Fridge / Frozen (2013)

Fridge Brilliance

Has its own page.

Fridge Horror

• What kind of childhood did Hans have if it turned him into a complete sociopath? What kind of treatment from his brothers could he have received that it made him concoct an Evil Plan and feel no remorse for killing an innocent or two, or toying with a girl's feelings? And at the end of the film, he's on a ship headed back to those brothers... You get an idea from one throwaway line.
  • This became Ascended Fridge Horror with the semi-canonical spin-off A Frozen Heart, which goes into detail (for example Hans was glad it was a piece of bread that got thrown at his head instead of a glass like last time), including some lines that sound suspiciously like descriptions of self-harm. He's also been thrown off a moving cart more than once, shoved in the mud numerous times, lost countless fights and suffered cruel practical jokes from an early age. His father is an unfeeling and ruthless man who uses his sons to brutally and violently suppress any criticism, and coldly regards Hans as a "weakling" who refuses to fight back at the taunting his older sons do to him. So, in his view, his older sons taunting and bullying Hans is a sign of "strength", and believes it's "all good politics". Although his mother cares for Hans, giving birth and raising 13 sons has weakened her greatly and left her incapable of stepping in. Hans has also been sent to do some horrible things in the past, and it's implied that despite being initially unnerved by the prospect, he was ordered to kill villagers who insulted the king or were behind on their taxes. In the book, Hans was not born sociopathic, but being pressured to commit atrocities and being bullied year after year by his father and brothers made him desperate and filled with rage. He originally goes to Arendelle with the goal of marrying Elsa and leaving, but once he meets Anna, his sociopathy apparently starts running in full force. From that point onward, we see Hans becoming more and more of a sociopath and seeing everyone as pawns. It gets even worse he's left in charge of Arendelle makes his state even worse and the power goes to his head, and Hans becomes determined to hang onto it at all costs. By the end, he has zero issues leaving Anna to die, tormenting her, and trying to kill Elsa. Only at the end, when he's imprisoned and in disgrace, does he start to realize what he's done wrong. But by that point, no one is willing to trust him thanks to what he's done.
• Imagine all of the people in Arendelle, including children and the elderly, who might have suffered permanent injury from frostbite, or frozen to death when eternal winter hit.
  • Arendelle is a fantasy version of Norway, where snowfall as late as early May isn't unprecedented, so while a freak out-of-season blizzard's not something they'd likely have been completely paralyzed by, a July Endless Winter in the middle of the growing season could certainly mess up the year's crops.
• If Anna or anyone else had not come up to the mountain to reason with her, what could possibly happen to Elsa if she was left alone? Considering how her isolation and concealment had an impact on her as a growing child, what more could it affect her as an adult? She would have probably become the very Snow Queen in the original tale.
• Think about it for a second. For thirteen years, Elsa forced herself to remain stoic and emotionless, even distancing herself from her only sibling. Anna lost her best friend and had to be shut up in a castle all her life, with no friends around and her only sibling seemingly rejecting her. Both had no friends or contact with the outside world, and then their parents died. Imagine the kind of depression the two might have developed.
  • It's been confirmed that Elsa did have depression/anxiety during the events of the movie; despite Anna's cheerful nature, she was still shown to be affected by it as well, so she probably could have gotten up to Elsa's level of issues had they been isolated for much longer than they were.
  • Anna is an Ink-Suit Actor for Kristen Bell, who has been outspoken about her own battles with depression and anxiety despite her own similarly bubbly personality, and is so in large part due to Bell's fight for a princess who was imperfect like she was. Patti Murin, who originates the Broadway role and is very Anna-like according to Word of God, does the same. Added together, it's quite likely that Anna is also suffering from anxiety and depression. Added Fridge Horror when you realize that a combination of her Genki Girl nature and of her isolation as her family closed the castle gates and minimized the number of people allowed in and her parents busy with older sister / heir to the throne Elsa's more obvious (and dangerous) struggles, it's also likely that no one noticed.
