Fridge / Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

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

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Subpages:

• Fridge Brilliance

Other examples:

Fridge Horror

• After his various deaths, does Puss' corpse pull itself back together, or does he respawn with a new body elsewhere? Given the graphic nature of some of his deaths like getting mauled by dogs, the process isn't pretty if it is the former. If it works like the latter, constantly seeing his own smashed-up corpse after coming back isn't exactly good for his mental health. Considering how his interactions with Death went down...
  • Considering Puss' all muscular before being crushed in his 4th death and then he was back to normal physique in his other deaths as well as now, it's probably safe to assume it's the respawn option.
• Were Puss's former lives merely illusions percieved by Puss? Or are they separate sentient entities from his current life held captive in crystals at the Cave of Lost Souls and thus when Death shatters their crystals their souls are left Deader than Dead?
• Death must have met so many people like Puss: people who thought they had enough time and squandered it away, or people who thought they could defy death with no respect for him or themselves. Puss gets his attention in this film, but how many people has he seen like him who disappointed and angered him enough to go for them himself?
• Death was likely — no, definitely there for major deaths in the franchise, just hidden in the shadows. Lord Farquaad's death at the claws of Dragon would certainly warrant Death's disgust of Farquaad's pride and wrath being his ultimate downfall, The Fairy Godmother's death with her prejudice, King Harold's death of natural causes being a frog and quite old as is, Prince Charming (potentially) and Shrek's death before the alternate timeline fell apart. It's not hard to imagine how much he was potentially a witness to throughout the series given his job.
  • Depending on whether or not the people in Rumpelstiltskin's timeline are separate people from their normal counterparts, he may have reaped that entire reality, including a version of Puss, no less.
  • Hell, assuming he's actually the Dreamworks' Grim Reaper and not just the Shrek's version of him, what says he wasn't part of other villains and heroes' demises, as well? The ones in Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, and even smaller movies like The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado (specially with all the human sacrifices implied in the latter).
  • There's also The Penguins of Madagascar, which is both a Dreamworks and Nickelodeon series...Think about that, for a moment...
• In relation to Death and the demises in the Shrek franchise, one might wonder exactly what Death was doing during all these deaths, including the Puss' ones. Considering this is The Grim Reaper we're talking about, we can assume he can be both visible and invisible around the living. So when, for example, The Fairy Godmother died, what did he do exactly in his "invisible form"? Was he just standing there menacingly? Did he use one of his sickles to reap her soul?
• Jack Horner's trophy room is a whole room of these. Pretty much any fairy tale character you can think of ran afoul of him for his collection.
  • Many of those "collections" are sentient creatures, who have effectively been his trophy and slave for who knows how long. And some of them might even have loved ones when they were captured.
  • The baby unicorns who had their horns torn off by Jack were, again, only babies when he did that. And a unicorn's horn could be considered a unicorn's limb. They were effectively and cruelly crippled by a madman and then used as his mode of transport for him and the Bakers' Dozen.
    • And since they were babies, that most likely means that a number of unicorn parents either faced a day their child(ren) disappeared, or they were murdered so it would be easier to get to their offspring.
  • One of Jack's "objects" is the Midas' Hand. Thing is, King Midas in Classical Mythology was an actual character, not an object, so this was actually his hand. What's worse it's that the hand is already made out of gold, meaning that, unlike the original story, Midas was probably either turned into a golden statue or had his hand cut off before the complete process, but still pretty much implying he's dead.
    • The mere fact that Jack has not just King Midas's hand, but also Poseidon's trident in his possession. This means that the Olympians, those selfish, petty degenerates who hide under a veneer of holiness, are around, or at least were around, raping women and ruining lives for the littlest of slights.
    • It's likely that in this universe, the Olympians are not doing that. This is DreamWorks Animation, after all. The Greco-Roman deities might still be Jerkass Gods, but better than in the source material.
