You May Never See Home Alone the Same Way After Hearing This Viral Theory

If you have ever watched the John Hughes Christmas classic, Home Alone, and wondered how the family could leave poor little Kevin home alone to defend the house from burglars while celebrating the saddest Christmas ever, a Reddit thread may have the answer.

In the film, eight-year old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) was sent to his attic bedroom for being naughty. At first watch (or even fifth) it appears that the McCallister family wakes up late for the airport, rushes out the door to catch their plane to Paris, and in the hubbub somehow everyone, including his own parents, don’t realize that Kevin has been left behind. However, a clip of the film popped up on the Movie Details thread on Reddit, and is leading some fans to speculate that the true culprit behind the blunder was Kevin’s own father.

In the clip, the family is eating pizza and when some soda is spilled, Mr. McCallister helps clean up. However, he doesn’t just clean up the pizza and plates and napkins, but manages to throw Kevin’s plane ticket into the trash, too. It’s a shocking blunder, not just because a plane ticket ended up in the trash, but also because of the fact that they were eating pizza over their airplane tickets (who thought that was a good idea?) and because Mr. McCallister, who is successful enough to be able to afford to fly his entire extended family to Paris for Christmas, can’t manage to keep plane tickets in order.

Some viewers are going so far as to suggest that chucking the plane ticket in the bin wasn’t a mistake though, and that Mr. McCallister threw it away to punish Kevin. “What if Peter hated Kevin just as much as Frank did, only he was better at hiding it?” wrote one suspicious mind on Reddit. Watch the clip and decide for yourself: innocent mistake or ingenious punishment? Either way, it’s poor travel planning.

Even if this isn’t a revelation for superfans of the classic, it’s the perfect excuse to go down the rabbit hole again this holiday season.