Kids Are Cruel: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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If the target of abuse could easily rip them apart if it wanted and the kids ''know'' it, then the kids are [[Bullying a Dragon]] (not to mention [[Too Dumb to Live]]). And even if the target of abuse is not superpowered at the time, just wait until the bully-magnet that [[Used to Be a Sweet Kid]] undergoes a [[Start of Darkness]], possibly as a result of the cruelty of other kids, and goes on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]], often at a point when the bullies themselves have forgotten the whole thing.
A favorite for films with grown protagonists is to reveal this as part of their [[Backstory]] via [[Flash Back
See also [[Teens Are Monsters]], [[Big Brother Bully]], and [[Humans Are Bastards]]. Contrast [[Children Are Innocent]]. [[Royal Brat]] is a particularly disturbing take on this.
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Sometimes leads to [[Would Hurt a Child]]. But all too often the bullying has [[Driven to Suicide|catastrophic consequences]].
[[Truth in Television]], as if we needed to say it. However, this doesn
{{examples}}
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** This could've happened to Naruto as well (since Gaara is Naruto's [[Evil Counterpart]]), but he never actually did anything about it because he never knew ''why'' the adults were treating him like the plague. Thankfully, none of his classmates knew either.
* ''[[Death Note]]'' has Teru Mikami, whose childhood involved having to deal with asshole kids. As a result, when Mikami gets his hands on the titular [[Artifact of Doom]] in the second half of the series, he develops the philosophy that past middle school, anyone who commits a cruel act is basically unredeemable and should be, to use his favorite term, "deleted." By the end of the anime, he's become the most psychotic of all the Kiras, with the much-contested title of "Craziest Character in the Series."
* ''[[Bokurano]]'' has several examples of this trope as
** Kodama is a [[Villain Protagonist|protagonist]] version. He cares little for other life (he says that if something dies it's their destiny, shoots cats regularly, and in the anime boils a crab alive using a firecracker), to the point where he kills dozens of people while driving the mecha. {{spoiler|He accidentally kills his father, sending him into a [[Heroic BSOD]], right before he dies.}} Ushiro also counts, being easy to anger and quite violent toward his younger sister.
* ''[[Flame of Recca]]'' is all over this trope. For most (if not all) of the characters with tragic pasts (such as Fuuko, Kaoru, Kurei, and many others), a good part of said past was being tormented by other kids, who take it to extreme heights for seemingly no reason other than the fun of being evil little bastards. One of the tormented kids ({{spoiler|Kaoru}}) was even driven to attempt suicide, and a few others considered it.
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* While usually not apparent in ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' it appears a few times. Such as {{spoiler|in the "perfect world".}}
* ''[[Deadman Wonderland]]'': It must be something that in a world of super-powered sadists some the cruelest characters are ''[[Muggle]] bullies'' whose victims later became the twisted un-powered (or at least not till recently) playthings/enforcers of the prison. Examples include kitten killing, possible rape, and playing Othello on a kid's back ''with thumbtacks''. And this is ''before'' the devastating earthquake that plunged the land into chaos.
** In terms of just plain [[Ax Crazy]], {{spoiler|Little Hibana killed a classmate while in kindergarten; Minatsuki killed her mom for abandoning her during the earthquake and her dad just to see if her brother was gullible enough to think their loving dad would try to rape her (he's not, he just has a huge [[Big Brother Instinct]], which she finds incredibly comforting). Minatsuki's current pastimes are sadism, [[Blood Sport
* In ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'', [[The Rival|Kenny]] looks this way when we find out the backstory of "Dee Dee", the [[Embarrassing Nickname]] he hung on Dawn.
* [[Litchi Hikari Club]] combines this with [[Ambiguous Innocence]] to produce nine [[Bishounen|rather androgynous]] eighth grade boys who commit [[Cold-Blooded Torture]] on a regular basis.
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* The entire ''[[Karate Kid]]'' series including the fourth one is filled with bullies that are mean to the point of over top idiocy; sometimes it's influenced by an adult who enforces this behavior. In the remake not only are they cruel but also racist.
* In ''[[Kung Fu Hustle]]'', in a flashback to his childhood, the [[Anti-Hero]] protagonist attempted to protect a mute girl from a group of bullies who were ganging up on her. They then proceed to turn around and beat him up instead, and afterwards, they even ''pee'' on him. This is when the protagonist says he decided to turn to a life of crime.
* ''[[Real Genius]]'' features a group of college students selected for early advancement due to their intelligence. Naturally, they tend to come from backgrounds where they were bullied for this. Mitch, the main protagonist, describes to his roommate Chris how he was once stuffed into a mailbox by the [[Jerk Jock
* From ''[[Toy Story]]'', we have Sid, Andy's next door neighbor, who decapitates his sister's dolls and crudely fixes them onto anything he finds. Oh yeah, he enjoys burning holes into toys and strapping them to rockets. Thankfully averted with Andy, who cares very much for his toys, even when he's a teenager and had outgrown, as shown in the third film.
** Played straight again in the third film with the daycare children, though excused in that they're too young to understand that some toys aren't designed for rough play.