• Imagine the worry from Shrek, Donkey, Fiona, and Puss' other friends when he didn't come back to Far Far Away for so long.
• On average, bears live for 10 to 20 years. And Goldilocks looks to be a teenager around 15 or 16. Unless aging works differently in this world, it means grim news for Goldilocks. That means she may only have a few more years with her parents and only slightly more time with her brother.
  • They’re talking animals. Puss himself has lived (well, chronically speaking) for many years longer than a normal cat. They’ll be fine.
    • Talking animals who managed to raise a little girl into a fully functional, English speaking teenager that you wouldn’t be able to tell was raised by bears unless you saw it for yourself. Fairy Tale logic definitely applies here.
• You have to pause it or be an eagle-eyed viewer, but you'll notice Goldilocks' fairytale book is from the library of "Crying Tears Orphanage". Given its Orphanage of Fear title, the children in question grew up in an emotionally depressing environment. And said orphanage is most likely still running.
  • Adding onto the above, there's also other subtle hints that Goldi's old orphanage was not a good place. Her younger self is basically wearing the same outfit she currently has on as a teenager - mismatched clothes, mismatches shoes, unkempt hair. All that implies that said orphanage was not a great provider for the children in their care.
  • Also, look closely at the illustration of the orphanage in Goldi's childhood book - it looks more like a prison than an orphanage. That coupled with the name, gives off the vibe that the children in their "care" were not given happy or comfortable living conditions.
• Up until the end, Baby Bear probably kept thinking and blaming himself for making cracks at Goldi being an orphan, thinking it was one of the reasons she wanted to make the wish.
• This movie confirms that in the Shrek universe, Death is sentient, can choose himself (with no external veto) who lives and dies, and is shown to be EXTREMELY petty in some of his choices. So: how many others otherwise innocent or good-natured characters have fallen to this version of Death simply because he didn't like or respect them?
  • Death itself states that it finds the very idea of cats having 9 lives absurd, coupled with the fact that Puss was so frivolous with his when most people only have one is heavily implied to be the real reason Death took it personally. The gloating probably didn't help though.
  • A bit of Nightmare Retardant: Most of the onscreen deaths in the Shrek franchise are a form Karmic Death suffered by villains (Lord Faarquad, Fairy Godmother, Jack and Jill) who notably never tried to redeem themselves or felt serious guilt about their atrocities. The franchise villains who don't die typically tend to be rather small scale threats or are detained in other ways (such as Rumpelstiltskin being caged before he could cause any real harm in their timeline, or Prince Charming being too much of a buffoon to do serious harm). The only major heroic onscreen death is King Harold... who dies peacefully of old age surrounded by his loved ones. So it seems that Death is usually much more fair, but Puss's disrespect towards his own lives is what infuriates him first and foremost. He notably avoids killing anyone except for Puss, even putting up a wall of fire to avoid anyone getting caught in the crossfire, and backs off once Puss is on the proper path again... and, coincidentally, Jack Horner dies afterwards, showing that Death did not leave empty-handed and another villain was killed because they didn't understand the value of life.
• When Death said he has been with Puss during his past deaths, he really meant it. If you pause the frame during Puss's deaths countdown◊, you can see Death has always been around the corners all along.
  • Even when fighting the giant, he was there in the crowd as well.
• The Bakers' Dozen may be just as cruel as Jack or just doing their job out of fear, but it's highly possible they had loved ones who now may come to realize they're never coming back.
• Given Baby Bear's crying state at the end and how he mentioned how scared he was from almost dying from Uncertain Doom, he might be going through some trauma in the future.
• Let's hope that Goldi didn't accidentally kill some or all of the Lilliputians. We saw them screaming and falling but there is no indication if any of them are okay.
  • Eh, they're tiny. At a certain smallness, falls stop being a danger no matter the height. There's still the problem of the glass shards and getting stuck under the boat, but the fall itself should not be a harm.
• Jack Horner mentions having loving parents and they are not present in the film, only in a flashback. And given Jack's selfish, egotistical, and sociopathic nature, it's very likely he may have done something horrible to them.
