Fridge / No Straight Roads

As a Fridge page, all spoilers are Unmarked.

Fridge Brilliance

• The title of the game "No Straight Roads" is brilliant in itself, because it's a strong indication that contrary to the simplistic beliefs that Mayday and Tatiana hold about the situation, there are indeed no straight roads to actually fixing the situation: May's simplistic perception that she can just overthrow and replace NSR with rock ends up running into problems and leads her to be exploited by Kliff for his own agenda. Meanwhile, Tatiana's single-minded disdain of rock ends up playing a huge part in why her Mega Stars are unable to deal with the energy crisis. Likewise, Kliff's egocentric parasocial behavior towards Tatiana ends up failing to impress or move her because he refuses to recognize that she has complex feelings and beliefs that aren't going to break and bend to his own selfish desires just because he was a giant fan of hers. The only time when Bunk Bed Junction and NSR are able to make any genuine progress is by accepting the complexity of the situation and trying to figure out a more nuanced solution.
• DK West controls a giant wayang kulit shadow puppet which is frankly a bit of brilliance in regards to West himself. His shadow is made gigantic because he wants to make himself seem more imposing and powerful, but as his fights with Zuke and Mayday show, it's not anywhere near as strong as it seems to be, and cowers when it is hurt sufficiently enough, reflecting how for all of his grandstanding, West is a much weaker and more cowardly person than he wants to admit. It could also be a representation of how he is always in Zuke's shadow, and that no matter how big he makes his shadow, it's always stuck behind himself, like his own relationship with Zuke.
• Half-way through the game, Mayday ends up snapping Zuke's NSR drumsticks due to thinking they don't match with their revolution. But during the radio segment where this is brought up, Mayday does acknowledge she got carried away in her frustration and apologizes to Zuke. This hints Mayday's a person capable of recognizing her mistakes as she does in the finale with the consequences of her revolution.
• Rather funny version, bordering on a subtle Visual Gag; Mayday and Zuke both bought one outfit and wear parts of it. Mayday wears the literal pants between the two of them, which makes sense; not only is the lead guitarist of a rock band most stereotypical to be The Face of the band, but she's the active character making the decisions that lead Bunk Bed Junction down its path to war. Zuke follows her lead, so she's got the pants.
  • Another subtle Visual Gag comes from their shared pair of gloves. Zuke's glove is on his right hand, and considering he admits he follows Mayday's lead, he could be considered her right-hand man.
• During the boss fight against Eve, Zuke and Mayday are separated into different hallways. All the while, Eve is offended that Zuke would ever befriend someone so different from him. This becomes prophetic of Tatiana's viewpoint; she bitterly sees Rock as a genre doomed to create chaos and break up, like the Goolings did.
  • It's also becoming that Eve compares Mayday to "fire", since Mayday ends up a worthy successor to Tatiana, who is also the fiery (Kul) Fyra.
  • Eve claims Mayday and Zuke do not go well together because she compares them to fire and sea, which do not mix. Assuming fire includes magma, then mixing fire and sea would create Rock.
  • Eve's particular offense to Mayday is interesting considering they're actually quite similar personality-wise; both are passionate artists with fiery temperaments that can be insensitive without intending to. However, this might be WHY Mayday irks her; she's aware they're alike and yet Mayday has what Eve truly wanted, which is a strong, genuine bond with someone.
• Both West and Eve share one thing in common; namely, they ended up ruining their relationship with Zuke due to an inability to recognize how their actions hurt him. In contrast, in the above mentioned instance where Mayday snaps Zuke's drumsticks during an argument, Mayday apologizes to Zuke and doesn't deny she got carried away in the moment. This trait is perhaps the reason Mayday is Zuke's best friend.
  • Also they both put May and Zuke in separate corridors with seperate treatments.
• In the final act, the theme song for restoring each district to its Megastars is a Rock version of their boss music. Fittingly, if one isn't listening to each of them carefully, it all sounds the same. It makes a good statement that Bunk Bed Junction imposing Rock onto Vinyl City wasn't any more noble than NSR.
• Of course Zuke would freeze up during his and Mayday's video in the opening: it must've brought back memories of when he struggled to be as eccentric as Nadia, as evidenced in her video.
• Unlike Tatiana back when she was Kul Fyra, Mayday is capable of taking charge and making the team work together towards a goal. Tatiana likely noticed this and she entrusts Mayday with her guitar, believing she could accomplish where she failed as Kul Fyra.
  • This ability to take charge is hinted at during the DK West battles. Mayday, who's usually the impulsive one, ends up being the voice of reason to Zuke when his anger at his brother starts getting the better of him. In the final battle, she steps in to get the brothers to actually talk to each other when it becomes clear they won't do so on their own, getting them to finally reconcile. This greatly contrasts Tatiana's inability to mediate for the Goolings.
  • There's another aspect to this: Tatiana did learn to be an assertive leader after shedding her Kul Fyra persona. Problem is, she ended up becoming a Control Freak with a huge bias against rock. Meanwhile, Mayday admits her own mistakes and grows from them. Tatiana might have surpassed Kul Fyra as a leader, but Mayday surpassed both.
• Tatiana making use of both time and fire in her boss fight in weapons makes sense with her history regarding regarding order and chaos. Time itself is like pure order, as no one can really stop its one movement flow (save for Tatiana herself). Conversely, fire is destructive and can cause massive damage if left unchecked, like when she was Kul Fyra with the Goolings.
  • Tatiana's last name being "Qwartz" also makes sense when taking her time powers into consideration; many clocks nowadays make use of quartz crystals as a regulator to keep precise time. Again, very fitting for someone obsessed with order.
• Why does Tatiana have cracked skin and a mineral theme? Visual irony and a subtle allusion to her backstory: she is literally made of rock.
• DJ Subatomic Supernova is the game's Warm-Up Boss, and his fight introduces you to a lot of the game's mechanics. Rather fitting, considering that his collectibles reveal that he used to be a college professor before he started making music.
• At first, Bunk Bed Junction's pet alligator Ellie being able to pilot a helicopter seems like just another bit of silliness in an already-wacky game. However, it's likely a reference to a classic rock song (specifically, "Ventura Highway" by America) which includes the lyric "Alligator lizards in the air".
• The reason why Metro Division district is returned to Neon J. instead of 1010 is because Bunk Bed Junction destroyed the factory and broke the remaining 1010 androids (with the white one definitely missing a leg). No new 1010 androids have been built and the old ones probably weren't repaired yet, so the district goes to their manager instead.
• After defeating Tatiana, the altered album cover shows Mayday, Zuke, and the NSR megastars at the auditions, but with the positions reversed - Bunk Bed Junction giving the megastars negative votes instead of the other way around. This ends up as another bit of foreshadowing that Mayday and Zuke came dangerously close to becoming the new NSR.
• At the audition at the beginning of the game, the megastars reject Bunk Bed Junction in the order in which they're fought... except for Yinu, who rejects them first, even before noted Jerkass DJ Subatomic Supernova. Given NSR's biases against anything that isn't EDM and Tatiana's personal biases against rock music, as well as the fact that Yinu is a child, she may have simply been doing what Tatiana and/or the other adults told her.
• DK Wests's style may be rap (a popular genre), so why isn't he as powerful as BBJ or NSR? While he does rap, his real style is cultural arts and music, utilizing Wayang Kulit or shadow puppets and singing a chorus reminiscent of his namesake dikir barat. While still appreciated in the modern era, Vinyl City is very urban, and might not have as many fans compared to modern music like rock or EDM. And DK West primarily utilizes some form of shadow magic, being hurt and hurting only other shadows, meaning his physical ability may not be on par with BBJ or Megastars.
• Zuke is one of few people who understands Eve's art, which nearly everyone else finds incomprehensible. He does have a Master's degree in fine art.

