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alt title(s): Children Are Cruel Marge: Kids can be so cruel. Bart: We can? Thanks, Mom!
This is a stock phrase uttered by the parents of children who are victims of Bullies. It seems fictionland is inhabited by the worst bullies in existence, always ready to mock you and steal your lunch money, no matter what happened to you, you'll always be different from All Of The Other Reindeer. Not even the Littlest Cancer Patient gets a break. Especially never the Littlest Cancer Patient. After a while, it looks like we have a society of youthful sociopaths running around the city. Oh wait.
Note that the victim is almost always the protagonist; at least fictionland doesn't think bullies are good protagonist material... unless they can grow a stubble, that is. In Teen Drama, The Libby and the Jerk Jock represent this trope.
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 Back Story via Flash Backs.
See also Teens Are Monsters and Humans Are Bastards. Contrast Children Are Innocent.
Sadly, this is Truth In Television.
Examples
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Comics
- The X-Men in every incarnation displays this trope. X-Men being what they are, this is liable to fall under Bullying A Dragon.
- Some kids bully Rorshach about his mother before he goes berserk on them.
Film
- Daredevil movie - 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 Butterfly Effect - look at the nerd! He has no arms and no legs! Ha ha ha!
- Hellboy movie - Look at the freak, let's throw rocks at her! She doesn't talk, she's a freaky Pale Skinned Brunette, weird fires keep starting arou— (Earth Shattering Ka Boom!)
- Unbreakable. "They called me Mister Glass."
- This example was inspired by an old, long-forgotten Littlest Cancer Patient movie where the main character was bullied when they found out he had cancer. (Which can happen in real life.)
- The Monster Squad. Even the kids we like are vicious little creeps at times.
- Subverted and played straight in The Orphanage. Let's be mean to the deformed kid! Damn it, now we're ghosts. Let's try to help this lady find her missing son! Damn it, now they're both ghosts.
- The protagonists in Drillbit Taylor are constantly menanced 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 protagnists finally grow some backbone and kick some bully ass.
- The flashbacks in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare showed that it was, amoung 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 concieved 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 fucking Krueger.
- In the 2009 Star Trek, 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."
- The 1993 movie The Good Son
 . Although, Macaulay Culkin's character is more than just cruel...
- Used on a couple of occasions in Schindlers 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.
- 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 Jocks at his old school.
Literature
- A Series Of Unfortunate Events: Carmelita Spats and her groups of friends in the book "Austere Academy" played this trope to it's hilt around the Quagmires and the Baudelaires especially. Unfortunately for the Baudelaires Carmelita returns later on in the series to torment them further.
- A Little Princess: After Sara looses her money, Rich Bitch Lavinia wastes no time in treating her like she's less than trash.
- The Discworld book Hogfather was largely built on this trope.
- This happens a fair old bit in Harry Potter, as well.
- Partially subverted in that James Potter was something of a Jerk Jock bully, growing up only when he was out of his teens.
- Snape's childhood is the epitome of this trope, since only Harry's mother seemed to treat him like a human, while Harry at least is a hero for his House (well, most of the time).
- That, and he was a jerk to many people except for Lily. To whom he was a Stalker With A Crush, looking at her greedily since they were nine.
- Stephen King's Carrie was picked on since childhood, but it wasn't until she reached her teenage years that everything came to a head and she snapped and went on a rampage. No one except her crazy religious fanatic mother knew about her telekinetic powers until it was too late.
- Edmund Pevensie from Chronicles Of Narnia. He constantly bullies his younger sister, Lucy, whenever he gets the chance and, in the movie version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, his malevolent smiles clearly show that he enjoys doing it.
- This is a big part of the message of Lord of the Flies. Of course, all Humans Are Bastards.
- In Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar novel, Brightly Burning, a troop of school bullies torment a boy who has the ability to start fires with his mind. Needless to say, it ends badly for them (and leaves the Firestarter wracked with guilt for some time afterward.) Not an example of Bullying A Dragon, since no one knew he had the ability until it manifested when they pushed him over the edge.
- In Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, Pinocchio is a little hellion who runs around getting into all sorts of trouble before he learns how to behave himself and Become A Real Boy. Contrast with his depiction as a well-meaning but naive and easily-led Cheerful Child in Walt Disney's version...
- A small part of The Subtle Knife discusses this: The protagonist's actions inadvertently cause the older brother of two kids from Cittágazze to be caught by the Specters. A few moments later, a big group of kids, many of them armed try to kill them. After they are rescued, Lyra is astonished at how kids are capable of doing such things. Will replies he already knew, due to having to deal with kid's reactions to his mentally ill mother.
- Played with in Enders Game. Ender is picked on at his first school by the other kids for being so smart, and so small, and later for similar reasons at the Battle School, in a straight use of the trope. He shrugs it off. However, when his personal safety is threatened, he turns the tables on the bullies and Ends the threat. Permanently, by killing the bullies.