• Try to imagine the events of the film's ending from the point of view of people in kingdoms around the globe, and how Elsa appears to them. A new queen just ascended to the throne of Arendelle — a superhuman, emotionally unstable, unmarried girl with the power to summon blizzards at her whim, and her first act as a ruler, after a three day blizzard that she apparently conjured up in a fit of depression, is to banish a foreign dignitary and cut off trade with his kingdom. Her Swiss-Army Superpower even covers the creation of life. Go to war with Elsa and she's liable to summon a massive blizzard/ice storm to slam your entire country. Try to invade by land and she'll send a blizzard that makes it impossible for your supplies to travel over the roads, and any attempt to invade by sea will end with your ships stuck in an ice sheet. And that's not even getting into her potential to create never-ending reserves of undying, sleepless snow soldiers who require no food and recover from injuries much more easily than humans do.
  • Not to mention no one else really knows that the Endless Winter was an accident resulting from Power Incontinence that's under better control now. Elsa never actually proved her innocence, so for all anyone else in the film's world knows, she might have done it on purpose, ended it because she felt about killing her sister, and has no qualms about starting another one for any reason at all. And if they do realize that all of that was without her even trying? Then they have to wonder even more just how to avoid another ice age.
• Just how terrible Elsa’s childhood must have been:
  • After the accident, Elsa would have naturally come to fear her powers, so any manifestation of her skills would have terrified her even when involuntarily inspired by a positive emotion. Add the emotional coaching she received from her (well-meaning but misguided) parents, and you have a young girl who would feel some happy emotion, which would make her afraid because “Oh no, I felt something, what if I create ice and hurt someone?”, and that fear would cause her powers to react negatively, which would make her more afraid, etc. etc. until she can’t control it anymore.
  • The lack of personal interaction amplifies it still further, as the longer a person goes without talking to someone (especially large groups), the harder and more stressful it is—thus ensuring any interaction Elsa had was almost certain to trigger her powers, making her even more terrified of being around people, etc.
  • And then add a sister who you love and are terrified of hurting again, who doesn't know (and who you can't tell) why you shut her out. By pushing Anna away until she feels that she has her powers under firm control while at the same time secretly longing like she does to be close, likely causes herself emotional anguish that could even trigger her powers in a negative fashion.
• Speaking of characters in the movie who suffered terrible childhoods, remember how Olaf says that "when life gets rough, I like to hold onto my dream"? He's been alive for a day, if that.
• The strand of platinum blonde in Anna's hair after Elsa's magic accident, imagine how Elsa feels every time she has to look at Anna? The physical reminder for Elsa about how she almost killed her only sibling, her baby sister, and her best friend. Her inner guilt and self hate must have increased for every time she saw Anna for the next thirteen years.
• Speaking of the skunk stripe, "Do You Want To Build A Snowman" is a very sad song for Anna, representing as it does her hurt and sadness at Elsa (from her point of view) freezing her out and ignoring her. But think about it also from Elsa's point of view for a moment. Every time Anna knocks on Elsa's door, she innocently and unwittingly asks the same question she used to ask to see Elsa's magic on the same night that Elsa accidentally injured her. Every innocent invitation to build a snowman is another traumatizing reminder for Elsa of the night she almost killed the sister she loves deeply with the magic powers she fears intensely.
• Elsa and Anna losing their parents is hard enough, but what about the other people on the ship with the King and Queen? They most likely perished as well, so there's a couple dozen other greatly traumatized families out there.
• Speaking of losing your parents — in the burial scene, Anna is by herself. Meaning Elsa wasn't even able to attend the funeral and give a final goodbye to her own parents. Meanwhile, Anna has to lead a country in mourning alone, and the last remaining member of her family won't even stay in a room with her. She probably knows that there's something badly wrong with her sister, would do anything to help or even just support her, but she's not even told what the problem is. She's fifteen years old.
• As soon as she takes the gloves off, Elsa starts freezing everything she touches. That her powers are that strong makes you think and realize she must have had a hell of a time trying to bathe without ever getting her hands wet for longer than a few seconds. The logistics of hiding her powers as they got stronger and more volatile must have been incredibly frustrating and stressful.
