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

Fridge Brilliance

  • You might have complained at how HARD some of the controls become in the more tense moments of the game. Then you realize: the controls are hard because the situation ITSELF is hard. The anxiety and fear the characters are experiencing reflects in how hard it is for you to make them fulfill a task.
  • Note the "Four Heroes" trophy for the game. The only one who doesn't need to be alive at the end of the game is the most conflicted character of all, our Ensemble Dark Horse Shelby.
  • Most, if not all of Scott's thoughts, listened to on subsequent playthroughs, tend to lend themselves to this. From hearing how he thinks out his actions in Manfred's shop to him noting that he hasn't been sleeping well since the murders started up again. Many of his thoughts hold a double meaning, having been worded by the writers just vaguely enough to work for unspoiled first time players and those who have knowledge of The Reveal.
    • You know that case Shelby claimed to investigate? It was indeed a case: The identity of his own copy-cat.
  • Every time you open the game, the first song to play on the main menu is Scott Shelby’s theme. This serves as a subtle clue that he is the Origami Killer.
  • Jayden's Butler cryptically warns him that "Too much reliance on 'you-know-what' could be dangerous." At the first incident, the player is lead to believe that he means Jayden's drug of choice, Triptocaine. But oddly, Jayden's withdrawal in the hotel keeps dragging him back to the ARI simulation...
    • If you notice, every single one of Jayden's withdrawal moments happen right after he uses ARI.
    • And something little: during "Solving the Puzzle", in which you can die from ARI overdose, the weather in the pleasant fall environment gets progressively worse, until it's thundering and lightning.
  • If you compare the way Ethan and Jayden commit some of the same actions of the game, it really accents how much of a normal yet unfortunate guy Ethan is. Ethan holds the gun he uses in the Shark Trial and potentially against Scott completely wrong, whereas Jayden has a perfect grip and stance. Also, If Jayden gives CPR to Shaun, he does it properly by plugging Shaun's nose and tilting his chin back, whereas Ethan doesn't.
    • Captain Perry can't tie his own tie because police wear clip-ons so that they can't be choked with their ties in a fight.
  • Scott Shelby has been hired by the families of the victims of the Origami Killer to investigate. But since he's talking WITH the families of the victims of the Origami Killer, who hired him? Exactly.
  • After Shelby drops in on Kramer's house during Face to Face, Kramer explained he was just trying to protect his son Gordi, who he said he'd love no matter what he did (including murder) and would do anything to protect even if it meant killing others, Shelby almost walks away without harming Kramer any further. After all, Kramer basically said he was willing to suffer to save his son. Shelby only roughs him up more after he screws it up and says no one would miss Gordi's victim anyway. Bad move.
  • Shelby had a police badge in his desk, but is retired from the force. One would think that any police agency would require retiring agents to return their official identification and/or credentials.
  • If you do well in Scott's first few chapters and get the box from Hassan and the cell phone from the suicidal mother, he doesn't even mention either piece of evidence to Lauren. In fact, neither are brought up at all until near the end of the game. But then, he'd have no reason to tell her, since he's the killer.
  • Early in the game, when Shelby speaks to Hassan, he has the option of mentioning Shaun's disappearance...despite the fact that Shaun had only been reported missing earlier that evening, nothing was reported in the media about it at that time, and there was no indication that Ethan ever approached Shelby for help. Because Shelby was the kidnapper.
    • Hell, there's the whole fact that after a while, it seems that every section involving Ethan, Jayden, or Madison unearths more and more about the nature of the killer, while Shelby's chapters... don't. Very odd for a private investigator and former cop to seem so ineffectual. The only time he does succeed at anything is when it's at the behest of Lauren. Because he doesn't need to unearth anything, he knows he's the killer and is just trying to cover his tracks—in other words, the opposite of what everyone else is doing.
      • Ethan's, Norman's, and Madison's chapters see them repeatedly crossing each other's paths and aiding each other, and the courses of their respective investigations gradually converge on the same key facts, locations, witnesses, and ultimately the same target. Scott's chapters are almost completely disconnected because he is the target the other three player characters are after, and his chapters are about tying up his loose ends.
    • While the face-to-face scene with Kramer was really awesome, there's still a massive pang that makes you feel like this is really out of character. Scott Shelby seemed like such a nice guy up until that point. How could he have murdered fifteen people without breaking a sweat...? He's a child-murderer.
  • The Origami killer's actions through the game as Scott Shelby make a little more sense viewed through the lens of an Oedipus Complex. We have a man whose brother drowned because of a drunken father refusing to save him. This causes his mother to lose custody of him, and she puts him up for adoption. So, fast forward a few dozen years later, and the Origami Killer starts drowning little boys in rainwater while putting their fathers through hell trying to save them. In addition, Shelby saves the mother of one of his victims from committing suicide, and even steals a kiss from Lauren depending on how the player plays it. So, if we accept that Shelby's victims are like his surrogate drowning brother, then we have a man who is vicariously punishing and likely killing his surrogate father and stealing a kiss from one of his surrogate mothers. So....yeah...
