Fridge / Thor: Love and Thunder

Fridge Brilliance

• Gorr in this movie makes a fantastic Foil to Thor:
  • They both lost their entire family and (most of) their species, and they are left holding the body of someone they love deeply. They both acquire a weapon that amplifies their power. They both find the being that they blame for their suffering hiding out in a garden. When said being attempts to justify their suffering, they both decapitate said being.
  • The difference is that while Thor directly avenged his losses and was left with only depression and feelings of unworthiness after, Gorr killing Rapu barely counts as revenge, since Rapu did not directly kill the people Gorr mourns. Gorr was therefore still consumed by his anger and desire for justice/revenge, no doubt exacerbated by the Necrosword.
  • They are also alike in that they both lose their purpose in life—Gorr can no longer be a father and Thor isn't the king or protector of Asgard. Gorr finds a new purpose as the God Butcher, but Thor is still searching throughout the movie. At the end, he finds the same purpose Gorr lost: being a father.
• The use of "Sweet Child O' Mine" throughout the movie isn't just to replicate how the previous movie used an '80s rock song as Thor's motif, as the ending has Thor adopting Gorr's child Love, giving him a "sweet child" of his own. Likewise, the line "sweet love of mine" becomes not just a term of endearment, but a reference to Love's name.
  • Similarly, the death of Gorr's child spurred him on his crusade, and her revival inspires him to give it up.
  • The song also focuses on children as a major part of life. Gorr abducts the children, but still values them enough to try to comfort them. The Thors and Valkyrie make an assault on the Shadow Realm to rescue the children, and Thor gives them his power so that they can do their parents' job of defending the people of Asgard.
  • The fact that the stinger has Zeus dispatching his son Hercules to re-inspire fear in the gods adds a further set of parent-child relationships to the movie, albeit a more selfish one compared to the other two.
• Heimdall has a son named Axl in the film. In the Norse myths Heimdall (under the name of Rigr) has three children who all founded different classes of society: Thrall (the first serf/slave), Karl (the first churl/peasant), and Jarl (the first earl/nobleman). Axl serves to manage the new generation of Asgardians in this film, which is a more diverse and inclusive society where non-Asgardian alien children also living amongst them (whereas Asgard was a stratified monarchy with its share of Fantastic Racism).
• Of course a massive mythical horndog like Zeus would have a nudifier spell.
• One running theme of the film is that Thor isn't sure who he is anymore, nor does he dare acknowledge his true depth of feelings for Jane. Zeus's "flick" was directed to strip off whatever disguise its target happened to be wearing, which Zeus intended to remove the "god of emotion" robe. But Thor's warrior clothing was pretty much a Thor-the-superhero disguise, within which Thor-the-man was hiding from Jane and from himself, so that had to go too.
• Thor's statement of how long it’s been since he and Jane saw each other (8 years, 7 months and 6 days) is also pretty dang close to the real world timeframe between the releases of this film and Thor: The Dark World. ^*  Note this only works in a meta sense, as the MCU is still a few years ahead of real-world time due to the Snap Time Skip
  • Thor mentioning 8 years vs Jane mentioning 3 years also makes sense when you realize Jane was a victim of the Snap. For Thor, it was a lot longer than it was for Jane.
• Mantis having gone through combat training makes sense if you realize that, All-Loving Hero that she is, she'd hold herself responsible for the failure to stop Thanos on Titan.
  • It's also Character Development—Mantis has to avoid Squishy Wizard as part of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
• On the subject of Avengers: Infinity War, Thor seeing Korg crumble into rubble must have been a legit PTSD trigger for him after surviving the Snap. With this in mind, it makes total sense how quickly he would go for the kill on Zeus.
• An interesting link between two characters in the movie who don't interact is Star-Lord and Gorr. Star-Lord was someone who lost the person who meant the most to him to a God-like figure when Ego killed his mom with Ego even saying he was a God albeit with a small g in said movie. Star-Lord did end up killing Ego both as vengeance and to save the universe and ended it there. Gorr's Start of Darkness is when he learns that his daughter the person closest to him died for nothing at the hands of a lazy god and because of the Necrosword and other reasons spread his vendetta against all gods. It would have been interesting to see Gorr learn what happened from Quill himself.
