Fridge / Epithet Erased

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Fridge Logic for Epithet Erased.

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Fridge Brilliance

• Molly's last name could be a word play for her Epithet, as it sounds like "blind-deaf''. Now what does her Epithet do?
  • It's a Meaningful Name for the rest of her family, too, with them being blind to her needs and deaf to her complaints.
• It's pretty lucky that Molly's Epithet gives her the power to make sounds quieter——it probably helps a lot with her misophonia.
  • Alternatively, her Epithet may affect her body much in the same way Mera's does——perhaps she hates noise because her Epithet makes things quiet.
• Sylvie’s Nightmare Fuel attack brings the targets worst fears to life under his control, and the second time he does this, it brings Sergeant Bear and Corporal Other Bear to life. What is the one thing Sergeant Bear says? “I should have been promoted to Staff Sergeant Bear AGES AGO!” This makes sense when you look at Giovanni. Of course he would be afraid of his minions being dissatisfied!
• It would be strange that Mera is affected so badly by her Epithet when no one else in the series has had problems like that with their Epithet before. Except that they have. Molly’s constantly suffering from both her father’s and her sister's stupidity; Indus has a need to always do his best to protect Mera; Sylvie is obsessed with what goes on inside people’s minds, which dreams are representations of; Percy is hellbent on maintaining the “structure” of the law; Ramsey tries his best to keep himself preserved like gold; and even Giovanni and Gorou are about as dangerous as warm soup and a light breeze respectively.
  • When he first appears, Sylvie mentions his field of study is the impact a person's Epithet has on their psyche, so presumably this aspect of Epithets is well-known.
• Speaking of Epithets affecting users, Mera Salamin is described as being “Size - Tiny” by the Eyecatch in the first episode. Considering how her Epithet makes her fragile, it makes sense. Her body couldn’t support itself if it was any larger!
• Giovanni seems to have a wider variety of powers than most inscribed. How many kinds of soup are there again? Similarly, his having healing abilities makes perfect sense, you're supposed to have soup when you get sick.
• Two things about Indus being Mera's bodyguard:
  • First off, of course someone as fragile as Mera would seek out a bodyguard, and who better than someone whose Epithet is "Barrier?"
  • Second, as Sylvie pointed out, it's tactical suicide to tell someone what your Epithet is, so it's not like she could ask around to see who has an Epithet that could protect her. But Indus is incredibly eager to let everyone know that his Epithet is "Barrier," so of course he would tell Mera when they first met. And that's how she found someone who could be a bodyguard for her.
    • Well, there are people willing to tell people their Epithet to other people besides Indus. Molly actually told (or rather tried to tell) a bunch of people about her Epithet during the tour.
• Why did Mera freak out about not being able to hear anything during the final confrontation in the museum arc? It's been established that Molly has the ability to silence anything, but Mera herself hasn't seen that Molly had that ability.
• When he first appears, Sylvie mentions his field of study is the impact a person's Epithet has on their psyche. This explains his interest in the amulet - logically, it would be easy to see that Epithets frequently correspond to people's personalities or situations, but proving the direction of causation could be tricky (ie. is Indus obsessed with protecting people because he has Barrier, or did he get Barrier because he was the sort of person who protects people?) The amulet would be incredibly valuable for studying this, since you could move someone's Epithet around for a while and then test to see if their personality changed.
• Giovanni yells loudly to his mother that he wants the car for "crime things", and she casually dismisses his request. Prison of Plastic reveals that his other family members are known crime-doers, so the request probably isn’t anything unusual.
• When Zora's talking to Ramsey about how the ramshackle prison cell can't keep him safe from her, she rips a rusty bar out of the window. "It crumbles to dust in her hand". On first watch, it's a reminder of how flimsy the jail is, and how little protection it really affords. But after we find out what Zora's Epithet can do, it becomes more of a personal threat for what will happen to Ramsey when she does catch him.
• At first, the tidbit about Banzai Blasters getting new uniforms each month sounds kinda... gross. Until you realize a few things:
  • One, a lot of the Banzai Blasters are on the very low end of competence, so it’s likely that some of them literally can’t wash clothes.
  • Two, they are a criminal organization. If someone took a Banzai Blasters uniform with them to the laundromat, they would probably get arrested shortly afterwards.
  • Three, the cloth is likely very cheap, so it would probably be a bad idea to use chemicals on it.
  • Four, they are not used often, considering that work might be sporadic considering the amount of crime ready to be done.
• It makes sense that everyone makes a huge deal about Percy's real-ass goddamn sword. Since bullets only take one hit point off, the sword can probably do a LOT more damage.
  • It’s actually confirmed by Jello that while guns only deal stamina damage, weapons classified as ‘real-ass goddamn’ go outside the stamina damage system and are capable of actually injuring or killing people.
• Mera's standoffishness and tendency to immediately go for the violent route make sense when you remember the rules of the world: when you win a fight, you regain all your stamina and fully heal, including healing broken bones. Of course she'd want to get into fights often - she's an extremely powerful fighter, meaning she'd basically be able to use fights as easy healing!
• Molly and Lorelai have an obvious Sibling Yin-Yang with their attitudes, as an overworked Only Sane Woman and irresponsible Womanchild respectively, but their powers also reflect each other. Both allow them to create a "bubble" within which they can numb the pain of life, but while Molly still deals with the real world and just uses it to help deal with situations, Lorelai completely isolates herself from reality and uses it to completely ignore strife.
• Word of God stated that Christmas doesn't exist in the world this series takes place in, but that actually makes sense given that Epithets are made from all real life languages and how many cultures are mixed together as well. So it's not much of a stretch that there may be a winter holiday in this world that combines all real-life winter holidays.
• Giovanni's not entirely wrong to dub his soup projectiles "lavacid grenades" - tomatoes are naturally acidic, and salt is a mineral, so they are acidic, and do contain a hot, liquid kind of rock!

