Fridge / Milo Murphy's Law

Fridge Brilliance

General

• The bad luck in the Murphy family seems to only affect the male members of the family, as it may work like a heriditary disease. It's been proven that women are less susceptible to these.
• People complain that "Weird Al" Yankovic's voice sticks out when voicing Milo. However, Milo's character is built around having bad luck. It could be possible that this bad luck could be the reason he has such an awkward adult voice as a child.
  • Additionally, in the first episode, Milo remarks that he doesn't scream because he "finds it doesn't help" and it "only hurts the larynx". It's possible he screamed so much in the past it took a toll on his voice.
• The theme song begins with Milo walking out a door, while the end of Dan and Swampy's previous show shows Phineas closing the door. As the old saying goes "When one door closes, another door opens."
• Milo's age is thirteen.
• Milo's curse coming from "Probability ions" may seem like simple technobabble, but looking at quantum physics, the idea of a special type of particle that influences probability becomes a lot less far-fetched.
• Murphy's Law, which the show pretty much revolves around, is that "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong". But this technically isn't true for Milo and friends - a lot goes wrong, but it all works out in the end. For example, in the pilot episode, Milo and Zack still make it to school on time, when they easily could have just encountered hostile aliens instead of the understanding ones they did, and boom, that'd be the end of that. In "Undergrounders", Milo mentions being confident that everything will work out, because it has so far (something even Melissa seems a bit doubtful of). The show is Milo Murphy's Law - he has his own law, related to his ancestor but with his own optimistic attitude. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, but it'll all work out in the end (if you're prepared)!
  • "Rooting for the Enemy" supports this; Milo is able to use his luck to make things go in favor of his school's team by cheering for their opponents. If he actually lived under the real Murphy's Law, this would have backfired.
  • Also another thing. Edward Murphy's curse appears to have an additional characteristic. He will NOT be permanently harmed. Which actually makes even more sense. He has to, someday, be able to pass on the curse!
  • Alternatively—if anything that can go wrong will go wrong, than anything that can't go wrong won't go wrong. Everything works out in the end because, at a certain point, it becomes impossible for things to get any worse.
• Milo's dad is a power plant safety inspector. Ironic at first, but Brilliance sets in when you realize he has Murphy's Law too—any other job would be really hard for Martin to hold down with things constantly going wrong around him. A constant stream of disasters anywhere else is pretty much instant termination, but for a safety inspector it's job security. After all, if anything that can go wrong, will, it pays to be the one identifying problems to fix.
• Shared Continuity Fridge Brilliance. We have confirmation that Milo Murphy's Law is set in Danville (as evidenced by Vinnie Dakota's map in "Worked Day"). So, how many times has his bubble of bad luck prevented a certain mad scientist from achieving victory? How often have disappearing backyard inventions caused Milo injury or inconvenience? For all we know, he may have had encounters with dancing animation studios, Ferris Wheels that roll around free of support, people being ejected from a Mix-and-Mingler, strange green beams from the D.E.I. building downtown, random explosions in the vicinity of local pharmacists seen having confrontations with animals wearing fedoras. Any and all of these things and more could have caused Milo to experience heightened levels of bad luck, or have been caused by his bad luck in the vicinity.
  • I can tell you one thing for sure. That giant ball of aluminum foil had Milo's name on it.
  • And now we know as of the episode "Milo's Lard" that the Roller Coaster from the first episode crash landed in Melissa's back yard.
• Dakota's been confirmed as Brilliant, but Lazy, since he revealed to Cavendish that he only joined the Bureau to stop the Mississippi Purchase. Cavendish doesn't even know that the Mississippi Purchase existed, which means Dakora did his job well. He's doing pistachios because he's in And Then What? mode.
• Milo's loafers. Wearing laceless shoes is the only way he can avoid tripping on his shoelaces. (This observation is later confirmed in "The Island of Lost Dakotas".)
• The entire premise of the show seems to be Dan and Swampy taking an old, cynical statement as literal truth. That being, "Murphy was an optimist."
• When you think about it, it makes perfect sense that someone like Elliot would work in Milo's town. Elliot is obsessed with safety. Any other person in his position would probably have transferred somewhere else a long time ago, but Elliot's obsessiveness means that he can't help but try and take on to the massive challenge to public safety that is Murphy's Law.

