Henry Stickmin Series / Fridge

Fridge pages are for post-viewing discussion of belated realizations, so all spoilers below are unmarked!

Fridge Brilliance

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Fridge Horror

In Airship, if you choose to steal the ruby, the Toppat Clan and the Government eventually face off in the desert. However, the Center for Chaos Containment tries to solve the situation by putting one of 4 discs into a machine. All but one kills Henry, and sometimes it destroys the world too. This would be less terrifying if the guard wasn't INSERTING DISCS AT RANDOM, which means that the people in charge of the deadliest weapons in the world don't know what they are or what they do. Also compounded by the fact that the Government didn't know what was there, implying that a random company has more advanced tech than the Government.
In Fleeing the Complex, Henry tries disguising himself as a snowman to sneak past some guards, only for one to shout "Frosty's escaping!" before they shoot him down. Sounds funny at first, until you remember it's a prison for the most notorious criminals in the world, which would include serial killers. Unlike other times where they were fooled by him hiding under a cardboard box, or didn't think anything of a dinghy taking off at random, the guards instantly recognize the danger and shoot him down. Who before Henry used a snowman as a disguise, to the point where it became his moniker?
In the "Presumed Dead" route, Henry can go to a random building, only to be greeted by Freddy Fazbear, who presumably kills Henry. In the Convict Allies route, Henry accidentally releases all the convicts, causing a Prison Riot. There is a slight probability that some convicts entered Freddy's building and got killed by him.
The "Triple Threat" ending has the Toppat rocket sent to the Wall, thus dooming them to life in prison. Except, er: the Wall just suffered a mass breakout which resulted in a massive amount of damage and casualties, and Henry just sent a station filled with experienced criminals into the dead center with access to their weaponry. Best case scenario has them still being arrested even with the damage done to the Wall. Worst case scenario has the Toppats take over and making the complex into their new base with a bunch of new recruits while Dmitri is forced to work with them to go after Henry and his allies.
In the Thief/Allies path of Mission, both The Wall and Henry's Government don't recognize each other, even with The Wall knowing who the Toppat Clan is. The Wall refers to the latter as, "some other government," whereas Henry's Government doesn't even know about The Wall, referring to them as, "Toppat reinforcements". Even Reginald doesn't know about The Wall in The Betrayed path of "Complex" until Henry tells him, and the only ones who seem to be aware of The Wall's existence are Charles, saying that he thinks he's heard the name before, Smith, who works as a double agent for The Wall and the Toppat Clan, and Wallace Pemberton, who is an undercover agent allied with the Toppats. Makes The Wall come across as a very shady penitentiary, which only begs the question, how has The Wall gone undetected by different governments of not only the Earth, but also the entire universe (if Gus Garno being implied to have been a podracer is anything to be believed), for this long to apprehend notorious criminals?
- On the other hand, The Wall is located somewhere on the coast of Canada, while the Toppat base is in a jungle setting. Even assuming the Government did know about the Wall, and even assuming they knew that the Wall had a certain level of militia-like forces, the Government would probably not be expecting to see forces affiliated with the Wall that far away from the complex, and so it would be easy to not recognize them on sight.
In Thief/Ghost route of Mission, it's revealed that the Toppat Space Station has a Kill Sat called Supreme Dominance. Given that the idea of the space station is to simply have a secure base while being able to steal anything beyond the reach of Earth's governments, why do the Toppat Clan need such a ridiculous weapon in the first place? In the routes where they already have the station up in orbit, could they have possibly used the laser before Henry showed up? If so, on whom?
- Possibly for the sake of leverage. One of the reasons the station was even sent into orbit was to be able to launch raids all over the planet; the Supreme Dominance likely serves as a "Loaded Gun" to ensure that, should Toppat Clan members get arrested and imprisoned, those in orbit can threaten the Government to release them, giving the Toppat Clan pretty much legal immunity for their crimes (unless they are killed in action during one of their raids).
  - This is confirmed by PuffballsUnited's developer commentary stream; Supreme Dominance was used to hold the world hostage, so that no government can stop them. This implies that the Toppats would obliterate anything that gets in their path if they wanted to. Not only that, they could even threaten to fire Supreme Dominance to any place on Earth unless the people there remain silent to their crimes, which basically established a terrorist rule of some sort for Earth.
