The 25 Most Annoying Kid Characters on TV

The annoying kid. It's an affliction even the most classic of series' can't escape. Medieval fantasy realms, spy thrillers, '60s period pieces—they all have that one bratty child, the problematic infant, and/or the moody, woe-is-me teen that fucks up our vibe.

The current state of TV is more plagued with frustrating children than ever, with the confused, increasingly sociopathic Carl Grimes on The Walking Dead leading the pack, and we're sure we'll be tired of hearing about Ashley Judd's much ballyhooed abducted son on Missing by the fifth episode in.

Of course we appreciate the predicament. If, for example, Walking Dead didn't explore how growing up in a post-apocalyptic world would affect a kid, the show would be creatively irresponsible for it. Doesn't mean we still don't roll our eyes when we're watching at home. Read on for The 25 Most Annoying Kid Characters On TV.

Written by Frazier Tharpe (@The_SummerMan)

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Appears In: The Boondocks
Voiced By: Gabby Soleil
Most Annoying Moment: Overhyping Santa Claus at the mall

Jazmine means well enough, often going along with Huey's scheme of the episode, but her naivete is often jarring when alongside the cynical Freeman clan. It usually results in hilarity, like their ill-fated group trip to the movies. Then you have moments like the Santa Claus episode, where it's easy to get tired of her pretty quickly. As Huey would probably agree, she's most tolerable in small doses.

Appears In: The League
Portrayed By: Alina Foley
Most Annoying Moment: Revealing the draft-pick conspiracy to Ruxin

There's no way Ellie could grow up as anything but a foul-mouthed goof-off with parents like Kevin and Jenny. She's usually good for some genuine laughs, but like most sitcom toddlers, she has a frustrating gift for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and inadvertently unraveling the best laid plans. Ruxin should've never seen that draft board, Ellie. Remember, snitches do dishes.

Appears In: Homeland
Portrayed By: Morgan Saylor
Most Annoying Moment: Getting wasted with her friends and falling through a plate glass door at home, disrupting the flow of the otherwise classic episode, "The Weekend"

Among other accomplishments, the season finale of Homeland succeeds at validating why so much time on this otherwise awesome show was focused on typical, rebellious bratty daughter melodrama: There was a master plan at hand and young Dana Brody ended up playing a more crucial role in the endgame than anyone could have predicted.

Unfortunately, we're still stuck with the unhappy memories of all that transpired before. No less than two or three episodes into the season we started groaning anytime she sulked her way on screen to give her mom a hard time or waste precious running time hanging out with her equally goofy friends. Hell, we even found ourselves siding with Brody when she wised up and started questioning his every move. Just let him put on the vest, dammit!

Appears In: Mad Men
Portrayed By: Marten Weiner
Most Annoying Moment: Watching Betty pee

We don't blame young Glen for being sprung—if January Jones was our babysitter we'd have a ring ready to go. But watching her pee, dog? That's taking the cute kid simp act a bit too far.

Unfortunately, Betty is a child herself, which only confused poor Glen into thinking he actually had a shot—and overstaying his welcome with us at home. We feared the worst when he started hanging out with Sally, but thankfully Betty still remains Sally's number one psyche-damager. What does it say about Marten Weiner that his dad cast him as a creepy peeping-tom though?

Appeared In: Batman: the Animated Series
Voiced By: Loren Lester
Most Annoying Moment: Sucker punching Batman...over Batgirl

The tone of Batman was often darker than the Boy Wonder, with his chipper attitude and bad one-liners, is fit for, so his appearances were sporadic. We're not even that mad that most of his appearances emasculated him into playing the Lois Lane, damsel-in-distress role; everybody's got to play their position.

But off-hours he got caught up with Barbara Gordon, and became increasingly petulant and critical of Batman's crime-fighting tactics. It all came to a head when he found out Barbara was actually Batgirl (some detective) and Batman already knew. Dude sucker punched his father figure—over a girl!—then quit. What an ingrate.

Appeared In: The O.C.
Portrayed By: Shailene Woodley; Willa Holland
Most Annoying Moment: The only time Young Kaitlin opened her mouth it was to whine about her pony. Teen Kaitlin's attempt to play mind games with her sister inadvertently led to a dude's death.

Once her older, story-draining sister was out of the picture, Kaitlin actually rose to the occasion and helped the Josh Schwartz once-upon-a-time hit series get back on track for its final season. Before that, though? Just as, if not more, annoying than Marissa. The insanely good first season of the show simply had no room for her as a child and it wasn't long before she was shipped off to boarding school and we breathed a sigh of relief at never having to hear about her stupid horse again.

