Fridge / Pixels

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Fridge Brilliance

• Why did Pac-Man bite off his creator's arm? That wasn't his creator, it was an actor. The real Iwatani is actually a cameo in the film.
  • Alternatively, the aliens had no knowledge of who created those games on Earth, so the alien Pac-Man didn't care about someone claiming to be his "creator".
• In a similar vein, though far less meta, why did Pac-Man aggress just when he was touched? In the original Pac-Man, whatever he touched was consumed. (Unless it was a wall.)
• Also connected to Pac-Man, each of the four Arcaders have a car which best describes their patterns. Iwatani was driving Inky, who would follow Pac-Man, much like how he tried to approach Pac-Man. Blinky and Pinky, driven by the two Arcaders who are best friends, actually work together to trap Pac-Man - which leads to all three hits. Finally, Clyde, driven by the cheating Eddie Plant, is the most erratic, which suits Eddie's cheating nature at the time.
• Lady Lisa had no dialogue because there would be no sound files for her aside from a few simple sound effects. Quite possibly, the only detailed model to create from may have been from the standby eyecatch screens.
  • But then Q*Bert opens his big mouth and starts speaking, and this beautiful Fridge Brilliance moment becomes Fridge Logic.
    • Q*Bert actually has a rudimentary speech synthesizer in his machine. It’s brilliant again.
• There was actually a Smurfs games for the Atari and ColecoVision in the early eighties, hence the appearance of one among the aliens.
• One might not think all that much about when Sam backs into and through a parking-garage to get away from Pac-man until the Power Pellet wears off, but it's actually strategic. Non-gamers probably wouldn't know that Pac-man is slightly slower when he's eating dots, so Sam was simply giving Pac-man some "dots" to munch on in order to buy himself a little time.
• It seems odd that Max, who is not a video game character, would be used as the face of "the Boss" of the aliens before the Boss comes out for the challenge. But then when you take into account the story behind Max, it makes sense: Max, in universe, is described to be an artificial copy of a human being. He's portrayed as being computer generator (though he was always portrayed by a human actor with heavy makeup). So, to the aliens, Max is at much an digital construct as they are portrayed to be.

Fridge Horror

• Based on the Artistic License – Space entry: What if the alien invaders were already within the solar system, hell-bent on exterminating humans (for whatever reason) and our space probe just gave them the excuse they needed and some super-cool ideas for how to go about it?
  • And based on this, when the humans stop them (at whatever cost), exactly 'what' are they gonna send to Earth next? More games (at or after the age of previous games used in the attack; there's limitless choices)... or themselves?
    • Nah, they honored the 'rules of war' (AKA video game mechanics). They only launch a full scale attack after one of the protagonists used a cheat code. And leave peacefully after they lose. They even restore the Pac-Man developer's arm that was eaten.
  • In classic arcade games, isn't the general rule that the game keeps going forever and ever until the player loses or you literally break the game?
    • Yes and no. Yes in that it was generally assumed at mostly/all players would never actually go through everything or the game was designed to repeat on some level. In practice, most games did have some sort of ending if only because memory would overflow.
    • Also, each game (Galaga, Arkanoid, Centipede, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong) is considered a stage in a multiplayer game, with each side having three Lives. Earth loses the first two stages, losing two Lives in the process, but wins the third, taking a Life from the Invaders. Pac-Man went to Earth, taking away another Life, but Eddie's cheating leads to the Invaders taking away Earth's last Life. However, the persistence of the Arcaders led to them being granted one last Life - which led to the battle with Donkey Kong, which they went on to win. Potentially also Fridge Brilliance as well?
    • Also, the president straight up says they have now talked to the aliens and cleared the misunderstanding (presumably using Q*Bert as a mediator).
  • Perhaps they were on a Generation Ship that was just looking to find a planet that could support life, unaware that there was already live on it (like in Au Rora 2015)