Home Alone theory attempts to explain why Kevin's family were such jerks

How could Kevin's family be so callous? Why was he fine with being left alone? Where did he learn to be so adept at surrealist torture?

These questions and more, that have haunted Home Alone fans for years, are answered in a Reddit fan theory proving popular this week, which claims that Kevin's dad was secretly in the mob.

Would the screenwriter have made such subtle allusions to his criminality without ever paying them off in one of the sequels? Doubtful. Do I want to believe this version of events anyway? Absolutely.

Here's the theory from cubanesis in full:

Home Alone - Peter McCallister is a criminal.

Home Alone is one of my favorite movies of all time and as such, I've seen it about a million times. Watching it over the years you start to realize things that didn't pop out as a kid. One of the things I noticed was that Kevin's dad, Peter, has something fishy going on. My theory is that he's some kind of mid level criminal for the mob or something.

First, the very first time we see Peter is when Harry is dressed as a cop scoping the place out. Peter is WAY defensive in this interaction. All Harry does is ask If he's the owner of the house and Peter jumps straight to "Am I in some Kind of trouble officer?". The look in his face is on edge the whole time he's talking to Harry.

Secondly, we never find out what he does. They don't mention where he works, or his background, or anything. Now in the the book adaptation of the movie they say something about him being in "business". That's pretty vague. But Peter makes enough money to have a wife that doesn't work and like 5 kids. He also has a house that is worth like 1.5 million.

This bring me to my next point. Harry calls the McCallister house "The Silver Tuna", the big score, etc. They specifically target this neighborhood for the McCallister house. When we see in the house there's nothing particularly valuable looking around. We don't ever see them mention jewels, or a safe or anything like that, but still this house that Harry has only seen the entryway to is THE HOUSE to rob. This might have just been a remnant of the original story line where Uncle Frank hired Harry and Marve to rob the place, but without that abandoned story line, why are they targeting that house specifically?

Finally, this one is kind of weak, but look at how his family carries themselves. Kevin's mom is a cold emotionally dead bitch who says terrible things to her 8 year old son. Buzz is a fucking psychopath, who is probably set up to follow in his dad's footsteps. Uncle Franks is obviously a crook of some kind. Then there's Kevin, who seems completely ok with killing two robbers. I don't think his intent was to "bonk them on the noggin". He was out for blood. I mean when I was 8 I knew that if I dropped an iron on someones head from 20 ft they would die. Plus, the whole family has terrible manners. Just look at the scene when Kevin's mom is trying to use the pay phone in Paris and a woman is already using it. The whole family just muscles the poor woman off the phone.

That's all my hard evidence, I know it's not much, but watch the movie and how Kevin's dad acts and carries himself. Also this jumps to the second film, but remember how much cash was in his bag that Kevin ended up with? He had thousands of dollars in cash. The early 90's were the time of travelers checks, plus they weren't leaving the country, so there wasn't a ton of reason to bring that much cash, unless you're a criminal who deals in cash.

That's my theory... a FILM theory.