Fridge / Amphibia

Fridge pages are Spoilers Off, so all spoilers are unmarked.

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Fridge Brilliance

• In "Flood, Sweat & Tears", there's a good reason Sprig's room is hot and sweaty and why he cannot open the windows at night; frogs are ectothermic and rely on external heat sources to regulate their body temperature, and a sudden drop in temperature could be lethal.
• In "Stakeout" Anne and Hop Pop having a Shared Mass Hallucination might not just be rule of funny — each of them verbally tells the other what their tripped-out perception of them is before it's noticed/the transformation appears on their bodies. Because they were told that they had a teakettle for a head, or rainbow stardust for hair, each of them then hallucinated that was what they looked like, and as for the rest, it's heavily likely that they weren't seeing the exact same 1-1 vision as the other — it was just close enough that there was little to no difference in what they saw, given both of them were being exposed to the same visual stimuli at the time.
• In "Hop Luck", the villagers can throw rotten "shame nuggets" at whoever sits in the Cage of Shame. The brilliance is, they don't use tomatoes because they're dangerous to acquire, as Anne and the Plantar family learn the hard way.
  • Sadly, later episodes seem to forget this, and Produce Pelting scenes often include tomatoes. It could be the case that the tomato slice was so delicious that frogs decided that it was worth the risk (and subsequently learned the tomato plant's weakness). More proof of Anne's influence on the frogs.
  • On the topic of tomatoes, in "Reunion," Anne draws attention to the fact that toads have ketchup. Being a warrior race, the toads probably have no problem fighting the tomato plants. Whether ketchup is a natural part of their diet or Sasha introduced it to them, they probably don't have nearly as much trouble making it as Anne and the Plantars had trying to make pizza.
• In "The Domino Effect”, when Anne asks Hop Pop if the house feels empty, he looks around at all the unwashed dishes and says, “Not especially.” Guess who was put on dish duty for a month four episodes prior.
  • This entails some realism for Anne. You can't expect a teenager to be hard-working overnight, and they may still be in the habit of putting off chores.
  • Domino 1 being a former stray gives Anne a fair amount of reason she can think she can tame Domino 2 the same way. Stray cats may not be able to eat humans, but they can injure a person badly (cat bites are nasty). She technically tamed a dangerous animal before, and one who proves to be dangerous for the Plantars when they have to take Domino 1 to the vet in season 3A. The problem is that normal Earth danger and normal Amphibia danger entail entirely different levels of threat, especially for a city girl like Anne.
• It's been hinted that Hop Pop isn't exactly good at acting or writing plays. Naturally, in "Anne Theft Auto", he's not the best at writing a compelling story. So why does it become engaging the more Anne reads it? Because it's based on a true story! True stories can prove to be more interesting than fiction sometimes.
• In "Contagi-Anne", why does it take longer for Sprig to register he's sick? Why do Polly and Hop Pop have it worst? The answer has to do with age. Being elderly and sick isn't a good combo for Hop Pop, and Polly's infancy doesn't fare any better either. Sprig is somewhere in between the two polar ages, so his ailment is relatively mild.
  • In the same episode, Sprig says that due to their nature as frogs, he, Polly, and Hop Pop should take their clothes off in the rain. However, being cold-blooded, the rain gear would help them retain the heat they need.
• In the episode "Dating Season", Anne states that magazines are never wrong. Then the camera focus on the magazine she's holding, which asks whether it's possible for a bat and a cat to have a baby, which is completely impossible. You know what else is completely impossible? Being stuck in another world populated by anthropomorphic amphibians. It's clear that the experience has caused Anne to be very open-minded to anything.
• In the same vein as the episode, Polly tearing the magazine with her bare teeth takes on new meaning when one bears in mind that in the previous episode, Anne was trying to make Polly into a "real" lady. Polly's probably livid that this magazine is the source of what nearly made her lose faith in her tomboyish personality.
• Sprig being out of it in "Snow Day" may be seen as comic relief, but in reality, frogs' organs completely stop when frozen during winter, and if they're unfrozen, their organs will still remain so. This means Sprig was not only weak and dazed, but also that his body was barely functioning due to lack of blood supply and oxygen.
  • Also, Hop Pop describes it as a hibernation, which can be taken as a deep sleep. If you wake someone before they get enough sleep, they'll be very lethargic.
  • Anne being warm-blooded and thus able to get through the winter without hibernation is a hint that the cause of the disappearances was also warm-blooded. Insects and reptiles would also be down from the cold, so it could only be a mammal (or a bird).
• Sprig doesn't know what cops are. Probably because Toad Tower is their closest approximation to a police force.
  • The town actually does have police, but they use the term "Constable", so they probably know "Constabulary" instead of "Cops".
• In "A Night at the Inn", vinegar is green, despite it being a common household product that many would have seen. However, vinegar is made from wine, and depending on how wine in Amphibia is made (if it exists), Amphibia's vinegar could look very different from ours.
• "Bizarre Bazaar":
  • At the start of the episode, it is mentioned that the Plantars and Anne found nothing about the Calamity Chest among the tons of books at the Archive. Hop Pop easily found a reference to it in a book at home. Hop Pop must have sabotaged the search to keep Anne from finding out anything, since he intended to take it and bury it for safety.
  • Why did Hop Pop as "The Wrecker" go to such lengths as to use a Blue Shell themed bug on Anne and Sprig to win Anne's backpack if he was just gonna give it back to her anyway? It was a Batman Gambit to make sure Anne gave him the Calamity Box. Had Anne and Sprig won the backpack, there's a chance that they'd continue trying to look for answers on their own like asking Valeriana again rather than give it to him to "ask his contacts". Since Hop Pop will do anything to protect his family, Anne included, anything that is a non-zero percent chance of Anne giving him the box couldn't be allowed to happen, since the records Leif left highlighted just how dangerous in general it was. So he became "The Wrecker" again to win the backpack himself, and teach Anne and Sprig that going to the Bazaar was too dangerous, in turn making Anne give him the box, and letting him bury it underneath the tree. Doing that, even if he had to blow Anne and Sprig up in a race, was better than letting Anne and Sprig get the backpack and risk keep looking.
• In "Reunion", Mayor Toadstool, despite being a toad himself, is deceived and captured along with all the frogs by Grime's forces. This may not make sense at first... until you consider that Toadstool was the one Hop-Pop stood up to (and handed a well-publicized defeat in the boxing ring). For that, Grime would have considered him a "failure" and "disgrace" to toadkind, and deserving of the same fate as the rest of Wartwood.
  • His stunt with the taxes probably didn't help either. Grime mentions that it wasn't just Wartwood that had stopped paying the taxes and Toadstool was behind it there. Grime likely didn't want to risk complications from a toad who showed his priorities were to himself rather than to the tower.
• The law that not only Wartwood, but the entire valley, gets a vote in the election is illogical and unfair. It's probably a law written by the toads of Toad Tower that is intentionally unfair — this way, they can keep up a façade of democracy and yet ensure that their candidate always wins, since regardless of how popular the opponent is in their own town (Hop Pop is Loved by All), only Toad Tower's candidate will have the resources to campaign in the other towns, whose citizens, not knowing better, will vote for the candidate they've actually heard about.
• In "Cursed", when Anne shows her curse turned her into a bird person, Hop-Pop and Polly jump in shock. You may initially assume it's surprise from her changed appearance, but then you may remember that several previous episodes have shown that many of the birds in Amphibia are vicious predators, so from their perspective it'd be like she had turned into a werewolf.
• The case of Can Only Move the Eyes in "Wax Museum" makes sense when it's revealed the statues are actual living creatures. They need some kind of way to get air so they won't suffocate.
  • This would also be in line with the hut's generally creepy atmosphere, which is very deliberate on the Curator's end. He gets actual living exhibits and adds to the ambiance of the place, so it's a win-win.
• In "Prison Break", the main threat of the episode is a group of herons. You could say that Toad Tower was under siege.
• In "Toad Tax", Bog says he's never seen a creature like Anne before, despite Sasha having been at the Tower for that whole month. We know they only came to Wartwood because the taxes never made it to the Tower, meaning they would have been there to know about Sasha, so what gives? Well, Anne does look pretty different from Sasha, only matching in terms of number of fingers, height, and body plan. Plenty of people would say all frogs look the same, but there are more than 6,000 known species, so just because she has the same body type as Sasha wouldn't mean they're the same species. Plus, Sasha was in a cell until right before they got back, so who knows how good of a look he got at her to make the connection with Anne.
• In "A Caravan Named Desire", Anne warns Hop Pop against letting himself be used to steal a bank. At first glance, it may seem that she was just telling him to do what's right, but remember, she let herself be used to steal something before, and look where it (literally) took her! She realizes Hop Pop is about to make essentially the same mistake that transported her to Amphibia in the first place, and tries to warn him not to do it because she knows firsthand what kind of trouble he could end up in!
  • Her exasperation at Sprig's interruption in the same episode probably has as much to do with the fact that she's had to deal with Sprig's problem of not being liked in a previous episode as it does with him further breaking her puzzle.
