As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
Season 1
- Marilka's humorous comments about killing rats and dogs in the first episode are a clear contrast to Stregobor's insistence that Renfri's supposed killing of small animals as a child marks her as a demonic monster, an early sign that the man has a huge Double Standard when it comes to proving his theory.
- Wishes:
- Geralt claims to be looking for a djinn in order to get some sleep, but as Yennefer notes, given how powerful djinns are, this is a very extreme measure, hinting that this explanation is probably a half-truth at best. His real motivation was probably something else: to be released from the Law of Surprise.
- Jaskier's injury and the first wish. When Geralt discovers the Djinn's three wishes are his by using one to inadvertently kill Beau Berrant's servant, he has only one wish left. Geralt had already made a wish right after the Djinn bottle was shattered, by wishing for some peace and quiet. This prompted the Djinn to attack Jaskier and disable his singing voice in particular, to ensure Geralt would get what he wished for. And it didn't just disable his singing voice; whatever it did to his throat would have killed him if Geralt hadn't been able to get him to Yennefer. Imagine all the things you wish for in a moment of anger, which you would never actually take if you could get them — the djinn can and will decide those count for its purposes and make them come true.
- Makes more sense when you look at it from the djinn's perspective — fastest way out of its binding is to grant the three wishes. Fastest way to get that nonsense over and done with is to go for the first thing the stupid mortal blurts out in a moment of anger. Whether it's something they'd have genuinely wanted to wish for or not doesn't matter to the djinn — a wish is a wish and they only need to grant three to get this all over and done with.
- Geralt's irritation at "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher" becoming a huge hit (and improving his reputation) could just be his typically grumpy Humble Hero attitude... but at the same time, the song portrays the elves as Always Chaotic Evil monsters (rather than essentially refugees) he heroically slayed. Exactly the opposite of what happened, and the antithesis of his world view (not being a fan of either Fantastic Racism, or being called human).
- Geralt almost had Ciri as a Child Surprise twice. Had Ciri let the merchant's wife adopt her and had Geralt accepted the merchant's offer of Law of Surprise, the merchant would have promised him the daughter he didn't know he had.
- The fact that the Doppler pretending to be Mousesack was able to waltz into Brokilon Forest to get Ciri appears at first glance to be an inconsistency, as the dryads would've made him drink the waters and discovered his ill intent. However, as explained in the show, the waters only reveal ill intent directed at Brokilon Forest. The Doppler would've passed with flying colors as his mission involved no ill intent towards the Forest, the Dryads or even staying there at all.
- After the events of the first episode, Geralt is saddled with the mantle "The Butcher of Blaviken." When he later joins up with Jaskier, the latter begins singing his praises all over and so characters begin to refer to him as Geralt or the White Wolf. However, at the end of Episode 6, Geralt tells Jaskier to fuck off, so he stops spreading stories about Geralt again. In Episode 8, even the friendly merchant is back to calling Geralt "Butcher."
- Jaskier's first scene in the second season shows him singing a song entitled "Burn Butcher Burn", essentially a breakup song about Geralt. Given the patrons at the tavern he's performing in sing along with him, it's possible that Jaskier's sung this song many times before. It's likely that Jaskier's new song and its popularity are also why Geralt's been saddled with the title of Butcher again.
- Geralt saying Jaskier's songs are "like a pie without filling." Some viewers from countries that don't regularly make and sell meatpies may be thinking of something like an apple or cherry pie, a dessert, in which case the lack of sweet fruit filling would make the whole thing pointless. But a common dish from real-life medieval times (through to today) and thus many medieval fantasy settings, is a meat pie
— basically like a stew, taking castoff chunks of meat that aren't useful for anything else, vegetables, and what have you, and making a meal from such scraps. A meat pie is still more difficult than a regular stew — you still have to make the crust and bake it properly — requiring an increased degree of skill compared to a simpler stew. If Geralt is thinking of a meat pie instead of a fruit pie when he makes this comment, he's basically saying that Jaskier's songs are all style, no substance — a difficult and artful crust lacking the meat and vegetables to make a truly filling meal.
