- Crosses the Line Twice: Having the kids cut off the heads of chickens in order to eat? Brutally uncomfortable. Having Jared give a goofy smile as he holds up the decapitated hens and say, "We sped up the natural process of life and death and gave these suckers a short cut"? Straight-up Bathos in its purest form.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Jimmy is one of the most well-liked contestants due to having the most common sense despite his extremely young age. Fully knowing that he isn't exactly cut out for the whole show's premise and choosing to leave when he had the chance. JonTron probably helped out in his popularity. Even though it has been quite a few years and Jimmy has grown up, Jimmy is still rather well-liked due to being a surprisingly nice, sweet, funny and cool guy, with many of his fans wishing him well. Some fans have even wanted to see more of him because he bounced off pretty well with Jon and overall was quite enjoyable.
- Jared is also considered a fan favorite for having many iconic lines, and being a Cloudcuckoolander.
- Taylor is a standout character for being a leader whilst not giving a darn about public image and snarking at everyone. It really helps that she's a surprisingly effective leader that makes the right decisions while on the council.
- Fountain of Memes: Practically anything that comes out of Jared's mouth is prime meme material. His aforementioned "short cut" line with the chickens and his exclamation about how "today has been the worst day in three years" are stand-out examples.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- At the time the show came out, there were plenty of editorials claiming it was all good fun, that children needed to be "toughened up", and that the complaints from adults were all part of the nanny state coddling and spoiling children. What we know about it now makes those editorials seem incredibly short-sighted.
- Jon Jafari's interview with Jimmy, the youngest of the kids who were on the show, revealed that the it really was about as creepy, unsafe, and morally questionable as all the detractors thought. During the first week, all forty kids were forced to use one poorly-dug outhouse, were made to feed themselves (and ate very unhealthily as a result)note , slept on barely adequate beds in freezing temperatures with no heatnote , bathed only once, had the bare minimum of supervision (consisting mainly of being given water, not for their benefit, but to keep them from passing out from dehydration on camera), were extremely frightened of Jonathan Karsh, and had little to no privacy, with Jimmy being filmed while he was having an emotional breakdown because it made for good footage.
- Kid Nation was filmed at the Bonanza City Movie Ranch. This is the same ranch where Alec Baldwin had a negligent discharge that left cinematographer Halyna Hutchins dead and movie director Joel Souza hospitalized during the production of the western film Rust.
- Memetic Mutation: Basically anything that comes out of Jared's mouth.
- Several of Sophia's lines count too. Such as "I stopped believing in God a long time ago."
- When the kids were talking about killing the chicken, Savannah (age 10) casually asked "Are they gonna hang it like they did Saddam Hussein?"
- Overshadowed by Controversy: The show is most known for accusations of child endangerment and being an Immoral Reality Show. Other than some minor bruises and burns, however, there were no major issues on screen for the most part. Although as JonTron's interview with Jimmy shows, the controversies and the issues the detractors had were not exactly unfounded either. It was also revealed that some of the kids accidentally drank bleach from improperly cleaned dishes and needed to get their stomachs pumped, which naturally wasn't mentioned at all by the showrunners.
- Unintentional Period Piece: It just screams mid 2000s. Especially with all the references to George W. Bush, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and even Saddam Hussein.
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