  • This actually makes Anna's remark about thinking Elsa had "A thing about dirt" ironic, and almost funny.
• Elsa is Carrie with a sister to love her and less dysfunctional parenting.
• If Olaf can be seen as representing the love Anna and Elsa have, Marshmallow can be seen as representing Elsa's isolation, depression, fear, and, in a way, her bitterness and anger. Note how Marshmallow is bigger than Olaf; all the love and innocence Elsa had is overshadowed by all the negative traits that she's accumulated over the course of her life.
• Let's say Hans wasn't lying about his brothers treating him badly and that it was so bad it led him to think it was okay to manipulate a young, naive princess and attempt to kill her sister (judging from Word of God, it's likely this is true). If so, what are they going to do once he gets home? I guess they'll be really welcoming him with open arms, and taking care of him in the best way they know possible.
  • Word of God confirms Hans grew up without love, and the adaption A Frozen Heart has Hans being tormented by his older brothers and suggests he has clinical depression. However, Frozen Fever shows him with the relatively light (for attempted regicide) punishment of cleaning out the stables, although it's unknown if this comprises the entirety of his sentence.
• One of the Trolls passed a kidney stone...the size of his hand. OUCH.
• If Anna could hear Hans drawing his sword, odds are that Elsa did too. After freezing the kingdom and killing her sister, she was willing to sit there and die for her actions.
• Counts also as Fridge Sadness: When Elsa dies Olaf and Marshmallow might die as well.
• How about a triple dose of Fridge Logic, Fridge Brilliance, AND Fridge Horror? Let's start with the scene where Anna confronts Elsa in the ice palace; Elsa's panic over finding out she has frozen over Arendelle causes a snowstorm indoors, when the weather outside is still pretty calm and clear.
  • So let's recap a bit to the "Let It Go" scene, which is after Elsa accidentally freezes Arendelle. During the first verse of the song, she's walking under a snowy weather, but as soon as the first chorus starts (right after she takes off the glove), the snow just stops falling immediately, and until Anna and co gets kicked out of the ice palace, the weather around the palace remains clear; no snowfall, no clouds, nothing. This later can be attributed to how feeling happy allows Elsa to control her power better, but does she realize about this at first?
  • It probably would have been better if she never realized that in her happiness, the weather becomes good, because otherwise, imagine how she feels when Anna tells her the Arendelle is freezing. Elsa is not just shocked ("Oh no, I've accidentally frozen my country!"), but also confused ("But the weather in the mountain is fine, how could Arendelle be snowed?"), and also very much horrified ("When I said 'Let the storm rage on', this is NOT what I meant!!")
  • This brings another question — Is Elsa's weather-control power related strongly to her (to the point of being centered on her), or can she lock a place in a given weather (such as cold weather) until she orders otherwise? She manages to turn the mountain weather from snowy to clear, but somehow this clear weather doesn't extend to Arendelle. And in the climax, when her anxiety causes a massive blizzard, a bit of the cold wind does reach the mountains where Kristoff is at that point, but otherwise the full brunt of the blizzard is centered at Arendelle. This brings another question: After Elsa dispels winter from Arendelle, what happens to other places which may have been affected by her winter?
• If Elsa's powers are like a toggle switch in nature (meaning they will lock an area in to a state of winter until Elsa undoes the enchantment herself). That means that the duke and Hans' theory that killing Elsa would end the winter would be dead wrong; killing her would remove the only possible being that could undo the winter, thus locking Arendelle into a state of permanent winter. That means that if Hans had succeeded in killing Elsa at the end, the kingdom he sought to rule would effectively become a permanent winter wasteland. Most likely, all the residents would quickly migrate to warmer climates, leaving him the king of a kingdom of isolation. Does anybody really believe he would settle for such a fate? It's almost certain that he would soon rehash his scheme for a poor lovesick princess in another country in order to rule over somewhere decent. And if need be, he'd probably be engineering "accidents" for all her family members that stand between her and the throne, too!
