As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- While Gale is leading the group to the movie theater Ghostface shrine, Kirby wonders how she found out about the place when Kirby has been investigating Jason and Greg for a while and hadn't found any evidence that they owned the property. This makes perfect sense in light of the later reveal that Detective Bailey owned the theater and only recently put it under the name of Jason and Greg in order to make it look like they created the shrine. The reason Gale found the paper trail to the property but Kirby didn't was that the paperwork didn't exist yet back when Kirby looked into the two guys.
- How did Detective Bailey obtain the Ghostface evidence for Richie on a cop's salary? Simple, he was already a dirty cop who very likely spent years amassing large amounts of money through crimes such as taking bribes. He may very well have even had crooked colleagues help him.
- It's also worth noting that part of the backstory Quinn provides says Wayne recently transferred to the NYPD. Cops are generally pretty well paid, so assuming that part of the backstory is true it's possible he just saved up by being frugal and living in an area with a low cost of living.
- Attentive viewers will suspect Detective Bailey was lying about Kirby being fired from the FBI by the fact that while in NYC she still had access to a van with phone tracing tech.
- Jason Carvey dies of being Wrong Genre Savvy, believing he's in a Slasher Movie and berating his victim for missing the obvious tropes. But it's a Whodunnit where Everyone Is a Suspect motivated by a Freudian Excuse, and the killings take place in the midst of urban Scenery Porn: he's really in a Giallo. His death even evokes the famous opening of A Bay of Blood where The Killer Becomes the Killed. Guess we know how he only got a C- on his Giallo essay.
- During the standard "rules" scene, Mindy cites Laurie Strode as an example of a character whose death helped the franchise move on, except the film in which Laurie was killed was famously a Franchise Killer, Laurie was killed off by her actress' own request, and the requel where she lived was much more well-received. While this can easily be chalked up to a screenwriting error or an over-excited Mindy misremembering, it's worth noting that her uncle Randy made a similar mistake back in Scream 2 (misquoting the famous "get away from her, you bitch!"); while the error in Scream 2 was a genuine one on Jamie Kennedy's part, it also showed that Randy was less well-informed than he thought, foreshadowing his demise. Much like her uncle, Mindy winds up being attacked in public by Ghostface, though unlike Randy, she's lucky enough to survive.
- In the same scene, Mindy also cites James Bond's death as another example of this rule, even though at the time the movie was released, that film was the most recent Bond movie (and included the message "James Bond will return", emphasizing that the character would be back), showing Mindy's tendency to make assumptions based on the supposed "rules". Like, for instance, the assumption that she'd be safe from Ghostface on a public subway car.
- However, Mindy does get quite a bit right, although possibly for the wrong reasons. She talks about franchises and how "subverting expectations" is necessary for the franchise to innovate and keep people coming back, and the film does subvert expectations, in part because the killers this time around explicitly don't care about slasher movies or their formulas. A great example of this is the opening scene, how it subverts, un-subverts, then re-subverts the expectations of a Scream opening scene. We get our traditional Dead Star Walking in Samara Weaving as the lovely young blonde murdered by Ghostface. . . but then Ghostface reveals himself to us, taking away the "whodunit" aspect of the Scream movies. And we see more than his face, we learn that he goes to school with Tara and that the woman he killed was his professor. But then the film's real Ghostface stalks and kills him in what both is and is not a standard Scream opening scene. . . we still get a Dead Star Walking in Tony Revolori, but a young man instead of a young woman (not unprecedented, the first three Scream films all had male victims as part of the opening scene attack), and another Ghostface killer instead of an innocent. But the expectations are still there, and still played with, letting the audience know that there's something fresh and new in this Scream film, reinforcing Mindy's point. . . the franchise has to innovate and evolve to remain relevant.
- Why does Ethan, one of the killers, make sure that Mindy gets medical attention after she's stabbed by another Ghostface? Because they're on public transit; Bystander Syndrome notwithstanding, people noticed Mindy's injury, and Ethan had to keep her alive to keep up appearances. Besides which, regardless of whether she survived, Mindy was out of commission; if she died, fine, but if she made it to a hospital, the killers could just carry out a Sickbed Slaying, just as they were already planning to do to Gale.
- As noted under Artistic License – Law on the main page, Sam's therapist is not, in fact, obligated to report her disturbing feelings to the police (only if she'd made specific threats or confessed to a crime); when he does make the report, Kirby notes that he said she "made threats", which shows that the therapist embellished or straight-up lied about what Sam said to justify his spineless refusal to actually help her, banking on Sam's ignorance of the law to avoid being sued about it.
