Fridge pages are Spoilers Off by default, so all examples were folderized and all spoilers removed. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned.
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Fridge Brilliance
- The Anti-Frustration Features introduced by this game in relation to 3 (such as the low amount of hitscan-based enemies) also make sense storyline-wise. BFE was about Earth's Last Stand against Mental/Tah-Um's forces, while 4 is a prequel to BFE. In that regard, Mental was just toying with Earth's population in 4, but decided to go all-in in BFE in order to ensure its complete demise.
- The AAA Team seems to be more worried about looking cool than fighting seriously against the invading aliens and, as a result, between this game and 3, they're wiped out effortlessly. Is it any wonder Mental/Tah-Um's forces are winning the fight? With this in mind, Sam's quip back in The First Encounter ("I'm the only serious action hero here!") gains a lot of weight: not only he's the one surviving human, but also the one more worried for fighting against the aliens than looking good in his team (check his reactions towards Kenny before the AAA team is regrouped, then the ones afterwards). Sam knows exactly what happens if you spend more time looking cool than fighting back. Hell, even if Brand's still a humanity-selling asshole, this even has the potential to justify his betrayal halfway through the game: what if he sold humanity out because he was done with the AAA team's antics?
- The "Holy Grail" in this game doesn't seem to have much in common with the legendary one... because it's not. The real one was the Sirian back-up ship key from the end of The Second Encounter — at some point, their common ties to Abrahamic mythological stories must've gotten them conflated.
Fridge Horror
- Just the fact that Charlie is the only good mook Sam finds about, and he tells Sam that his race was benevolent until Mental allied with the most fanatical members of its society. Not only you're possibly gunning down Charlie's friends (and possibly family) across all the series, but they are also part of Mental's forces off their own volition. That, of course, implies they weren't enslaved into the forces in the first place.
- In addition, Brand is the fanatical factor that leads humanity to become Mental mooks in BFE. Him being strapped to a rocket and sent to Mental's dimension at the end of 4? That doesn't stop his other mooks (or other Quisling factions) from working for Mental.
