General reminder: All spoilers are unmarked on Fridge pages. You have been warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- Track 3 introduces security drones, and Chai learns how to parry attacks. Zanzo reveals that the drones were Korsica's design. Come Track 7, and you have to defeat Korsica herself using nothing BUT parries (and dodges).
- Sometime in Track 4, Zanzo appears and says 'Go! Go! Go!' and the 'menacing' visual sound effect like in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. 'Go' is actually how you pronounce the menacing character.
- Chai was using a sling in the beginning of the game, what happened to it? It became his signature red scarf.
- Almost every character is named after a food or drink of some sort, and the name choices can be pretty fitting once you think about it:
- The bombastic, fiery Rekka is named after a style of ramen that uses extra chili powder for a spicy kick. It also conveniently sounds like Wrecker.
- Zanzo, the walking JoJo reference, is most likely named after Sanzo, a brand of Asian-inspired sparkling water.
- Korsica's name is derived from Corsican pear spice tea, foreshadowing her Heel–Face Turn, since Chai is also named after a type of tea.
- Macaron is named after a sweet French confectionary. And there are recipes that include the use of 'CNMN'.
- Macaron is also a popular tea flavor, fitting his status as both a loyal Vandelay employee as well as a member of La Résistance.
- Mimosa, the vain, classy head of Marketing, is named after a high-class cocktail of the same name.
- Kale is named after kale cabbage. It's considered a superfood, loaded with nutritional value, but bitter and unpalatable, particularly if it's ornamental kale, made for appearances but not eating. Further, kale cabbage is a green plant. You know what's also a green plant? Peppermint.
- The fact that Peppermint, who has the most personal deal with Kale out of anyone, is one of the most useful allies to use against Kale in his final phase. Her attacks do damage, regardless of the distance and whether or not the target has been stunned. In fact, you can cheese the entire phase fight, by exclusively using Peppermint.
- To further Korsica's parallels with Chai, her clothing is nearly a full inversion of Chai's. While Chai wears a yellow shirt with a red scarf to act as contrast, Korsica wears a red long coat with yellow inner lining that gets shortened to the general length of Chai's shirt after Kale's attempt on her life. While Chai wears jeans, Korsica wears shorts. Chai's right arm is robotic, while Korsica gets arm augmentations primarily on her left.
- When inspecting the Roxanne and Kale statue, Chai will comment on his hair above anything else. Much later on the Vandelay Museum, Mimosa takes time during her speech to praise Kale's hair in a very similar manner, implying that Chai only had that opinion in the first place because of her propaganda.
- The Vandelay bosses are all enhanced, while Team Defect all have prosthetics replacing body parts. They're also "defective" in one way or another in Vandelay's eyes. Korsica has neither, because she doesn't fit in with either. Right up until the exact scene where she joins the good guys.
- And why does she need cybernetics? Because Kale literally and figuratively breaks her heart by firing (at) her. He even says he should've used actual fire. Oh, and he explicitly says she doesn't fit his standards.
- This doesn't only apply to the human cast. 808 was basically made by Peppermint, not just for spying, but companionship, making her quite literally a therapy animal. CNMN is straight-up a psych robot that Macaron made to deal with his insecurities and anxieties.
- There's a rather sneaky one in the game's banner, which shows the defects in a team-pose going up against a bunch of robots. Just to the side of them is a billboard full of intimidating robots and Korsica seemingly glaring at the party. Except her ponytail is sticking out of the screen, once you consider her Heel–Face Turn it looks more like a clever way to include her with the team without spoiling anything.
- Korsica stands out from the other bosses in more ways than one - she's the only boss who doesn't have a licensed track.
- It seems weird that Korsica, as head of Security and having enough knowledge of cybersecurity to both hack her way into Spectra files and counter-hack Peppermint out of mirroring her screen, would pick a password as comically insecure as PASSWORD. Keep in mind, though, that the only time this password is seen entered is at the very end of the game, long after Korsica has changed sides. It's also been established by that point that Korsica expects her department to be constantly changing passwords (and likely followed that herself), and that without her the department is too incompetent to even remove her from the security alerts mailing list, let alone do anything resembling actual cybersecurity. It's entirely possible she deliberately set that password to be PASSWORD at some point between her defection and actually needing to shut Spectra down so it'd be incredibly easy for Peppermint to remember and enter.
Fridge Horror
- When Chai is made out to be a defect in Project Armstrong, he deemed to be disposed of, despite the fact that he he's a human being (it's apparently in the fine print). It isn't clear if Project Armstrong was put on hold after Chai, so its entirely possible that others after Chai had gone through the project, been deemed defective, and killed. Also, considering how Rekka cares about her record and has a machine to kill defects, it's very possible she and her departments HAVE killed human defects and then erased them from the company's history. And Kale approving of such methods only makes it even more possible.
- Both QA-1MIL and Rekka were destroyed/killed by Chai, so it's possible that department is no longer functioning.
- Since Chai's unemployed, it's more than likely that he was living with a friend or family member before joining Project Armstrong. If he had been disposed of, would Vandelay have informed them? Or would they leave them in the dark, never knowing what really happened to him?
