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SYFY WIRE The Shining

Detroit high school encourages students to dress as pop culture icons for ID photos

By Josh Weiss
Anakin Skywalker Star Wars Attack of the Clones

High school can be a turbulent time for any budding teenager, but when you're allowed to dress up as your favorite movie or television character, facing picture day isn't the daunting challenge it once was. Per a report from The Huffington Post, North Farmington High School in the suburbs of Detroit allowed its senior pupils to assume the persona of their favorite pop culture icon for the sake of ID photographs. What followed was a parade of Woodys (Toy Story), Shuris (Black Panther), Fionas (Shrek), creepy twins (The Shining), and so many more!

The seniors ended up posting their finished IDs on Twitter posed side by side with a still of the person they were ... well, impersonating. Each caption was something their character would or might say, such as "There's a snake in my boot" and "Wakanda forever!" Even some of the teachers (like wacky Mr. Simpson) got in on the cosplay fun.

According to student Bennett Kraus (who dressed as Anakin Skywalker from the Star Wars prequels), this is something that North Farmington's been doing for a while now.

"I think the tradition started when seniors realized their photo won't be in the yearbook and they could dress up as whatever they wanted, so people decided to just do crazy stuff," he tells SYFY WIRE. "When I was a freshman, my first reaction to seeing seniors dress was very confused, but then I realized it's a part of the North culture. I came up with the idea of doing Anakin Skywalker because I am a HUGE fan of Star Wars, and so I knew I had to be someone from the movie. My favorite cosplay beside my own was my friend Zack Machlis, who dressed up as Seth Rogan."

Check out some of our viral genre favorites below. If you ask us, though, the dude who went as Milo from Atlantis: The Lost Empire is on a whole other level entirely.

"I’ve been thinking about what Andreas and I could do since freshman year," says Therese Diakovasiliou, who, along with her twin brother, dressed as one of the creepy twins from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. The idea came to her during sophomore year. "At first, I thought we couldn’t do it since they’re identical twins girls, but then I thought that maybe my twin and I—being the opposite genders—would make it better. I was set on the idea when I realized how funny it’d be. On the other hand, Andreas was not excited about wearing a dress and a wig. His initial answer was no, but then junior year came around and he said okay to the idea ... We decided to do the twins from The Shining since they’re iconic and everybody has seen or at least heard of the movie ... My favorites IDs are Fiona from Shrek (Fiona Godfrey), Johnny from The Shining (Kevin Prabahker), Tyler the Creator (Jalen Johnson), The Watermelon Guy (Myles Gresham), and Malorie from Bird Box (Angelina Yaldo). These are only a few of my favorites; there are so many more that I loved."

You can peruse all of the IDs posted to Twitter right here or simply search the hashtag of #NFID20. Seriously, this is so cool that we want to re-enroll at North Farmington for a high school do-over. It just makes us all the more excited for Halloween next month!

If your school asked you to dress up as a figure from the world of movies, TV, and comics, who would you choose and why? Sound off in the comments below!