List of Fictional Feral Children - in Film and Television

In Film and Television

In the Gilligan's Island episode "Gilligan Meets Jungle Boy," Gilligan encounters a boy (portrayed by a younger Kurt Russell) living in the jungles of the island wearing only a loincloth. Not much was known of the jungle boy's background before his encounter with Gilligan. The jungle boy can mimic words said by the main characters when they try to teach him human manners. Yet when he sees himself in a mirror by Mary-Ann, he screams and runs out of the hut. He shows Gilligan a natural helium outlet in the jungle which means the Professor decides to make a balloon out of the castaways' raincoats glued together with tree sap. By the time the Professor finishes his balloon, the jungle boy is shown wearing civilian clothes. As it ends up, the jungle boy unknowingly takes off in the balloon and lands on a Navy carrier.

The protagonist of the 1977–78 American television series Lucan was a young man who had been raised by wolves in Northern Minnesota and then captured/rescued by a research institute which spent ten years acclimatizing him to civilized society.

In the Kennedy–Miller film Mad Max 2, a character called the "Feral Kid" lives in the wasteland near the refinery settlement. He flips, growls when displeased and has a fascination for the Gyro Captain's autogyro. The Feral Kid wears shorts and boots made from hide, hunts and defends himself using a lethal metal boomerang.

In the Tarzan parody George of the Jungle, the main protagonist George (as depicted in the first film) was travelling in the airplane above Bukuvu and the plane crashed. None of the passengers died, but George was lost. He was raised by an Ape named "APE" who could speak in human language and even read books and played violin.

The Monarch from the Cartoon Network Adult Swim show The Venture Bros. was raised by monarch butterflies in his youth. He wears a monarch butterfly costume with a crown, showing his "royal" status.

In the second episode of the original Star Trek, "Charlie X", the Enterprise takes aboard the title character, a 17-year-old boy named Charlie, the sole survivor of a crash on a remote planet which occurred in his infancy. He claims to have survived and learned language via the ship's computer records, but in actuality was taken in by an advanced alien race, who taught him psychic abilities.

In the Manimal episode "Female of the Species", a boat accident on the Ganges River caused by Stanford Langly (portrayed by Michael McGuire) kills the parents of the four-year-old Sarah Evers, causing her to be raised by wolves and living in the Sultanpur district's forests naked, untamed, and acting less than human. When the long-haired wolf girl (portrayed by Laura Cushing) is captured years later by Professor Barta (portrayed by Rick Jason), she is the subject at his university and has been dressed in a jungle bikini (since she rips whatever clothes they offer her). Stanford tries to orchestrate another attempt on her life which is thwarted by Jonathan Chase. Jonathan manages to protect her and gain her trust.

A similar plotline written by Michael Berk and Douglas Schwartz (who also wrote the episode above) had occurred in The Wizard episode "Endangered Species" (with the show also being created by Michael and Douglas). A similar accident had happened to the parents of a younger Linda, causing her to be raised by wolves and living in the Indian jungles naked, untamed, filthy, and acting less than human. When the wolf girl (portrayed by Priscilla Weems) is captured, she becomes a subject at the university where she is held and has been dressed in a leopard-skinned dress. She ends up nearly killed by someone hired by a businessman and gains the trust of Simon McKay.

In the Thunder in Paradise episode "Endangered Species," poachers have found a boy living with wolves while hunting and managed to catch him. He is freed by Randolph J. Spencer who makes it his mission to find out the boy's identity and find out who wants him dead. On a related note, Michael Berk and Douglas Schwartz were the creators and executive producers of that show.

In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Time's Orphan", an eight-year-old child of a couple in the crew of the ship falls through a time portal from which she emerges ten years older having experienced a decade in solitary existence. She was wild and uncontrollable, needing institutional care, so her parents returned her to the void she had become accustomed to, where she instead succeeded in preventing the incident (through a time-travel paradox).

Walk Like a Man is a 1987 comedy film starring Howie Mandel about a man who was raised by wild dogs.

Bad Boy Bubby is a 1993 Australian film by director Rolf de Heer in which the title character is subjected to life long social isolation by his mother. Events in the film lead Bubby to venture into the world where many of his interactions take on a darkly comical aspect.

Nell is a film in which a young woman (portrayed by Jodie Foster) is raised by her paralyzed mother in an isolated cabin, and has to face other human beings for the first time.

In the DuckTales episode "Jungle Duck", Mrs. Beakley is reunited with a feral duck (voiced by Frank Welker) whom she nannied at a young age.

In the Friday the 13th film series, the main character Jason Voorhees was presumed drowned when he was 11 years old but survived the drowning and grew up living in the woods.

In Jumanji, the character Alan Parrish is lost in an alternate realm for 26 years due to the consequences of the eponymous board game where the clue read "In the Jungle You Must Wait Till the Dice Reads 5 or 8." After escaping, Alan seems relatively normal if a little bit eccentric and paranoid. The character Danny Hutcherson suffers a similar fate in Zathura.

In Juken Sentai Gekiranger, a show in Toei Company's Super Sentai franchise, Kandou Jan/GekiRed was, as a young child, the sole survivor when his village was destroyed, and was raised in the nearby forest by tigers and pandas. Growing up in the company of animals has taught him to feel with his body rather than his heart, which is something he must re-learn. One of his notable idiosyncrasies is his personal 'Jan-ish' language, using onomatopoeia in place of many of the words he does not know.

The title character of Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 anime film Princess Mononoke named San was raised by a wolf goddess along with her two wolf pups. San is drawn into a deadly conflict between the forest gods and the humans whose presence seems to threaten them.

In The Mighty Boosh, the main character Vince Noir claims to have been raised in the forest by Bryan Ferry and various animals, whilst living in a tree house made out of bus tickets.

In Digimon Data Squad (Digimon Savers in Japan), the character Keenan Crier (Ikuto Noguchi in Savers) was brought into the Digital World as an infant and raised by the Digimon Frigimon to believe that he is a Digimon (digital monster). After Frigimon's death at the hands of one of Akihiro Kurata's Gizumon, Keenan was raised by Merukimon. When brought back to the human world around the age of eleven, he greatly protested being treated as a human and having to act as one, coming off as very wild, and (at least in Savers) spoke in a very stilted manner from his lack of communication with humans.

In Batman Returns, The Penguin spent his childhood among penguins in Gotham City's sewers.

In a Season 4 episode of Supernatural, two children are found in a house thought to be haunted. Instead, it is discovered the two children were the product of an incestual abuse by a recently deceased man whose daughter, mother of the children, later committed suicide. The children, though never explicitly described as feral, lack ability to speak, survive off of rats, and are extremely violent. They were held captive in the walls and basement of their house, but broke free and killed their father and started to terrorise the new family that moved there. Eventually the boy is shot dead in self-defense by Dean Winchester while the girl is stabbed to death by the father of the family after she goes after his wife and daughter. They were described as likely having never seen the light of day and "barley human."

In The Wild Thornberrys, Donnie (voiced by Flea), the youngest in the family, spent most of his early years with orangutans. His history was revealed in the TV movie "The Origin of Donnie" where his human parents were killed by two poachers when saving some orangutans. Though the natives held a funeral for the two, Donnie was taken in by a bunch of orangutans living in the nude until he was discovered by the Thornberry family and sporting his trademark leopard-printed shorts.