- A second, though not mutually exclusive to the former, possibility would be simple defense and deterrence. In the Thief/Ghost route, when Burt Curtis tells Reginald that he picked up an object approaching the station, Reginald initially assumes the Government sent "Destroyers", which implies some sort of spaceborne fighting force. The fact that the station also posesses batteries of defense turrets that open fire on Henry as he makes his approach, even though it's supposed to be "untouchable", only reinforce that impression. The Supreme Dominance would also make one hell of a deterrent, even if the Government had a space fleet, since it would likely be more powerful than whatever the Government could throw at it, or at least make any direct attack a Pyrrhic Victory at best. Assuming, of course, the Toppat Clan doesn't just decide to turn it against Earth itself if they think they are about to go down as a last act of spiteful defiance.
Based on what Reginald says in Revenged, it can be assumed that Henry killed everybody in the Toppat Clan when the airship collided with the rocket. …Does this mean that not only did Henry kill Thomas and Geoffrey, the only two Toppat members who liked Henry as a leader more than Reginald and the Right Hand Man, but also killed Dave, who was an innocent prisoner onboard the airship?
In the Government/Rescue route, Charles mentions that there is no chance that he'll accidentally shoot Henry with the IR sniper rifle. This is of course a reference to the fail in Complex where he accidentally shoots Henry. However, since that didn't actually happen, just whom did Charles accidentally shoot to necessitate switching to the IR rifle?
- There's the chance that Charles was simply commenting on the rifle's capabilities.
In the Convict Allies ending, every cell in The Wall has been opened… but does that include the quarantine cell?
The Omega Ending confirms that every choice in the entire series (whether it's ending or failure) is canon as they exist in the multiverse. And if we consider fails as endings, there's virtually too many downer ones. Worst, if the deadliest failure (The Moon one) is considered canon, does it mean everyone in the bio has died canonically and no one survives in all timelines?! And that's enough to you ignore all the fails.
At the end of Thief/Allies, siding with the Toppat Clan has Reginald seemingly forgive Henry for stealing the ruby and making him and Ellie honorary members of the Clan. Except, Henry destroyed their airship and caused dozens of losses of their members in the firefight with the government, Right Hand Man is shown to hold grudges against Henry in other routes, and the ending screen of Toppat Recruits shows that not all of the clan members are too happy at the two becoming members. On top of this, while Reginald did forgives Henry for his actions against the clan, he goes back on his word in Executive/Ghost and Executive/Betrayed. Suddenly Henry and Ellie may be in serious real danger...
- Granted, it is also true the Right Hand Man eventually put aside his grudge against Henry despite the later almost killing him and disfiguring him in the Toppat 4 Life and Toppat King endings. Reginald might admittedly still want to keep a close eye on Henry since he did manage to steal from them but on the other hand he's also capable of recognize when someone could be a worthy addition to the clan. Plus, Ellie could be there with Henry to tell the Toppat clan he took some risks to get her out of the Complex instead of abandoning her so it's safe to assume while Henry might have betrayed the Government without a second thought, he wouldn't abandon fellow criminals and thieves like her. So there's a chance that as long as Henry keeps his part of the bargain (which is returning the ruby), Reginald is willing to keep Henry and Ellie on his files. At worst, he probably thinks it's better to keep someone that dangerous close to him just so at least the Toppat clan wouldn't be another target for him.
The Presumed Dead ending of Complex has Henry faking his death and getting the Wall off of his tail, which is great for Henry and all, but what about Ellie? The only thing she knows is the guy who was imprisoned with her died during an escape attempt, and the Warden was enraged enough hearing that a prisoner managed to break out to the point of going after them personally. And since Henry was the very first prisoner who actually managed to escape, and he seemingly died in the process, what's that going to do to the morale of the other prisoners at the Wall? On top of that, if Henry surrenders to the Warden, he's locked up in a maximum security vault, and even after he's seemingly killed, the Warden is furious that he managed to breach security. What kind of measures is he going to take with Ellie and the other prisoners to ensure an escape doesn't happen again?
- This also essentially makes every Presumed Dead ending in Mission an Esoteric Happy Ending, since Henry unknowingly made things much worse for the other prisoners still locked up at the Wall.
Another one from the "Presumed Dead" route in Complex. Upon arriving to the ledge with Henry trapped in the truck, Dmitri remarks how impressive it is that Henry was the first person to successfully escape the Wall, then proceeds to either give him the option to go back to maximum security or stay in the truck as it's pushed off. If there were previous escape attempts at the complex and they weren't as successful as Henry's, it could very well mean that the convicts before were executed immediately for it.
- That also means the only reason Dmitri didn't have Henry immediately killed on the spot and gave him the option to surrender was because he was impressed that Henry managed to get out at all. On the other hand, if Henry does surrender, he's put in a maximum security vault that's essentially solitude confinement for life. Who's to say Dmitri wasn't just keeping Henry alive to figure out how exactly he got past security?

