Remember that Fridge and Headscratchers pages do not conceal spoilers.
Fridge Brilliance:
Season 1
- In "Who is Tim Kono?", Charles and Oliver ask Mabel if she wants to go to Tim’s apartment with them to look for clues. Mabel’s response ("Do I want to break into a dead guy's apartment and go through all his shit? Sounds like an afternoon.") makes more sense when you realize Mabel and her friends used to break into apartments and go through all their shit.
- The revelations of "The Boy from 6B" put Teddy Dimas' past support of Oliver's theatrical ambitions in a new light. He'd been funding them through money obtained by selling valuables stolen from dead people who pass through a funeral home he owns. Any losses he incurs from funding Oliver's productions are acceptable, as his dirty money is laundered back to him as legitimate income. Unfortunately, Splash!: The Musical was too big of a flop, and he didn't make any money back.
- Owning a high volume cash business like a chicken wrap restaurant is already a great front for laundering money.
- From the same episode, the reason why the partygoers only remember Oscar fighting with Zoe and no one but Tim noticed her fight with Theo? Because it was perfectly silent since it was in ASL.
- Well, not entirely silent. Though most of the conversation is in ASL, Zoe does switch to speaking out loud as things get heated, knowing that Theo can read her lips. The whole thing is only silent in the episode because it's from Theo's perspective.
- Also fridge: Theo is pretty much ignored by the residents in the building the entire show. They probably didn't even notice him standing there or arguing, because they were actively not acknowledging him.
- Mabel has a recurring dream about somebody breaking into her apartment to watch her sleep. She isn't wrong to be paranoid—throughout the show, people enter each other's apartments with ease, and Mabel even did it as a hobby in her teens. The Arconia isn't safe and she knows it.
- It takes ages to find the podcast because Teddy insisted on putting his business name in front of it. Teddy knew this would happen, and Tim Kono's death wouldn't be investigated by millions of internet sleuths by accident.
- Why does nobody seem to have security cameras? Because most of the residents of the Arconia are implied to not have a lot of money (even Bunny fights about the price of arugula and basil). The only person with disposable income is Teddy, who doesn't want to get filmed hiding urns and jewels.
- This is also why Sting was the only neighbor whose apartment they didn't investigate. The chances of Sting not having a security system are nonexistent.
Season 2
- Charles being the one to fake his death makes sense—he's the one with the stunt double and easy access to props for fake injuries. Sazz can walk him through what to do.
- Since the murderer's real name is Becky Butler, that means in one sense The Butler Did It.
- In the opening narration of "Framed", Leonora Folger refers to herself in the third person, which is odd considering the narrators of all the other episodes refer to themselves in the first person. This is because she is not Leonora at all. She is Rose Cooper.
- Through a Meaningful Background Event, Theo is ruled out in episode 3 as Bunny's killer. When we see the flashback to Bunny's death, she's shown speaking to her killer out loud. However, in Season 1, she signs to Theo in ASL. If it was him, she'd know to sign to him.
- What was Poppy's downfall? That she had to put herself into the investigation. This is the undoing of a lot of criminals. If she just sat back and enjoyed the show, people wouldn't have looked her way twice.
- Oliver talks about his grandchild, telling the others he is a soccer player, stating being an athlete is quite unusual for his family. Later, it turns out Teddy is Will's biological father.
- Will is also more similar to Theo and Teddy in character; Will chose a job in the medical field, like Theo, and he has a better understanding of money than Oliver, like Teddy. Will also doesn't have a single clue about theater work (as seen with his difficulty directing a school play).
- That Bunny does leave her bird to Oliver isn't that weird: only two residents of the Arconia have pets they lovingly dote on, Oliver and Howard, and Howard has a cat.
- Poppy's saliva is on the knife because she sneezed on it.
- Theo lives in an apartment near the train tracks, which has a train pass by early every morning. But of course that wouldn't bother him, since he can't hear it.