• Randomly gifted powers:
  • The existence of the book seen in the first scene of the movie, with its drawing of a man in medieval clothing having ice magic drawn from his head, implies that Elsa's powers are likely extraordinarily rare but not entirely unique. Particularly in combination with the Grand Pabbie's suggestion that some people are cursed by others to have ice powers, it seems like there's nothing keeping someone with a significantly less benign personality from having the same abilities that Elsa exhibits in the movie. Given that Elsa can almost destroy an entire country without even knowing it, what could a person with those powers but with more malign ends (or worse, an Omnicidal Maniac with those powers) achieve?
  • Word of God states that someone is born with ice powers every 1,000 years, and even then, only when a particular alignment of Earth and Saturn occurs. Seeing as it takes place in the same universe as ''Tangled, where a drop of sunlight fell to create a flower that gave Rapunzel healing magic, it seems that the celestial bodies have a certain power to them. What if there was, say, an alignment of Jupiter 500 years earlier than gave someone fire powers. In the hands of someone benevolent it could all be well and good, but someone harnessing a power like that and having ill intentions...
• Within just a few days after Elsa accidentally unleashes an Endless Winter upon Arendelle, it already appears as though the kingdom has been snowed over for years despite it being summer. One can't help but shudder at the possible consequences of this magical accident being unleashed in proper winter.
• Combines to make a sort of Fridge Tearjerker: At the point that Hans delivers his Wham Line to Anna, she's just parted from Kristoff and Olaf, possibly forever (and she had no idea that Kristoff had fallen in love with her), and her long-difficult relationship with Elsa is at an all-time low, and... that's about all there is for her. Hans' revelation comes at the moment when she's about the most vulnerable and alone she's ever been; there really doesn't seem to be anyone else to turn to, or even any comeback to what he's just said to her — his cutting remark probably just keeps going into her skin deeper and deeper. Anna had lived most of her life thinking that her sister didn’t want to see her. That she didn’t love her. Especially after her parents died, there was no one left to show her love. But then she met Hans, who seemed to love everything about her. He seemed to be her true love. Maybe someone did love her. But he didn’t. And now here she is. Her only friends gone back to the mountain, her sister far away not even wanting to see her, and her “true love” has just revealed to her that she was a pawn all along. We may not believe what Hans is saying, but she does. And Hans very much probably realizes it. Word of God says he's long known he's chronically unloved.
  • This might also explain why the main thing that affects Elsa emotionally in the shorts isn’t “I’m afraid of hurting everyone” but rather “I don’t want to mess things up again” (like she thinks in Frozen Fever with her fever and the snowgies at Anna's birthday, and her "It's my fault we don't have a real tradition" bit in Olaf's Frozen Adventure): because there must have been a moment post-Thaw where Anna reveals what Hans said to her, and what it meant to her, either through actually talking about it or acting in such a way that it prompts Elsa to ask. Either way, the revelation comes up that Anna had a moment when she truly believed Hans’ words because she had never really seen anything that would disprove them, and that Elsa accidentally ended up seemingly confirming them, even if the reality was the furthest thing from them. Which is probably the saddest thing about this. Because Elsa did truly love Anna. But because of fear, and thinking it best that Anna stayed away from her, she gave her the opposite message.
• Anna repeatedly blames herself for Elsa's big ice explosion and her running away, because she was the one who asked her the armor piercing questions, missing the fact that Elsa was clearly a very messed-up young woman and Anna herself can hardly be to blame for the Power Incontinence. She's even been trying to remember all her life how she had somehow offended Elsa and caused her sister to neglect her. It's hard to notice with Anna's general sweetness and light, and that she uses her optimistic nature to carry on despite her low self-esteem, but the fact that she assumes she is to blame somehow for most of Elsa's strange dysfunctional behavior indicates that she's actually very emotionally damaged too, and doesn't quite have a very good yardstick for normal emotional relationships yet. Her desperation for approval and willingness to believe herself at fault leave her extremely vulnerable, and also perfect prey to a manipulative boyfriend like Hans who is out to exploit her. Even worse, this pattern is reality for many emotionally vulnerable teenagers.