  • Probably one of the biggest giveaways you realize once you complete the game; Shelby says he's a private investigator looking for the Origami killer, but he never once actually tries to make contact with Ethan, the father of the current victim. Becomes even more noticeable when Ethan becomes one of the prime suspects later in the game.
  • The death of John Sheppard. As pointed out in other places, if he had simply fallen into the hole, he would have been swept away, so he would have needed to climb into the hole to get stuck the way he did. This is pretty stupid, but remember that immediately before this the kid was running around a construction site, recklessly doing a ton of things that could have gotten him killed or injured, and not really giving it a second thought. Being Too Dumb to Live might have actually been intended characterization.
    • In a weird way it gives John a parallel to Jason, too. If Too Dumb to Live had an official T-shirt, Jason's face would be on it. Not to mention it gives Shelby and Ethan a connection, since both of them tried to save their respective loved ones from terminal stupid and failed.
    • Hey, why does Ethan leap to the conclusion that he's the Origami Killer even though that's obviously impossible? Because he doesn't think about stuff, he just goes wherever his head takes him when it wanders off. Apparently, Jason got it from his dad.
  • The ending Case Closed, while still bitter sweet, is actually much more sweet/less bitter than most people realize. Remember in Jayden's Blues where his hallucinations of the forest scene completely overwrote the reality of his hotel room without the glasses on. In Case Closed however after he takes the glasses off the tanks are only a few small details and they are insubstantial and see through, clearly not real. They're actually a sign that while Jayden is still having problems after using ARI, they're getting less severe than they used to be.
  • This is something that won't be apparent to everyone while playing. The identity of the origami killer can be discerned by simply looking at the box art for the game and realizing who the only main character to be standing in the far back in shadow with a weapon is.
  • Note the name of Norman's drug of choice: "Triptocaine," or "Tripto," can also be read as "trip to." The first time you get a choice to use it, the interface actually says "Take a Tripto" (i.e., "take a trip to"). This for a character who is also (and maybe more seriously) addicted to virtual worlds he keeps taking trips to.
Fridge Horror
  • If you have Ethan follow the OK's instructions during the Shark trial, imagine Sarah and little Cindy coming home from school, wondering why the house is such a mess and why daddy doesn't seem to be in, before going to their room to play.
  • In "The Doc" chapter, if you have Madison do the smart thing and leave the house after she gets her clue, then Adrian Baker will still be around to continue murdering people horrifically in his basement.
  • At a few points in the game the player can let Scott Shelby drink (such as at the bar during the party level) and its been shown that he keeps a bottle of booze in his desk drawer. The implications of this is that he is at least a moderate drinker. Guess it's something he picked up from his father.
  • Two out of Three of the victim's families you meet during the game are single mothers whose husbands mysteriously disappeared not long after their sons. During one of the trials, Ethan can find the corpse of a father who previously attempted the trial. No doubt these "missing fathers" died during their own trials.
  • The origami figures seen in the Helpless ending can come from three places, all of which are horrifying in their own way:
    • Ethan made them himself, meaning he’s either consumed with guilt and madness and only has one way to express it or he’s snapped and genuinely believes he’s the origami killer himself.
    • The families of Scott’s victims sent them to him as a twisted form of revenge. After all, almost all of them kept the box that included the original origami figures Scott made.
    • Scott used the massive amount of origami figures he still had left over, as well as the ones he collected during his “investigation”, and sent them to Ethan to rub it in his face.
  • If Lauren survives, she had just learned the Knight in Sour Armour private eye who she trusted and had fallen for, probably the first person she let herself care about since she lost her family, was the Serial Killer who murdered her baby boy. Even spitting on his gravestone or putting a bullet in his deranged mind wouldn't cure that heartbreak, putting aside the fact that she's still a struggling prostitute.
    • In the second scenario, she had just murdered a man in an open street with cars nearby. What's to say that after shooting Scott, she didn't turn the gun on herself?

Fridge Logic

  • All of the Origami killer's victims are killed via drowning, via a method of putting them in drainage pipes and other prisons that fill up with water after a couple days of rainfall. Shaun is also almost drowned by this method, and lasts about three to four days before this happens. In real life, though, he would probably have died of hypothermia long before then. Him and the other victims lasting almost four days before drowning also assumes that none of these ten-year-old children passed out from exhaustion.
  • Ethan's trials are all very chilling and reminiscent of Saw, yes, including the trial that requires Ethan crawl through miles of ventilation filled with broken glass. The Fridge Logic kicks in though when you try to figure out how the Origami Killer was able to set some of this stuff up in the first place. Heavyweight Scott Shelby could never have fit into those vents, let alone meticulously covering them in broken glass, and he sure couldn't pay all of those warehouse bills on a retired policeman's salary.

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