• The fact that the aliens on the planet Thor and the Guardians rescue state that the death of their gods allowed other aliens to invade is an early demonstration that Gorr's philosophy is incorrect, as some gods were clearly doing their rightful job.
  • On this note, the film also presents the stories of Thor's exploits as giving hope to the children from New Asgard, with Thor sharing his power with them in the end, an inversion of how Gorr's hopes that his god would intercede on his behalf were proven false.
• The goats pulling the boat may seem cheesy, but they are actually pulled directly from Norse mythology, where Thor's carriage is pulled by the goats Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr.
• One reason why Thor pushes Star-Lord's buttons, albeit unintentionally: He rips the sleeves off his Ravager jacket. Its color is red—Yondu's Ravager color. To defile it is probably extremely disrespectful.
• Eternity's realm, which manifests as a boundless layer of shallow water, is a mirror to Thanos' vision in the Soul Stone dimension—in both, a villain sees his own daughter in a similar setting, but whereas Gorr was motivated by the death of his child and realizes that he primarily wants his daughter back, Thanos killed his daughter to achieve his goals and remains a Knight Templar till his death. But there's also an added irony in how Eternity's realm (a pale, seemingly boundless expanse) looks like the planet where Gorr's daughter died, albeit with water instead of dry land, which makes it fitting that this is where her death gets undone.
• Up until this point, Stormbreaker had never been shown to display sentience in the same way as Mjolnir, but of course it would be alive since it's made of Groot.
  • It wasn't sentient before because it was just dead wood and then Thor planted it just like Rocket had done with the fragment of Groot Prime.
  • And not just any Groot, but the adolescent version. Small wonder it's so touchy!
  • It's also the perfect weapon for Love at the end, being a bratty adolescent who shoots eye beams at Thor when he asks her to put on her proper boots.
  • Also Stormbreaker acted as a Clingy Jealous Girl, overreacting every time she perceived Thor favoring Mjølnir over her. Now she's part of a family, albeit one born by fate and chance, and even if Thor had returned to wielding Mjølnir she knows she won't be left behind or abandoned because Love is always going to be there for her.
• Odin had the power to enchant, that's how Mjølnir came to be. Makes sense that Thor carries the same power and he always did. That's why Mjølnir reacted to his drunken wish of having his hammer care for Jane no matter what, and when he realized that he could enchant the random scraps and toys the Asgardian children were wielding in battle.
• As Zeus, Russell Crowe seems like he’s just doing a Greek accent poorly, but he’s actually doing a mix of a Greek accent with stereotypical Italian inflections.^* “Let’s-a see who you are...I take off-a your dees-guise.” Which is appropriate, considering the Greek God Zeus is also Jupiter in Roman mythology. It's also possible that Zeus' accent has shifted due to spending centuries talking to gods from different pantheons and planets, or that, like his love for grandstanding and showy spectacle, it's a strange but deliberate affectation.
  • Antipodean viewers would immediately identify Crowe’s accent as a very specific Greek-Australian accent, thanks to the waves of Greek migrants to Australia. This accent has been popularized in Australian comedy by characters like Con the Fruiterer.
    • I thought it was Russian.
• Fridge Heartwarming: When Thor assumes that Gorr has won, he decides to leave the fight and spend his last minutes with Jane. By choosing to die alongside his beloved rather than in combat, this means that he was willing to give up Valhalla to comfort Jane.
  • Jane's ultimate fate also shows how Valhalla is a gift given to brave warriors, not just for dying in battle. Jane died putting her life on the line for the others while fighting cancer, and Thor was willing to give everything up for love.
  • Jane's death is also reflective of how the mythological Thor dies: not directly from battle-wounds, but from exposure to the toxic blood of the Midgard Serpent, which he messily slays at Ragnarok. If expiring from a deadly bane to which you'd willingly exposed yourself, for the sake of one last victory, is a proper warrior's death for the original Norse deity, it's a worthy death for The Mighty Thor too.
