As the pandemic inflicted more than enough misery on just about everyone, Jimmy Kimmel opted not to call for submissions for his Halloween prank tradition in 2020. And just like they did last year, parents still kept it alive in 2021, even if—as the host said—“it felt like kids have had it hard enough lately.”
For the annual stunt, parents trick their kids into believing they ate all the Halloween candy the little ones spent so much time collecting, leaving the youngsters incredulous and heartbroken. Kimmel said he got 200 submissions for this year’s spooky holiday, but since these were “unauthorized and unwanted,” he opted only to show a couple.
“We did not ask parents to do this, but a lot of parents just went ahead and did it anyway. … So since the kids got pranked anyway, you know, why waste—we decided to show just a couple of them, okay?” he said.
Jimmy Kimmel Live indeed kept it short and sweet this year. The two-minute clip first shows a mom telling her son she ate all his candy and him responding, “I thought you were on a diet” and asking if Kimmel was “a bad guy” when the mom said the host told her to pull the prank. The second pair of kids called their mom a “dick,” and the third swore his dad who ate all the candy was going to get diarrhea. (Or maybe it was gonorrhea—we don’t know what this kid knows.)
“What’s Halloween without it?” Kimmel said at the end.
Last year’s video was a bit more involved, where some kids were definitely upset with their parents, while others showed forgiveness. One girl memorably put a religious guilt trip on her mom when she heard it was a trick, saying, “Jesus does not lie. Remember you taught us that?”
Watch Kimmel’s 2021 Halloween prank video at the top.