Fridge Sadness

There are only two times in the entire series that Charles sounds even remotely panicked. One of them is during the conclusion to the Executive/Dead (Toppat 4 Life) path, where the Government's staging camp has gone into disarray due to the rampaging of Big Boy and G.A.B.E.G.G., which is entirely understandable. The other is when he's telling Henry to leave on the escape pod in the Valiant Hero path, and he calms down once the pod takes off and Henry's out of danger. From this, we can infer that one of the few things that can rattle Charles is the idea of his close friend's life being in peril. The opening cutscene confirms that Charles did hear the supposed news of Henry's death (Presumed Dead is one of the necessary endings for this path). How did he take that news? Probably not much better than Henry took the realization that Charles died on that space station. What further drives this home is how ecstatic Charles sounds at seeing Henry again at the beginning of the path, giving off the impression that he really was hurt by Henry's faked death. The fact that Charles cares so much about Henry's presumed death even though they barely know each other (they literally worked together once in Airship) may imply that Henry was the closest thing to a friend Charles had.
- The fact that Charles gave Henry the communicator in Cleaned 'em Out (there's a sticky note on it that says "from: Charles :)") implies that they did keep in touch to some degree after the events of Airship. (This is also a Government route.) So Charles definitely considered Henry more than just a temporary partner recruited out of desperation, and they likely maintained at least some sort of contact prior to the events of Complex and Mission.
As said before, "Toppat Civil Warfare" is made of endings in which Henry betrays them, resulting his main enemies. He made this to not only Ellie but also the Government (including Charles) as well before that. In other words, this comes off that "Toppat Civil Warfare" is basically an inversion of "Triple Threat". Which makes you wander: what if three of them did meet each other in the worst possible timeline?
"Valiant Hero" can also be seen as an inversion of "Triple Threat" considering the status of the three main characters in that timeline: Henry is presumed dead to the world, Charles is actually dead, and Ellie is left to rot in the Wall, with no mention of her fate whatsoever. Instead of the bright future for all three in "Triple Threat", they are all completely lost to the world with nothing but a miserable future to look forward to (In Henry and Ellie's case anyway).
Henry actually grieves Charles' death in "Valiant Hero", but how about Henry's other partner Ellie? She never dies in any of endings she appears in thankfully, but in a Freeze-Frame Bonus moment of a fail from "Triple Threat", Henry looks like he's been shocked about Ellie getting killed by a Toppat (well, before Henry also gets killed by the way) meaning Henry would probably saddened by Ellie's death, just like how he reacted in "Valiant Hero". Not mention there are fails where he survives but his (sometimes) only partner, Ellie, has been killed...

Fridge / Henry Stickmin Series

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