- Right before the QA-1MIL boss fight in the first level, you can see some scrolling text which has the day's statistics of how many defects had been disposed of that day. Methods include: exploded, eaten, banished to the void, etc, meaning that yes, human defects would have 100% been killed. In fact, QA-1MIL's opening line is about how it enjoys the taste of defects, it's literal.
- The fact that Chai and friends have killed half of the Vandelay Executives. It's possible that Zanzo (as he was not directly a boss fight and was merely knocked in the face aside by Chai) and Roquefort (who was just crushed by gold coins) survived, but every other boss Mimosa, Rekka, and Kale all perished in their respective explosions.
- What makes this worse is that none of the characters are fazed by this. They show no emotional turmoil or reflection over killing people and effectively being murderers. Not even Roxanne has any negative reaction to the heroes killing her son.
- Which likely implies that — even with the exploding — all of the executives are either still alive or within Vandelay's capabilities to revive. Remember, this is a future with Full-Conversion Cyborg tech. For all we know, Roxanne can easily rebuild all of their bodies from scratch so long as their brains are still intact. Which might very well invoke Body Horror, but that's neither here nor there.
- When Kale uses SPECTRA to mind control Chai, he stops the music player in Chai's chest. Depending if you buy in to the idea that the music player is connected to Chai's heart (bes, it means that Kale had turned Chai into a literal zombie for a moment.
- When Chai is thrown aside, his eyes don't close, it makes him look quite dead. The fact that his eyes only flutter when his music player beats seems to seal this.
- Worse yet, we know from Peppermint's demonstration that people controlled by SPECTRA know what they just did under mind control. Either being forced to attack his friends, convince other disabled people into joining the project, or being left to slowly die of a heart attack, Chai would've been fully aware of what's happening.
- Realizing that Roxanne Vandelay has been under SPECTRA's control ever since Kale took over the company, which was years. And that Kale is ruthless enough to brainwash his mother and that she would have been completely aware of it too. Maybe there's a reason why she doesn't feel too bad about his apparent death.
- A Vlog reveals that ground buttons are all sentient and have feelings, even being able to get depression. How many other mundane things are sentient on Vandelay Campus?
- Roquefort is buried when 3rd quarter earnings are deposited right unto him. Considering the fact that LU-C1LLE drops a sassy comment right afterwards, along with Kale's bust on top of the pile, and her earlier words that she hates the current management and puts a silent rebellion to them, it sounds plausible that she picked this moment deliberately. Basically, a much put upon secretary outright murdered (or at least sincerely tried to) her boss through a loophole in her duties. Talk about a toxic corporate culture...
- Kale's Thanatos Gambit in the postgame involved test chambers that could only be decoded with Chai's abilities and Peppermint's knowledge, making sure they would be locked in the SPECTRA room with only seconds to realize their mistake before it was activated (had he not left enough wiring around for a SCR-UB unit to get tangled up in). For all of Kale's laziness in getting things done, he's terrifyingly quick in having a backup plan whose sole purpose was to control or kill Chai as fast as possible.
Fridge Sadness
- It's been confirmed by Word of God that Chai did not have full function of his arm prior to the start of the game. For one reason or another, he was disabled and that very thing is likely why he wanted his arm replaced by Project Armstrong in the first place. Being unemployed, he probably didn't have the funds to get a prosthetic or get treatment. Project Armstrong was free, and was basically Chai's last resort to reach his dream...and then the whole thing turns out to be a ruse to install SPECTRA and override people's free will all so Kale wouldn't have to work as hard.
- Look at one of the first scenes of the game when Chai is waking up from surgery. As he gets up from being thrown, watch his robotic arm: he holds it folded and close to his body, as if it was in a sling. The fact that his new prosthetic instinctively takes that pose (and that his sling was even customized to begin with) shows that his arm has probably been like that for a long time.
- Calling Chai a "defect" has a double meaning. Not only is he defective in the eyes of Vandelay, but disabled people are often unfairly seen as "incomplete" or "defective" by society in general. No wonder he seems pretty upset at being called that.
Chai: My name is Chai, not 'defect'.- The moment where Peppermint questions Chai on whether or not he could play an instrument is Harsher in Hindsight when you take into account that it's not because he's a slacker (perhaps partially), but he literally could not play a guitar. The fact that Chai seems to have a great understanding of both music and rhythm theory (and the books in the hideouts implies he still studies) suggests he at might have at least tried before his physically disability stopped him.
- In the second final track, Kale's belittlement of Chai, calling Chai "useless" without "his tech" (Project Armstrong) feels so much worse. Chai genuinely sounds upset and if you take into consideration his personal history (a physically disabled, unemployed college drop out who's unable to achieve his dream thanks to factors out of his control) it's no wonder he's so upset.
- In a bit of a mix of heartwarming and sadness, Chai is unusually serious and understanding when Peppermint brings up her leg in a conversation in the hideout. After all, he knows all too well how it feels to be unable to use a limb...