• Wally says that despite living in squalor, he somehow pays his taxes. This foreshadows that he's Secretly Wealthy.
• Anne’s flashback in “The First Temple” has her being Peter Pan and Sasha being Captain Hook. This more or less parallels their present-day dynamic, as Sasha is the villain in Anne’s story, yet she still feels justified, while Anne is the flawed hero.
  • About Anne being in a play, why would she do that if she admits to hating theater (and was traumatized after setting a play on fire by accident)? Simple — Sasha was playing Hook. Maybe the play couldn't find somebody to play Peter and Sasha forced Anne to join. Though, this could lead to some Fridge Horror if her trauma affected her seriously.
• You'd have thought Hop Pop would try to be a lot more responsible for the money earned in Wax Museum instead of having the kids spend it right away. There are, however, two reasons he would be more lenient in letting it be spent. The first comes from the aftermath of Fort in the Road where he got a full glimpse of what keeping the kids locked up and bored leads to: letting them do something helps them alleviate that boredom and stress before it flares up again. This is probably the reason the kids would see if they thought of it. What they'd not consider a factor is Hop Pop's hiding of the Calamity Box: he's already feeling guilty for doing that, so letting Anne have fun the way he does may be him alleviating some guilt.
  • The first reason is likely tied to having Anne drive with him: he probably picked up on how long and tiring it would be to drive solo. Having a co-driver was simply more efficient than keeping her locked up and bored.
• The three gems line up fairly well in The Legend of Zelda terms: Anne is Courage and is associated with the rural and nature community at Wartwood a la the Links. Marcy is Wisdom and is associated with the capitol/castle and monarchy. Sasha is Power and is associated with the militaristic toads. Given that Power is associated with Ganondorf/Ganon/Demise, Sasha's ties to it make even more sense to that narrative.
  • Relatedly, Andrias' Evil Plan throughout season 2 — tricking the girls into heading to the 3 temples and charging the Calamity Box so he can use it for his own purposes — is exactly like Ganondorf's plan in the first half of Ocarina of Time, letting Young Link brave the dangers to collect the three stones for him, allowing him to swoop in and steal the Triforce to become an Evil Overlord in the Bad Future. Similarly, Andrias ends the season with the Artifact of Doom he needs to increase his power to hitherto unseen levels, but the heroes destined to interfere with his plans have been put in a safe location to prepare themselves for the inevitable showdown with him.
  • And in "The Hardest Thing", the Core, now inhabiting Darcy's discarded helmet after its human host was excised from it, induces a Colony Drop using Amphibia's red moon, revealed to be a massive creation of Andrias' ancestors covered in the Core's Hellish Pupils, effectively reenacting the plot and final climatic showdown of Majora's Mask.
• In "Little Frogtown", Anne gets tazed by a security guard immediately after pointing out that there's no way they're gonna taze a kid. Except that Anne is about the height of an adult newt, and of a species the Newtopians have only seen one other member of. They didn't know she was a kid.
• Speaking of the Zelda bit above, Marcy frequently talks about games that sound like retro role-playing games or Dungeons and Dragons type games. It's a somewhat random detail, until one remembers that a lot of games like that are based around adventuring parties. Unlike something like Zelda or Fallout, which feature lone heroes facing the odds, those games would have groups of people on grand adventures. Given what we learn of Marcy in the season 2 finale, it is very possible that she really doesn't like solo adventures, and her ideal adventures would include others, an adventuring party of her, Anne, and Sasha at the core. With the Calamity Box, she ideally would have had that, even with a 'party-gathering' phase to find the two of them again.
  • Also on Marcy, the fact that she is somewhat the 'Wisdom' to Anne's 'Courage' and Sasha's 'Power' does play into her part in the mess. While Sasha is the more direct antagonist as Ganondorf often is, the royal family in Zelda usually manages to do something to create the mess they are in. They never mean to create the problems, but they are often at least partially responsible for them. Marcy didn't intend to put her friends in danger or make them miserable, but her actions did make things worse for them all.
• There's a tiny detail in Marcy's reunion with Anne that stands out: when they finally see each other again, Anne's literally crying in relief at seeing Marcy and outright tackles her with a hug, showing just relieved she is to see her long-lost friend in this dangerous world again. Marcy, on the other hand, smiles and laughs but doesn't cry, and the first thing she decides to talk about is how great the adventures have been in Amphibia. It's a subtle clue as to Marcy's oblivious nature, the fact that she hasn't been through the same horrors that Anne and Sasha have gone through, and just maybe how eager she was for this "game".
  • To build on the above difference, this disparity probably didn't help with Sprig's concerns that she was going to be another Sasha, as to him she isn't acting 'right'. Surely, if she was fully on their side, she'd be acting differently? Meanwhile, beyond not being anywhere near as paranoid about Marcy, Anne isn't going to see anything obviously wrong because of Marcy's nature: Marcy is typically speculated to be somewhere on the autism spectrum, and autistic people have different emotional responses. To Anne, Marcy is responding the way she always would, while to Sprig, something is 'off' and he doesn't know what it is, so he immediately leans on what he has context for, Sasha. If Marcy is in fact neurodivergent, it also makes sense that Anne didn't bring it up. Amphibia probably doesn't really 'get' that sort of thing, and Anne, a neurotypical person, may see trying to explain it as either demeaning to Marcy or something she can't properly explain (Anne's best comparison is Maddie, whose behavior doesn't strike people as neurotypical, but true to autism being a spectrum, Maddie and Marcy are different enough that Sprig wouldn't properly make the connection and the comparison would probably create more problems, especially since Maddie's quirks are macabre interests and not realizing she seems creepy); either way, Anne wouldn't want to come off as ableist, and likely realizes that the person best qualified to explain why Marcy's the way she is is Marcy herself. As for Sprig likely having ADHD per Word of God, Anne, despite suspecting that Sprig is neurodivergent and, since she knows Marcy, being more understanding of him than most of the other kids in Wartwood, couldn't use that, because a) ADHD and autism are too different for the comparison to work, and b) since Amphibia probably doesn't 'get' that sort of thing, he's undiagnosed, and she wouldn't feel qualified to diagnose him.
• In “The Dinner”, Grime and Sasha are shown staying at Felicia’s inn. Felicia would never help her enemies, and they did attempt to kill her and her fellow frogs once, but as someone running a business, she can’t turn down Grime if he’s a paying customer. Either that, or Grime had to pay Felicia extra to stay quiet.
• In the first season, Anne had to stay with the Plantars until she found a way to go back to her world. Now, in season 3A, the roles have been reversed and the Plantars stay at Anne's home on Earth, bringing things full circle. Anne also has proof that she didn't just run away for a few months in the Plantars, as well as being able to warn her parents about Andrias's invasion.
• Many people would call Marcy's actions in True Colors impulsive, poorly thought-out, and otherwise lacking her trademark intelligence. Well, that's because it is a A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Marcy probably didn't even spend an hour between finding the Calamity Box and deciding to try to use it to have the three of them go off on a wild adventure, and furthermore stumbled upon it mid-meltdown. With such little time and Marcy being an utter wreck, the girl didn't think much of anything before using it. It also makes her talking to Anne about thinking with your heart instead of your head a case of Hypocrite Has a Point, if she's had enough time to realize that it was not the best course of action.
• The Caterpillar in Newtopia that Anne warns a young child about is probably present because it isn't the same species as Domino 2. Due to any combination of inherent biology, domestication, magic, or some other element, it is likely a species that either stays in its cute and harmless form indefinitely (as some sort of Amphibia counterpart to spaying or neutering a pet) or whose adult stage is not a voracious devourer of amphibian flesh.
• In the flashback at the beginning of "True Colors", while Marcy is flipping through the book that contained notes about the Calamity Box, she briefly stops at two illustrations; the one on the left is Bill Cipher, the one on the right of Goliath. This hints that King Andrias is the true Big Bad of the series; King Andrias is voiced by Keith David, the original voice actor of Goliath, while Bill Cipher was the Greater-Scope Villain of Gravity Falls.
• From "Hop 'Til You Drop" onward, Sprig's Earth disguise incorporating a beanie to hide his head was likely inspired by Ivy and her own choice of headgear, showing how he's still thinking of her even when they're separated across dimensions.
• Of course Ned in “Thai Feud” couldn’t get his brakes fixed. He likely didn’t have enough money for it, which is why he had to park where he’s bound to get more customers so he can generate the funds he needs.
• When given the choice to watch Earth media in "Thai Feud", Hop Pop selects the Expy of Quantum Leap, which makes complete sense when you think about it. The premise of the show is the lead character 'time-jumping' to different historical periods and 'possessing' others from that time period, having to temporarily assume their life and identity so he can find out what anomaly is upsetting the course of history and Set Right What Once Went Wrong. In other words, he's acting as multiple different characters and roles In-Universe and out — something that would greatly appeal to an aficionado of the dramatic arts like Hop Pop.