Fridge Horror

• Sayu and children:
  • An incredibly minor example, considering it's in-universe fiction, but Sayu originally debuted in the visual novel Doki Doki Mermaid Club. If that game is anything like its namesake, then it's quite possible Sayu got gutted and mounted by the Monika Expy, provided she wasn't the Monika Expy herself, though that unlikely. Which leads to a small bit of Fridge Horror, since she's popular with kids, someone is bound to discover some grizzly depiction of her and get traumatized by accident.
  • Or rather, the fact that Sayu is the megastar outright stated to be popular with children means there's a very likely chance some kids with their parents watched a duo of then-no-name musicians beat up and outright "kill" their cutesy happy idol on-screen in the middle of her performance from their homes.
  • Consider that the boss after Sayu is nine-year-old Yinu, who accuses Bunk Bed Junction of only being good at breaking stuff. It's entirely possible she may have been one of the children watching their fight with Sayu; either that, or she knows someone in her age group who is a fan and was upset at what happened at Sayu's performance.
• Whatever happened to Neon J during his service in the Border Wars led to him needing at least all of his limbs and even his head replaced, if not more of him; despite this, it still wasn't enough to kill him outright, which really begs the question of what exactly happened to him back then.
  • This also makes his insistence that he's a cyborg far worse; by calling him a robot, Zuke just unwittingly reminded Neon J he's more machine than man now, and his offended response is a desperate attempt to cling onto any remaining humanity he has left within him.