Season 2
- Rather than reveal it when expositing his backstory as he did in the book, Nivellen keeps the fact he raped the Priestess who cursed him a shameful secret and only reveals it after his curse is lifted when breaking down and begging Geralt to kill him. He still admits to having ransacked the temple as the reason he was cursed, however, and it seems that they're actually just giving Nivellen some Adaptational Heroism by not including the rape, allowing the reveal to be shocking even to book readers who know Nivellen was a rapist (albeit, one who was coerced into raping the priestess by his bullying companions).
- In Ciri's Lotus-Eater Machine dream back at Cintra, the illusion eventually falls away and the people she lost—Calanthe, Mousesack and Pavetta—turn into dust. The one person who notably does not visibly disintegrate in that vision is her father, Duny—which nicely foreshadows The Reveal of the very last scene: that Duny is still alive and is, in fact, Emperor Emhyr var Emreis.
- Jaskier's sympathy for the elves, to the point he begins running an Underground Railroad to aid them, makes a lot of sense when you remember that he vilified them with "Toss A Coin To Your Witcher", so he likely feels a great degree of guilt for their plight. Though his song really has nothing to do with it, it probably doesn't help the elves much that most average citizens probably know the song and assume its the true story of what happened, whereas Jaskier knows that the elves are just desperate to survive rather than Always Chaotic Evil.
- The Deathless Mother's deals are all of the Jerkass Genie-type variety, which is obviously made most clear with Francesca and Fringilla's deals that ultimately lead to a cruel Hope Spot for the elves and causes Fringilla to lose favour with Emhyr - but this would also have been the case with Yenn, simply because of what she demanded in return: Ciri. Yenn didn't know who Ciri was at the time and was driven to such desperation she was willing to go along with it, but had she not backed out, she would have unknowingly given up her chance at motherhood - something she has desperately wanted for decades - just to regain her magic. Even worse, going along with the deal leads to her and Ciri bonding, giving Yenn enough time to realise exactly what she'd be missing out on by trading Ciri away, and by the time she has a change of heart it's too late to stop Ciri going on her way to to being possessed. Meaning that, had Geralt not interfered, Yenn would have gotten the exact same Hope Spot Francesca experienced.
- The Deathless Mother's interest in Ciri also makes more sense with the reveal that she's one of the riders of The Wild Hunt, and that they want Ciri to join them. As shown, it appears they themselves can't leave their own sphere voluntarily (yet), but Ciri can teleport herself and others anywhere in the multiverse, as she's able to leave their sphere without a problem. She didn't just want Ciri for her power and/or to hurt the Witchers as part of her revenge, but she wanted to bring Ciri to the Wild Hunt riders so that they can use her for their ends.
- The Nilfgaard armour is radically redesigned in the second season. The Doylist reason is in response to the heavy criticism about how ugly it looked, but the changes made to it also makes sense in a Watsonian reasoning. Despite their Rape, Pillage, and Burn-like tactics, Fringilla and other Nilfgaard followers see themselves as liberators who are freeing the North from their problems and ridding the world of their problems. Their armour, however, by being solid black, made it easier for them to be demonised by the people they're fighting and contributed to making their conquest traumatic for the populaces they're "freeing" (as seen by Ciri's nightmares of Cahir). The new armour, while still black, now has heavy gold accents, which not only makes for a more stylish and better looking armour, but it also makes them look more heroic, especially in contrast to the armour of the Redanians.
- There's also the fact the first armour was largely worn by their first wave, who primarily utilised Zerg Rush tactics and seemingly more expendable. The soldiers shown in the second season seem to be the next wave, who are an occupying force, and also dispatched in response to the first wave's inability to take Sodden Hill. The new armour is fancier plated armour that not only looks better than what they previously wore but also seems much more protective than what the Northern armies wore, making it likely developed specifically as a response to their defeat.
- The gold accents also, somewhat, reflect the fact they are now occupying Cintra, who wore gold plated armour themselves. After defeating their army, they likely assimilated their leftover equipment and arms, using it to improve themselves.