Fridge Horror

• Mera wants to take Molly's Epithet to dumb down her pain. Mera's Epithet leaves her body frail. Using Molly's Epithet won't make Mera's body any stronger, just painless while the rest of her bones in her body continue to shatter and break.
  • Actually, Molly’s Epithet did negate a strike from the Soul Slugger Doom Bat, so Mera probably could be free from incidental damage if she had her Epithet. She would be fresh out of stamina at the end of the day, but not broken.
    • Still, it would only mitigate her symptoms, not actually cure her inability to keep her Epithet from affecting herself, and if Molly's Epithet became tied to the Amulet, she might have to wear it constantly to be able to use it.
    • Would that actually be a problem for Mera, though? All she would have to do is wear the amulet under her shirt and keep people from stealing it. She and Indus are probably good enough to deal with Zora, possibly even taking her Epithet.
    • Basically the point is that just how much Molly's epithet would truly help is up for debate...As shown here.
    • Even if Molly’s Epithet doesn’t help much, it could still negate damage from minor events such as bumping into people, and can also prevent broken bones, as seen with the Soul Crusher.
• Ramsey tells Percy that he lost his eye to a Mundie, which seems odd considering that, when Zora broke into his Redwood Run cell, Ramsey instinctively transmuted whatever part of his body she was aiming at to gold. How did a Mundie manage to do something as messy and personal as take out an eye when Ramsey has those kinds of defenses? Recall how, when Percy merely mentions she has eraser cuffs on her person, Ramsey moves a good distance away from her, and looks incredibly uncomfortable. The Mundie probably had access to eraser cuffs. Which, so far, we've only seen other police officers use...
  • It’s likely that the Mundie either caught Ramsey by total surprise or was able to separate the eye from the socket. He also could have had a really hot object capable of melting gold and went down to the ocular nerve. Or knocked out Ramsey and taken his eye as a trophy.
    • Or Ramsey didn't know how to do that yet.
• According to Jello, Yoomtah is the strongest Bliss Ocean member, while Zora is the second-weakest Core Officer. Just how powerful is Yoomtah, or for that matter the two Bliss Ocean Core Officers above Zora that managed to push the most powerful named character in the series down to second-last on the food chain?
• The song "Say No" sheds some more light on the Blyndeff family - specifically, on Lorelai. From some of the thinly-veiled implications of the lyrics, it's clear that Lorelai spends all her time in her Epithet bubbles because she thinks that everybody blames her for her mother's death after causing the fire she died in, and has spent the past few years isolating herself from her beloved younger sister because she thinks that It's All My Fault and she's scared of trying to be forgiven. Holy shit.