for gore and violence. Oh yeah, and demon-like voices that whisper to him in an unknown language while he sleeps. No biggie.

As the film progresses, Brandon grows increasingly hostile and uncontrollable. He stalks, kills, maims, and tortures the residents of his hometown. In one particularly gory scene, Brandon even terrorizes his own uncle before graphically murdering him. A definite departure from the usual superhero flick we’ve been inundated with in recent years.^[1]

9 Charlotte (The 100)

Charlotte was a minor character who appeared early in the first season of the sci-fi drama series, The 100 (2014–2020). The show’s first season primarily focused on a group of delinquent young adults who are forced to become the first humans to return to Earth in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse.

Charlotte was among the 100 juveniles sent down to Earth from the Ark (an orbiting space station that contains the last survivors of humanity). Haunted by nightmares of her parent’s execution by the Ark’s Chancellor, Charlotte initially appears as a scared and frail little girl. However, her story quickly takes a dark turn when she misinterprets advice that another character named Bellamy tries to give her. Bellamy tells her to “slay [her] demons” while she is awake so that they can’t get her in her sleep.

Charlotte takes this advice literally and fatally stabs the Chancellor’s delinquent son in the throat, hoping it will end her bad dreams.^[2]

8 Hit-Girl (Kick-Ass)

Mindy McCready, aka Hit-Girl, is the secondary main character in the comedy superhero flick Kick-Ass (2010). With her father being framed for a drug deal he didn’t take part in and her mother later committing suicide, Mindy’s early life was a rocky one. Upon his release from prison, Mindy’s father trains her from a young age in martial arts and weaponry skills. Together the two become a crime-fighting duo known as Big-Daddy and Hit-Girl.

Hit-Girl is a brutally efficient fighter and an expert in weapons like firearms, knives, spears, and explosives. Her fighting abilities are showcased in a partially first-person point-of-view scene where Hit-Girl single-handedly takes out an entire room of armed men attempting to light her father on fire. ^[3]

7 Ashley Oswalt (Sinister)

This 2012 horror film follows a true-crime writer named Ellison Oswalt, who moves into the house of a mysteriously murdered family with his wife, son, and daughter Ashley. Ashley starts as a sweet and creative little girl who is scared by the ghost children that begin to appear in the house shortly after Ellison finds reels of footage in the attic.

The footage depicts not only the murders of the family that once lived in his current house but also the murders of other unnamed families. Ellison begins to investigate the murders, finding drawings on the inside of each box of reels. The illustrations are in crayon and appear to be recreations of each murder, with an ominous figure named Mr. Boogie always standing close by.

At the film’s climax, it’s revealed that each family has been murdered by one of their own children. The children carry out the bloody act while under the influence of an ancient pagan deity named Baguul, who seeks to consume their souls. Ellison reaches this conclusion a little too late and soon realizes he’s been drugged by his daughter. Ashley then films herself murdering her entire family with an ax and proceeds to paint the walls with their blood.^[4]

6 Number Five Hargreeves (The Umbrella Academy)

Five Hargreeves is one of the main protagonists of the Netflix comic book-inspired series, The Umbrella Academy. The series follows a group of estranged super-powered siblings who are reunited after the death of their abusive adoptive father.

Five, though 13 years old on the outside, is actually a ruthless 58-year-old assassin on the inside. As a child, Five’s botched attempt at time travel stranded him for decades in a futuristic apocalypse. He was later recruited by a mysterious organization that governs the flow of time and then shaped into a lethal assassin who quickly rose to fame among his peers. Five eventually defected and again attempted time travel in order to stop the oncoming apocalypse. Unfortunately for him, he made a vital miscalculation and accidentally landed himself back in his 13-year-old body.

However, that doesn’t stop the now-pint-sized killer from being one of the most brutal characters in the show. Throughout the series, he kills many of his opponents with his bare hands, gouging out eyes and snapping necks with relative ease. He even has a habit of going on killing sprees when the occasion calls for it, the most graphic of which occurred in the second season where Five gleefully slaughtered a room of time-traveling executives with an ax.^[5]

5 Lilith (Supernatural)

During the third season of the CW drama Supernatural, the demon Lilith (a recurring character in the show) briefly possessed a little girl and held her entire family captive. During that time, the girl (portrayed by Sierra McCormick) forced her mother, father, and grandpa all to celebrate her birthday every day and eat cake for dinner every night. She also killed the family pet, murdered a babysitter, and later snapped her grandfather’s neck.

Her tiny reign of terror eventually came to an end when she deserted the young vessel for a different one. However, that version of the character appeared again a season later as a hallucination. She terrorized and taunted one of the main characters of the show as he had a paranormal-induced heart attack.^[6]

4 Eleven (Stranger Things)

Another number-themed murder child from Netflix’s lineup is Eleven from the streaming service’s hit series, Stranger Things (2016 – ). Eleven (El for short) was locked away by a mysterious figure referred to as “Papa” and experimented on as a child. As a result of Papa’s tampering, Eleven was endowed with telekinetic and telepathic powers, which often make her nose (and sometimes her ears) bleed when she uses them.