• Perrito's former owners tried to murder him as a puppy. Thankfully, he survived. However, if they were willing to do that to him, who is to say they didn't do that to his other littermates. In fact, Perrito could be the Sole Survivor.
• As shown in the flashback, Baby has had his Ear Notch before he and parents met Goldi. It looks like it was torn or shot off. And remember he was a cub at that point.
• Hopefully, no animals or people were present when the Wishing Star first fell in the Black Forest.
• The Giant of Del Mar tried to kidnap several people before Puss intervened. Given how upset he was, it's likely whatever he was planning to do to them was not pleasant.
• Baby mentioned only being able to smell cat pee while in Mama Luna's house. Cat excrements are known to be deadly for humans. If Mama Luna doesn't clean up her house and get more litter boxes (or give some cats away to good home), she could end up dying.
• One wonders how many people (including innocent) the Serpentine Sisters killed to get the map.
• Looking at the map causes the terrain to morph according to the mental state of the one who looks at it, as demonstrated by Puss, Kitty, Perrito and Goldi, this raises a very unsettling question, what would terraform if Jack Horner were to look at the map?
  • The Dark Forest changes depending on the mental state of the individual to try and slowly convince them to give up their wish. It’s easiest for Perrito because he doesn’t even want the wish at all and is quite satisfied with who he is; the ones who need to change are his companions. Jack falls into the opposite extreme; he wants the wish incredibly badly, wants it for entirely self-serving reasons, and, above all else, Jack is incapable of Character Development, which is the Dark Forest’s M.O. In this case, one of two things would happen; The Forest would become a literal hellscape to make it as hard as possible for Jack to get the Wishing Star, he’d probably get comically ejected from the forest altogether, or he’d get immediately killed by the Forest itself.
    • Considering the Posies, which came from Perrito's path, was trying to wipe out Jack and the baker's dozen from the start when it merely blocked Puss and Kitty's way, the forest would've unquestionably tried to kill him outright. Heck, the Wishing Star does just that when Jack does get the map, albeit due to a lot of interference.
• The Doctor of Del Mar claims to be the town's witch hunter. As Puss leaves the hospital, seated in the waiting room is the Wicked Witch of the West. Either she doesn't know the doctor's other profession and thus is due for a grim fate, or the doctor is not as qualified as he thinks to take on a powerful sorceress. Or, even darker, the Wicked Witch is visiting to recruit him to hunt other witches, which could include her sister the Wicked Witch of the East or the rival Good Witches of the North and South.
  • He's likely to obey the Hippocratic Oath. Hunting witches is one thing, attacking a witch who came to him for a medical reason is another. He also probably knows how to tell if a witch is bad or good and only hunts the bad witches.
• Goldie and the bears absolutely thrash Mama Luna's sanctuary, breaking the door, walls, windows and internal furniture. How is she going to pay for the renovations? Speaking of which, how is she paying for the food for the cats? It doesn't seem that she adopts out her cats for money or that she has a day job, so it leaves donations of kind people to keep her afloat. The gang has just destroyed the only shelter for Mama Luna and a number of animals, the first rain and cold snap mean very bad times for them. And it could have all been avoided if the bears just cased the joint and sniffed around before busting in guns blazing.
• The crowd was probably traumatised heavily by seeing Puss get crushed by the bell. And if that weren't enough, considering it wasn't long before Puss' trip to the doctor and encounter with Death, that was the last they saw of him for a long while, they probably think he died there and then.
  • Well, he did. Anyway, they probably know cats have nine lives.
• If you think about it, even the wishing star wouldn't have saved Puss, if anything it would have made the situation worse for him. Sure he'd get extra lives but what's stopping Death from simply taking them all again by force? Death already demonstrated a willingness to cheat in order to reap Puss's soul, so getting extra lives only meant that Puss would have to endure getting hunted down and murdered by Death over and over again until he was in the exact same situation as before.
• All cats have nine lives. So how many have also made Puss's mistakes but didn't learn from them, resulting in Death prematurely hunting them down?