• "Adventures In Catsitting" revealing that the Plantars once had an experience with The Thing That Would Not Leave gives extra context to their decision to house and support Anne, no matter how many times she screwed up or put them in normal danger, besides her saving Sprig's life. Firstly, Anne, even at her worst, was never a petty freeloader (not that she really liked anything in Amphibia at first), and always helped the Plantars out around the farm or at Wartwood, even going out of her way to improve things here and there, so given they'd already dealt with somebody remarkably less helpful and more burdensome for what seems to have been weeks to a month before kicking him out after he refused to change his poor attitude, it makes sense they'd be much more receptive and considerate towards Anne's screw-ups, especially because she does learn from them. Secondly, it shows the Plantars are people willing to support strangers in need. In fact, given Hop Pop's age and the implied void left in Sprig and Polly's life from their absent parents, it makes sense he'd be receptive to others being around the house who could help out more, especially given he's repeatedly shown worry about Sprig and Polly's future prospects once he passes. It didn't work out great with Cousin Stanley, but with Anne the Plantars gained far more for their aid than they were counting on, eventually getting a surrogate big sister in their family.
• "Fight at the Museum": Anne's refusal to trust Dr. Jan with the Plantars' secret actually chalks up to how many times her trust was abused. In total, Anne had been betrayed 6 times by that point (Hop Pop burying the Calamity Box, Tritonio setting her, Sprig and Polly up, Curator Ponds, both of Sasha's betrayals and worst of all, Marcy sending the girls to Amphibia to begin with.) After having been backstabbed so often, with over half of those betrayals being caused by people she was close to, it makes sense why Anne was very against the idea of letting anybody else in on their secret.
• In "Sprig's Birthday", Anne is taken aback by the Amphibia variant of a birthday being so low-key and humble, not to mention short and apparently bereft of gifts, but it goes hand in hand with both what kind of world it is alongside the frogs' social status. Frogs are the lowest on Amphibia's pecking order, and several episodes have showcased that the Plantars are near-literally poor as dirt and constantly looking for ways to save or earn money. A birthday celebration having a crown constructed from mud and leaves makes sense, as it's something anybody would be able to make no matter how poor they are, and the focus on being grateful for all you have and your life thus far makes sense, given that the frogs could die at any moment, so you should enjoy the time you have with your loved ones in case they're no longer there, or fondly remember the absent ones. It also makes Sprig's Tragic Keepsake more meaningful — if birthdays don't normally include presents, then his parents must have saved up especially to get that hat and goggles for him, so it's a more meaningful gesture to give a present on a celebration that doesn't normally rely on them, and part of why Sprig treasures them so much.
• King Andrias is a large salamander who made an unholy pact with the Core, an infernal entity. In other words, he's a hellbender in more than one sense.
• When the Core is finally revealed, its full appearance — a bulbous 'head' equipped with at least six (possibly eight if one looks closely at the top) tentacles for manipulating its surroundings — is quite similar to an octopus. This is a fitting Animal Motif, considering that studies of octopi have indicated that a single octopus is itself a kind of Mind Hive like the Core^note two-thirds of an octopus' neurons are outside its main brain and bunched inside its tentacles, and some studies have indicated that this enables the tentacles to think and act semi-independently and even develop their own personality quirks, a trait which has inspired the Multiple Head Case portrayals of such characters as Alfred Molina's Doc Ock and the MonsterVerse's King Ghidorah.
• In "Hollywood Hop Pop", Mr. Boonchuy considering charging rent to the Plantars seems a bit out of character, due to his declaration that the frogs will never owe him anything for taking care of Anne. However, the Boonchuy residence has been undergoing a lot of property damage (Polly trying to fix Frobo, the appearance of Andrias' assassin etc.). Given how costly all those repairs are/will be, it would make sense for Mr. B to consider new ways to get enough money to pay for them. It does help that Hop Pop was famous enough to appear on TV, so asking him for money wouldn't be too big of an issue.
• Anne got Sprig a gorgeous gold-plated telescope with his name engraved on it for his birthday. It's no wonder he felt so much pressure to get her something perfect for Christmas.
• King Andrias could’ve just fired on the pigeons colliding with him since the drone has weapons, but either he’s still getting used to the controls so he didn’t have time to react, or that maybe he realized a fried pigeon would draw a lot more attention than one that died in a more mundane way.
• The butterfly drone controller designed like a standard Earth RC controller was probably something Marcy proposed to the newt scientists a while ago. They chose that design because of how basic it is, and they anticipate that such a design offers a conveniently gentle learning curve to potential new robot operators, which are in high demand for the upcoming invasion.
• Why is Curator Ponds so much worse than Stan Pines, whom he is so clearly based on? Simple, it's Amphibia itself. Earth is no paradise, but it's not the Death World that Amphibia is, and with the hints that Ponds went through the same sort of life events as Pines, it is likely that every bad part of Stan Pines' backstory was made worse for Ponds. Harsh conditions produce harsh people, and harsher conditions create a harsher Grunkle.
• Anne, Sasha, and Marcy don't just have their own unique negative traits, but they also have the others' flaws too. Anne is just as capable of getting in 'the zone' as Marcy is, and she can be as pushy as Sasha. She is very much "my way or the highway" with the pizza hunt, for example, and just like Sasha, she was very much motivated by good intentions gone toxic. Meanwhile, Sasha gets so obsessed with the hammer quest as to be as singleminded as Marcy, and she copes after her and Anne's fight the same way Anne does. So, why does Anne get better where Sasha very much does not? It's simple. Anne is in a situation where those traits cannot get the better of her. She can't be channeling Sasha at the Plantars, because there she doesn't have the ability to take charge like Sasha did with the toads (where even Grime somewhat became subordinate to her) due to the presence of authority figures like Hop Hop and Toadstool, and she can't fall into the same obliviousness as Marcy in Newtopia, as she is not kept in a bubble and has to see how her actions affect the people around her. In addition, Anne's own bad habits aren't able to fester as, for example, she had earn the respect of the town, and she couldn't be a pure doormat, because if she did, she'd be eating Hop Pop's cooking without complaint. Interestingly, Marcy's episodes in Wartwood actually do find her in a similar boat to Anne: she has to learn how hyperfocusing can blind her (New Wartwood) or others (Maddie's) to those around her. Had she had more time in Wartwood, she might have had the same level of positive development that Anne had and averted the worst of True Colors.
• The show makes it clear that flora on Earth (such as tomatoes and avocadoes) are easier to harvest than their equivalents in Amphibia. All the monstrous insects, plants, and other dangers of the Amphibian wilderness likely made them evolve and adapt to better defend themselves from their predators.
• Anne notably is shown doing something that is goofing off or otherwise being a lot more relaxed about doing something that isn't trying to get home or help the Plantars not die in more later episodes of season 3A than those at the start. Beyond simply relaxing a bit and having some of the stress of True Colors wear off, she's also had episodes by then, like Fight At the Museum, where her over-focus was starting to create problems, like paranoia, extensive tiredness, and the thing in Temple Frogs where her over-focus turned into rudeness. She was probably suggested, decided to, or outright was told to relax a bit. She hardy slows down afterwards — one doesn't casually read Dante's Inferno after all — but she does start remembering to relax a bit for the sake of herself and others.
• Anne being more responsible when she returns home isn't just because Hop Pop made her do chores, since her parents did that, nor is it (entirely) because of guilt, or even just character development. Anne's been basically set into the big sister role to the younger Plantars, most certainly with Polly and debatably with Sprig (or a dual friend-older sister role), and it is well known that being an older sibling is a maturing experience. Anne admits with fondness that she's an only child, and living with the younger Plantars ended up putting her in the role with unexpected but positive consequences.
• One might initially wonder how the Plantar tunnels would have been found by the resistance, as the ones who adventured though them were all on Earth and beyond contact. Then you remember that not only did Sasha have access to Anne's journal, which may have mentioned it, but Loggle had been taken down there against his will by Hop Pop at the end of an episode.
• Loggle having changed dramatically might not have just been a joke about the statues he carves of himself. In real life, axolotls have a somewhat stunted maturation process that prevents them from fully developing all the features of an adult salamander, allowing them to basically be adults in a fully aquatic stage. Maturation has to be induced by artificial means, at which point the axolotl reaches an adult form more typical of a salamander. This may have some truth with axolotls in Amphibia, even if it is unlikely that one of the real-life means of doing so was used (Sasha probably didn't inject him with iodine, for example).
• The resistance having casual piñata parties is perfectly acceptable. Counterpropaganda is very common during wartime, where people openly express their hatred for a common enemy figure, either with words or defacing them with dummies, so having a piñata of the Dark King would be a great way for the Wartwood Resistance to solidify their disdain and strengthen their bonds. Additionally, they do get indirect combat training using sticks to beat up Andrias, so it's productive and entertaining.