• It makes perfect sense that there were plenty of Jerkass Gods around to prove the Gorr may be right in wanting to wipe them out. It is eventually revealed that what Thor was told in Original Sin that led to him becoming unworthy, thus setting the stage for Jane becoming Thor, was that Gorr was right.
• It makes sense that Khonshu doesn't appear in Omnipotence City; the gods there are living in luxury with no regard for the plight of their followers, for all his many faults, Khonshu takes his job seriously. The devotion to duty could also be said about The Great Protector if she counts as a deity.
• Thor denies having any issue with having been rendered naked in public. Scandinavian cultures are generally more tolerant of non-sexualized nudity than English-speaking ones.
• Thor wasn't misleading the Guardians when he said the world they were fighting on at the start of the film would be like a vacation. The local god killed by Gorr was apparently one of the good ones who would have kept the world a safe place to vacation. Thor didn't learn about their death until after the battle.
• The "Asgard isn't a place, it's a people" philosophy carries on from the last movie in a way: even though some of the children kidnapped were from different places and species, Thor declares that they are all Asgardians regardless of their origins and lends them his power.
  • Not to mention, it's almost an Asgardian cadet-junior version of what Hawkeye and Cap said, respectively, to Wanda in Age of Ultron and to the entire freaking MCU in Endgame, that elevated all those fighting against evil to Avenger status.
• Thor makes a lot of heroic speeches in this film that quickly go downhill—but it makes sense with his character arc of trying to pick himself up and be a hero again after everything that happened with Hela and Thanos. He probably is totally aware that the Guardian's ship isn't actually his, he just thinks he's supposed to make a Big Dramatic Speech at this point because That'sWhatHeroesDo, but he's still too emotionally affected to think up proper speeches so he just starts running on autopilot and saying things that sound heroic even if they make no sense. (It's also possible he's pulling material from various movies/games he consumed in the 5 years he was inactive.)
• The Greek-Roman gods existing seems like it would contradict the implication in the Eternals, as the Eternals were the inspiration for a lot of those myths...except the Eternals were supposed to keep their existence a secret and the gods are kinda self-centered, so it's likely they struck some sort of deal where the gods would allow the Eternals to use their identities in exchange for being able to lay claim to the Eternal's deeds to inspire/gain new followers for themselves.
  • Building on this, if Zeus is the head god, then it's possible all of those gods existed before Earth was even populated, and that the Eternals' names in their current iteration were actually based on the gods instead of the other way around.
• Valkyrie is the first of the heroes to wield Zeus's Thunderbolt in open battle, something she's been missing after long months as New Asgard's king and public-relations "face". Considering how much personality the other artifacts wielded by MCU gods (and god-butchers) demonstrate in this movie, it's quite likely that the Thunderbolt feels the same way that she does: after all, it was forged to be a weapon, yet has been spending Zeus-knows-how-long as a mere party trick and throne logo!
• In Thor: Ragnarok Valkyrie is very socially savvy on Sakaar. She is clever with money, overall comfortable in their messed-up society, and highly successful in (for the lack of a better term) public relations. No wonder she grows so competent at governing New Asgard! She has the skill set for the economics and the politics.
• In Gorr's backstory, what does he do upon meeting Rapu? Kneel. And how does Gorr make Rapu spend his final moments? On his knees.
• When they show the play re-enacting the scene on the cliff in Thor: Ragnarok why did they end the play immediately after Hela destroys Mjolnir and gets into the Bifrost when there is still a lot more plot of the movie to go? The answer is that the part of the movie that was shown helps to remind the audience of two main plot elements in that scene that will be important in this movie, first being Odin disappearing into dust and going to Valhalla, which foreshadows Jane dying in the same way. Second is Hela destroying Mjolnir which foreshadows Jane putting the pieces back together.
  • The play seems to be part of a tour recounting the founding of New Asgard, as immediately after the guide takes them to see the remains of Mjølnir. The play may have been cut there specifically to lead into the viewing, with additional plays for other events to follow. This then develops the "Asgard is not a place but a people" idea, which Odin did not mention originally.
