Line #5 Fridge/TheMuppetChristmasCarol


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3	[[WMG: FridgeBrilliance]]
4	* See those human actors walking around in Victorian-era clothes in the crowd scenes and singing in chorus? They're not just extras. Most of them are the ''puppeteers''. Look closely and you can just about see the muppets some of them are walking with. It gives the potential for even more Muppets to be merged with the population of Dickensian London.
5	* The Ghost of Christmas Past is the only one with a defined form. That is because the past cannot be changed and will always be the same. The Ghost of Christmas Present ages because the present is ongoing and constantly changing. The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come has no face because the future can't be known and is scary.
6	** Even then, notice that the Ghost of Christmas Past is kind of blurry and ill-defined. That's because memories are fuzzy and not always perfect.
7	** Also notice that the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is always pointing ahead, but doesn't emote. The Future is always ahead, and only people decide what they will make of it. Yes it can be scary. As Scrooge learns later, it can also be something of great joy.
8	* And then, of course, there's the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come resembling the grim reaper, evoking thoughts of the one indifferent, certain thing about any living creature's future: that he or she will die.
9	* Why does omniscient Gonzo/Charles Dickens fail to catch Rizzo when he jumps from Scrooge's gate? Because Rizzo is not part of the story and thus Gonzo doesn't actually know where he'll land. Also RuleOfFunny.
10	** On top of that, how could the omniscient Gonzo/Charles Dickens didn't know that the two times that him and Rizzo was sitting on the window ledge that The Ghost of Christmas Present and Scrooge would be opening the window, thus leading them both to fall? Because he DID know. As it was revealed the first time it happened, he loved it! Of course he would do it again.
11	* The Ghost Of Christmas Present tells Scrooge of Christmas Yet To Come, "Go forth, and know him better man!" But why would you want to? He's so creepy! No, wait... once you know the shape of the future a little better, it's not so scary. You can change it and make it better!
12	** That, and recognizing the inevitability of his demise helped [[ScareEmStraight convince him to become a better man]].
13	* On first viewing, Tiny Tim's {{Incurable Cough of Death}} might just seem like clichéd shorthand for "seriously ill." But a little research reveals that it's actually realistic. Some Dickens scholars believe that Tim's disease ''is'' supposed to be tuberculosis, which can make the victim develop a limp by spreading from the lungs into the spine and bones. Dickens himself had a nephew who was crippled by TB and eventually died of it, and that nephew might have inspired the character of Tiny Tim. (Another notable, fictional TB victim: Ratso Rizzo in ''Film/MidnightCowboy'', whom the Muppets' own Rizzo the Rat is named after.) Tim's coughing in this movie is actually a case of {{Shown Their Work}}! (The problem with this theory, however, is that the plot requires Tiny Tim to be cured and TB was untreatable with Victorian-era medicine. Even worse, [[ScienceMarchesOn applying leeches was the accepted "treatment" for TB in the 1840s]].)
14	** Then again, this troper has an indirect ancestor born not long after the setting of this tale, who spent a couple of years in a sanitarium for tuberculosis, had access to proper rest and diet, and lived to be seventy years old. The plot doesn't require Tiny Tim to be cured, just that he does not die as was previously predicted.
15	** However it has also been theorized that he had [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renal_tubular_acidosis renal rubular acidosis]] or [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickets rickets]]. Both were easily curable at the time, but fatal if not treated. This would explain both his early demise and why he got better once Scrooge became like a second father to him.
16	** The actual answer may be a combination of two different explanations. Russell W. Chesney at the American Medical Association wrote an entire article on how environmental factors could have led to Tiny Tim developing Rickets and TB.
17	* When Bean Bunny appears at Scrooge's door carolling, he's singing "Good King Winceslas" - a carol about a powerful, wealthy man who willingly leaves his luxurious home on Christmas to share food and Christmas cheer with a poor man.
18	* In the opening song, a bunch of old ladies sing: "He must be so lonely, he must be so sad / He goes to extremes to convince us he's bad / He's really a victim of fear and of pride / Look close and there must be a sweet man inside." And then as Scrooge gruffly storms past them, they all shake their heads and say "Nahhh". Well - it turns out in the end they were actually right the first time.
19	* This adaptation of ''Literature/AChristmasCarol'' provides us more foreshadowing of the potential for the redemption of Scrooge's soul than most; while Bob Crachit is Scrooge's only clerk in most versions of the story and he has to beg to get Christmas Day off, Scrooge has many bookkeepers in this version and he gives them ''all'' the day off (albeit once Bob makes the practical point that it makes no sense to stay open when nobody ''else'' will be open to do business with).