Despite being a mostly kind girl and avid lover of waffles, Eleven and her psionic abilities have racked up quite the body count. She has killed guards attempting to lock her in a dark room and even was responsible for destroying the titular monster of the first season, the Demogorgon. One of the most notable incidents occurred when Eleven caused an entire room of government agents (“bad men”) to hemorrhage to death using only her mind. She has also used her powers to flip a moving van several feet in the air while she and her friends were attempting to escape capture.^[7]

3 Janice (Annabelle: Creation)

Janice is one of the main characters in the second installment of the Annabelle trilogy from 2017. Having to use a wheelchair after a bad case of polio, Janice begins the movie as a kind girl who cares deeply for her best friend, Linda. Janice and Linda are a part of an orphanage run by Sister Charlotte. After their old orphanage closed, Sister Charlotte and her six young girls are welcomed into the home of a doll maker named Mr. Mullins.

However, it quickly becomes apparent that the house and Mr. Mullins himself harbor dark and deadly secrets. Soon after moving in, Janice is targeted and later possessed by a demon attached to the doll Annabelle. Janice’s entire personality soon changes, and she even regains her ability to walk. The demon that is now attached to her then goes on to murder Mr. Mullins and later crucify and mutilate his bedridden wife.

As the movie comes to a close, we see that Janice’s atrocities aren’t just confined to her adolescence. As a teenager, Janice (now Annabelle Higgins) joins a satanic cult and then later returns home to murder her parents, who had adopted her years before, unaware of her dark and gruesome past.^[8]

2 Village of the Damned (1960)

Next on our list of prepubescent terrors is not just one child but a whole brood. Though, due to their telepathically connected nature, they could easily be considered a unit. This ’60s black-and-white film is based on an earlier book called The Midwich Cuckoos, which tells the tale of a group of eerie alien children conceived under inexplicable circumstances.

The children, born with strange eyes and platinum-blonde hair, quickly begin to grow at an unnatural rate and exhibit telepathic powers. By the age of three, their appearance is that of a nine or ten-year-old. They are also abnormally intelligent and have a cold and unkind nature, causing many of the townspeople to resent them.

It also doesn’t help that the children are responsible for many vicious acts, such as forcing one of their mothers to stick her hand in boiling water as a form of punishment. They also kill a man by making him crash his car and then later force his brother to shoot himself in the head.^[9]

1 Lizzie Samuels (The Walking Dead)

Appearing in the fourth season of the AMC series The Walking Dead (2010–2022), Lizzie was a disturbed young girl who could not come to grips with the reality of zombies or “walkers.” She often did not see the flesh-eating walkers as threats and had a habit of naming them and referring to them as her “friends.” She even tried to play games with them and would get upset when they had to be killed.

Lizzie’s flawed perception ultimately came to a head when she tried to prove once and for all that walkers weren’t dangerous. She did this by stabbing her younger sister Mika to death and attempting to make others wait for her to reanimate, claiming that she wouldn’t hurt anybody. Lizzie would have done the same to another infant named Judith had two other adults not intervened.^[10]

Fear for the next generation? You’re not alone. If you’re not in the right frame of mind, it’s easy to see kids today as over-stimulated, over-entitled and terminally self-involved. How could they not be? They’re bombarded by influences seemingly determined to rob them of all innocence and feeling for their fellow man. Just look at the felonious role models, ubersexed music, violent video games and truly disturbing toys being marketed to them 24/7. YIKES.

Fortunately, it’s easy to get out of this frame of mind and back to reality. There are some great kids out there doing some great things. Submitted for your approval are 10 Young Philanthropists, and they deserve the spotlight more than Britney or Lindsay’s latest rehab stint.

Abby Miller is a 12-year-old musician who collects donations for 4-year-old Taylor Love, who suffers from neuroblastoma, a form of cancer affecting the nervous system. Most contributions come the old fashioned way – from playing on the street with a contribution bucket nearby. All funds go to help Taylor’s family with medical expenses. Passersby typically note Abby’s talent and drop in a few bucks, wondering why a young kid would be singing in the street on a cold day. Few notice she’s singing for a cause greater than herself.

Olivia Bouler is an 11-year-old artist who has raised over $200,000 for the National Audubon Society, which is hard at work rescuing birds affected by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

It all started when Olivia saw the oil spill on TV. Not knowing how to help, she wrote a letter to the Audubon Society, offering to sell her illustrations to raise money for cleanup costs. Then she hit upon the idea of just giving her drawings to anyone who donated to wildlife recovery efforts. Media outlets caught wind of her offer and the donations came flooding in. She’s made 150 illustrations so far, and shows no signs of stopping.

Cameron Cohen was 11-years old when he was stuck at home with a hip-to-toe brace following bone tumor surgery. Instead of playing Halo or watching Spongebob, Cameron spent his downtime learning software development. He then used his mad skillz to design ‘iSketch’, a drawing program now available on the iPhone App Store. Cameron donates a portion of his earnings to purchase electronic and entertainment items for other pre-teens to enjoy during their hospitalization.