• The girls' ultimate reason for being summoned to Amphibia being to save the inhabitants from the greed and corruption visited upon their land by the long-term actions of Andrias' ancestors and their ultimate creation, the Core, or as Mother Olm puts it, 'the worst version of ourselves', is symbolised by King Andrias himself. Throughout the series, he's shown to be a Fallen Hero, one who would have gotten along with the girls in other circumstances, due to being genuinely quirky and having an appreciation for Earth culture, but a combination of his guilt for causing the fall of the Newtopian empire through trusting his friends and the 1000 years he spent in connection with the Core following that have corrupted him into a twisted version of the newt he used to be. He scorns the idea of friendship, uses the bonds he made with Marcy as a weapon against her and her friends, and is ruthless in following his master's orders, even though he himself shows some compunctions against a few of them, out of his desire to correct his prior failings. However, it's clear Andrias' mistake was not in trusting his friends, but following his ancestors' ways without question and maintaining Blind Obedience to the Core's plans, in so doing becoming the worst version of himself due to following the guidance of an unempathetic Mind Hive. This in turns furthers the parallels between him and Anne, who was similarly led astray by her toxic friendships with Sasha and Marcy and the peer pressure that came with following their 'fun' ideas, as well as Anne's own desire to make her parents proud and not let them down. It's just that Anne's parents are a loving family as opposed to Andrias' conquering ancestors, and Anne is eventually shown the error of her own friendship through a more positive, genuine bond with Sprig and the Plantars, which Andrias failed to realise himself.
  • "The King and the Core" makes the above explicit, as Andrias' father is revealed in that episode to be an Abusive Parent who guided his son towards upholding his 'royal duties' for the sake of their people and following the Core's commands during his own reign, when Andrias was ignorant of the fact that he would be required to wipe out or enslave sentient species until he inherited the throne and regularly repeat the process to maintain their people's way of life. The Core is revealed to contain the minds not only of the greatest minds in Amphibia, but the previous rulers as well, including Andrias' father. After the music box was stolen, Andrias not only had to witness the gradual decline of the 'great' society Newtopia had become over the years, but spent all that time mentally connected to the Core through his crown, living with the condemnations of his forebears for all that time and festering over his 'mistake' until he became the worst version of himself out of a desire to make his father and ancestors proud, too indoctrinated to see what a horrible thing that actually was, because the views and opinions of the 'true' rulers of Amphibia were forever preserved unchanging within the Core's shell. Thus, Andrias' desire to live up to his responsibilities parallels Anne's own feelings towards her biological family that fuel her positive Character Development, but they lead him down a darker path instead because of the type of legacy he was born into.
• It makes perfect sense that Sasha is more reluctant to go into Mother Olm than Anne. While the former spent her first few weeks in Amphibia locked up in an unhygienic cell, after she was freed she basically became a toad princess and was treated as such, limiting the squicky things she could be exposed to from that point on. Anne, on the other hand, was adopted into a farmer's family, and learned to appreciate squickiness after "Girl Time", and with the number of things she's ended up inside, she's likely used enough to squick to actually handle a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot.
• The King and the Core gives quite a bit of context for everything.
  • Why would a 'woodsmith' exist, even if without a ton of good business? Why would a cook's artificial hand be made of his own bones? Why was the capital city carved out of marble? Because there isn't a ton of metal in Amphibia to build with, with any and all of it going to robots or weapons.
  • Why would Andrias need to build so many mining facilities so quickly? Because squeezing every last drop of resources out of Amphibia was maintain to have an army of any reasonable size.
  • If the Core has access to Marcy's memories, this may include any and all familiarity with the Earth's military capabilities. Marcy probably wouldn't bring that up casually ('Hey Andrias, did you know that Earth knows how to spit an atom and make it go boom?'), and it also gives context for what a 'complete' army looks like. It needs to be able to conquer 21st-century Earth.
  • The odd mixture of medieval trappings and more modern concepts like supermarkets make a lot more sense when Amphibia went backwards at some point: it didn't develop the idea of a supermarket faster than humans did, they just retained the idea instead of losing it with their more advanced technology.
• As noted on their character page, Leif, Barrel, and Andrias showcase opposing traits from the Calamity Gems they match colour-wise — in fact, it is their inability to showcase said traits that ultimately destroys their friendship. Andrias matches the heart gem, and Leif betraying his trust leads to him metaphorically 'closing his heart' and acting more like the kind of ruler his ancestors preserved inside the Core expected him to be. Even if he's greatly hinted to have emotional misgivings about betraying Marcy, he brushes these feelings aside for the sake of fulfilling his family legacy, becoming more and more isolated even when it's made clear that deep down, part of him really just wants the camaraderie he once had with his friends. Barrel is a traditional toad Dumb Muscle, corresponding with the Wit gem, and his inability to make a clear decision when Leif's theft of the box pushes him into a Sadistic Choice ultimately separates him from both his close friends, because he wasn't smart enough to make a call one way or another when put on the spot like that. The only one who inverts this, and thus comes out as the Token Good Teammate amongst the trio, is Leif, who is physically the weakest of them, but showcases great strength of character, corresponding with the Strength gem. She steals the Calamity Box that powered their advanced civilisation once Aldrich refused to listen to her concerns, aware that doing so would irrevocably break her friendship with Andrias and Barrel, but did so anyway out of fear that the vague prophecy she foresaw would come true.
• The Core's decision to make Marcy its human host based on her ability to beat Andrias at Flipwart makes sense with the reveal of his mental link to the Core. Not only would Andrias have sharpened his skills over the years playing games against the greatest minds of Amphibia, to the point that he's legitimately good enough to be undefeated before Marcy came along, but some of their games could themselves have been directed by the Core's silent commands to Andrias, meaning it was actually the Core Marcy was playing against and successfully defeated. Of course a creation that prizes intelligence would dearly covet a mind capable of outplaying it in an honest contest of skill and smarts.
• The mural of King Andrias and the Core's true nature that Sasha and Grime discover in "True Colors" has the figure of Andrias darkly shadowed out and recognisable only by his imposing stature and pointed royal crown. This is because said figure isn't Andrias himself — it's whatever ruler happens to be the current King of Amphibia. "The King & the Core" reveals that the role of 'king' merely makes one the Core's foremost devoted servant and physical agent of their will, not being in any position of real power and authority compared to their immortal master, and ceding all independent decision-making in favor of serving its interests over their own. Said figure could more likely be one of Andrias' ancestors who helped enslave the Moss Men and the Shadowfish glimpsed at the bottom of the illustration, rather than the future conqueror Andrias aims to fashion himself into to maintain his warped family legacy and do his forbears proud at last. The mural isn't just depicting the true nefarious nature of the one who becomes king, inevitably twisted into evil by the indoctrination of their forbears towards serving the Core's will, it's a hint that for all his evil actions, Andrias himself is ultimately just a replaceable tool for the Core, a useful servant at present, but ultimately one whose individuality does not matter compared to the immortal legacy and ambitions of the Core.
• Crossing over with Fridge Horror, it's heavily implied Leif is an ancestor of the Plantar family. This would probably be one reason why Andrias so sadistically decides to drop Sprig, who has Leif's coloration, even after Anne hands back the box.
• Sasha being more reluctant to forgive Marcy for her getting them Trapped in Another World than Anne seems like a massive Hypocrite move on her behalf, given her character arc throughout the series — and something Anne does point out to her as a reason they should both still try regardless — but it makes sense when you consider the fact that Sasha still hasn't gone home yet. Granted, in "True Colours" she is perfectly happy to remain in Amphibia, which is implied to be because of her possibly unstable home life situation that is hinted at in "Froggy Little Christmas", but that was when she had control over the music box and the situation around her. She was comfortable remaining in a position she could control and prevent getting out of hand, mainly seeing it as her making the best of a bad situation, but in her ideal scenario she always would have had the chance to return home under her own terms. Instead, she not only finds out that everything she went through was due to Marcy's selfish decision to strand them all in another dimension to stay together, she then lost said chance to go home, and furthermore has to remain behind in Amphibia as things went From Bad to Worse as Andrias' plans progress and his army and forces grow along with the environmental pollution and hazards. Anne and the Plantars get to spend some downtime with the Boonchuys, and Anne gets to sort out her guilt issues over vanishing from her parent's lives like that, leaving her with the opportunity to breathe and sort out some of her emotional issues regarding the fallout of "True Colours", but Sasha never gets that chance, and moreover, has to take up a position of leadership and responsibility with the resistance to prevent them getting overrun by Andrias' army. Sasha never really had the opportunity to fully resolve her emotional scars from the revelations Andrias hit them with, which contributes to her hastily putting Anne in charge when they meet again in a poorly-thought out attempt to make amends with the friend she had wronged. Similarly, she hasn't really been able to think through her feelings towards the friend who wronged her, hence why she takes a moment to try and hash things out with Anne before they finally meet Marcy again, as by that point she can't put it off anymore and she knows it'd be a bad idea not to discuss their stance before they see Marcy again. In addition, Marcy didn't get an opportunity to apologise to Sasha, but she did manage to apologise to Anne, softening Anne's stance on her compared to Sasha's. Finally, Anne had Marcy's journal^note which includes Marcy's own perspective on her actions and, in particular, distress that Anne and Sasha had fallen out, the latter of which made her vulnerable to a Deal with the Devil, giving her further context to Marcy's actions that Sasha never got.