Season 1

Going the Extra Milo

• Melissa stopping the rest of her class from shouting out their bets until she can get her notebook to write them all down at first just seems like a trait of the typical High-School Hustler but when we find out about her Forgetful Jones tendencies, this takes on a whole new meaning, namely that she wouldn't have been able to keep track of what she was owed/would owe if she lost without writing it down.
• Although it's Milo who realizes that the aliens who abducted him and Zack might not understand that they're inconveniencing them and hits on the idea of explaining the situation, Zack is the one who actually negotiates with their abductors. This is a smart tactic; Milo's bad luck might have caused the aliens to be less charitable if he had spoken with them.
• After the bungee cord breaks, Milo says it was clearly defective. Now, one might think he's trying to play down his bad luck. Except that doesn't jive with the rest of Milo's established personality. But then you have to consider how Murphy's Law works. "If something can go wrong, it will." Of course it was a defective bungee. Murphy's Law wouldn't suddenly weaken the rubber of the bungee. But it would manipulate events so that Milo wound up using a bungee that actually was defective. If there had been a thousand bungees and only one was defective, you could count on Milo to end up with the defective one.
• Milo's thrilled about the fact that the betting pool of items from people's lunches which Melissa won for him and Zack includes Bradley's Vitamin C tablets, echoing Bradley himself by mentioning that it's "cold and flu season." This may be a Strange Minds Think Alike gag, but it's also very characteristic (and completely understandable, since we can infer that Murphy's Law makes him more likely to catch any illness going around).

Rooting for the Enemy

• The "Sounds of Disaster" CD seems a tiny bit out of character until you realize that the sounds of disaster would basically be ambient noise for Milo, like rain or singing birds would be for other people... meaning it's basically his version of those "relaxing nature sounds" CDs.
• Regarding the "weaponizing" of Murphy's Law and the morality of such: Murphy's Law states "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." It doesn't state "Anything that can go wrong for Milo Murphy, will go wrong." Others are affected by Milo (and his male relatives) due to proximity, not familiarity or intent. Like, if only his friends were affected, Eliot, Bradley, and Mr. Chase would be safe, but they're not. Even when he's an actual competitor (say, in the Acadecamathalon), Murphy's Law doesn't conspire to specifically make Milo lose. Therefore, everyone at the football game is already affected by Murphy's Law: both teams, all fans, vendors, equipment, etc. It doesn't matter who he's rooting for. He was already negatively affecting the Tigers just by being there. The Tigers' early lead was based on their clear advantages (being teens/adults against children, being better funded, the Geckos' crushed morale from the "pep" rally). Once Murphy's Law started building up the calamities, the Tigers gain a disadvantage, whereas the Geckos are already used to dealing with Murphy's Law, so they're more able to take things in stride. From there, it's mental. As they realize they actually have a shot of winning this game, they start actually trying, and the Tigers probably aren't used to actual competition.

Sunny Side Up

• Milo has a group photo of firefighters in his room. Considering Milo is a Walking Disaster Area, he and those firefighters are very familiar with each other for obvious reasons.
  • Milo's relationship with firefighters is even more pronounced in "Worked Day" where Melissa's dad assumed that the accident he is dealing with is caused by Milo.
• Milo putting an egg in his pocket in is random and has no context or reasoning at the time besides setting up for a later (somewhat predictable) Chekhov's Gun. But this is Milo. He probably realized at some point that having an egg on him, alongside all the other stuff he has, would be important, and pocketed it while they were at a point where they had many spare eggs.
• Why did they have Milo be the one to drop the egg each time (occasionally with Zack's help)? Him being a Walking Disaster Area should spell doom for any egg dropping device he touches... which is the point. They want to make sure of their egg holder's toughness, and know that Milo will be in the vicinity for the real drop, so they put him as close to the egg holder as possible to find one that counteracts his own bad luck.
• Of course Milo's dad has just as much bad luck as his son. For Milo to be a descendant of Edward Murphy, one of his parents must also be a descendant - apparently his dad, in this case.
• The final test really shows how thorough the protagonists' testing was, considering, among other things, the chain of events that the egg survived included an explosion with an eggs-tremely large mushroom cloud.
• Why is Melissa angry when her friends used egg puns? Perhaps it's because she once tried using it on Bradley but failed.
  Bradley: You know, eggs can be rather fragile.
  Melissa: Bring it on. I eat eggs for breakfast!
  Bradley: Yeah, so do all of us.

Doctor Zone Files

• Sara's hair decs is a Four-Leaf Clover.
• A small one: in the flashback where Milo and Sara eat ice cream, Murphy's Law causes Sara's scoop to drop off its cone. Milo's ice cream, which he promptly shares with her, is in a cup, presumably to avoid exactly this kind of thing.

Smooth Opera-tor

• Milo's crush on Amanda makes sense seeing how she's The Perfectionist. He probably finds her potential to bring order to his chaotic life attractive. And on the flip side, Milo can bring some much needed chaos to her life full of schedules.

