# Evil Toddler

Evil Toddler is an advice animal image macro that pairs a photo of a grinning boy clasping his hands like a cartoon villain with captions describing petty schemes only a small child would think up. It started on Reddit in October 2012 and became one of the defining kid-photo macros of that era.

## Origin
On October 19th, 2012, Redditor altmedsol posted the source photo to /r/pics under the title "Evil Plan"[2]. In the comments, user Lochness Digital shared a Photoshop pasting the toddler's head onto a Snidely Whiplash frame from the 1960s animated series Dudley Do-Right, which set up the villain read the meme later ran with[5]. That /r/pics submission cleared 14,000 upvotes and 200 comments over three months[2].

Later the same day, Redditor tattedspyder turned the image into the first captioned macro on /r/AdviceAnimals, with the line "I will save all of my urine / for right in the middle of the changing"[3]. The post pulled in more than 10,100 upvotes across the same window and seeded the template the wider meme would follow[3].

- **Platform:** Reddit (r/pics origin, r/AdviceAnimals viral spread)
- **Creator:** altmedsol (Reddit user, posted the source photo); tattedspyder (Reddit user, made the first captioned macro)
- **Date:** 2012

## Overview
Evil Toddler is an advice animal built around a snapshot of a young boy grinning wide while clasping his hands together like a scheming cartoon villain[1]. The captions describe the small, petty plots only a toddler could pull off, from ruining diaper changes to hiding remote controls, all written in a mock-serious voice that matches the pose.

The format sits inside the /r/AdviceAnimals boom of late 2012, when reaction-based image macros dominated Reddit's front page[3]. What set Evil Toddler apart from the fictional-character advice animals of the time was the real photo, whose expression reads as pure scheming, giving writers a narrow lane: every caption had to sound like something a small child would actually plot, in Snidely Whiplash cadence[1].

## How It Spread
Three days after the original post, on October 22nd, 2012, humor blog Pleated Jeans ran a "Best of the Evil Toddler Meme" roundup of 16 macros pulled from Quickmeme[1]. The Huffington Post published its own compilation the same day[4], and BuzzFeed and UpRoxx followed within weeks, pushing the format beyond Reddit[5].

The meme jumped languages fast. On December 2nd, 2012, a Polish-language Facebook page titled "Złowrogi Brzdąc" (translated from Polish as "Sinister Toddler") launched and pulled in more than 20,000 likes over two months[6]. New captions on that page kept the same villain pose but tuned the jokes to a Polish audience.

Reddit kept generating hits into 2013. On January 19th, 2013, Redditor AlphaPigs posted an Evil Toddler macro about placing stickers on car windows, which cleared 7,200 upvotes and 50 comments in three weeks[3]. By that point the template was locked in, and any petty plot a small child might realistically pull off was fair game[1].

## How to Use
The template typically uses the same cropped photo of the grinning boy with hands clasped. Captions usually run in two lines framed as a plan, setup on top and punchline underneath, in a mock-serious cartoon-villain voice. Common examples describe holding urine for a diaper change, hiding TV remotes, or drawing on walls the second a parent looks away[1].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Evil Toddler?
Evil Toddler is a 2012 advice animal image macro pairing a photo of a grinning boy with clasped hands with captions describing petty schemes a small child might pull off[1].

### Where did Evil Toddler come from?
Redditor altmedsol posted the source photo to /r/pics on October 19th, 2012, under the title "Evil Plan," and the first captioned macro went up on /r/AdviceAnimals the same day[2][3].

### What does Evil Toddler mean?
The joke turns a random photo of a happy kid into a cartoon-villain pose, then treats normal toddler behavior like diaper-change antics as premeditated evil plans[3].

### How do you use Evil Toddler?
Take the cropped photo of the grinning boy and add a two-line caption framed as a plan, with the punchline describing a petty toddler scheme[1].

### Is Evil Toddler still popular?
Evil Toddler was a defining advice animal of the 2012 to 2013 /r/AdviceAnimals wave, and it is remembered as a classic image macro from that era rather than a currently viral format[5].

## References
1. [https://www.pleated-jeans.com/2012/10/22/best-of-the-evil-toddler-meme-16-pics/](<https://www.pleated-jeans.com/2012/10/22/best-of-the-evil-toddler-meme-16-pics/>)
2. [https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/](<https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/>)
3. [https://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/](<https://www.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/>)
4. [https://www.huffpost.com/](<https://www.huffpost.com/>)
5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/evil-toddler](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/evil-toddler>)
6. [https://www.facebook.com/](<https://www.facebook.com/>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/evil-toddler
Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library