• One of the first things that Sprig says to Anne on their first meeting was 'Does this look like a face that could deceive you?' to help gain her trust. It's funny at first, but on reflection, thanks to Sprig's Strong Family Resemblance to Leif, the friend that betrayed Andrias' trust and stole the Calamity Box, to the tyrant King, that's exactly what it looks like.
• In "All In", each of the three girls demonstrates the trait of their respective gem as a culmination of their Character Development throughout the series coming to the forefront here.
  • Marcy has the 'Wit' to see through the Core's illusions and falsehoods, rejecting the fantasy world and the fantasy versions of her friends who are totally subservient to her wishes, recognising that the real versions of her friends don't share her interests, but that she can't let herself be blinded by that and selfishly force them into a narrative without their consent, just like she did when tricking them into getting transported to Amphibia. This enables her to resist her assimilation into the Core's Mind Hive, which enables her to regain control of her body once the connection is severed and the Core expunged from her body.
  • Sasha has the 'Strength' to stand back up despite her grievous injuries and self-regret over her past mistakes, which Darcy keeps throwing in her face, believing she's still the same Control Freak Alpha Bitch she was when she first entered Amphibia. However, Grime's sincere faith in Sasha allows her to be strong for both her friends and ultimately save them in one attack, severing Darcy's Achilles' Power Cord and preventing her Villain Override on Andrias, allowing him to choose to let Anne strike him down.
  • Anne has the 'Heart' to publicly face Andrias in a one-on-one match despite it being an obvious trap and the risk of her Hour of Power running out, even managing to call the would-be tyrant king out for his own lack of heartfelt connection with others. Anne is given moral support from both her biological and Found Family, and the entire city cheers her on to stand up again and again no matter how hard the fighting with Andrias gets, and ultimately, the fight is won because of her sincere friendship with Sprig, motivating him to jump into the fight despite the danger before Andrias can finish her off and deliver Leif's last message to him, which sincerely breaks his will to keep fighting despite acknowledging that he's done too much to stop now, buying Anne time to charge up her Super Mode for one last attack. Ultimately, Andrias loses the fight because he accepts Leif's pleas to 'open his heart' to others, allowing Anne to strike him down as a monster to the watching audience, which she seems to genuinely pity him for.
• In "The Hardest Thing", in order to communicate with Anne, the Entity, an interdimensional being beyond all time and space, takes the form of Domino the cat. This subtly calls back to Anne's anesthesia-induced monologue in "Adventures in Catsitting".
  • It also first appears as a computer and makes computer-like sounds, for lack of a better way to describe them, in its true form. It backed-up Anne and or made a copy of her.
• The end of each season ends on a representation of what 'home' has come to mean to Anne. Season 1 ends in Wartwood, shortly after she calls the Plantars "my family" for the first time. Season 2 ends on Earth, as fantastical and strange as Amphibia in its own way, and season 3 ends in the Amphibia exhibit Anne made in the aquarium on Earth, as homage to and a blending of the best parts of both worlds she has come to think of as her home, or alternatively, recreating the home she may never return to in the home she has returned to.
• Andrais uses Barrel's warhammer as a walking stick in the epilogue to help support him with his missing leg. Even with his old friend long absent, he can still lean on him for support at his lowest point through the physical legacy he left behind. Likewise, he keeps both Leif's old pin alongside the one Marcy gave him close to his heart, as a reminder never to close himself off to others no matter how painful it may be, covered in chains that do not appear to impair his movement greatly and which have a link notably broken, representing both how he is still 'chained' by his past sins and mistakes and yet at the same time 'freed' from the legacy of his family that chained him to a cause he didn't fully believe in but upheld anyway out of familial duty.
• The series, and season 3 in particular, hammer home the idea of not allowing the past to chain you down and prevent you trying to focus on the future, no matter how scary or uncertain it may be to let go of the comforting and the familiar. In order to allow change — real change, for the better — to happen in Amphibia, Anne not only needs to destroy the Core, the physical representation of the unchanging past strangling the chances of the future, but she destroys the Calamity Gems to do so — the very objects the Core's insane ambitions had been built around, which enabled their Multiversal Conqueror lifestyle, powered their Magitek for generations, and helped shape the way of life in Amphibia for untold years, to the point that when the box and the stones were lost, the Core's plan was to remain still until they could be reclaimed and their plans could be restarted once more, exactly as they had done for generations, rather than trying something new. In destroying the stones, Anne forces Amphibia to live on in a world without them and find a new, better way of living, but in choosing to protect the world she so loves, she sacrifices the only reliable way she had to keep herself a part of it going forward, saving everything, but losing it at the same time. Anne loses contact with the new, and now comforting, Found Family she's forged in this strange land in order for both their worlds to move forward to an uncertain future, with it being unclear if they'll ever be able to see each other again. Nonetheless, the fact both worlds do move forward from this separation means that sad as it is, that uncertainty contains the ray of hope that one day, a way may be found to travel between their worlds once more, both better off for the experience, so long as each side keeps moving forward and doesn't dwell on what they've lost rather than what they've gained.
• The Core makes a nice Foil for Anne when you think about it. The Core is a "thing that never sleeps and does not die", a culmination of immortality made up of the worst of newt-kind that festers without any personal growth. Meanwhile, you have Anne, who is not only offered immortality for her self-sacrificing act, but turns it down because she recognized the importance of change and growth.
• Each of the girls and their respective friends/family in Amphibia have something to remind them of the girls when they leave. While Marcy leaves Andrias her pin, and Anne leaves behind her phone for Sprig (later getting a whole statue built in Wartwood in her honor), Sasha really didn't leave anything for Grime. However, Grime will always have something to remind him of her — his missing arm. Grime heroically pushes Sasha out of the way of Darcy's attack, and it costs him his arm, but he will never regret doing it, reminding Sasha that she made him a better person for it.
• It seems like a plot hole to have Marcy and Sasha visit Anne on her 23rd birthday, which is apparently also the 10th anniversary of the invasion, when Anne never mentioned it was her birthday in the previous episodes, but it can be explained through the simple fact that all three girls not only live far away from each other (with Marcy needing to fly in), but also have careers. They likely couldn't meet up on Anne's actual birthday, but arranged to do so whenever it was convenient for all of them. As the saying goes, better late than never.
  • Or it could be because the anniversary of the invasion is also the anniversary of her death and rebirth. The Anne that came back after she died is a clone (metaphysically at least), so you could say that she was born when she came back from her meeting with the Guardian, and thus that the anniversary of the invasion is her birthday now.
• It seems strange that Andrias now has Barrel's warhammer in his possession during the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, but there are likely several reasons for this. One is that it is one of the only things remaining of his long-departed friend, and the people of Amphibia weren't spiteful enough to deny him any reminder. Another is the fact that the hammer's previous owner, Grime, is now missing an arm and can no longer properly wield such a large heavy weapon. This is also likely why Grime has Sasha's old sword, as it's a weapon that can be effectively used with one hand. Finally, while Andrias himself is large enough to use it as a weapon with just one arm, he's also missing a leg, which would make near worthless to him in that regard, as he has severely limited mobility, and this was enough to convince those who sentenced him that it would be safe to give it to him even if he wasn't sincere in his atonement.
• When Anne uses the full power of the stones, she turns white. The stones are red, blue, and green — without these three colors, they leave no color.
• Compared to Andrias' chains, which are more symbolic due to being broken, Triple B's chains are more reminiscent of a prisoner chain gang. This is likely due to the fact that, unlike Andrias, they didn't have a good Freudian Excuse for allying with the Core.
• With discussions of how Amphibia is essentially a Death World, it is quite fitting that all three girls have had a few brushes with death themselves, and all involve trying to save each other.
  • Sasha lets herself fall from the tower so Anne doesn't fall with her. She has no way of knowing she was going to survive the fall, yet she chooses to do it to keep Anne from dying as well, accepting that she was about to die. Had it not been for Grimes, she would have.
  • Marcy is literally stabbed in the back by Andrias while she's helping Anne and the Plantar family escape. Marcy can only deeply apologize for putting her friends in this situation to begin with, and it's only through Andrias ordering her recovery did she survive.
  • Anne actually dies saving not only Marcy and Sasha's life, but all of Amphibia, by absorbing the music box's gem powers to destroy the Core, and does it knowing she would die. The only reason she exists now is because she was cloned, and her original body decayed in Sprig's arms.
• Though subtle, each of the three seasons has an underlying theme that connects to one of the Calamity gems.
  • In season one, Anne is trapped inside the valley and cannot find her way home until the snows thaw, thus effectively forcing her to remain in place and learn some life lessons from the character-building adventures she has with the Wartwood villagers, when beforehand she would have happily moved onto a different location in the hopes of finding her friends and overlooking her experiences in the town. This is subtly shown in her Character Development as she matures and becomes more responsible, going from causing most of the situation that they have to deal with from her impulsive and poorly-thought out actions to instead reacting and dealing with them with a level of responsibility and maturity after "Toad tax", culminating in her being named 'Frog of the Year', which all correlates to 'Wit'.