Worked Day

• Milo is normally okay with all the disasters in his life, even cheerful about it. When Melissa's dad asks him - twice - if he was at the fish hatchery that day (said fish hatchery was on fire), Milo gets visibly annoyed; a first for him. Considering his reputation, this is probably far from the first time he's been accused of causing something he didn't. Even Milo's got to have his limits.

Murphy's Lard

• Milo asks why Melissa was making a science project on the first day of summer. There was a science fair in Danville during that summer.
• Milo having a fear of Chinese finger traps seems random, until you realize that if his hand is stuck, he can't reach into his backpack for a potentially life-saving bit of equipment during a disaster.
• This line in light of "The Island of Lost Dakotas":
  Dakota: If you're still alive, can we go home now?

Secrets and Pies

• Melissa's missing teeth weren't the result of Murphy's Law, because Milo had no idea about the incident until Melissa pulled out her dentures. This may be why she's so willing to hang with Milo. She's seen that even without him, everyday life can still throw you a curve ball (or a pop fly in her case) so you might as well hang with the guy who's prepared to handle it.
  • "Murphy's Lard" inarguably shows this better, with another Milo free incident. A rollercoaster falls on her science project on the first day of summer.

Backward to School Night

• Dakota is extremely casual about Cavendish nearly being hit by a car. In light of "The Island of Lost Dakotas", this is likely because (unknown to Cavendish) Dakota is accustomed to saving Cavendish's life at this point. It may even represent yet another instance where Dakota went back in time to avert Cavendish's death, simply not shown to the audience.

Love Toboggan

• Toboggan of Love makes sense in two ways:
  • The melody is actually from Phineas and Ferb. Both are about finding love in unexpected places, whether it be on a boat or on a toboggan.
  • Toboggan of Love is a parody of Boat of Romance. Milo was the one singing the song. Put these together and you get an extremely clever and subtle case of Actor Allusion.

Penchant to Sleepwalk

• I was a little confused as to why Cavendish and Dakota believe they need to wipe out the the Pistachios to prevent the Pistachions coming into existence when it was the unique fusion of a pistachio plant and the sentient blob from the Substitute, but then I realized, they don't know that, they just assume it was a quirk of evolution, meaning unless the entire species is extinct, there is a risk that they could evolve into Pistachions.

Fungus Among Us

• The same actor has been playing Doctor Zone for fifty years without visibly aging. This makes sense once you realize that while the original actor/creator of Doctor Zone was time-traveling with Milo, Vinnie, and Cavendish, he was replaced by a pistachion, made evident by the gift-box on his hand, which serves to hide his exposed pistachion limb. Fifty years is probably nothing for a plant-based organism.
  • ...Yeah, umm... about that... As revealed in the crossover, Derek, the Pistachion that disguised himself as Dr. Zone, turned out to be terrible at managing the show, resulting into it being cancelled after two episodes, meaning that no one remembers it anymore, including Zack and Melissa, who were introduced to it in an earlier episode. Looking at Sara's T-shirt in both "The Phineas and Ferb Effect" and "Fungus Among Us", you'll notice that the Time Ape image is also missing, only reappearing when Derek has been defeated in 1955. This means that Derek could've never held the series going for fifty years and that Orton has to instead, meaning that this theory above is Jossed, and we're right back at Fridge Logic again (unless Orton decided to use Derek's rubber mask for the show).

Season 2

Cake 'Splosion!

• At first, one would find it odd that Amanda freaks out upon realizing she has to to team up with local disaster magnet Milo, despite her learning in "School Dance" that Milo can still fix things in spite of Murphy's Law. One would also find it weird that she would shush Milo when he dares to even speak of Murphy's Law, when in previous episodes, she was fine hearing the term. Then, you realize she has to team up with Milo on her absolute favorite TV show since she was a little child. Being a perfectionist that has to compete in front of her idol, it makes sense she would be even more more anxious than before with Murphy's Law around. Even when she doesn't really care about winning, Amanda would probably at the very least want to bake something decent as the biggest fan of Cake 'Splosion and Basil Bravo, instead of Murphy's Law mucking up everything for her in spectacular ways.

First Impressions

• This episode, showcasing how Milo and Melissa became friends and how Dakota and Cavendish became partners, sends the message that a bad first impression isn't final, and that people can still become friends later down the line (essentially, don't judge a book by its cover). However, this episodes highlights a recurring theme, as Milo also had bad first impressions with Zack, Amanda and Cavendish, who all have actually become close friends with him as the show progresses.