- Lambert's insults and treatment towards Ciri gets pretty cruel, but they're also pretty much on-par with the kind of insults the other Witchers throw at one-another. Lambert himself is regularly insulted for being a dumbass and most of the Witchers, sans Geralt, are insulted for their looks. Vitriolic Best Buds in play. They're also all immortals who are a century old, so not only are they used to hearing such comments and taking them in stride, but they're probably only used to socialising with their fellow insult-trading witchers, clients (who are often insulting them for being mutants), and prostitutes (who are likely hearing much worse things regularly and probably treat vulgar remarks as Dirty Talk). As such, they're just not used to not insulting everyone they meet. Ciri is shown able to hold her own initially with them -she responds confidently to Eskel's in-your-face attitude and throws her own snarky remark at Lambert herself- so they probably assumed she can take it, and don't realise they crossed a step into cruelty simply because they don't have a sense of what is too cruel to say, because they're collectively used to saying and hearing such things.
- A meta, Real Life Writes the Plot example. Due to covid and the unexpected long time between seasons one and two, Ciri's actress is visibly older by the second season. This ends up working quite well with her Adrenaline Makeover and witcher training, making her appear more mature and in control than in the first season.
- Eskel's Adaptational Personality Change in the show, which earned some scorn from fans of the character, actually makes perfect sense in that he's not actually in his right mind, due to being infected by the mutant Leshen variant. It's pretty clear that he's not acting how the others expect Eskel to act, as Vesemir and Geralt both seem perplexed by his attitude and Geralt outright expresses that he assumes Eskel is more injured than he's letting on and he's acting this way due to the pain he's in. We even see in the next episode, Geralt has a brief flashback to his youth with Eskel, and he seems to be much more on-par with how the character is expected to be.
- Yennefer and Jaskier's character development from mutual hatred to something closer to frenemies makes a lot of sense in Season 2. Yennefer is on the run after the political maneuvering at Aretuza became unbearable, while Jaskier is pulling on all his connections to run the Sandpiper operation. There must be something refreshing to both about being honest and sincere enough in your dislike of someone to hurl insults at them.
- The presence of Queen Meve Of Lyria implies the King, who Yenefer was once assigned to as a mage a generation ago, never got the son he desired after getting his queen (her mother) assassinated for giving birth to too many daughters. More over, the fact she holds a position of power implies his daughters didn't take kindly to their mother's death.
Fridge Horror
- This was not properly explored in Season 1 — but Calanthe's significant Adaptational Badass takes on a potential sinister and tragic edge when we consider her Muggle Born of Mages status. As mentioned in the character page, the Cintran royal line had Elder/Source blood which gives significant magical powers, which skipped her. Is it not possible that her hardier and Blood Knight tendencies were possibly driven by her search for something that would validate her not being magical?
- This gets even more noteworthy in the second season when its revealed that, not only did the Cintran royal family descent from Elves, but they directly descend from Lara Dorren, which is why their bloodline has such significant magical potential. This gives the genocide she personally led against the elves in the past a potential extra motivation of resentment towards her elven bloodline for skipping her, leading to a Boomerang Bigot situation.
- When Yennefer returns to Aretuza, she finds it has started taking students from rich families regardless of their magical talent, because the girls' parents will pay. But it also seems like Aretuza hasn't stopped doing the eel thing. Are paying students who fail protected from that fate by their parents' wealth (or possibly by the fact they would make bad eels), and just given a wizard-school pity C and sent home? Or do they still end up in the pool, when they never had a proper chance at ascension? It seems like the options for the implications of this are endangering girls for money, or creating a horrible class system where the only students who actually deserve to be there are also the only ones who face Aretuza's dark side.
- Nivellen's Adaptational Villainy and Adaptation Expansion ultimately casts some of his interactions with Ciri in a more disturbing light. Unlike the books, where Nivellen was bullied into raping the priestess, that's not stated here and appears he raped her of his own volition. As Ciri is now present during this story (she wasn't even conceived yet in the book version), they spend quite some time interacting, and he almost seems more interested in her presence than he is Geralt, his actual friend. He gives her gifts, puts her to bed, tells her romantic stories, etc. Ciri is also about 12-15 at this point, even if she looks 19. Knowing he was a rapist (even if he hated himself for it) makes all this appear as grooming tactics. Note that, as they leave him, it's Ciri he begs to stay with him, not Geralt (rather, he instead just begs Geralt to kill him once its clear Ciri won't be staying with him), making it appear he had no real interest in Geralt's presence and was just biding his time to get Ciri alone.
Fridge Logic
See the Headscratchers page.