  • Season two has the concurrent plot line of Sasha and Grime's planned toad rebellion, which doesn't intersect with Anne's own journey until the last few episodes, and also features a heavier focus upon Sasha and her struggles with the choices she's made, both good and bad. Anne also has increased 'Strength' of character from her adventures, being more willing to stand up for herself and also having much-increased combat skills from her sword-fighting, enough to even overcome Sasha in a fight. By the climax of "True Colours" her newly-unlocked Super Mode makes her hands-down the strongest character in the series, enough to ragdoll Andrias, who was otherwise unstoppable in a fight and later needed a Humongous Mecha to take her on evenly, all of which emphasises 'Strength'- notably, the strength of the girl's friendship gets pushed to the breaking point with Sasha's betrayal and Marcy's Dark Secret by the end.
  • Season three has the most focus on Anne's life on Earth, her biological family interacting with her Found Family and more or less accepting each other as kin through their time together, a great focus on her Super Mode abilities brought forth by those she cares about getting put in harm's way, Anne and Sasha eventually deciding to truly work on repairing their friendship despite the bad past between them becuase they really value the other as friends, the increasing parallels with Andrias as Anne's Foil, down to getting similarly betrayed by his own friendships and having his desire to please his family twisted into making him into a mindless servant of a heartless Mind Hive that explicitly relishes causing emotional and physical pain and suffering. During their final clash Anne gets a Heroic Second Wind from the city cheering her own and her combined family playing her a Theme Music Powerup against Andrias, who ultimately loses because leif's last heartfelt letter to him got through to his repressed emotional torment and convicted him to 'open his heart' and let himself be struck down by Anne. In the end, Anne willingly sacrifices herself to save Amphibia out of heartfelt love for it, and the series ends with both world being separated again, but each promising to hold the other in their hearts moving forward, all correlating to 'Heart'.
• The three gems and girls represent different powers: heart, strength and wit. But said powers also represent the major sentient amphibian societies (corresponding 1:1 with what girl they host), as well as their main players, with their species and color representing what they must learn:
  • Frogs are the farmers, the people, the Heart of Amphibia, who take care of Anne, and the main frog is Sprig, and as the heart, he must learn responsibility. Hell, it's the whole Thing of episode one! As a red frog, Sprig must gain strength, and eventually beats Grimes.
  • Toads are the guardians, the enforcers, who capture and then follow Sasha, and are represented by Grimes, and as strength, he already fights a lot, but he later learns to care for others' potential strength, or to fight in difficult situations regardless of his chances: learn persistence (what you do when you can't, what you do when you're not at the top). As a green toad, he must be smarter about his actions (which he learns from Sasha enough to temporarily depose Andrias).
  • Newts are the ruling class, elegant and posh, hosting and promoting Marcy. Due to their place on society, they have two viable protagonist: Andrias from the old guard, and Olivia. Andrias is quite clearly intelligent, up to using the same game the temple uses for his plotting, and only until he heals from the events years prior does he gain the humility to reject immortality in the core. Olivia stands quite firm to newtonian tradition and behaviors, until she understands she should not be above the suffering of the world. And as they're both blue, Andrias and Olivia must gain Heart (regain in Andrias' case), doing Olivia first from seeing Amphibia crumble, and from Andrias' reading the letter.
• The areas that the girls land in reflect their personalities/home lives.
  • Anne comes form a working class family that operate their own business, much like the Plantars and most other families in the Valley.
  • Sasha ends up at Toad Tower where it is survival of the fittest, reflecting on how she maintains her status as top of the food-chain at school and cheerleading but also how she comes from a broken home, as hinted in the Christmas special when Anne is sending two separate letters to her parents hinting at divorce, and has the need to stand out and be the best so everyone will acknowledge her.
  • Marcy comes from a a family who works white collar jobs, as evident in her being able to afford her various games plus the decorations outside of her house.
• In Marcy's simulation, the Sasha and Anne fakes being dressed up as Edelgard and Link respectively isn't just a Shout-Out and her knowledge of games poking through. It is a reflection of their personalities from Marcy's POV.
  • Just like Edelgard, Sasha is bossy and won't admit her mistakes. Remember, Marcy never seen commander Sasha and the only time she saw Sasha as a decent person was when she was just using them to get to Newtopia.
  • Anne is dressed up like Link because Anne has grown to become a warrior like him. Much like Anne, Link is usually the one that is always pushed into action by destiny rather than doing things by his own decision.
• A reddit analysis on Marcy noted something interesting about the Wu Household. We may not see Marcy's parents or get even ten words out of them total, but we do see their home. On the surface it's a nice house, but the yard's kind of sloppy, the house's walls are filled with cracks, and the sky is overcast. It might look nice on the surface, but there are clearly visible flaws of something being wrong with it. Depending on how one sees the Wu's, one can read a lot into it. Compare it to Anne's house, which when we first see it in its full glory, despite looking messier it still feels more right. The grass is more trimmed, the mess has more of a lived in feel, and the light's brighter. Both shots are notably set at different times, but the Wu home was before the Amphibia trip and the Boonchoy home after Anne had been gone for five months and her parents gave up hope. Take of the read what you will.
• The Boonchuy parents freak-out at Anne having attacked a king isn't just a case of context-less assumptions that Anne was misbehaving as she had been before Amphibia, let alone just stress at being chased by a killer robot. The Boonchuy parents are first generation immigrants from Thailand, which not only has a monarchy, but also a culture that is far less prone to casual disrespect of leaders than the west is. While Thailand's monarchy is far from beyond open criticism the way other monarchies in the world, it is a bigger cultural taboo there compared to insulting a western prime minister or president. So they have another reason to assume that the answer isn't 'Andrias had it coming', the way that, for example, Sasha's parents might.

Fridge Horror

• Somewhat less horrible than other examples, but hopefully none of the girls had started their period yet while they were in Amphibia.
• Amphibia is a Death World, a fact about which its inhabitants seem alarmingly blasé. Even faced with supposedly inevitable death, the Plantars seem ready to embrace it with equanimity rather than fight it. How inured must you be to tragedy to embrace such fatalism?
  • Anne quickly adjusts to a similar mentality, which has pretty terrifying implications. While she doesn't ever become as accepting as the rest of the Plantars about dying horribly, she does quickly become desensitized to death in general. For example, while it's never explicitly stated, she definitely murdered the Horned Toads from A Night at the Inn. Both baking soda alone and baking soda along with vinegar mixtures are lethal to frogs upon direct skin contact, but Anne's reaction to blowing up their inn with the chemicals is amusement (to be fair, she might not have known that). One wonders how she'll adjust back to life on Earth, where death and murder very much aren't the accepted norms of survival.
• Polly is very young (some of the dialogue calls her a "baby"), which implies that she and Sprig's parents have disappeared (and may possibly have died) fairly recently, when Sprig was a small child. Just what happened to them?
  • Well, Sprig and Polly's mom is confirmed to be dead, but it wasn't recent. Sprig says she passed away when they were too young to remember her. Still, how did she die? And, is their father dead too?
  • Turns out their parents were eaten alive by herons while Hop Pop was away.
• Umm... doesn't the "DON'T SWIM" sign in "Best Fronds" look like it was literally written in blood? It also trails off after the last letter...
• With every episode we watch until the end of the 20th episode, Prison Break, Anne's friend Sasha is imprisoned one more day or so, and it doesn't look like her captor is the hospitable type.
• The way Grime speaks to Sasha implies that she's been there a while (or, at least long enough that they've tried to get information out of her). How long has she been a prisoner? For that matter, how long was Anne forced to fend for herself before she came across civilization?^note the tally marks on the wall behind Sasha suggest she's been imprisoned for at least 5 days
  • According to the flashback sequence in "Reunion", Anne, Sasha, and Marcy have been in Amphibia for three months by that point, yet Anne says that she has been eating bugs for just two. At first, it may sound like a mistake from the writers... but Anne mentioned before that she had to live in a cave before settling in with the Plantars. This means that Anne was on her own in a Death World for approximately one month.
• How long was that wretched, pathetic pumpkin creature locked in the dark? How aware is it of its condition? Does it feel pain? Fear? Loneliness?
  • In "Bessie and Microangelo", Polly mentions getting weapons from the hidden rooms under the house, and Hop Pop has no problem letting her go down there on her own. Is the pumpkin monster still there? Have the Plantars just left it locked up as they went about their lives? Do they have to pass by it every time they venture down there? Its room is the first one entered behind the secret passageway in the fireplace, after all.
• The campsite in "Anne Vs Wild" that’s inhabited by frog-eating mudmen (who are actually a Cannibal Clan) has an area littered with empty buckets. This might seem like a random detail, until you realize that they look exactly like the one Polly is carried around in. These things eat babies, and have already devoured DOZENS off-screen. And they’re never actually stopped.
• Sasha has officially thrown in with Grime's bid to take over the whole valley, and the next time she meets Anne will not be a friendly one. Even though Sasha was trying to find her and Marcy to get them home, Anne will waste no time confronting her about it and fighting her, and maybe blame her for being complicit in levying heavy taxes on innocent frogs. Clearly, the way to their friendship falling apart has already been laid.
