Even though Home Alone is a Christmas staple, and you watch it every year without fail, you've probably always wondered just how Kevin's parents managed to forget their eight-year-old son long enough to drive to the airport, get through security, get on a plane and travel at least halfway to Paris before they'd even realised he was missing. Well, thankfully thirty years after the film was released eagle-eyed viewers have spotted a crucial detail that helps explain it all.
As you know, the film is based around Kevin McCallister, the eight-year-old boy whose parents forget him in the rush to leave for the airport for their Christmas break. While learning how to survive on his own in his family home, Kevin finds he also has to defend it from two robbers who have been eyeing up the McCallister family home for weeks.
Obviously, you know all that. This is not your first rodeo. You know about the moment the neighbour's kid is confused for Kevin in the headcount, but it still doesn't fully explain how they forgot him for quite so long. The flight time from Chicago to Paris alone is over eight hours?!
Well, luckily one Twitter user spotted something pretty important. In one of the early scenes the family sit down to eat their huge stack of pizzas, when Kevin and Buzz get into an argument knocking bottles of fizzy drink all over the table.
As Kevin's dad scrabbles to clean up the mess with some bright red disposable napkins, he wipes everything on the table into the bin, but what we haven't noticed for the past 30 years is that Kevin's plane ticket gets mistakenly thrown into the bin with the napkins.
While it's still a pretty long time to forget your child, this does explain why Kevin's parents didn't notice he was missing, since as far as they were concerned they had the right number of kids and tickets.
If it took us 30 years to see this, what else have we missed?
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