  • Gets worse with the knowledge that the Cut Song "You're You" was only replaced with "Love is an Open Door" because Disney thought it would be too obvious to audiences that Hans was abusive and didn't actually care about Anna, "Anyone who would interrupt Kristen Bell singing is a creep" - which means that Anna's low self-esteem and lack of experience with healthy relationships (romantic or platonic) are so bad that this song, half of which is put-downs followed by Hans asserting that ''he'' loves her anyway would've actually been her idea of a loving partner! This is sadly Truth in Television and a common abuse tactic, picking at the victim's insecurities and positioning the abuser as the only one who would love them. It even carries over in a more subtle form to the final version of the film, although many viewers do not notice it, demonstrating its Truth in Television nature]]. He responds to her talking about her damaged relationship with her sister by saying that he would never shut her out, instead of focusing on reassuring her that she was worth loving, and Word of God confirms that he immediately notes her low self-esteem during their first meeting when she says it's "just" her and preys upon it.
• At the moment Anna dives in front of Hans's sword, she had no idea that she would freeze at the critical moment: not only could she have frozen too early and not gotten there, but she could have frozen too late... and taken the sword hit. The situation was a microsecond away from Anna being permanently dead, Elsa, already distraught on the ice of the fjord, being left in a pool of her sister's blood and whatever else was left of her... and no amount of true love being able to heal that. And that's assuming Hans didn't go on and slash her as well.
  • If Hans didn't immediately go on to kill Elsa, there's some more Fridge Horror when you think about what would have happened to him. The near-death of the two Weselton guards suggests that Elsa wouldn't just take something like that lying there covered in blood. Rapidly impaling Hans with ice spikes might be the most merciful possible outcome Elsa would give him. Adding another layer to this: this is the kind of incident that, back in that time period, kingdoms tended to go to war against each other over. One can only imagine that if this was the outcome, Elsa's follow-up response would probably have been to declare war.
  • There's also the fact that just earlier, Hans had lied to the Arendelle cabinet and visiting dignitaries that Anna had died. Even if he succeeded in killing Anna and Elsa in this scenario, it wouldn't be hard to imagine that he would have lost his position as a noble successor of the throne, and could have easily followed the sisters straight to the grave. This would leave the Duke alive and mostly well, and given his view on Arendelle, the kingdom could easily vanish overnight with no heir to take the throne with a power-hungry foreign minister about to exploit Arendelle for what it's worth.
• Elsa is portrayed pretty positively through most of the movie and obviously isn't an outright sadist or psychopath. When she does reveal her dark side, though, it can get incredibly dark. Watch the scene where she was going to kill the Weselton guards again. She might have had to kill them, but that wasn't her immediate motivation. Her immediate motivation was the fact that she was pissed, especially since they shot at her without being justified into doing so, and she probably wasn't trying to kill the two men (if she really wanted to kill them, she'd probably just impale them with ice spikes). Obviously for Elsa these motivations only come out in extreme circumstances, but those happen in international politics. If civilians in Arendelle or an allied country are threatened, what's the chance that all Hell won't break loose? Or freeze over?
• If you listen to "For the First Time In Forever" (Reprise) when Anna and Elsa's argument really picks up, you can almost imagine Kristoff and Olaf (whose minute is up) going from admiring the ice castle to hearing them and racing up the stairs searching for them — then Anna gets hit, a second or two later Kristoff bursts in and runs to her, and it's a bit like he's thinking "If only I'd gotten here sooner..."
• Elsa repeatedly uses the metaphor of "the storm" for her own inner turmoil and its connection to her powers. This gets a lot more somber if you consider that a storm at sea was what capsized her parents' ship. Even when she's speaking in metaphors, Elsa can't help but associate her own ice powers with the tragic deaths of her loved ones.