- This lie also explains why, despite Ghostface killing the therapist and stealing his notes on Sam, doesn't make any of those notes public; the notes would have revealed nothing at all new and would have actually made Sam out to be more sympathetic, as they would have revealed that the therapist unfairly impugned Sam's reputation. Besides which, given the killers' plan to frame Sam for their murders, releasing the notes would have made no sense, as in their narrative, Sam would have stolen the notes to protect herself; since Sam wouldn't release the notes in that scenario, the killers couldn't do so without revealing the frame-up.
- Despite not being motivated by the “requel” plan, the killers unknowingly do follow it with their motive of avenging Ritchie, which parallels the motive of Debbie Loomis, the mastermind Ghostface of the second film who wanted to avenge her murderous son.
- The great slasher franchises fall into the same trap: the killer becomes the main character, with the victims being just interchangeable bodies to run up the kill count. Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street all ran into the problem of Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, and Freddy Krueger becoming the most important characters, to the point Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning were roundly hated for not featuring Michael or Jason. Scream VI brings this trend to its logical conclusion: a heroic Ghostface. In the intro, Ghostface kills an unrepentant and petty Ghostface copycat (though the film's actual Ghostface goes on to be one of the most villainous incarnations), making the audience root for the killer, at least a little bit. Then, in the climax, Sam embraces her dark side as the daughter of Billy Loomis and uses Ghostface's own slasher tactics against the last, unmasked Ghostface, wearing the costume and mask and wielding the iconic knife. Helping matters is the killers adopting the same mask, costume, and knife to keep the iconic killer present even as the people behind him change. But here, in the climax of this film, we have all the Ghostface accoutrements used for unambiguously heroic purpose.
- It sure seems easy for the Baileys to have convinced everyone Sam was behind Richie and Amber's murders in the last movie. But given how sensationalized the Stab-related killing sprees are, most people would probably be aware that every single previous killer had planned to frame someone else, set up their partner as a patsy, or both. It wouldn't be at all hard to believe that, finally, one of them managed to succeed at it.
Fridge Horror
- This film technically had not just 3, but 5 Ghostfaces. There were two Ghostface factions operating in New York City stemming from Richie’s legacy alone. This means there could be countless future Ghostfaces out there sprouting like branches from a tree. The likelihood that this would end was already slim given the events of the 4th and 5th film. Now it’s a guarantee that this will chase the survivors until their dying days and could possibly continue after that. Just just think about it. Was someone a fan of Mickey, or a relative of Amber, or someone with a crush on Jill? The possibilities are endless.
- To make it even more horrifying, Ghostface could live on for decades...even centuries. It doesn't help that technology is getting more and more advanced, giving Ghostface "new toys" to play with.
- Kirby said that as an FBI agent, she works specifically with Ghostface cases. This means that the Ghostface massacres have become such serious business that anyone or any group of killers using Ghostface as a mascot are treated as domestic terrorists. That’s how bad this has become.
- Even more terrifying is the thought that the only massacres we as the audience actually see are those related to either Sidney Prescott or Billy Loomis, the daughter of the first victim and the killer respectively. As we've seen from the TV series, there could be countless other Ghostface killings that could be in no way related to Sid or Billy.
- Sam's reputation was ruined online by the three Ghostfaces, by spreading a rumor that she was the true mind behind the 2021 killings. This rumor being followed with Sam being involved in another spree will do nothing to repair this. If anything, it will only confirm in the eyes of many, that she is a heartless mastermind obsessed with fame and continuing her father's work.
- The way the movie keeps showing Billy in Sam's head egging her on, those rumors could soon become a reality.
- Sam's identity as Billy's daughter, and therefore Nancy's granddaughter, is now public knowledge. What if relatives of the victims from the first Woodsboro Murders and the Windsor College Murders decide to avenge their loved ones by targeting their killer's descendant.
- Ethan says that he's always wanted to stick something in Tara. Paired with his whole thing about not wanting to die a virgin, the implications of what else he would've done to Tara besides, you know, killing her if she couldn't defend herself against him are bone-chilling, and makes Tara's specific method of fighting back (driving a knife deep into Ethan's mouth) doubly karmic.
- It's now confirmed Sam was in high school when the 2011 spree happened. Aside from the fact she had only found out about her father years before and would have suddenly dealt with another copycat....she was close enough to Kirby to consider her a friend......how close was she to joining Jill and Charlie's kill count for fame....?
- When explaining away Quinn's "murder", Bailey casually mentions that there were prosthetics used, and a fresh corpse swapped out for when the paramedics arrived. It's possible the body could have been accessed via a morgue, but considering who we're dealing with it's just as likely that some random college girl was murdered and butchered beyond identification just for use as a prop because she looked like Quinn.