• When Sif loses her arm Thor reminds her that while her arm might have gone to Valhalla the rest of her wouldn't because she didn't die in the battle. And yet when Jane dies, she goes there despite seemingly not dying in battle herself. This might seem like a plot hole, but think about it: she didn't die as a result of wounds sustained in her fight against Gorr, she died from losing her fight with cancer. She still died a warrior.
  • Furthermore, Jane had one last chance to put Mjølnir down, stay back and try some more aggressive therapy, she willingly choose to help Thor and the Asgardian children, knowing she could die, out of love and selflessness. The Valhalla may be the final resting place for selfless, brave souls fighting for what's right with no need for another prize.
  • There's also the fact Thor has previously convinced Sif not to give her life in battle, as seen back in Thor, and with Jane proving him wrong (as well as the simple fact Odin is assumed to have gone to Valhalla despite not dying in battle), there's a possibility that he was making up that highly specific interpretation to convince Sif not to surrender to her mortal injuries and accept his plea to get medical help.
  • A looser interpretation is that Valhalla is a place for people who die via Heroic Sacrifice, whatever form that takes. If Sif had simply laid there and died of her injuries, long after the battle was decided, when she was fully capable of getting up and getting medical help, or if she'd done something in the battle to get herself killed on purpose, that's closer to Senseless Sacrifice territory and wouldn't have secured her entrance into Valhalla. Thor pointing out that she missed her chance by surviving the battle is simply shorthand for this.
  • A somewhat darker take: in some variations, another way to get into Valhalla is by suicide, if you've past the point where being able to go into battle (and thus die in one) is remote. Jane took up Mjolnir knowing full well it was almost certainly going to be fatal, she deliberately and knowingly took an action that had a high probably of ending in her death.
• With a Top God like Zeus whose domain is hospitality and would rather spend his days partying when he isn't seducing women at the head of the cosmic council, the other gods in Omnipotence City acting the same makes so much more sense.
• Rapu mocking and humiliating Gorr mere feet away from the Necrosword seems like idiocy of the highest order. Well, it still is, but considering how low Rapu's opinion of mortals are, he probably thought Gorr was too weak and stupid to use the Necrosword and underestimated the fury of a father who found out his daughter's death was for nothing.
  • There's also the possibility that the Necrosword's influence is just that great. It was calling to Gorr from a great distance and seemed to empower him enough to walk into Rapu's oasis, implying whatever corrupting nature it has includes long-range psychic power. Rapu's idiocy isn't far off from Zeus's, but it's possible the Necrosword itself compelled Rapu to act that way to convince Gorr to take it up and accept its cursed gift.
• What prevents Thor's ability to pass on his power from becoming a Story-Breaker Power is that it is not only temporary but also requires the receivers to be worthy. The receivers are young children who haven't done anything to make them unworthy yet, like Vision in Age of Ultron.
• The portrayal of the Asgardians as actual gods (as has been pretty much the case since Thor: Ragnarok, but it's more unequivocal here) has been regarded as conflicting with their initial portrayal in the MCU as Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who were merely seen as gods by early humans, especially given Odin's insistence to Loki in Thor: The Dark World: "We are not gods. We are born, we live, we die. Just as humans do." However, there's a possible explanation here: it's indicated that they used to live/hang out in Omnipotence City with the other pantheons, but ended up having to leave for reasons unknown. Presumably, then, they started out as fully-fledged gods, equal to the others, but whatever it was that happened also cost them their immortality (give or take five thousand years). Odin was of the view that this meant they no longer counted as gods and shouldn't call themselves that; opinion evidently remains divided in-universe as to whether he was right.
  • Another possibility is that Odin got fed up with the hedonism his fellow gods displayed. It was previously shown that Odin used to be a conqueror, but eventually became (or tried to be) a wise protector. He might of renounced the title of god and his relations with Omnipotence City's gods as part of this shift.
• In the end of the movie, why was Love wielding Stormbreaker when Mjolnir would probably be easier for her to handle as a weapon due to its smaller size? Stormbreaker is a power amplifier and it does make sense for the weaker, less experienced god (or whatever Love is) to get the weapon that will make her stronger.