Fridge Horror

General

• Milo's mere presence, even at a distance, can cause car crashes. And the intro sequence shows the town basically collapsing around him. Has he ever indirectly killed anyone?
• The Bureau of Time Travel has the purpose of preventing disasters on the scale of World War III (and others), with the extinction of a plant being considered the lowest possible job. What would happen if they found out that a good portion of the disasters they were trying to prevent were probably at least partly the fault of the Murphy lineage? They could literally make Milo's whole line of descent never have existed. And unlike the incident where Phineas and Ferb had major characters wiped from existence, there likely wouldn't be anyone in a position to prevent this. And even if they don't wipe out the family line, they're still probably going to make sure that Milo and Martin never interfere with events ever again; this spells some horrible thoughts.
• Where was the Bureau when Candace's future self accidentally caused the Bad Future in Phineas and Ferb? Did her actions cause them to never exist? Doofenshmirtz wouldn't want to correct that anomaly.
• It's been confirmed that the reason why Cavendish and Dakota have the pistachio mission is because Cavendish has messed up more than one serious mission, with Nightmare Fuel results. The horror is the implication that he doesn't even remember due to the other agents regularly having a Reset Button on hand. There is no opportunity for Cavendish to learn from his mistakes and improve; he is stuck with pistachios, possible forever.

Season 1

Going the Extra Milo

• As Zack points out, it's a miracle that Milo has survived as long as he has.
• Imagine how much a Stepford Smiler Milo would be if he weren't The Pollyanna. His lines include saying "sticks and stones can damage your vital organs, so always wear body armor" and "what doesn't kill you only makes you late for school" while smiling.

Rooting for the Enemy

• This episode raises two things. One is that Milo can cause bad luck to happen to someone by cheering them on and another is that Milo might be able to abuse his bad luck in some cases. Essentially this means he can use Murphy's Law to his advantage.
  • While it's less he can use Murphy's Law to his advantage (since, as is pointed out under Fridge Brilliance, you can't) and more he can just put his bad luck to good use, the fact that he can use his awful luck to his advantage is a tad unsettling. Fortunately Milo is a nice guy, but still.
• Melissa considers being abducted by an orangutan (which is quite capable of severely injuring or even killing her if it got angry enough) safer than going bowling with Milo. The implications are...unsettling.
  • Being abducted by an Orangutan has its own problems. Sumatran and Borneo folklore says that Orangutans are sexually attracted to human woman. This isn't scientifically true, but then again neither is half the stuff in this universe.
    • Think about both of those at the same time.

Murphy's Lard

• The setting for this episode, Lard World, is a theme park absolutely swimming in rendered pig fat. There's enough of it to run a submarine ride, and that's just one of the attractions that uses lard instead of water. Assuming it isn't some kind of substitute, how many pigs have died to keep this place running?
  • And what must it smell like?

Secrets and Pies

• Milo only had one babysitter that was Crazy-Prepared to handle his bad luck. What happened to the rest, and how much horrors ensued?

Battle of the Bands

• As at least one fanfic has pointed out, Max's interactions with Zack come off as very Gaslighting. Who's to say that Max wasn't manipulating Zack the entire time they both were in the band and Max's hold over Zack is still strong enough, despite time and distance, that Zack's memories of what happened are completely wrong?

The Llama Incident

• Milo and Melissa were worried that the llamas will tear her apart when she ends up trapped in pistachio gelatin.
• Melissa also could have easily smothered within that pistachio gelatin. It's a miracle she was able to outrun a llama stampede.

Backwards to School Night

• A stray beam from an aging device hit a skeleton inside the science classroom, bringing him back to life with all flesh intact as a regular human. Theoretically, they could reverse the effects and kill someone with the device. That deaging device needs to be locked up somewhere secure.
• It's really lucky that the worst thing Little Dakota ate was birdseed, he easily could've gotten into the toxic science chemicals.
  • Also a stroke of good luck is how nothing bad happened to (the notoriously accident-prone) Cavendish while Dakota was a toddler—if something had happened to Cavendish like it has "hundreds of times" in the past...
  • ...Dakota would be stranded in a time at least a century before he was even born, as a toddler with no memories or survival skills.
  • ...the kids' parents, without the fixed time device, would have stayed toddlers. Their former spouses and children would have had to raise them, to say nothing of the important jobs they each left behind.
    • We never see Zack's dad or Melissa's mom. If Zack and Melissa really are from single-parent households, it's entirely likely there would be no adults left to take care of things if the time device remained broken.
    • Zack's dad shows up in a later episode, so he'd be okay at least. On the other hand, Melissa's mom is implicitly out of the picture (since her dad had to sign her up for a volunteer program in order to get her a female role model).

A Christmas Peril

• Milo's cousin Nate is in complete denial about suffering from Murphy's Law like the rest of the males in his family. Refusing to accept that he is affected by it means he wouldn't prepare for possible disasters like Milo. And as we've seen, even all of Milo's preparations don't prevent him from suffering serious injuries every so often. What kind of injuries will Nate suffer (or already has suffered), simply because he won't admit to having the family condition?

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