20	* In the future, after Scrooge 'dies', the ladies at the pawn shop are not just BlackComedy - it's closely cut from the original scene, where the people who were emptying out Scrooge's house had indeed taken everything due to the lack of any mourning presence, even his bedsheets and bedclothes, and boasted shamelessly about it.
21	* When present-day Scrooge starts singing "When Love Is Gone" with past Belle, he seems to be able to match her word-for-word. A horrifying indication that, in the decades following, he ''never stopped reliving that moment''. Thus it also qualifies as FridgeHorror.
22	* Why are the Cratchit children a clear-cut case of GenderEqualsBreed, with pink pig girls and green frog boys, when in other [[Franchise/TheMuppets Muppet]] media, Kermit and Piggy always imagine their possible future children as frog-pig hybrids – e.g. [[Series/TheMuppetShow "bouncing baby figs"]] or [[Film/MuppetsMostWanted a pink frog and a green pig]]? Well, it's because the Muppets are [[AnimatedActors puppet actors]]. Kermit and Piggy are just playing the roles of a married couple here, and the kids are child actors, not their actual kids: Tiny Tim is played by Kermit's real-life nephew Robin. If they were ever to really have kids, they would be hybrids.
23	* When The Ghost Of Christmas Present mentions his large family, Scrooge jokes about how big the grocery bill must be - while the interaction shows Scrooge is starting to change by the very fact that he's let the spirit's joviality rub off on him, it's still very in character for him that the first thing he thought of to remark on was money.
24	* At Fozziwig's party, Belle's dress is light green. When she breaks up with Young Scrooge, her dress is orange with a leaf pattern. Even though both scenes take place on Christmas Eve, the first dress, which she wears when their love begins, evokes springtime, while the second dress evokes autumn. In ''WesternAnimation/MrMagoosChristmasCarol'', Belle describes their happiness and its ending in terms of the changing seasons in the song "Winter Was Warm," which is that adaptation's equivalent of "When Love is Gone" ("No blossoms fell that fall/May didn't leave at all... Now trees with a sigh/Stand and shiver while their leaves fall and die..."). In this version, she doesn't sing those words, but the same sentiment is conveyed through her clothes.
25	** Another detail about Belle's dresses, and the other costumes in the Christmas Past sequence too. The dialogue doesn't spell out how long Scrooge and Belle were engaged; only that she broke it off "some years" after they first met. But at the Fozziwig party, all the clothes are in the style of the late 1780s or early 1790s, while in the "When Love is Gone" scene, Belle and Young Scrooge are dressed in the style of the early 1800s Regency era. That means that Belle has been waiting while Scrooge has postponed their marriage for up to ten years! It's no wonder that when he insists on waiting yet another year, she realizes there's no more hope.
26	** This ten-year wait, combined with some historical context, adds another level to Belle's grief. In this time period, women were expected to be married with children by their mid-twenties. If Scrooge postponed their wedding for ten years, then she's approaching thirty and still single. Her eligibility is running out, and she knows it.
27	* Listen to what the Headmaster tells Scrooge: he tells him that he needs to "work hard, work long, and be constructive." In the whole childhood sequence, Scrooge is only seen doing schoolwork. He even says that he saw the Christmas holiday as "a chance to get some extra work done." In the next scene, he has to be ''told'' to enjoy himself at Fozziwig's Christmas party when he worries too much about its expenses. He puts off marrying Belle because he's too preoccupied with his business endeavors. The idea of giving employees a day off for Christmas seems ''alien'' to him. And even when he does go home he doesn't seem to do much to relax, with his routine apparently just being to eat and go to bed, presumably with the expectation of starting over the next day. A big part of Scrooge's problem is that he seems to have grown up being taught that hard work is all that matters and he never really learned that it's actually okay, even healthy, to occasionally ''stop'' working. This might also add a bit more context to his attitude around Christmas, since he's come to see it as an excuse to get out of work.
28	* If you look closely as the camera zooms out during "The Love We Found," you can see that one of the guests at the dinner table is Mr. Applegate, the same guy that Scrooge threw out of his office at the start of the movie for not being able to pay his mortgage. This makes sense from a character development perspective. Scrooge probably forgave his debt and invited him to make up for past mistreatment.
29	** Also in "The Love We Found," Bean Bunny is sitting near Bunsen Honeydew, who is one of the charity collectors--so maybe he won't be homeless for much longer, either.
30	* The Ghost of Christmas Past mentions being able to recall "nearly 1900 Christmases." If one considers the birth of Jesus as the first Christmas, around Year 0 CE, and that the movie takes place in the nineteenth century (i.e. 1800's AD; most likely around 1843, the year the original Christmas Carol story was published), then the Ghost's claim of recalling nearly 1900 Christmases is completely accurate. So much for WritersCannotDoMath.

Context Fridge / TheMuppetChristmasCarol