  • Stormbreaker is not a power amplifier and was specifically made to counter the Infinity Stones because it is made of the same material as the Infinity Gauntlet. However, Love wielding Stormbreaker indicates that she’s very powerful because only very powerful people can wield Uru weapons without going insane which is another reason why she wields Stormbreaker instead of Mjolnir. Wielding Stormbreaker means that she’s already around the same power as Thor, meaning she wouldn’t need the power of Thor since she already has physical strength around Thor’s unless she wants lightning powers.
  • Stormbreaker will also help make up for her lack of reach in melee combat.
  • The reason could be simply sentimental. Thor would likely associate Mjolnir with happier times—his old home, his family and friends, and the time he got to spend with Jane. Stormbreaker conversely would be seen as a crisis weapon for Thor—the effort to make it nearly killed him and it's associated also with the traumatic experiences of the wars against Thanos. This was a disconnect even Stormbreaker itself seemed to be aware of—and just like how Thor needed to find a new purpose after everything that had happened, so did Stormbreaker now that there was no longer a Thanos to kill.
  • Finally, Stormbreaker has the capacity to summon the Bifrost. Although Thor may not actually admit it to Love, he's lost so many loved ones that he'd make sure his adoptive daughter always has a surefire means of escape at hand, should the duo ever encounter something that's genuinely too dangerous for them.
• The existence of Eternity, a being that can grant any wish to those who manage to discover it, might give a possible explanation as to why the Illuminati needed the Book of Vishanti to stop Thanos on Earth-838. After all, the aforementioned Book only gives its reader what it needs, not what it wants, meaning that it likely didn't have a direct way of stopping Thanos on its own. However, it would definitely be able to illuminate a path for someone like Captain Marvel who can use Faster-Than-Light Travel to get to Eternity and wish for a way to stop Thanos before he assembles the stones.
• Whatever the God Butcher thinks of Thor that justifies going after him would certainly be convoluted baloney in the present. The truth of the matter is, Thor in his debut film was a god who only cared about glory and had no humility. These are stains that Thor cannot remove, and Gorr is of the belief that once a Jerkass God always a Jerkass God.
• Zeus surviving the Thunderbolt through his chest was foreshadowed by him not turning to golden dust.
• Gorr indignantly calling out Thor on turning his back on him seems like a weird line at first, but makes sense for two reasons. For one, he thinks Thor is acting like the gods he hates by, in his eyes, turning his back on him literally and metaphorically, which he thinks is Thor turning his back on him like Rapu did and is looking down on him and can be seen as a sign of disrespect from a warrior to another warrior. For two, Gorr is acting like the gods he hates by talking and acting imperiously like them.
• Some viewers have found the Infinity Cones ice cream parlor a rather odd thing to exist in-universe, comparing it to an ice cream shop themed after calamitous losses of life such as the Holocaust. But the Infinity Stones didn't merely cause the Blip: they were also wielded by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, both of them already legendary heroes, who used them to defeat Thanos once and for all and to bring back all those who vanished. If you'll forgive the lack of a less-vulgar comparison, if two guys wearing swastikas had shown up near the tail end of World War II, one single-handedly ending the war while the other brought all the victims back to life, we'd probably have a very different attitude toward that symbol than we do now.
• Thor adopting Love is another thing that shows his similarity to Odin compared to Odin adopting Loki with them both adopting their enemy's child.

Fridge Horror

• Whether Gorr realizes it or not, he leans hard on Thor's Trauma Button when he threatens Jane to get his hands on Stormbreaker. The last time Thor was bound, gagged, and Forced to Watch a loved one be slowly strangled before his eyes, he was watching Thanos murder Loki.
• Have all the gods in Omnipotence City abandoned their planets or peoples? Considering that King Yakan's planet was invaded soon after Gorr killed their god (implying that gods who do their job actively help defend their chosen peoples), the presence of deities from the Aztec and Maori pantheons raises the possibility that the colonization of said cultures occurred because their gods had abandoned them and left them undefended. Granted, Bast appeared at Omnipotence City in the trailers but still seems to play a role in Wakanda, but the massive number of gods at the City interested in partaking of Zeus' promise of entertainment and orgies makes it very clear that Gorr has good reason to despise the gods.
