Enter Linda.  Nasty to the core, Linda was a vicious little ten year old.  But her introduction to the show helped raise its popularity to new heights.  She was Lex Luthor to Li'l Bill's Superman, and received more hate mail in her first year on the show than Li'l Bill received fan mail.  In 1997, Psychology Today magazine even mentioned her in an article about why children can be cruel.

Interesting facts about Linda:

• Lacey Chabert, who provided Linda's voice, gained early recognition in her career as young Cosette in Les Miserables on Broadway.
  
  
• The "Linda's Home Phone Tapper" toy, which was essentially a tape recorder with a Linda sticker on it, figured into a real life court case after a young girl in Minnesota used it to record a phone conversation in which her father made reference to a plot to murder his ex-wife.
  
  
• In 1999, series writer Anthony Watley wrote a song called "Little Linda and a Microphone" to the tune of Beck's "Two Turntables and a Microphone."   It was played once on the Dr. Demento radio show, received unfavorable comments from fans of the TV show and of Beck, and was never played again.  Only a few of the casette singles that were available for purchase were ever sold, and are now mildly collectible.