Fridge / The Fault in Our Stars

Fridge Brilliance:

• Augustus' go-to response to "How are you doing?" is "Grand", which figures prominently in his school's fight song - an in-joke for locals and anyone nerdfightastic enough to look up North Central High School, Indianapolis on Wikipedia.
• Most of the foreign-language titles translate back to English as something other than The Fault in Our Stars: the German one translates to Fate is a Cruel Traitor, the Swedish one to Sooner or Later I Will Explode, and so on. Shakespeare is read in most non-Anglophone countries in modern translations so "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves" may or may not retain its' imagery.
  • And then the Norwegian title is simply "Fuck Fate." Props to you, Norway.
    • Then you have Mexico translating it as "Under the same Star"....
    • The Italian translation is 'The Fault Of The Stars' ('Colpa Delle Stelle'), as is the Hebrew translation ('Ashmat Hacochavim')^note It literally translates to "blame the stars", so....
• Josh Sundquist insists that Gus is not based on him, and offers evidence that he's not a bad driver as proof. Gus' problem with driving comes from missing his right leg, and Sundquist is missing his left.
• Hazel's questions about An Imperial Affliction are all about how those who are left behind by protagonist's death cope and move on after the event of the novel. When Van Houten asks her why her questions are so important to her, it's because she doesn't know how those she will leave behind will cope after she's gone. When Van Houten says that Hazel reminds him of Anna, it's likely that subconsciously she felt the same.
• Hazel's mother is characterized as an over-celebrator, making big deals of half-birthdays and obscure holidays. However, she knows her daughter is terminal and will have a short life. She's trying to give Hazel as many celebrations as possible.
• The presence of the Anne Frank house in the narrative may be awkwardly included, but makes perfect sense—Anne Frank, like the fictional lead of An Imperial Affliction, was a minor whose written story was cut off against her will, to haunting effect for the reader. The idea of a book ending without resolution is played in TFIOS as distressing for the questions it reflects about the uncertainty of the end and the void left by someone's mortality, with Anne being the most famous nonfictional case of an author whose book has a disquieting and tragic lack of resolution.