History Fridge / PuellaMagiMadokaMagica

* Kirsten/H.N. Elly has an Internet theme, with "H.N." standing for "Handle Name," and her barrier having a lot of computer or TV screens in it. She is also the only known witch to have spread her witch kiss to a large number of people. Her ability to do this may be related to her Internet motif, because it's easier to reach a lot of people at once over the Internet.

* Kirsten/H.N. Elly is the only known witch to have spread her witch kiss to a large number of people. She also has an Internet theme, with "H.N." standing for "Handle Name," and her barrier having a lot of computer or TV screens in it. Connect these two things together, and maybe she was able to do such a thing because it's easier to reach a lot of people at once over the Internet.

** One more thing about Sayaka's swords: She often summons a lot of them, despite only really needing/being able to handle one at a time. Why? Because the only MagicalGirl she sae in action before, her respected senpai, Mami, did the same with her muskets. She is honoring her.

* There were two 'flaws' in the show that bothered a lot of viewers: the fact that [[TheScrappy Madoka was such a timid crybaby]], and the fact that it took forever for her to [[ForegoneConclusion make a contract.]] But these traits make a lot more sense when you consider the fact they manifested '''after she witnessed Mami's death.''' Madoka only really begins bursting into tears after that event, most notably when she's on the roof with Sayaka and Kyuubey in episode 4 turning down the contract and when she's begging Sayaka to stop fighting in a way that hurts her after the latter savagely beats Elsa Maria to death. Also, she starts to hang back more in the [[EldritchLocation witch's labyrinths.]] Up until then, she'd just been [[ShrinkingViolet shy]] and hadn't really been less involved than Sayaka. It seems like seeing the death of her new friend really [[BreakTheCutie left a mark on her personality]], especially when she blurts out "don't talk about her (Mami) like that!" to Homura in the cafe. For someone as softspoken as MADOKA, that speaks volumes.

* Magical girls are powered by wishes. Mami comments to Homura on how much talent Madoka has...Or in other words, how many unfulfilled wishes she carries

** Also regarding Kyoko's wish, regardless of whether she meant or not, she essentially gave her father MindControl powers with which he unintentionally brainwashed anyone who hear him into believing what he said and possibly doing whatever he inquired of them. Other works often delve into how disturbing brainwashing is and the potenetial horror. Code Geass? 1984? Kyoko mentioned that to passerby, her father looked to be leading a cult. Imagine if that had been the case and Mr. Sakura did turn out to be unscupulous, narcissistic or megalomanistic as cult leaders tend to be. He could have ordered his folllowers or anyone who heard him really into robbing, killing or committing all sort of crimes for him because the wish magic would make them believe Father Sakura's words to always be right. While it ended horribly for the Sakura family, it's perhaps a good thing that Mr. Sakura rejected his daughter's wish. On minister Sakura's side, there's finding that you believed to be righteous and good, having made a supposed DealWithTheDevil to allow to bewitch everyone around you by robbing them of their free will, the gift God gave to humans. Also, he could probably never trust anyone again since he couldnt be sure any opinion or response someone gave him was really his or just magic forcing them to agree with him.

** See also Walking Corpse Sydrome. Which deals in large part with extreme depression and depersonalization.

** Speaking of wishes, why doesn't anyone within the span of human-to-Kyubey had the common sense to ask for world peace? Even if it didn't immediately destroy the concept of witches, if Kyubey was a LiteralGenie, the amount of goodwill that would counter the DemonicPossession that drives a island country - [[DoingInTheScientist already dealing with massive suicides due to cultural norms]] - to suicide pacts, would diminish tremendously until witches became a myth in the magical girl community. [[IdiotPlot So, is every girl that signed up selfish enough not to wish 'world peace' in the universe?]] Chalk that up to WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief.

** Also, pay close attention to what happens when a girl makes the contract. She's always ''alone'' when it happens, or else in the company of someone who can't interfere. That's deliberate on Kyubey's part. He only tells the girls that they'll make a wish and then become a magical girl, he never precisely tells them what that entails, and he always makes sure that there are no witnesses around to see the soul being extracted and formed into a gem. Since it doesn't feel any different to the magical girl herself and no one sees it happen, nobody figures it out unless they manage to get around Kyubey's methods. None of the girls are ''stupid'', there's no IdiotPlot involved; the relevant information is deliberately obscured or hidden from them because if they knew the truth, they wouldn't do what Kyubey wanted.