• One has to wonder what exactly becomes of Jonah after the events of "Cracking Mrs. Croaker". Given he tried to kill Mrs. Croaker and was last seen webbed to her wall toward the end of the episode, the mere thought is chilling.
  • Either he was disposed of by Mrs. Croaker (which is relatively easy in this world full of large predators), or he escaped and is still out there, trying to murder Mrs. Croaker again. Both implications are highly disturbing.
• In Fiddle Me This, Hop Pop begins to imagine a life of luxury for the kids in the future. While it's funny for Polly to question why she's still a baby, Anne questions why she's still there. Given that Hop Pop buried the music box, it's not that funny when you really think about it.
• The prologue in "Reunion" reveals that it has been three months since Anne first arrived in Wartwood. The fact that she's been gone for this long without anyone in the real world knowing what happened to her is frightening.
  • The scariest thing about the prologue? Realizing the day Anne disappeared was on her birthday. Her parents kept texting her wondering where she was since they were planning a birthday party for her. Sasha basically forces her to ditch her own birthday party to go steal the music box that Marcy had found.
    • It becomes especially scary when you realize Anne never made it home to her party and her parents have been fraught with worry and distress that their daughter has been missing for three months.
• The plot to outright kill Hop Pop for unwittingly inspiring a rebellion across Amphibia when he ran for mayor against Toadstool. It's even worse that Sasha said it was her idea. Why did she decide to go with murder, rather than with tarnishing Hop Pop's image as a figurehead? Did she always have a killer streak, or did it develop as a result of having to survive among toads in the harsh world of Amphibia?
  • It's more toned down, but the prologue also reveals Sasha really is not the friend Anne makes her out to be. She strong-armed Anne into skipping her own birthday party to steal the music box that got them in this mess in the first place.
• Combine events from "Grubhog Day" and "Children Of The Spore", and it becomes possible that not only is this world full of obvious predatory animals and plants, but a hidden threat from sentient parasitic species that are setting up to wage a covert war against the frogs and toads!
• Season 2's opening theme showcases Anne and Sasha sword-fighting, a well-animated and awesome-looking scene. But what's disturbing, even more so than the shot of Marcy and the Calamity Box in the background (seeing that's she's harmless and a loving friend to Anne), is just how intense the fight scene is. As of now in the show, while they're obviously not friends, Anne and Sasha still care about each other. But here, Sasha is fighting her best friend since kindergarten with a Slasher Smile, Anne is simply furious, with no hint of remorse or sadness from either girl. What will happen between them, or with Sasha, in this season?
• King Andrias has proven to be largely a boisterous and affable host to Anne and the Plantars, and seems to have more than earned Marcy's fondness. There have only been a few hints here and there that he's scheming more than he lets on, and isn't as kind as he might seem, until one remembers that he's the one that elevated the likes of the psychotic General Yunan to her position, and that he's the one that Captain Grime and the toads of Toad Tower ultimately answered to.
• Had the Plantars really died in "Contagi-Anne", not only would Anne be forced to live with the crushing guilt that she lied to her second family in what could've been their final minutes, but also, unless someone else in Wartwood decided to take her in, she would be all alone again until she possibly got eaten by predators, or encountered Toad Tower or Newtopia and met Sasha or Marcy.
• The Curator's wax attractions that were freed will have to do something after they are done with him. Will anyone warn Frog Soos before he walks into a feeding frenzy, and what about the town itself? They could get a monster attack from inside their own borders as soon as they get out.
• From the season 2 opening and trailers for the season 2 finale, Sasha hasn't really reformed. She's planned revenge on Anne and the Plantars, despite the fact that she needs Anne intact to get home according to the Calamity Box lore. Why is Sasha ultimately pursuing Revenge Before Reason?
• How will Anne tell Marcy's parents that she could be dead?!
  • Also, Anne most likely can't mention the part about "she was stabbed by a giant newt in another world", and considering the last time they saw her daughter, she ran away from them... WHAT WILL THEY THINK?! THAT SHE COMMITTED SUICIDE?!
  • And to add Fridge Sadness to the mix, it is very unlikely that Marcy's parents will be able to give her a proper funeral. Her father, in particular, may blame himself for what happened, because him getting a job out of state is what drove Marcy to use the Calamity Box in the first place.
  • On this point as well, if time in Amphibia works like time on Earth does, then the girls have all been missing for several months, and of the three only Anne came back. She's going to have three very uncomfortable conversations on her hands; one to her own parents about what happened and who the talking frogs she's been living with are, one to Sasha's parents about how their daughter is trapped in a gruesome frog land, and one of course to Marcy's parents about how the last thing Anne saw of their daughter was her getting run through with a sword about as wide as Marcy's torso.
    • Averted in-series with the revelation that Anne wrote letters to Sasha and Marcy's parents letting them know that their daughters are alive and she was planning on getting them back home.
• The season three opening shows Marcy, apparently alive, being held by Andrias in a tube. But why does Andrias want her? Is it because of her knowledge? As ransom? Or worse, are we looking at the next Winter Soldier? "Olivia & Yunan" reveals an even worse fate, which is being used as the Core's physical body while having her mind assimilated, becoming Darcy.
• Even if Marcy and Sasha are rescued and return, after all the betrayals and trauma, it is likely the end of the trio's friendship.
  • This may not be such a bad thing, as now the three are free from a toxic friendship and can make new ones. Still, it is bad that it had to end in such an awful way, as the three's problem was never that they weren't genuinely friends, but that their traits when put together became toxic. Thankfully, the ending shows that this problem is fixed among the trio.
• So Andrias used to be friends with the past leader of the toads and the past leader of the frogs. Both of them betrayed Andrias and stole the Calamity Box from him under his nose. Does that mean the two of them already knew he was untrustworthy to begin with? Adding onto that, there's still a ton of coffins in the castle's basement. We see what's hidden in some of them (those little Eldritch Abomination things with tentacles), but we never see what's in the rest of them. Add onto the fact that said frog and toad leader were never heard from again, and Andrias might've already committed a murder years before the show's events even started!
  • Andrias committed many atrocities, but the deaths of Leif and Barrel are not among them. Leif founded Wartwood and what would become the Plantar Farm while Barrel was exiled by Andrias and later died in battle with a Narwhal Worm.
• Considering how Sasha initially seemed to prefer staying in Newtopia to rule it over going back home in "True Colors" and even only mentioned Anne's parents when trying to send her back on her own out of anger, just how bad are Sasha's home life and parents? Is it possible that a good chunk of Sasha's negative traits may have come from her own relationship with her family?
  • "Froggy Little Christmas" shows that Sasha's parents are likely divorced (hence the two individual envelopes), which only furthers the implication. Perhaps her traits come from watching her parents' marriage implode, which is psychologically damaging enough, and a manipulative parent gaining custody of her in the divorce proceedings?
  • Let's go up another one. Marcy has a very obsessive interest in not just fantasy, but escapist fantasy, and loves the 'found family' trope. She's shown to be studying for the SAT years ahead of time, and the only time we see her interact with her parents, it's a pretty explosive situation. Mr. Wu likely knew his daughter finds it difficult to make friends and Hates Being Alone, yet, from what evidence we can gather^note the way Marcy reacts in the moment and describes it once her resulting actions come to light heavily suggest a way-too-sudden announcement that she would have been too upset to properly process before finding the Calamity Box, took a job that would require him to relocate his family without telling her beforehand; if he didn't tell Mrs. Wu beforehand either, this is just as selfish and inconsiderate as what it caused Marcy to do. Even if he did tell Mrs. Wu, dropping a bombshell like that on an autistic kid the way he apparently did is the worst possible thing he could have done. While another, less terrible scenario is certainly possible^note even with regards to negative parental traits rubbing off on the girls, perhaps, not unlike his daughter, Mr. Wu is generally a Nice Guy but is Innocently Insensitive and simply didn't consider that he'd have to relocate his family until he'd handed in his two weeks' notice and Mrs. Wu, as furious with her husband for unilaterally making such a decision as Anne and Sasha were with Marcy for stranding them in Amphibia and dreading Marcy's reaction, told him to summon Marcy back home immediately, perhaps Marcy's quirks came from her parents as well, and not in a good way.
    • Marcy's Journal seems to support the not-so-good scenario, at least with regards to Mr. Wu. In one entry, Marcy writes about her and Andrias bonding over having strict, near-unpleasable fathers and her being blindsided by the move announcement, and considering that Andrias' father was assimilated into the Greater-Scope Villain, that has to count for something. While Mr. Wu can't top a Hive King who intentionally exacerbated his son's self-loathing even in death, he doesn't seem to have been a good father at all, especially for a neurodivergent girl.
• At first Grime thinks that, in mounting the coup, he and Sasha dodged a bullet by dethroning Andrias. That ends up not being the case: the Plantars, being a Badass Family, break out of prison, allied with Andrias' loyal subjects, and fight Grime and Sasha to save the king. Now suppose that Sasha and Grime had aborted the plan, with Sasha sincerely planning to return home, and they found the same evidence. Anne would have needed little convincing to realize that Andrias was playing them all. As Sasha acknowledges with her facial expressions, she is responsible for Anne's understandable distrust of her and for Andrias getting his hands on the box. She was Her Own Worst Enemy who inadvertently enabled a multiverse conqueror.