Then, as the show started to fall off, she came back from school as—what else?—a rebellious, manipulative, horny teen who stirred up trouble for everyone. We almost wanted to call the boarding school ourselves and send her back.

Appears In: Hey Arnold!
Voiced By: Haley Joel Osment; Ben Diskin
Most Annoying Moment: Curly once locked himself in the principal's office and held the school hostage; Eugene continuously drags everyone around him into his accident-prone orbit.

PS 118 was full of eccentric, interesting kids, but the less we saw of these two, the better. Eugene is sickeningly happy and energetic—that is, when he isn't clumsily causing five accidents per second. Curly is the polar opposite: high-strung, a little schizo, possibly psychotic. He even once framed Eugene in the series' memorable riff on 12 Angry Men. Too bad they didn't end up taking each other out.

Appear In: Revenge
Portrayed By: Christa B. Allen; Connor Paolo
Most Annoying Moment: Attempting to extort Charlotte's mom for enough money to get their own place

ABC's shamelessly soapy new drama is the reigning guilty pleasure of the TV season. Star Emily Van Camp's single-minded mission to take down the family that destroyed hers is consistently entertaining, and the Hampton setting is full of colorful characters. That is, except these two lovebirds.

The fun stops whenever the camera cuts to whatever nonsense they happen to be up to at the time—experimenting with pills, running away from home, driving illegaly. Always insignificant, always boring. She's the daughter of the wealthiest family on the beach! He's the cunning townie her parents disapprove of! We wish your starcrossed romance well, guys...off-screen.

Appears In: Dexter
Portrayed By: Luke and Evan Kruntchev
Most Annoying Moment: Dexter's infant son takes to scratching other babies on the cheek, hinting at a Dark Passenger

In a sense, Harrison epitomizes everything that is wrong with Dexter right now. Don't get us twisted, Dexter's stepkids were good for a groan or two, but having a family was a necessary obstacle for Dex, and the show. But once Rita was put to pasture, a baby incapable of putting two and two, or even one and one, together and babysitters that are apparently good with working all hours, no questions asked, makes everything way too easy. We never thought we'd say this, but we miss Astor.

Appeared In: Veronica Mars
Portrayed By: Kyle Gallner
Most Annoying Moment: Lying to Veronica about what really went down when she was drugged at a party

Cassidy's got his reasons for being a douche bag. Being touched as a kid by Steve Guttenberg will do that to a young G. But he responded to that by (spoiler alert) killing two fellow victims who were planning to go public and out Guttenberg. Not cool, Cass. Oh, and did we mention that he took advantage of a drugged-up Veronica at a party, in order to work through his intimacy issues? Smh, leave it to Beaver.

Appears In: South Park
Portrayed By: Matt Sone
Most Annoying Moment: The unfortunate Twilight/Hot Topic phase

We appreciate Butters' innocence on a series full of crazy-ass kids. Still, we can't help but laugh at him every time Cartman victimizes him. Innocent or not, his gullibility, susceptibility to pranks, and naivete simply make him not as cool as the core gang. Then again, someone's gotta play the victim, we suppose. Oh, hamburgers!

Appeared In: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Portrayed By: Michelle Trachtenberg
Most Annoying Moment: Her attention-craving kleptomaniac phase failed at getting everyone's attention. Unfortunately we had to sit through every moment of it.

Dawn's brattiness is almost forgivable, seeing as how when the series ended she was technically only two years old. You didn't have to be a sharp viewer to notice that Buffy definitely didn't have an irksome little sister running around for the first half of the series. But as soon as she suddenly appeared, seamlessly integrated within the show, she annoyed us as if she had been there the whole time. Job well done, reality-bending monks.

During her first season on the show, the mere existence of a sudden needling sister upset fans, and she proceeded to get into typical hero's family member nonsense like constantly getting kidnapped and creating a lot of drama around her. Then, she stopped being important to the plot and the writers were left with a normal, petulant teenager on their hands, so Dawn...continued to be in a constant state of peril, while going through typical teenage nonsense. And here we thought we left the high school years behind seasons ago.