  • Puss actively stoked his ego by doing adventures. Most cats would probably only lose a few lives doing stuff like that and Death can probably tell the difference between what Puss did and another cat happening to do it, like Puss drunkenly stepping off the tower vs another cat simply being up there for the view and then losing their balance.

• Perrito's route to the Star seems to be mostly a serene route with few obstacles. Or is it? All of its obstacles have darker undertones: the Pocketful of Posies brings to mind the Black Death that's commonly associated with Ring a Ring of Roses, the River of Relaxation reminisces of the one Perrito was almost drowned in, and the Field of Quick and Easy Solutions sounds like a Deadly Euphemism for suicide or murder.

Fridge Sadness

• There's a tragic undertone in Death's character. He exists in a world whose fairytale characters have defied their original purposes. The Big Bad Wolf befriended the pigs, princesses can rescue themselves, ogres, dragons and other monsters meant to be slayed end up having loving families. Everyone can live their lives at free will, but Death is stuck in his job as The Grim Reaper forever, even if he seems to really enjoy it now. After all, he has a personality of his own and could have instances where he gets bored of the Eternal Duty.
  • That might be why he takes such interest in hunting Puss down — it's not every day Death has an excuse to break his routine and punish someone who mocks him. The hunt, their fights, it's all a thrill to him to the point where he says 'good' when Puss manages to hit him. It's entirely possible that he's stuck with his repetitive job forever and his conflict with Puss is a very rare opportunity for him to do something different.
  • What about the fairytales that couldn't change their outcomes? Death might have witnessed the Little Match Girl, Romeo & Juliet, Little Mermaid and Princess Kaguya, all of them having tragic endings. Even if he might have not cared, a thought could have popped in his head that if things could have been different for them if they had an extra live on them. Then, Puss shows up and gives the answer. It leaves little wonder why Death has such an intense grudge against the cat.
• While it's not certain, Kitty's more discreet nature means she most likely has a nice number of lives left (whether one takes that as literal lives or opportunities to survive fatal injuries). Her love, Puss, only has one. Her friends, both present (Perrito) and future (Shrek, Donkey, Fiona, etc.) only have one. In other words, even though Kitty will be surrounded by loved ones she can trust, she will also outlive all of them. Death isn't likely to bend the rules any more than he already has; the only alternative he might conceivably give her is agreeing to reap her at the same time he takes Puss' last life.
  • Unless of course the "nine lives" thing doesn't actually give cats eight extra lifespans, but rather eight opportunities to "cheat" death and survive things that would normally be fatal. Remember, the "Cats have Nine Lives" thing comes not from longevity, but the apparent ability for cats to come out of otherwise fatal situations alive. Of course, this opens up a whole new brand of Fridge Sadness: how will Puss react if Kitty loses a life at one point, and she hasn't told him how many lives she has left?
• While Puss was derided by Death for wasting 8 of his 9 lives, Puss didn't have a moment where he truly reflected over this. Now, that he has made peace with Death, there are going to be times for Puss that he's going to remember the reason behind each of his deaths and become disgusted by realizing he could've had more time with his loved ones.
  • It's possible that the lives aren't exactly regular life spans, but more a "get out of jail free" card. That when a cat does something that SHOULD have killed them, they just walk away from it relatively unscathed. So it may not be that he'd have had more time, so much as that he'll realize that he wasted those chances on stupid, self-aggrandizing things, instead of things like saving the people he cares about and not having to worry.
    • Though it still could give him more time, like if he gets into a fatal accident or something.
• After Goldi reveals her intentions with the wish and her family sadly but firmly promises to get her the Wish, they travel to the Star's location. For a certain amount of time, the family were sadly thinking that they only have a few minutes left with each other.
  • Goldi probably wouldn't have erased them from the past or present. She seemed more like she would wish for a human family.
• Goldi not feeling like she's part of the crime family makes sense given how the said family is always introduced: "Goldilocks and the Three Bears Crime Family". She is always the odd one out, othered from the Bears. And given she's been with them since she was roughly around 5 or 6, the feeling of otherness started fairly early.
• Puss’s inflated ego and concern about his legend here could be explained as easily as the first movie. There, Humpty betrayed Puss and framed it to make it look like he was a bank robber, practically shunning him from the very town he grew up in. Even after saving the day in the end, the police still had it out for him, so he still wasn’t completely welcomed there. His egocentric ways could very well just be him not wanting his legend to get ruined for him again like in the first movie and keeps trying to put himself up to those podiums to ensure his legacy doesn't get tarnished again, as well as actually feel appreciated after being an outcast.
• Puss's seventh life (the one that ended via oven explosion) is presumably the one he was living during the mainline Shrek movies given the presence of Gingy. He isn't seen with any of the Shrek cast after that, leading to a saddening implication: After that death, Puss likely ran away to salvage his pride and hasn't seen his friends ever since, spending Life Eight partying with strangers while his friends in the swamp and Far Far Away likely don't know where he is. It adds another explanation as to why he doesn't go to them for his retirement, and on a more positive note, adds a whole new layer to the ending where he finally decides to go back.
• Puss's fourth life has him die during a strength training accident because he ordered his squatter to let him lift incredibly heavy weights without aid. The poor spotter is likely carrying the guilt of causing his friend to die because he chose to listen instead of spotting.
• Perrito, as a dog, will have a shorter lifespan than his cat friends Puss and Kitty. He won't mind, but they will when he reaches his end.
• Shrek and Donkey make a cameo when Puss's lives are flashing before his eyes. However, at the climax, mainly one life, the one with Kitty and Perrito, flashes before his eyes when we see how much he's grown, with only Imelda making a brief appearance at the start. Why wouldn't Shrek and Donkey (who he's been friends with for years) at least get a glimpse? Did he have a falling out with them at some point due to his arrogance and his journey to Far Far Away is to make amends, after being forced to realize who he used to be?
  • Alternatively, it's more that he IS good friends with them, but comparatively they haven't been quite as big an influence in his lives. Kitty is someone he is very clearly in love with, Perrito is a recent memory who possibly saved his life during his panic attack, Imelda is a big part of why he is who he is. Shrek, Donkey, Fiona, and Dragon, by comparison, have mostly just been good friends who he hung out with for a while.
  • When Death asks "Lives flashing before your eyes?" during their final encounter, Puss says, "No, just one." Shrek and Donkey aren't included this time around for the simple reason that they were part of a previous life, not his current one. Yes, so was Imelda, but that's a formative memory and keeping it in this flash is a good callback to the previous one.

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