• We know that Sasha and Grime eventually become Fire-Forged Friends, but what would have happened to Sasha if the herons never attacked Toad Tower and she never got to showcase her skill? We see a skeleton in chains right next to her cell... just what was the fate of former prisoners?
• In the very first episode, Hop Pop tells Sprig that Polly is much more responsible than him. This may just seem like a way to give Sprig a reason to meet Anne, but after seeing what had happened to Sprig and Polly's parents...could Polly possibly have become more responsible so that she could take care of herself and Sprig? After all, Hop Pop's not gonna live forever, is he?
• In "Hop Til You Drop", Anne meets up with Gabby, and it’s a good thing she doesn’t ask where Sasha and Marcy are. But, Anne likely has other friends besides Sasha and Marcy who, like Gabby, would’ve noticed they all disappeared for months, and how’s Anne going to answer that? If she opts for a generic answer, how long can she get away with it?
• Anne has been bottling up her fears about Sasha and Marcy since returning to Earth, meaning just one traumatic experience involving either of the two — say, Darcy attacking her — could send her right into a Heroic BSoD, and she hasn't been getting used to her Super Mode because the Power-Strain Blackouts she suffers every time she taps into it have caused her to avoid resorting to it for fear of suffering a Heroic RRoD unless she genuinely has no choice, meaning any sort of emotional stress could easily cause her to lose control of it. Anyone who's played the Trails of Cold Steel quadrilogy can envision the likely result of this, especially since an Unstoppable Rage was what unlocked Anne's powers in the first place... and unlike last time, when he was caught off guard and barely able to defend himself against the onslaught, Andrias is likely ready for Anne going berserk and trying to kill him.
• As confirmed by 'If You Give A Frog A Cookie', The Owl House exists somewhere in the same universe as Amphibia. Back in 'Bessie & MicroAngelo', a skull resembling King's (who is from The Owl House) is shown on one of Anne's potential outfits. Considering how much of a Death World Amphibia is, and that portals are a big part of both shows, who's to say that it didn't belong to another member of King's species? And it should be noted that King is still a child.
• Andrias turning Amphibia into a Polluted Wasteland is already awful enough, but it gets even worse when you know just how sensitive Earth amphibians are to environmental degradation.^note They are used as bioindicators by environmental scientists — if an ecosystem has a decent population of them, then it's in relatively good shape. Given the similarities they've already shown, that means the pollution is going to be even more lethal to them then it would be to humans.
• Marcy thinks Anne and Sasha hate her for what she did, and her Heel Realization resulting from Andrias exposing her secret was soon followed by one of the worst Trauma Conga Lines ever experienced by a Disney character, one which not only interrupted her efforts to make things right but has trapped her in a villainous role. The poor girl's going to be in a horrible emotional state once she's free from the Core's control, especially if the Boonchuys are in Amphibia and/or Anne suffers a Heroic RRoD (particularly if it resulted in a Disney Death) as a direct or indirect result of freeing her, in which case she may refuse any and all attempts to help or forgive her.
• If Anne managed to defeat the giant Santa with her float tree but failed to destroy the drone with it, then chances are it could've probably taken over another float, or just attacked her head-on. And since the heroes never even saw the drone, then it's good that hit was accidental. And, it's unknown who found it...
• Sasha was lucky that she got freedom when she did: Snow Day takes place after the events of Prison Break, meaning that without the herons Sasha would have spent that entire period of time freezing completely alone without anyone to talk to or provide her food and water and unable to leave a seemingly damp cell. That would have been bad, and she'd likely have not gotten a warning about it ahead of time.
• Mother Olm’s memory loss might not simply be due to old age; batsquitoes have been attacking her brain for quite some time.
• Just how many worlds did Andrias's predecessors strip and leave barren prior to the loss of the music box? How many of them were inhabited? How many billions died? And, given how much focus there has been on the Earth, is it just because of it being personal to Andrias as being unfinished business, or might there be very few options left to conquer at this point?
  • Seeing as the Boiling Isles, specifically the Owl House itself, is shown in a cameo appearance in If You Give A Frog A Cookie, could it also be a target after the Earth? Had it been a target?
• Seeing as there are some, if scarce, metals on Amphibia, why didn't Andrias or his father try to mine Amphibia's resources to try and keep something akin to stability? The sheer damage to Amphibia is the answer, though neither's moral concern is the reason for the lack of doing so. The simple fact is that the damage is not sustainable long term, as the golden age required constant world-plundering to keep up. What Andrias is doing is essentially one massive desperation attack. If he can't conquer the Earth or another world quickly enough, Amphibia will grind to a halt and collapse. It is an all-or-nothing attack that will either destroy the Earth or leave Amphibia a devastated husk that may take millions of years to recover if the Calamity Stones don't have a world-healing wave effect.
• Fans have noted that when Sasha cuts Darcy's cheek, a drop of green blood leaks out. Given that it is revealed that Andrias has been cybernetically enhanced so he could live for a thousand years, what body modifications were done on Marcy?
• While mild compared to other things mentioned on here, Anne's gonna have a really weird time explaining to her parents that she's technically just a clone and that her original body is dead. Assuming she even tells them at all, that is.
  • There's the likely possibility that because Anne remembers the encounter with the Calamity Stone Deity as a dream, she probably forgot them telling her that she was a clone.
• Why would the Core even think about destroying Amphibia, its own world, as a last resort? It comes down to the fact that the Core was basically made to extend the life of its previous kings, a continuous line of conquerors. Marcy says that the Core is afraid of being irrelevant, and what is a tyrannical monarch afraid of above all else? Holding no sway over their people and minions and being overthrown. Thus, as a means to punish those that don't bow to them, the Core will destroy the people that dare to rebel against it, and either build from the ground up now that the survivors know what they are dealing with, or seek another world and start over. After all, like it did with Marcy, it can manipulate its host into believing that it's peaceful.
• If it wasn't for the Plantars watching cat videos on Marcy's phone at the second temple and screaming as a result, Anne would've fully lost her Calamity powers like Sasha and Marcy. Anne will be trapped on Earth, unable to power the portal at "Escape to Amphibia". That is if Cloak-Bot doesn't kill her first before the invasion of Earth. Without the opening caused by Anne's transformation, she wouldn't have even gone that far, instead dying alongside Sasha in battle while Sprig fell to his death as Marcy couldn't find an opening to save him.
• Many fans find it odd that Marcy, the smartest of the trio, was the only one who didn't get a job requiring a degree in the epilogue. But consider this: it was her who stranded them in Amphibia, and despite her being the most receptive to their arrival, easily got the worst experience. Her impulsive action eventually led to her getting stabbed, then becoming the host of a genocidal Mind Hive in a painful process, and her childhood friend dying^note Yes, Anne got better, but she still died, and there's a real possibility a facsimile came back to the land of the living. While things turned out all right in the end, the trauma and guilt isn't going to just go away, and it's entirely possible those interfered in her ability to study. As for her still cheery demeanor, we have a trope for that.
  • It's possible that Marcy sustained minor brain damage from the Darcy situation, which affected her ability to remember equations and ruined her academic future.
• Assuming Amphibia's moon has any sort of gravitational effect on Amphibia similar to the effect our moon has on Earth, then even with Anne stopping the Core from Colony Dropping the planet, the destruction of the moon might still have very bad effects on Amphibia.
• According to the entity, Anne is going to die at 91. She will very likely outlive both Marcy and Sasha, and possibly her future spouse and children.
• The Core is supposed to contain "Amphibia's greatest [presumably scientific and sociopolitical] minds" in order to help solve Newtopia's problems, yet this gestalt being of great intellect's only solution for making Newtopia great is to become a Multiversal Conqueror. Most intellectuals would likely advocate for more peaceful approaches for improving society...until we see how it gaslights Marcy when it's forced on her. Who's to say that most of the people assimilated into the core weren't good, decent folks who were Brainwashed and Crazy by the more close-minded, conquest driven folks that were presumably assimilated first?
• We never learn how Marcy dealt with the guilt of being an unwitting mass murderer. She lives in Los Angeles, so chances are she's seen some of the people she killed in cold blood (no amphibian pun intended) face to face, and even talked to them. How does she feel, years later, seeing those people's friends and relatives and knowing she was responsible for killing their loved ones?
• Due to the strong hints that Amphibia takes place in the same universe as Gravity Falls, it makes Leif taking the Calamity Box to Earth even more of a good thing in the end. If the ancient Amphibians still had the Calamity Box, they would've still used it to conquer other worlds until they have eventually reached the Nightmare Realm and encountered Bill Cipher. From there, Bill would have persuaded the Amphibians into forming an alliance with him by stating that in exchange for the Calamity Box, he'll grant them unlimited power. This would have led to Bill unleashing Weirdmageddon on Amphibia and gain control of the Calamity Box. From there, Bill would have used the Box's powers to take over the multiverse itself.

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