Fridge Brilliance
- The Fisherman killer moves very slowly, even when chasing Helen throughout the town. As he was in a car accident the previous year, it's possible he didn't fully recover and thus can't chase people all over town. Also making for a very good reason why he gets Julie onto a boat where she has limited places to run.
- While the killer cuts some of Helen's hair while she's asleep, he doesn't cut too much off both for practical and symbolic reasons.
- Practical - her sister appears to live at home, so he has her and the father to sneak around, especially if one of them heard noises from Helen's room.
- Symbolic - he doesn't want her to miss the parade, which is why he did something that could be tidied up easily.
- Helen's crown could have sealed the protagonists' fates in so many ways. After all, Ben Willis had no reason to know who ran him over, especially if he was barely conscious at night. But he would know they had the Croaker Queen pageant that day, and it wouldn't take much effort to figure out who that year's winner was. Once he knew Helen, he could figure out that her boyfriend and best friend were involved. And with his identity a secret, he could quite easily get talking to Julie's mother one day to find out more about her and when she'd be returning home.
- This also offers a good explanation why Ray doesn't receive anything until the day of the parade. His involvement would be the hardest to work out, since he was only there as Julie's boyfriend and they split up right after the accident. He probably didn't even register as part of the group until he went into hospital to see Barry or the others started talking to him on the docks.
- And why does the killer wait until a year later? Obviously it's for symbolic reasons, but Julie also hasn't been home since she left for college, Helen would have been in New York for a while, and Ray disappeared "up north" for a bit. It was only until Julie arrived home at the end of college that all four were in the one place again.
- Why is Officer Caporizo so apathetic to Helen? She has to intentionally keep the details about why there's someone after them hidden, to avoid implicating themselves for the accident. So her story is that there's a mysterious masked man trying to kill her for no apparent reason. Of course it sounds ridiculous when you put it like that.
Fridge Horror
- Right before they push the body in the river, Julie suggests checking his wallet to see who he is "just to know", and the others dismiss the idea. Had they done that, Julie would have found out much sooner that David Egan was not the man they hit.
- Ben Willis could easily have stalked the kids, except Julie obviously, without any suspicion. They don't know who he is, that he's still alive or that he has any connection to what they did.