  • Zeus mentions a prize going to the god who has received the most human sacrifices. Either "human" is used to mean "sentient species" (which is itself unsettling)—or there are gods on Earth who are still demanding, and receiving, human sacrifices. It's possible that this refers to deities like Ammit and Khonshu, but who else could be receiving mass human sacrifices in the 21st century? Could the Abrahamic God be a contender for this prize?
  • Well, considering there's an offscreen "god of carpenters" mentioned...
    • There's actually some potentially grim basis for this. While there are other reasons at play, religion does play a major role in modern war still. Even putting aside nation states who prioritise religion, religious belief is common among soldiers. Besides this, religious extremism to the point of committing murder is hardly unheard of. Both of these could be considered "sacrifices".
  • Arguably making it more tragic and horrifying is this: what types of Gods are most likely to be outside of Omnipotence City and thus make up most of Gorr’s previous kill list? The heroic ones like Thor. Sif herself provides an example of the type of victim Gorr’s targeting before Asgard itself. Omnipotence City is likely a shelter for gods who’ve already watched their most heroic (or at least their most foolhardy) compatriots perish.
  • The presence of at least one Chinese dragon-god among the audience may, in part, explain why the Great Protector wasn't consistently effective in the Shang Chi movie: either she's been left to defend Ta Lo without her fellow dragon-gods' aid, if she's divine, or the dragon-gods whom she would normally call upon to reinforce her strength were as negligent as Zeus & Co., if she's mortal.
• The Black Berserkers' shadow-stuff forms are horrific on the face of it, but they become even more disturbing if you consider that they look like spikey, nightmare versions of the creatures Love had playfully drawn on a rock shortly before she died. The Necrosword's corruption has actually led Gorr to weaponize the last truly sweet memory he has of his daughter against other children. If ever an MCU artifact deserved to burn in Hell alongside the Darkhold, that one does.
• More of Fridge Tear Jerker rather than horror, but how would Darcy and Dr. Selvig react if they hear the news that Jane had died succumbing to cancer, and it was due to her continuous use of Mjolnir?
  • Not just them, considering Jane was a highly-respected figure within the science community: How will the public react upon hearing of her death?
• Although Thor's accidental destruction of King Yakar's palace was Played for Laughs, who's to say that it won't have far worse consequences than the Guardians losing all respect and credibility? They’re already in trouble with the Sovereign for Rocket stealing their Anulax batteries. Thor may have been the sole party at fault for the damage, but seeing as he was a member of the Guardians, everyone else will be equally blamed. Will the Guardians be seen as criminals again, or will there be a galactic equivalent of the Sokovia Accords put into place?
  • As for the Sovereign accident, the Guardians are still ultimately seen as a bunch of likeable losers, inefficient heroes and good guys with a bad reputations. They'll likely keep being a cosmic joke paid in screaming goats and sarcasm for their attempts.
• While on Omnipotence City, Valkyrie points out a "god of carpentry" offscreen. Assuming this is a reference to Jesus, why would the Messiah, who preached kindness, compassion, and general sinlessness, be hanging out with the hedonistic, selfish pagan gods who actually give prizes to the most people killed in their name? What does that say about his celestial crowd?
  • While Jesus was known to be a carpenter (or skilled laborer depending on translation), he is not a god of carpentry. He is the Son of God. Many deities have been called the "god of carpentry" such as Hephaestus and Lu-Ban. To say that Jesus is the "god of carpentry" is like saying Thor is the "god of hammers" because he is often seen with a magic hammer.
  • Also, assuming the god of carpentry is Jesus, this is consistent with his Biblical characterization. He believed fervently in redemption and forgiveness, and spent much of his time hanging out with sinners and trying to help them. He could've visited Omnipitence City to advocate for an end to the orgies and the sadistic sacrifice-measuring contests.
• When Jane learns that they have to deal with Zeus, she is also likely thinking of a dozen ways of not getting defiled by him. This actually adds some dark context to her and Valkyrie's quick insistence on removing their disguises to prevent being subject to The Nudifier he used on Thor.