Appears In: Weeds
Portrayed By: Alexander Gould
Most Annoying Moment: His continued obsession with Pittsburgh

Dope-dealing Nancy sucks as a mother. We pity Shane, but we're pretty sure he's a serial killer in the making. Evidence: He talks to his dead father, gets routinely bullied at school, and shows increasing signs of a violent personality (with a lack of remorse), aaaaaand...he jerks off to pictures of his own mother. Maybe he's not that unhappy with her parenting skills after all? When he finally committed a murder, we barely batted an eye. That other Showtime show gave us a crash course on how to spot "Dark Passengers."

Appears In: Family Guy
Portrayed By: Lacey Chabert; Mila Kunis
Most Annoying Moment: Guilt-tripping Brian into being her prom date by threatening suicide

Meg's whole reason for existence is to be the boring, colorless child that nobody likes, and she does it well. She's been the butt of many a great joke, but really we like her as much as her own family. Which is to say, not at all. She'll always have Neil, at least.

Appeared In: The Walking Dead
Portrayed By: Madison Lintz
Most Annoying Moment: Her failure to follow simple instructions led to a frustratingly boring half-season dedicated to searching for her.

Sophia, we hardly knew you. Honestly we don't have much to say about shorty personally because, well, she was never given much to do before she went missing. But the sheer fact that she is the embodiment of one of the most maddening plots of the current TV season puts her on our shit-list. She couldn't just chill where Rick told her to stay for two more minutes?! Who's Carol going to exist next to now?

Appeared In: Angel
Portrayed By: Vincent Kartheiser
Most Annoying Moment: Holding a mall full of people hostage because life sucks

This kid was destined to end up like he did. Well, we didn't know Angel would make a figurative deal with the devil to erase his memory and insert him into a normal family with a normal life. But that was literally the only solution short of killing him.

Connor was an unoffensive supernatural baby until Angel's nemesis abducted him to a hellish dimension, raising him to hate his father. When he escaped, he was already a teenager (time moves faster in Hell). Poor Angel does his best to subvert his son's brainwashing, but influence from bad guys on all sides leave Connor all fucked up in the head with no clear sense of family and trust.

After one season of trying to make it work, Angel the vampire, and Angel the series, effectively wrote Connor out. If dude got manipulated into doing something stupid one more time we would've turned to dust ourselves.

Appears In: Californication
Portrayed By: Madeleine Martin
Most Annoying Moment: Her bitchy phase during all of season three

Becca started out as a cool enough daughter, but the older she got the more she took on her mother Karen's propensity to blame everything on Hank. If there's one thing Hank Moody is good at besides writing, it's at least trying to be a good dad, but you wouldn't know it from the way Becca treats him.

We thought it was just a part of the plan in season three when she transitioned from goth to a more typical, bratty teenage girl, but it's only continued. One little fuck-up and she's uttering soul-crushing putdowns to Hank (in that grating, monotone voice) that would send any father straight to the bar.

Even worse, her first serious romance has made her into a mindless automaton of a girlfriend, manipulating Hank's fatherly affections to help her douche of a dude get whatever he wants from him. Hank's no father of the year, but he deserves better than this ingrate.

Appears In: The Simpsons
Portrayed By: Pamela Hayden
Most Annoying Moment: Stealing the coveted role of "Fallout Boy" from Bart for the Hollywood production of Radioactive Man and then acting like a diva on set

Milhouse has the misfortune of being the butt of many jokes over the past two decades (especially in many of the series' best episodes) but after all this time our pity has turned into nonchalance and we've had enough of him (the show too). Dude is like the animated version of that kid from middle school who was allergic to everything, and managed to rub everyone the wrong way no matter how hard he tried. Bullying is wrong and all that, but in Milhouse's case we can kind of see where they're coming from.

Appeared In: The Wire
Portrayed By: Julito McCullum
Most Annoying Moment: Breaking down into tears after Michael gave him a few well-deserved slaps

It only took one episode for Namond to set himself apart from the newly introduced group of boys in season four as the resident asshole. He was entitled, a shit-talker who couldn't back it up—he got G-checked by little Kenard, a punk—he let Michael get jumped, and a regular cause of headaches in school, although if we had his awful mother we'd probably act out too. It's a testament to how depressing the fates of the rest of the boys are by the end of season four that we were genuinely happy that someone salvaged a bright future out of it all, even if it was this snot.

Appears In: The Walking Dead
Portrayed By: Chandler Riggs
Most Annoying Moment: Playing with dead things. Shed a thug tear for Dale.