- Ben Elton's Past Mortem.
- All Summer In A Day.
- Eloise McGraw's The Moorchild. The other children pick on Saaski because she's different, and their teasing often turns violent and she ends up injured. When a prank could have turned deadly (an older, stronger boy tries to push her in a deep pond), nobody helps her. The children's parents deliberately look the other way, and when they stop, things get even worse for Saaski.
- Robert Arryn and especially Joffrey Baratheon in A Song Of Ice And Fire.
- Blubber by Judy Blume. Parents have been known to complain that no gets punished at the end.
Live Action TV
- The main character of Pushing Daisies was picked on at Boarding School, because of his introversion and his tendency not to retaliate. And when he did retaliate, the bullies waited until he was alone and then beat him up.
- A major factor in Warren Mears growing up to be a stone cold, woman hating, megalomaniacal PSYCHOPATH.
Manga & Anime
- Elfen Lied. Lucy gets a backstory like this, where she gets tormented by cruel kids because of her "cute little horns" and her utter emotionlessness. Their most despicable act was to force her to watch as they beat the little puppy that she had started caring for to death, just to get any kind of reaction from her at all. This causes Lucy to snap and murder everyone by making their heads a splode. And the worst part is that, for a good number of fans, she has been too merciful to them.
- The puppy was innocent. The cruel kids weren't.
- Peach Girl: Momo is bullied by Sae throughout the course of the story, because Sae is jealous of her for getting more attention and hates her, though Sae often lies to people about this, trying to convince people that it is *Momo* who is bullying her. And she succeeds for a while before she finally gets what's coming to her. Also Momo is put down by her classmates and other people for having tan skin and bleached blonde hair, because they believe that she is a major party girl who spends all her time tanning at the beach; they also sometimes insulted her by calling her a slut because Sae tricked them into thinking that Momo stole Toji from her when it was really Sae who was trying to steal Toji from Momo, which, in reality, is entirely wrong, as Momo is actually a really nice girl, it's Sae who's the Manipulative Bitch.
- Candy's step-siblings Eliza and Neil Reagan in Candy Candy. They are so utterly cruel, that it's unthinkable to even feel a twinge of admiration or sympathy towards them. Worst is the Rich Bitch Eliza, whose motivation for making Candy's life hell is: because she can. If that doesn't convince you enough, wait until you see the episode about Eliza getting temporarily grounded, whereas she will make up a monologue that explains that she really loves violence, especially towards people that can be picked on, like Candy. So she not only did it because she can, she also LOVES and takes joy in doing it.
- Tetsuo from Akira. In a scene after Tetsuo, in the full throes of his psychic megalomania, kills fellow gang member Yamagata, Kaneda reflects on how everyone in his school had teased Tetsuo and tried to make him cry.
- Sakura's classmates in Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan are an extreme example of this.
- Narutaru contains Aki Honda and her girl posse, who manage the rather impressive feat of turning schoolyard bullying into a monstrous act when they rape one of the side characters, Hiroko, with a test tube; and as if that's not nasty enough, the original plan was to kick Hiroko in the stomach while the test tube was inside her!. Needless to say, once Hiroko obtains her dragonet, she gets her revenge... in very bloody fashion.
- Gaara of Naruto. Yes, make the kid who contains a gigantic malevolent sand demon upset. That's definitely going to score points.
- 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 well — the major victim would be Mako Nakarai, who is bullied mercilessly because her mother is a prostitute.
- 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 (Kaoru) was even driven to attempt suicide, and a few others considered it.
- Kaze no Stigma: Kazuma was born into a prestigious family of fire users yet had no talent in the arts at all, not even the standard immunity to fire that even the weakest branch members had. Consequently, as a child, he was regularly beaten and tortured with fire by the other children, ranging from 5 year olds to teenagers. At least one time, they were seriously going to kill him.
- Mad Pierrot from Cowboy Bebop has regressed to having a child's mind from sadistic experiments, and as Jet puts it, there's nothing as purely cruel as a child.
- Toyed with in Ranma 1/2; when Ryoga Hibiki and Ranma Saotome were kids, they went to the same all-boys Junior High, which had a policy of simply flinging out the stuff from the lunch shop and letting the students fight over it. Ranma would consistently beat Ryoga when they went after the same piece of food, but otherwise got on with him okay enough that he would regularly lead Ryoga to and from his home, to the point Ranma still remembers where Ryoga lives better then Ryoga does. Eventually, Ryoga got sick of Ranma beating him in combat and challenged him to a duel; when he took four days to get there and found Ranma had left, he set off after him to try and get that match. Initially, however, he didn't seem to really be mad at Ranma, more wanting to settle the score. When he wandered into Jusenkyo, however, he fell into the Spring of Drowned Piglet in an incident involving a girl and a panda, and he promptly blamed Ranma for it, becoming much more furious and even declaring he wanted to kill Ranma. Things kind of peaked when he found out Ranma was actually at fault, but it quickly petered out; much as they squabble and bicker, the two watch each other's backs and save each other's lives on a regular basis.