* Charlotte looks out of place compared to her fellow witches, with a hand drawn design and not some kind of mosaic. She looks more like a simple cartoon plush toy/caterpillar monster, which makes more sense knowing who she was in life. Nagisa was only 8 years when she contracted and turned into a witch without fighting any in her short life. The cartoon design resembles her youthfulness, while the simplistic design separates from the other witches who had far more experience and maturity when they were magical girls.

*** Suicide statistics also play a role. A teenage girl is more likely to commit suicide as a long drawn out attention seeking gambit (you could interpret Sayaka's breakdown as a cry for attention from Kyosuke). A teenage boy is less likely to try but more likely to succeed (a genuinely suicidal boy is more likely to just shoot his soul gem and be done with it). Considering witch transformations rely on the target's depression getting to dangerous rates without the soul gem being destroyed, the former is much more efficient.

** "Her nature is helplessness" -- as magical girls fall into despair, they become helpless to stop themselves from turning into witches.
** "She symbolizes the fool who continuously spins in circles" -- can be interpreted as a reference to the endless magical girl/witch cycle (magical girl defeats witches to harvest Grief Seeds, becomes a witch herself and gets her Grief Seed harvested by another magical girl, repeat ad infinitum) or Homura endlessly repeating the same month over and over to save Madoka.
** "She will continue to rotate aimlessly throughout the world until she completely changes the whole of this age into a drama" -- magical girls throughout the world make contracts and wishes, influencing the many lives around them in ways both good and bad.
** "When the doll's usual upside-down position reaches the top part of the witch, she completely roils the civilization on the ground in a flash through her gale-like flight" -- at the end of Timeline ''n,'' when Homura's sand timer is used up, Madoka makes her wish to erase all witches from history, becoming a goddess and rewriting the universe from the ground up.

** Following that same line of thought, Kyoko's "advice" to Sayaka on how to get the man she wanted can be seen in a very different light. Despite never having watched it, [[{{Tropers/Timeskipper}} this troper]] once read that in Anime/SailorMoon, one of the [[TrueCompanions sailors]] gave relationship advices to another Sailor. Considering [[DeconstructorFleet what PMMM is]], it's very easy to see Kyoko's advice as a darker reflection of this kind of situation. Which means that when she came up with the nice idea of breaking all of Kyosuke's limbs to render him helpless and dependent on Sayaka, she wasn't trying to mock her. It was probably the first genuine gesture of friendship Kyoko had done towards Sayaka!

** His design is also somewhat fox-like. {{Kitsune}} are known for being cunning tricksters. Is it any wonder that Kyubey's name sounds eerily similar to [[{{Manga/Naruto}} one of the more iconic Kitsune in Anime history?]]

* Much of the series when considered from the perspective of the adults is this. Teenage girls inexplicably going missing and/or turning up dead, sometimes for no seemingly no reason whatsoever. AdultFear at its best.

* Kyubey's modus operandi is essentially finding young girls at their most desperate, coming to them in an appealing shape while offering them something, allowing them to become increasingly emotionally unstable as he exploits them, only to repeat the cycle with other girls once the original girl becomes something barely resembling the way she was prior to meeting him. [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything This]] pretty makes the show "[[AdultFear Stranger Danger]]: The Anime".

* AmazingTechnicolorHair is something a little girl would wish for humans to have, especially other girls around her age.

*** Worse yet. What if she wasn't dying? All we know for certain was that 1) she was injured and 2) her parents were killed. Maybe she was dying, but maybe she only ''thought'' she was dying and Kyubi exploited that to his own advantage. We never heard her wish, it could have been "I don't want to die ''here''" as opposed to "I don't want to die". I could not have been "I don't want to die" because of obvious reasons...

* The very first track played at the very beginning of the series (first episode, when Madoka sees Homura fighting against Walpurgis) is the series ending. Why would they play the series ending at the beginning of the series ? Maybe to indicate that Madoka's dream was just the '''end''' of another doomed timeline ?

* On a similar note, Mami binding Homura with her ribbons in the third episode after the latter warned her not to go after Charlotte. In episode 10, it's revealed in a previous timeline after Sayaka turned into a witch and was killed, Mami promptly went crazy and attempted to perform MurderSuicide on the cast by starting with tying up Homura so that she couldnt use her TimeStop powers and killing Kyoko. so Homura probably thought for a moment that Mami intended to shoot her dead especially in light of their last conversation. And even if she didn't, being bound again would still conjure up some unpleasant memories.