If you grew up how Carl grew up, you'd be in Georgia doing stupid shit too. Carl's first dad, Rick, is busy being the world's nicest zombie apocalypse sheriff ever, his surrogate dad, Shane, is a possessive loon, and his only friend, Sophie, got herself eaten. We understand.

But damn if Carl hasn't been racking up the stupid points lately, hitting an unimaginable peak by more or less setting poor Dale up to get got, and following that with the shot heard round the swamp, alerting a horde of walkers (milling around the woods for Zombie Woodstock?) that fresh meat is in the vicinity. Sunday's finale will probably bring more carnage. Carl sure is racking up quite the body count.

Appears In: The Sopranos
Portrayed By: Robert Iler
Most Annoying Moment: Tony's unfortunate news about Uncle Bobby makes A.J. cry...about how badly it affects him

A.J. is the epitome of the lazy, silver-spoon goofball, useless and lacking in any and all practical skills. Unlike his productive, accomplisehd older sister, Anthony Junior practically floats from season to season, engaging in suburban hoodrat behavior with his friends, failing at school and going through annoying phases, all the while remaining self-centered and passive. Shout out to the dude who got acid poured on his foot by A.J.'s wannabe loan shark friends, while A.J. just...watches.

He hit unforeseen lows in the final season, leading up to television's most insincere, least empathetic suicide attempt. To cap it off, he fulfills his rich-kid destiny with a shiny new Beamer and a plush job obtained through nepotism. We're so glad he survived his many trials and tribulations.

Appeared In: The Twilight Zone
Portrayed By: Billy Mumy
Most Annoying Moment: Making it snow just cause he can, and fucking up the crops in the process

"It's a Good Life" is a Twilight Zone classic, made memorable by little Anthony Fremont, the god-like, omnipresent child menace. He gets points for literally locking down the whole town, but his pimp hand was so strong that even his own parents had to watch their every sentence, lest it piss him off. By the end of the episode, the sycophancy is too much to bear; if you ask us, the cornfield doesn't sound so bad comparatively.

Appeared In: American Horror Story
Portrayed By: Evan Peters
Most Annoying Moment: Almost killing the new kid just because Violet talked to him

Pretty much every bad thing that happens in season one of American Horror Story can be attributed to Tate's mommy abandonment issues. We would sympathize, if he wasn't a homicidal, raping, emo, woe-is-me maniac who refused to even own up to his antics. We've already said goodbye to his character and yet, still no clear reason on what pushed him to lace half of his fellow student body up. We know Constance sucks but, damn, what an overreaction.

He was also embroiled in an uninteresting simp affair with Violet Harmon that ate up way too much screen time, though a horde of tween Tumbling girls would beg to differ. We'd say we hope his "new" character next season is vastly less irritating, but the Ryan Murphy Law of Incremental Overkill means he's probably going to be worse.

Appeared In: 24
Portrayed By: Elisha Cuthbert
Most Annoying Moment: That damn cougar.

For two seasons Kim Bauer embarked on a stupidity reign of terror, compounded by bad decision after impossibly bad decision. Sneaking out late at night to hang out with boys is normal enough but when said guy helps kidnap you, you get away, and then, a couple hours later, track him down at his house because he was a "nice" kidnapper, that's well, not very bright.

We wish we could say that was the dumbest thing Kim ever did but it was just the tip of the iceberg. She spent every episode of the otherwise classic season two in mortal danger and participated in television's most nonsensical plot when she came across a deadly cougar in the woods. Did we mention she existed on a series about government agents combating terrorism?!

It got so bad that for season three the writers were forced to come up with the improbable solution of her joining CTU with her dad to keep her out of trouble, and we were happy to go along with it if it meant no more wildlife. We were even happier when season three became her last season as a series regular.

Appears In: Game of Thrones
Portrayed By: Jack Gleeson
Most Annoying Moment: Everyone else was perfectly fine with just banishing Ned Stark, but noooo, junior's got a point to prove.

HBO is well represented on this list, but this little inbred brat makes the likes of Namond and A.J. seem like...princes. Even before he doomed Ned Stark, this sniveling kid had us tensing up with fury every time he appeared, and cheering when Tyrion finally bitch-slapped him. He disrespects Ned's daughters, had one of their direwolves put down, and got innocent townie boys killed for no reason at all.

We can't wait for season two to start but we're worried that Joffrey's new possession of power is going to make him even more insufferable. (Also, Joffrey is a punk-ass name.)