- The Drifting Classroom is a prime example of this. When the school is transported into a Crapsack World and the kids get more and more desperate they start doing horrific stuff such as killing each other with spears and knives for food, burning a fellow student on a cross, and even (EATING A DEAD STUDENT'S REMAINS.)
Music
- Check out Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne for an example where the bully is the protagonist.
Radio
- Nebulous:
Nebulous: At school... they called me "Nobulous"
Rory: Ha ha ha ha... er... Ahem hem, er, kids can be so cruel.
Real Life
- Reena Virk was brutally murdered by a mob of her peers led by one Kelly Ellard, who was not only heard afterwards bragging about "finishing her off," but rumored to have conducted tours of the murder scene.
- And she still seems proud of it over ten years later. Ellard is a pure psychopath. It was the most vicious crime ever committed in this troper's home city of Victoria, BC.
- In this troper's elementary school/church/boy scout troop/any gathering of kids, there was always one kid who was singled out to be bullied by everyone else. Often, the others would gather in a circle and throw things at him or her for up to hours at a time.
- This troper is reminded of his sins.
- The most extreme case is serial killer Mary Flora Bell, who committed her first murder at age 10, and her similar-aged accomplice, Norma Bell.
- Two words: Cyber Bullying.
- The Salem Witch Trials, started because two girls got bored.
Video Games
Webcomics
- Tedd of El Goonish Shive has been made fun of since he was small for being androgynous; his AU counterpart went nuts from the strain. Justin has been teased since early high school for being gay. Susan has always been considered a weird feminist, but she got really reamed for a few days after showing up at school in the boys' uniform.
- Do teenagers count as kids? If so, Red String has nasty little jerks all over the place.
- In Gunnerkrigg Court, it seems that prior to Antimony's arrival, the entire Queslett North class made a point of ostracizing Kat Donlan, simply because she got good grades and had teachers for parents.
- Part of this newfound respect for Kat may be simple fear of Annie. Its shown that despite the class having respect for her, they're kind of freaked out by her Emotionless Girl status at the same time. Ironically, this makes Kat the sociable one and Annie the quiet one, as the class tend to ask Kat to pass messages along to Annie. Kat, naturally, calls them on this.
- In Girl Genius, the children aboard Castle Wulfenbach are noted by Tavrek in this comic as tormenting and picking on each other all the time. Lineage, as he comments, was a favored excuse, with them taking any chance to "one up" each other and thusly claim a reason to bully their "lessers" around.
- In What Birds Know, this trope forms a major part of the backstories of the three girls during flashbacks.
Web Video
- In the lonelygirl15 episode "Poor Pluto", it is revealed that Bree was bullied by the other kids at school because she liked to ask questions about stars. However, in the following episode, "I Want to Take Bree to a Party", Daniel claims that it was just teasing and that Bree takes things really seriously.
Western Animation
- Hercules by Disney - Oh, my god, the freak! He used his super-strength to destroy the entire city! Let's be openly hostile towards him!
- This one is a bit debatable, as the village never openly antagonizes him, but excludes him from everything because of his clumsy nature with his super strength.
- In the series (set in high school) many kids are openly hostile towards him.
- Nelson and his fellow bullies on The Simpsons certainly qualify here.
- Ruthlessly subverted. In the hockey episode, where Bart tries to show up Lisa in school because she's playing well on the ice, he gets every single answer he volunteers wrong. Cut to him being beaten up by Nelson. "Here's for wastin' teacher's valuable time!". In a later episode, Nelson beat Bart up once for "Stealing credit from someone else", along with another bully concerned with church issues because "Not only am I a teenager, but the father of a teenager."
- Nelson also beat Bart up for "Besmirching a lady's good name".
- In summary: Nelson will use any excuse to hit someone.
- South Park is made of this trope.
- An American Tail had a group of mean, cynical orphans near the end who briefly convince Fievel to give up looking for his family.
- Ed Eddn 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).
- And on that note, although Ed and Edd don't deserve the bullying they get, Eddy usually deserves at least some of it. Not only does he try to scam everyone, but he's a self centered jerkass, which makes Kevin seem somewhat sympathetic by comparison.
- Really, it's not focused on the Eds. The kids are just violent in general. Pretty much everyone, from the local Brainless Beauty to the girly boy, has beaten up/caused some serious harm to another kid.
- Futurama: As a child, Leela was mocked by the other kids for only having one eye. Even the blind kid hated her ("At least I have two of them!"). It seems their favorite pastime was pointing at her and chanting "One eye! One eye!" Whatever torment they dished out on her, however, was probably preferable to what they would've done if they knew she was a sewer mutant and not an alien.
- She responds to taunts with violence (having broken the blind kid's nose several times), a trait that has carried over into adulthood, where her response to many situations is to kick/punch someone. It was even a key focus of the third movie.
- 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.
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