* The protagonist's little sister in ''[[Remember Me]]'' is frequently a victim of bullying, but she says she can handle it...until towards the end of the film, where one of the bullies invites her to a, chaperoned by her mother, birthday party. The sister is nervous to go, but assumes the girls just want to be friends now...and then later we see her tearfully begging her father over the phone to pick her up, her pigtails chopped off. Apparently the girls ganged up on her out of sight of the parents, held her down and cut her hair off, and then told the parents she did it to
* Henry Bowers from [[IT]]. Not only is he cruel, he's also a psychopath, a racist, a sexist, and an all-around asshole. While he was bad enough as a kid, he eventually grows up into an even worse adult who tries to murder the protagonists on multiple occasions before finally getting his comeuppance.
* [[Gonk|Those kids]] from ''Film/50FirstDates'' would laugh at a man having a fantasy dream.
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* Protagonists Emmeline and Adeline in ''[[The Thirteenth Tale]]'' have zero empathy for other people and casually destroy things and endanger infants.
* In ''Inheritance'', the final book in [[The Inheritance Cycle]], [[Big Bad|Galbatorix]] has a couple of children kidnapped, and states to the heroes that he's never believed that children are innocent, just that they usually lack the means to act on their cruel urges. He then tells them that if they believe that children are innocent and consider themselves virtuous, that he'll kill the children if they choose to act against him.
* Subverted in the children's book ''Angel Child, Dragon Child.'' Ut's family moves from Vietnam to America, and on her first day of school, she and her sisters are taunted by the other children. Finally, Ut snaps and gets into a fight with a boy named Raymond, and the principal makes them sit down and talk. Eventually, Raymond understands Ut's
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* The ''[[Law and Order]]'' episode "Killerz" involves a ten year old girl who casually murders a six year old boy for the fun of it, and receives a slap on the wrist for it. During her psychological evaluation, she casually admits to poisoning the neighbors pets, of enjoying having killed someone, and of having plans to kill again.
{{quote|'''Dr. Emile Skoda:''' "She's a [[Serial Killer]]. We just caught her early."}}
** What's equally sad is the likelihood that the girl is a sociopath because of abuse she herself
* ''[[Law and Order SVU]]'' had a recent example of a very young-looking thirteen-year-old {{spoiler|date-rapist who was pushing his victim to get an abortion; his secret lovechild half-brother who had a crush on the victim killed him when it seemed (and I could be remembering wrong) like he was going to take matters into his own hands}}. There's also the two fourteen-year-old {{spoiler|girls who almost succeed in pinning the murder of an eight-year-old on a retarded neighbor -- actually one girl was "normal" and the other was the psycho/sociopath who tortured the kid because it was funny and strangled him because he was gonna tell}}.
* ''[[Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger]]'': Bandora's son Kai was chased off a cliff to his death by a dinosaur...because [[Mama Bear|the dinosaur]] caught him slashing its eggs open, dumping the insides out, and then throwing the shells in a river. Unfortunately, [[Mama Bear|Bandora]] didn't take her son's death well, and made a [[Deal with the Devil]] for power to [[Disproportionate Retribution|exact revenge]] [[Put Them All Out of My Misery|upon all of]] [[Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs|dinosaur kind]].
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** In fact many of the children at Springfield Elementary give Bart and Lisa a hard time when they face a dilemma of embarrassment, most notably Janey Powell and Sherri & Terri. It's even one of the three main "rules" of the Code of the Schoolyard. This trope however is especially driven [[Up to Eleven]] in "Lisa Goes Gaga".
* ''[[An American Tail]]'' had a group of mean, cynical orphans near the end who briefly convince Fievel to give up looking for his family.
** If you think about it, they're [[Jerkass Woobie
* ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy]]'': Ed, Edd and Eddy in particular are known for being disliked and harassed by just about every character on the show, except the Kankers, though they tend to sexually harass the Eds. This is because Ed is a comic book geek, Edd is a nerd and Eddy scams people out of their money. Hell the Ed's sometimes attack each other when no one else is bothering them. Jonny, Jimmy and the Kanker sisters aren't known for being liked that much either (though the Kanker sisters actually fight back whenever someone messes with them).
** Can you blame the kids for not particularly liking Johnny? There's an entire episode devoted to him being a pest (and the Eds capitalizing on that).
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*** Actually, Dib ''is'' the nicest guy on this show. Although he's arrogant and at times selfish, at the end of the day, his intentions are to protect Earth from an Irken invasion and he has more than a few moments where he shows protectiveness of Gaz, [[Little Miss Badass|not that she needs it.]]
* ''[[Danny Phantom]]'': Danny Fenton was more of a victim of bullying before he got his ghost powers and was able to teach [[Jerk Jock]] Dash a lesson. Still, the other kids, namely Dash and his group of friends, never do stop bothering him.
** Namely because Dash and his friends never found out about Danny's powers...well, they did
* Same goes for Timmy in ''[[Fairly Oddparents]]''.
** To the point where it crosses over from
* Most of the kids in ''[[Hey Arnold!]]'' depending on the episode.
* The kids in the academy in Galaluna in the [[Flashback Episode]] of ''[[Sym-Bionic Titan]]''. Especially Baron. Mocked Lance for not having a father, [[Lack of Empathy|after said father died no less]], and always got him into trouble, even endangering his life in the process. Constantly [[Karma Houdini|got let off the hook by comparison]]. If he ever got hit by a rocket, it wouldn't be too soon.
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