Jordan Somer is a Nebraska teen who founded the “Miss Amazing” pageant, an event for girls and women coping with physical and mental disabilities. The event focuses on all participants gaining confidence and revealing their true beauty. Jordan started the event in 2006, as a way to combine her own pageant experience with her Special Olympics volunteer work. Jordan recently received Teen Nickelodeon’s Halo Award, and hopes to use the $25,000 grant to expand the pageant nationally.

5-year-old Phoebe Russell needed to complete a community service project before she could graduate from kindergarten. Uninterested in a lemonade stand, she saw a homeless man begging for food and decided to raise $1,000 for the San Francisco Food Bank. Her teacher tried to lower expectations to something more reasonable, but Phoebe’s heartwarming appeal to leave soda cans and donations at the school snowballed. Before she knew it, Phoebe had raised $3,736.30 – the equivalent of 17,800 heated meals.

Brittany and Robbie Bergquist (12 and 13, respectively) learned of a soldier who racked up an $8000 cell phone bill by calling his family from Iraq. They decided to pay the soldier’s phone bill and brought $21 to the bank to start an account. The bank manager was so impressed he added an additional $500. This encouraged them to keep trying.

The kids then held car washes and bake sales, but then decided on recycling used cell phones. With help from volunteers, they set up drop-off sites across the USA, and used the proceeds to buy prepaid phone cards for troops overseas. To date their ‘Cell Phones for Soldiers” program has collected 7.5 million phones and provided military personnel with over 90 million minutes’ worth of pre-paid airtime.

Mackenzie Bearup is a 16-year-old girl with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, a medical condition that makes cold weather, wind and vibrations excruciatingly painful. She found relief in books, and reads constantly. Then she learned of a residential treatment center that needed books for its library, and began soliciting donations. Mackenzie’s book drives have since donated over 50,000 books to treatment centers in Georgia and neighboring states, and Nestle gave her their 2009 ‘Best in Youth’ award.
Her altruism appears to be a good tonic as well: since starting her volunteer work, Mackenzie has maintained a 4.0 GPA in gifted and talented classes. She also plays harp in an orchestra, and has performed at charity events, assisted living facilities, and nursing homes.

In 2007, Timothy Hwang and Minsoo Han started Operation Fly, when they were only 14 years old. Their non-profit business offers cut-rate tutoring services to inner city students, and then uses the revenues to distribute blankets, clothing and soap to Washington DC’s homeless. Their organization has since spread to five cities, involves over 800 volunteers and is entirely student-run. For his efforts, Ernst & Young and Junior Achievement named Timothy Hwang the 2009 Youth Entrepreneur of the Year for the Greater Washington Region.

After hurricane Charlie hit Florida in 2005, Zach Bonner collected water bottles in his neighborhood using a little red wagon. By the end of the charity drive, he had 27 truckloads of aid. And he was just getting started.

In 2007, Zach began a three-stage “My House to the White House” charity march, to raise money for homeless children. In Stage 1, he walked 280 miles from Tampa to Tallahassee, Florida. In stage 2, he walked 250 miles from Tallahassee to Atlanta, Georgia. In the last leg of the trip, he walked 668 miles from Atlanta to Washington, DC. His most serious test came when his grandmother died, and the 11-year-old was forced to choose between finishing the walk or attending her funeral. He continued the trek and dedicated the march in her honor. All monies were split between a playground for an emergency foster care shelter in Tampa, and the Sasha Bruce Youthwork, which helps runaways and homeless kids in Washington, DC.
In 2010 Zach’s ‘March Across America” took him 2,448 miles from Tampa to Los Angeles, culminating in a meeting with Elton John, who contributed $25,000 to the Little Red Wagon Foundation.

Harry Moseley is a nine-year-old from Sheldon, Birmingham, UK. He lives with an inoperable brain tumor, but this hasn’t stopped him from making and selling beaded bracelets for Brain Tumour UK. His bracelets are now available in over 30 shops across Britain, and so far he’s raised over £15,000.

Harry also gives PowerPoint presentations to school kids, and encourages them to set up bracelet making clubs. Harry’s system gives 15p from every bracelet sold to the kids’ school and the rest goes to Brain Tumour UK. Harry started his fundraising efforts after an elderly friend in the hospital bed next to him died from their shared condition.

When presented with the 2010 ‘Britain’s Kindest Kid’ award, reports say Harry was “speechless” and “gobsmacked”. He plans to give £200 each to his brother and sister and spend the rest on a wooden playhouse in the garden where he can make bracelets. He dedicated his prize to his late friend Robert Harley.

Someday a better writer will make a new list of young philanthropists, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the kids on it were involved with the Be Better U Dream Ranch, which helps children learn and teach other kids about philanthropy. If you or your child are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and are interested in child-led philanthropy programs, go to their website and see if you’d like to help out.