• One for the history buffs: even if Hans had succeeded in usurping the Arendellian throne, the European Great Powers, which the nations of Scandinavia explicitly were not at the time the first movie was set (the 1840s) would never stand for it. At the time, every European country's foreign policy with the possible exception of France's was based on knowing who was going to be on what throne on the basis that either the Monarch and/or his or her heir was going to marry into someone else's noble family. Even if everything had gone according to plan, Hans was going to find Britain and France mobilizing for war on behalf of whoever would be Elsa and Anna's legitimate heir in the event either of them died without issue. And he'd have been lucky if it was just those two. That's why it was probably a far bigger deal that a French ship was returning him home. This wasn't just an act of charity on behalf of the French government. This was agents of the French government, taking a traitorous member of the royal family of a foreign power into custody and conveying him home under guard on a French warship...almost certainly accompanied by any other French warships as well as the Royal Navy ships carrying the British delegation. A pointed warning that any further attempts to destabilize the Concert of Europe that had ensured European peace since Napoleon went down for the final time would not be tolerated...just in case Hans really wasn't operating without orders.
  • Such a coup would be an upset of power that could easily give the Concert of Europe under Metternich the impression that Arendelle and/or the Southern Isles were under revolution. Considering that the Revolution of 1830 by this time already gave France a more liberalized monarch, it recognizes this fine balance despite its outlook and thus wouldn't be as involved as the other powers. Considering that there is a portrait of Joan of Arc in Arendelle's castle, Arendelle could at the very least have a relationship with the French that likely goes back to the Napoleonic era since Denmark-Norway at the time were indirect allies with France against Britain.
  • Having a member of another royal family attempt to usurp your throne is going to be considered an act of war by most of the key players, and it's going to take a lot of bending over backwards to convince them that it wasn't. At the same time, a country isn't going to take the trial and execution, or even a long prison sentence of a member of said royal family lying down either, even if he had gone rogue. Realistically, France and/or Britain delivering him home with the diplomatic version of "We have guns and we'll find you" was probably the only way to ensure this didn't snowball into a European war no one really wanted while they were grappling with the fact that Russia was making her usual noises about wanting a Black Sea port.
• When Elsa freezes Anna's head accidentally, her first instinct upon seeing Anna in trouble is to run to her without thinking twice. You'd think, like before, that Elsa would run to the younger sister's side to comfort her. Hell, Kristoff and Anna met not a day ago and he does just that. It's instinct, but Elsa flinches, gasps, backs away, and closes her hands. But after the accident and years of believing that she’s a danger to anything and anyone that breathes, Elsa’s (learned) instinct is to recoil and run away. That's why she runs rather than stays when her powers are revealed at her coronation, and why she doesn’t run to Anna after freezing her heart. She doesn’t because that’s what fear and anxiety do: drive one into avoidance. Elsa doesn’t run to help Anna because she truly believes that staying away is the more helpful option.
• It's easy to assume that Anna's freezing at the climax equals death. But her eyes continue to dilate and her fearful is gone, as if she knows that Elsa is no longer in the danger she was when Anna threw herself between her sister and Hans. She shows no surprise at the situation when she unfreezes and finds Elsa draped over her, Hans nowhere to be seen. Why isn't she surprised? It seems as if she can see what happens after freezing - still fully conscious as a statue of ice, unable to move, speak or breathe, and wanting to comfort the distraught Elsa, but trapped in her own hard, cold body? Frozen II: Forest of Shadows makes this Ascended Fridge Horror: Anna still has nightmares about it.
• The Duke of Weselton is widely seen as being less dastardly than Prince Hans, but they are in fact very similar in the scope and nature of their vices. What makes them insidious is the rather narrow limits of their obsessions. Hans wants to be a beloved King, and the Duke simply wants trade and has a judgmental hatred of all things sorcery and magic. These are obsessions and goals they will act both ruthlessly and sneakily upon, but outside of these limits they're mostly capable of decent acts, which makes makes most people oblivious to them, and even makes them oblivious to each other. Furthermore, how common are such views in this world? If prejudice against magic is widespread enough, Elsa will have to deal with it for the rest of her life, provoking wrath simply by existing. And if such people are in positions of power...