** Kyoko represents Fire. Her transformation has a fiery theme, and fire is linked to her religious background. Kyoko is by far the most destructive and openly self-indulgent of the group, and the most temperamental when dealing with obstacles to her goals or Kyubey's nonchalant attitude when he reveals the AwfulTruth. When Kyoko realizes she's indirectly responsible for Sayaka's witchification, she commits a HeroicSacrifice by taking out Octavia in a huge, fiery explosion that consumes all the magic in her soul gem. Her own witch form has a candle for a head.

** Madoka's bow is reprsentative of her powerful will. A bow cannot block, and cannot face close combat. It can only strike from afar, like how she will do anything to enact her will. While unable to influence things directly anymore as no one but Homura remembers her, she takes her place 'behind the scenes'. A bow is also a very simple weapon, which is how Madoka sees herself, and what she appears to be. But a bow is deadly in the hands of an ArcherArchetype, and its long range means that you probably won't see the arrows coming...

*** On a similar note, there's a reason why Homura's costume reveals only the bare minimum. When she became the magical girl, she had little confidence in herself, which likely extends to her physical self-image. It is also similar to the Mitakihara school uniform, since that is the only place where she could form meaningful connections.

* Why doesn't Homura care for Mami like she cares for Madoka? Well, LesYay aside, Homura's seen Mami in dozens of timelines, in the girl's darkest moments. She likely knows that Mami's compassionate actions- though benevolent- are motivated by her "selfish" (as Kyubey would put it) need to be loved and respected by those around her. When Mami is scared or agitated (as in the scene where they learn about witches), this selfless mask cracks- as when she instantly MercyKill[=ed=] her teammates without even asking their opinion. But despite all ''Madoka'' suffers, (and Moemura's increasing cynicism about people) Madoka remains consistently honest and ''truly'' selfless. Madoka's not the only person who ever said she loved Homura, but she was the only one who really ''meant it''. That's why she- and only she- is so special to Homura.
** On top of that, Mami is indirectly responsible for the suffering Madoka goes through. After all, she's usually the one to introduce Madoka to the magical girl world and chest her to contract to Kyubey, the very problem Homura is desperate to fix. This either leads to Madoka's death or breaks her spirit entirely, leading her to witch out. In the third timeline alone, Mami's FreakOut traumatized her wards by murdering Kyoko, and then Madoka had to MercyKill her beloved BigSisterMentor before the former did the same to Homura. Mami's attempted murder-suicide act all but guaranteed the duo's deaths at Walpurgisnacht's hand without their two fully trained magical girl seniors to help them fight. For all the misery Mami unintentionally puts Madoka through, small wonder Homura could care less for Mami after seeing it so many times in different ways.

** Homura's gem is on her left hand. Her power is to stop and turn back "the hands of time." Why her left hand? In analog clocks, the left hand is usually the minute hand and when adjusting time, people usually move the minute hand.

* Kyubey's "magic" is basically just SufficientlyAdvancedTechnology, right? Of ''course'' [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor the wishes always screw up somehow]]. A computer doesn't do what you want it to. A computer does ''what you tell it,'' no more and no less. A common way for programming teachers to introduce students to algorithms is the "sandwich exercise," where the students come up with a list of directions to make a sandwich, and then the teacher follows those instructions exactly and gets the sandwich wrong. For example, if the students write the sentence "put jelly on bread", the teacher puts the unopened jar of jelly on top of the bag of bread. The purpose of the exercise is to force the students to rewrite the directions until they're 100% impossible to screw up. Unfortunately, every magical girl only gets one (1) wish, and if she messes up the wording, there's no do-overs...

* The four most active magical girls (Mami, Sayaka, Kyoko and Homura) follow a FourElementEnsemble pattern to reflect their powers and personalities. It's also reflects how they met their demise or defeat. Meanwhile, Madoka does not fit in the the main four elements, but her unique element symbolizes how she ultimately won the game that the other girls lost.
** Mami represents Air. Her ribbons flow and can be constructed in to guns, and has a GenreBlind mindset about being a magical girl. When Madoka promises to contract so she won't be alone, Mami describes it as feeing "lighter than air". But this uplifting feeling carries her away and bites her hard in the back when she ignores crucial advice from Homura and acts recklessly out of euphoria, resulting in her graphic decapitation courtesy of Charlotte. Her witch form is small and can float.

*** On a similar note, there's a reason why Homura's costume reveals only the bare minimum. When she became the magical girl, she had little confidence in herself, which likely extends to her physical self-image.