- The revelation that Teddy is Will's biological father potentially puts his financial support of Oliver in a different light again. Though he genuinely seems not to have known, it may have also been a form of child support. Oliver and Teddy haven't worked together for years because Will is now an adult and grown up, so Teddy's financial support wasn't needed.
Season 3
- Ben Glenroy is surprisingly cheerful after his near-death experience. He does not even accuse any of his costars of trying to poison him. The finale reveals that he was cheerful, because he didn't know it was a murder attempt. He probably blamed the cocktail of drugs he had taken before the show. In the final episode, we see retrospection when he learned that he had been poisoned and wasn't happy about it.
- Tobert is a Documentarian. The whole season, he is good at trailing people with them being unaware, noticing things about them, and putting clues together. Meanwhile, he is utterly bad at things he doesn't need for his job, like searching Ben's apartment and lying to peoples faces.
- That Oliver lost his tooth on Loretta's pork chops probably wasn't completely her cookings fault, but also that he doesn't eat anything but dips. He is a) not used to chew things tougher than a cracker, and b) his diet is horrible for years, so his teeth must be weak.
Fridge Horror
Season 1
- Lucy's mother's method of breaking up with Charles was obviously unbelievably cruel and traumatizing for him, but how bad do you think it was for Lucy? Her mom dated (and lived with) Charles for six years—and they moved in together when Lucy was seven. She lived with Charles for nearly half her life at that point, and all dialogue indicates that she loved him just as much as he loved her. (We never find out if her dad is still in her life, but either way, Charles would've been as good as a second father by that point, if not an outright substitute for the first if he's absent.) And given her mom's insistence of having a "hard break," it's almost certain that she was just as blindsided as he was. One minute she's on a fun family cruise with her mom and quasi-stepdad, having a great time, and the next her mom is taking her on a plane and explaining that the relationship is over, and they're moving out, effective immediately. Even if Mom eventually found Mr. Right, and he's a perfectly nice guy who takes good care of Lucy, it would've been really hard, if not impossible, for her to ever fully accept him—after all, how can she trust he won't just be ripped away from her?
- Her appearance in Season 2 confirms this, as she now has a difficult relationship with her mother and hasn't been able to get close to any of her mother's boyfriends (or even her now-husband) since, because in her mind none of them measure up to Charles.
- When we see Theo tell Teddy what happened the night of Zoe's death, he's too emotional to communicate what actually happened. Based on what Theo told him - that Zoe was dead and he was responsible - Teddy likely never knew the actual truth. While Theo blames him by saying he could have said it was an accident (which it was), it's possible Teddy always thought that Theo cold-bloodedly murdered Zoe.
Season 2
- If Cinda Canning faked a murder for a podcast, does that mean an innocent person went to prison for that non-existent murder?
- It turned out Poppy White/Becky Butler faked her own murder with the help of Detective Kreps. They made it look like the Mayor of Chickasha, her former boss, did it. While he was innocent of the murder, he was guilty of sexually harassing her.
- Mabel has blackouts ever since her father died. This is a sign of PTSD. Note how it gets worse as the series goes on - Mabel is actively more traumatized by the events.
- The whole episode of "Flipping the Pieces" from Mabel's perspective. Imagine waking up in a strange apartment, the killer of your best friend walks in, and he shows you a video, which went viral, of you attacking and stabbing somebody on the subway, all of which you have no recollection of.
- This is also horror: good thing it was Theo finding Mabel. What would've happened in her state of mind if somebody more nefarious tried to snatch her and take her home? Or if somebody would've attacked her?
Season 3
- Ben shows signs of a serious eating disorder. He fasts before a show (which is very dangerous considering how much energy one needs for an entire musical performance) and writes a fat phobic insult to himself on the mirror in front of him (not something a healthy person does after giving in to a sugar craving). How long was he suffering prior to his death, and how bad would it have gotten if he lived?
