The cruelty of children as depicted in Film.
Animated Films
- An American Tail had a group of mean, cynical orphans near the end who briefly convince Fievel to give up looking for his family, though they could be seen as Jerkass Woobies who were embittered after failing to find their families.
- Cats Don't Dance: Child star Darla Dimple is a savage, prejudiced, hot-headed, self-absorbed, sociopathic prima donna who has let her celebrity status go straight to her head and has an iron-fisted dominance over every other cast and crew member on the film set.
- The white-wooled lambs in the 2003 Charlotte's Web sequel are incredibly mean to literal Black Sheep Cardigan. Not only do they call him names, mock him for being friends with Wilbur, and push him around, they pretty much outright kick him out of the flock for the terrible sin of having black wool.
- The president's daughter in Free Birds: after successfully kidnapping Reggie, she deliberately mistreats him.
- Megamind: At the beginning of the movie, it's shown that Megamind was bullied relentlessly by his peers in school, particularly by the child who would grow up to be Metroman. In one scene during a game of dodgeball, Metroboy chooses a girl with a broken leg and lazy eye over young Megamind to be on their team, leaving Megamind the sole target. Even the teacher picked on him.
- Toy Story:
- Toy Story: Sid, Andy's next door neighbor, decapitates his sister's dolls and crudely fixes them onto anything he finds. He also 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, as shown in the third film.
- Toy Story 3: The daycare children, although excused in that they're too young to understand that some toys aren't designed for rough play.
- Wreck-It Ralph: The Sugar Rush characters are meant to be around age ten. They aggressively bully Vanellope, who is referred to as "The Glitch" due to her being a glitch, to the point where they break her car in order to get her out of a race. However, it's only because King Candy tampered with Vanellope's coding system that they act this way. When they regain their memory, they are a lot sweeter to her, though it may partially just be fear as she is royalty and could reprimand them.
- Zootopia: When they were young, both of the protagonists, Judy and Nick, were victims of two seprate violent bullying incidents from bigoted peers where their dreams were ridiculed because of their species. Judy was told she would never be more than a "stupid carrot-farming dumb bunny" and Nick was told that a fox would never be trusted without a muzzle. While the two of them reacted in completely different ways, it was the main factor in shaping their adult world-views and the trauma still affects them even 15-20 years later.
Live-Action Films
- 8 Ball Clown: The two kids of the movie earn 8-Ball's wrath by constantly prank calling him and leaving him nasty messages about how he's a loser and an asshole, and even by farting into the phone.
- Those kids from 50 First Dates would laugh at a man having a fantasy dream.
- In the movie An American Girl Chrissa Stands Strong, three girls constantly bully Chrissa and her friend Gwen. They throw away Chrissa's clothes, give Gwen a deliberately bad haircut, and even cause Chrissa's brother to become seriously injured.
- Scott Hoager and Gary Fulcher from the Disney film adaptation of Bridge to Terabithia, whose screentime consists almost entirely of picking on protagonist Jess Aarons. Scott especially takes on a more antagonistic role like teasing Jess after his only friend Leslie's death.Scott: "Looks like you're the fastest kid in class now, huh, Jess?"
(suddenly noticed Jess standing up and turning around)
Scott: "Uhh, it's a joke, dude!" (Cue Scott getting well-deserved punch to the face) - Big Fat Liar: Marty shows up at a kid's birthday party dressed like a Non-Ironic Clown. The guests have no reaction to his greeting. But then the birthday boy's father recognizes him, instructs his son to "show him your nutcracker," and... they all go raging wild!
- Billy Club (2013): In Flashbacks, we see that when Billy struck out in the 1981 and lost a Little League game for his team, they all basically turned on him. They ripped the sleeves off his shirt, gagged him, put him in a dunking booth, and took turns trying to dunk him. It was Alison who threw the ball that put him in the water, at which point the kids started shaking the booth. Also, his hands were tied up, so he couldn't swim to the surface, so he basically started drowning. He was floating face-down on the surface by the time someone showed up to get rid of the other kids and save his life (partly because the door to the booth was jammed shut. Losing a game is one thing, but basically drowning the one who cost you the victory!?
- In A Boy Called Po, the titular autistic child is severely bullied at school, which teachers refuse to do anything about even after he comes home with a black eye.
- The Butterfly Effect: Look at the nerd! He has no arms and no legs! Ha ha ha!
- It's played with, given how the bully can be a better or worse person depending on how the events are dealt with.
- Carrie (1976): A textbook example not just of Kids are Cruel, but of just what happens when you bully the character with telekinetic powers.
- In Castle of Sand, young Hideo is a beggar along with his leprous father. In one village the local children jump on Hideo and beat him, then throw stones at Hideo and his father as they limp out of town.
- A Christmas Story: In addition to the bullying Ralphie personally experiences, there's the aftermath of the infamous Tongue on the Flagpole scene where the teacher tries the guilt trip the class for daring that kid, since she didn't know which one was responsible. But Ralphie notes that it didn't work because they were only concerned about getting caught.
- Daredevil: Even after Matt is blinded, the kids still pick on him. Although to be fair, before Matt agrees to fight them, they turn away, presumably to leave. They may have physically hurt him when he could see, but it seems like they weren't about to cross that line anymore.
- The protagonists in Drillbit Taylor are constantly menaced by two bullies, one of whom is completely psychopathic. Not only do they perform the normal bully tactics, but at one point the bullies chase the protagonists with a car, apparently in an attempt to murder them for trying to report their behavior. What makes this even worse is that most of this is done in plain sight of the rest of the kids in school and they do absolutely nothing about it, at least until the protagonists finally grow some backbone and kick some bully ass.