• Considering how the "flick" removed not just the "god of emotion" disguise but also all of Thor's armor and seemingly even Stormbreaker, there may be another good reason Jane would fear Zeus' nudifier spell. She's concerned it could also flick away Mjölnir, and it's already established that when she lets go of Mjölnir, her sickly condition immediately returns with a vengeance. Collapsing in the middle of what turns out to be hostile territory would jeopardize her survival and the safety of her companions.
• Zeus, as the apparent leader of Omnipotence City, is implicitly the Top God of every pantheon in the universe, and is still a horny bastard. This implies women all over the universe, not just Greece, have been seduced/raped by him and put into Hera's crosshairs.

• Thor mentions that the Necrosword has changed hands numerous times since the dawn of everything, and the dark being Rapu slew was just one of the more recent wielders. So even though he doesn't appear because Sony owns the rights to him, this leaves the door open for Knull existing in the MCU, meaning it's very possible that an unkillable and extremely powerful Humanoid Abomination with a burning hatred for all that exists is out there, biding his time to strike and destroy everything. Not to mention the decapitated Celestial that produced Knowhere in the comics was Knull's doing...
• Being that the Infinity Stones give off Gamma Radiation, and Jane had one inside her body, there is a good chance that her misadventure in The Dark World, is why she has cancer in the first place.
  • It's as likely to be simple, tragic heredity since flashbacks show her mother died from cancer too.
  • The two possibilities above are not mutually exclusive: the Aether could've prematurely triggered a genetic propensity to cancer which, left to itself, might not have emerged until Jane was much older and/or might have been non-terminal.
• Retroactive Fridge Horror for Moon Knight: as mentioned above, Khonshu, for all of his faults, takes his job seriously. Let that sink in: the creepy, arrogant, condescending, violent, manipulative god of the night sky is one of the good guys by virtue of actually giving a crap about humanity's well-being.
• One of the gods on Omnipotence City resembles Amatsu-Mikaboshi in his form as part of the Amatsu-kami. Why is this horrifying? Mikaboshi is in fact not "merely" a Japanese god, but an Anthropomorphic Personification of the Primordial Chaos, an offshoot of Oblivion, who as part of his master plan to destroy existence, enslaved and wiped out entire pantheons, conquered the Underworlds, made Death herself flee from reality, and destroyed 98.76% of the Multiverse. Let's hope this Mikaboshi doesn't attempt something like this (or if he does, he's significantly weaker).
• Bast is on Omnipotence City. This throws T'Chaka's story of how she gives the Black Panthers power and T'Challa's speech about how she and Sekhmet watch over dead Wakandans a much more doubtful and concerning lense. As Gorr found out the hard way, Rapu's benevolence was greatly exaggerated by the people's religion. It's not impossible the same happened with Wakanda.
  • Another, more benevolent interpretation is that Bast is specifically hiding in Omnipotence City because she knows full well what could happen if she dies, and that her power is ESPECIALLY useless against Gorr (death can't counter death), so she's opting to withdraw to keep her loss from impacting the world.
  • Or she, like Thor, might have come to try and recruit other deities to join forces against Gorr's rampage. She just wasn't as brute-force or accusatory in her recruitment methods, seeking help on the downlow.
• Thor has been criticized for being much more light hearted and can't take anything seriously. However, considering what all he's been through, it's likely he's just joking non-stop to cover up the fact that he's still affected by what happened to his people and his homeworld.

Fridge Sadness

• Among the tourist attractions in New Asgard is Infinity Conez, an ice cream parlor themed after the Infinity Gauntlet, and, by extension, Thanos and the Snap. Sure, an Infinity Gauntlet brought the dead back, but the parlor is clearly modeled after the golden one Thanos used, not the red-and-gold one made by Tony. Already, this would be a jarring case of Merchandising the Monster, but remember, Asgard especially suffered at Thanos's hands. To find the Space Stone he and his forces stormed their evacuation ship and wiped out half of their population, which was already decimated by Hela and Surtur. Then, the snap took half of that, as stated by Word of God here. Regardless if that second half came back, such a gauche cash-in on a personal tragedy would be utterly humiliating for any culture, let alone a Proud Warrior Race Guy society like Asgard, and shows just how hard they have fallen.

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