- Force 10 from Navarone: There's a young boy in the Chetnik camp who always laughs at captured enemy soldiers being taken away to be tortured by the Germans.
- The flashbacks in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare showed that it was, among other things, being relentlessly bullied by other children that drove Freddy Krueger to become a killer. Pretty horribly, the kids were shown teasing him about how he was conceived when his mother was raped by mental patients ("Son of a hundred maniacs! Son of a hundred maniacs!")
- Also revealed to be part of the inspiration for Jason Voorhees' rampages in Freddy vs. Jason. You'd think Freddy would have a little sympathy. Oh, wait, that's right, it's Freddy Krueger.
- In A Girl Named Sooner, the girls doing jump rope tease Sooner. Later, Sooner and the kids throw things at Bird to try to get him to fly.
- The 1993 movie The Good Son. Although, Macaulay Culkin's character is more than just cruel...
- The Gillymuck: Three of the four little girls are mean little brats. They scare one of their own and call her a wuss, causing her to leave the tent in tears that night and run into The Gillymuck.
- Hellboy (2004): Look at the freak, let's throw rocks at her! She doesn't talk, she's a freaky Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette, weird fires keep starting arou — (Earth Shattering Ka Boom!)
- Hostel: There is a roving gang of children that mug people for money and candy, and are very comfortable with violence.
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000): When the Grinch was a child, Augustus and most of his classmates mocked him for his looks, which led to his Start of Darkness.
- 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.
- The entire The 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.
- In La Ferme des Sept Péchés, François' flashback shows him being bullied by boys from the village who throw stones at him until Paul-Louis Courier intervenes.
- Let the Right One In: The three bullies can get pretty mean. Oskar, his victim, is clearly getting a little creepy. Then comes the big brother whose cruelty scares even the bullies, and of course, finally Eli.
- Little Sweetheart: Thelma torments adults and her friends increasingly as the movie progresses. Even her friend, Elizabeth, becomes cruel for a while, but ends up redeeming herself. It almost equals death, instead becoming life in the last few seconds.
- In Mandy (1952), almost all the titular deaf girl's interactions with normal kids are unpleasant. In one scene, a boy takes her ball and won't give it back until she says "please." When she can't, he and his friend play piggie in the middle, taunting her with the ball, until she attacks him and pulls his hair.
- In Mario (1984), Mario is first shown being taunted and shoved around by other kids.
- Jack Jr. from Meet the Fockers.
- The Monster Squad. Even the kids we like are vicious little creeps at times.
- Eric has shades of this in Mystery Team.
- 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 Jocks at his old school.
- Remember Me: Caroline, Tyler's little sister, 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 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 herself — and, as her father reluctantly admits, it was off school grounds, so nothing can be done about it. The girls still mock her for her attempt at a decent hairdo the next week (she was too traumatized to leave her room) at school, in front of the teacher. Luckily, even if the teacher did nothing, the girl's older brother and father certainly did. In fact, when said brother was sent to jail for doing something about it, the father bailed him out and then told him that he threatened all the girls' fathers if they didn't transfer them to other schools right away.
- In RoboCop 2 not only is one of the villains of the film a child, but every kid who appears in the film is either a violent criminal (one scene involves a group of little leaguers mugging a man and beating him to death with their bats) or a foul-mouthed little brat who drops F-bombs generously.
- Used on a couple of occasions in Schindler's List, such as the little girl screaming "Goodbye, Jews!" as they're being rounded up, and the boy who grins and makes a throat-slitting gesture at the cattle cars heading towards the extermination camp.
- Smosh: The Movie: The gang of kids at the Game Bang antagonize Ian and Anthony for no reason, with their leader taking a dump on Anthony's car.
- In Star Trek (2009), we discover that even Vulcan kids display this tendency towards Half-Human Hybrid Spock. Being Vulcans, they're quite stoic and formal about it (Spock: "Have you prepared more insults for me today?" — Vulcan boy: "Affirmative."). They cross the line once they discuss Spock's mother: a beatdown from Spock ensues.
- This was actually established the TOS episode "Journey to Babel".
- Parodied in Step Brothers, where elementary schoolchildren attack Dale and Brennan and force them to eat dog shit. Dale and Brennan are at least 40 years old. Thankfully, the two get their revenge at the end.Dale: You know in that one scene in The Wizard of Oz when the flying monkeys pull apart the scarecrow? That's what it was like.
- The main plot of the WWE production That's What I Am, where a kid gets paired with an intelligent student who gets made fun of due to his tall, wiry frame, red hair and big ears. The kid gets to learn his qualities and experiences the prejudice he faces.
- At the end of Tomboy, the protagonist's friends force her to take off her shorts and force a female friend to check her pants, so that they can see if she's really a girl. There have been cases of kids actually doing this to transgender or gender-variant kids too.
- Unbreakable. "They called me Mister Glass."
- When Evil Calls: Many of the students are shown being treated horribly by others, which often prompts their wishes for change.
- The Wild Child: In the village where Victor is originally kept after his capture, local kids hit Victor, and he hits them back. At the institute for the deaf-mute, the other students are initially friendly, but soon they start harassing him and mimicking his odd behavior.
- The Woman in Black: Angel of Death includes a scene where a young, traumatized child is locked in a haunted nursery during a game of hide-and-seek. Things only go downhill for him after that.
