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Fridge: Western Animation

A reminder of the rules of Fridge Brilliance:

This is a personal moment for the viewer, so every example is signed by the contributor. If you start off with "This Troper", really, you have no excuse. We're going to hit you on the head.

This revelation can come from anywhere, even from this very page.

Also, this page is of a generally positive nature, and a Fridge Brilliance does not have to be Word Of God. In fact, it usually isn't, and the viewer might be putting more thought into it than the creator ever did. This is not a place for personal commentary on another's remark or arguing without adding a Fridge Brilliance comment of your own.

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    DCAU 
  • The Fully Absorbed Finale of Batman Beyond in Justice League "Epilogue" was a strange mash-up of ideas. It integrated the Cadmus storyline of Justice League into the "Beyond" future by having Bruce Wayne being the biological father of Terry. Terry's assumed dad was secretly genetically reprogrammed by the principle project workers behind Cadmus. It was an obvious Ret Con that had most message board posts going "WTF?!?!", and I was one of them, at least initially. The more I thought about it the more I liked certain aspects of it, like Amanda Wallers' lesson to Terry that he chooses his own path. This review convinced me of how brilliant this episode truly is, that it is supposed to be almost unbelievable. It is a Deconstruction of the Super Hero Origin story. —KJMackley
    • One problem... it wasn't a retcon. Look at both boy's hair. Black. Look at TAS Bruce's hair. Black. Look at Warren's hair. Reddish orange.
    • I would have to agree. The episode works not only to demystify the Terry backstory, but also ties together several loose threads from the original series by cramming in so much audacious plotting that it really does take half a dozen viewings to catch all the references. At first it appears to be a massive Ret Con and very disrespectful to the legacy, but given time it actually makes me think the whole thing was an attempt to make the DCAU more epic and thought-provoking, and with this in mind it made rewatching the entire run of Batman Beyond more enjoyable. It gives the older, heartless Wayne a much-needed dose of lingering humanity well-hidden behind his tough facade. Without too much hyperbole, I personally now regard this as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome that stacks up well to any others in the DCAU and one of my top five Batman Beyond episodes overall. —MrBrownstone
    • I also agree about how important multiple viewings was to this episode. It took me quite a while to realize that every single one of the Deliberately Monochrome flashback scenes were not, in fact, flashbacks, but mental hypathetical scenarios that went through Terry's mind after the devastating revelation. Once I figured that out, the episode took about five levels in awesome. -Batfan
    • Something that occurred to me regarding Epilogue bordering on fanon- I was wondering how Mary and Warren divorced if they had the "same psychological profiles" as the Waynes, who were happily married; then it occurred to me. What if Warren suspected he wasn't the boys' biological father? As a scientist, he could have even tested it. Suspecting an affair could have easily been the roots of the divorce.
      • I thought about it, and realized that the two couples still could've had the "same psychological profiles", and Thomas and Martha Wayne were on the path to divorce... but never got around to it, having been killed when Bruce was eight. -Cinna The Poet
    • A sort of retroactive Brilliance regarding this episode: I watched the Science Channel story about Craig Venter's work with synthetic lifeforms, in which they synthesized DNA from chemicals using a sequence entered into a computer. They talked about how it might be possible to someday create custom biotech for things like medicine, fuel production, and the like. My first thought was how the technique could evolve into the ultimate conservation tool; being able to literally back up a species on a hard drive. Then I remembered this episode, and it clicked: It is now within the realm of possibility (at least by 40 years in the future) that something like Project Batman Beyond could be done. Instead of overwriting one bacterium with another, overwriting gametes with a desired set of DNA. Sci-fi becomes Sci-maybe yet again! -Gamer From Jump
    • Yet another from this ep: The "Justice Lords" incident, as well as the times Superman went rogue, probably impressed upon all concerned that the Justice League functions best when all of the Big 7 are around. Of them, only Batman was in danger of leaving a hole when he finally died for real. Superman, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter are all nigh immortal, The Flash has had various successors, the Green Lanterns regularly recruit new members, and Hawkgirl would produce Warhawk in at least one continuity. Only Batman was seriously in danger of leaving no heir. Thus, he's the only one for which a "Beyond" project is even necessary, but he's important enough for it to be imperative. -Gamer From Jump
  • Also from Batman Beyond, I was initially vexed by the fact that Bruce had a heart condition...not from anything he was predisposed to, not anything genetic or viral, not because he ate too many fatty foods in his youth...apparently his heart was failing because of plain and simple old-age. How were we supposed to believe that a man who spent years training himself to the peak of athletic fitness, one of the "healthiest" men on the planet, just got a heart condition for no reason? Fitness helps reduce the effects of aging, making it easier on the body, not worsening it. Then it hit me...it's not about his age at all. It's about overtraining! He was always pushing himself not just to his limits, but past them. He was always flirting with the Heroic Red Rings Of Death. In fact, that's exactly what it was, a slow, meta-example of Heroic RROD applied to a lifetime rather than a single fight. His heart condition was simply his lifestyle catching up to him, always going beyond what his body could take. And when I realized that, I realized it was exactly as it should have been, and could have gone no other way. —-Legendarylugi
    • Also, at the time when Bruce's heart was starting to strain. He was alone. Alfred is dead. Tim, Dick, and Barbara were driven away. And his other friends been shoved away. Bruce had no one to tell him that he had to slow down or take care of himself. —- Lady Nomad
    • Also, this is a man who spent probably twenty to thirty years getting the shit kicked out of him in about a million different ways from everyone from the Joker to Darkseid. That can't be good for your heart.
      • Actually, it was expresly stated in an episode that his heart condition was caused by an exoskeleton suit he was experimenting with. I always thought this was supid of him until I was reading this and realised that over training like this would have made him much weaker than he was earluier in life. At the same time he was getting weaker most of the crooks in the city were now splicing, or doing venom, or just had random meta powers. (like all the "normal" guys Terry fights who crack pavement with punches.)
  • I was rewatching 'Out of the Past' in Batman Beyond and it occurred to me. Bruce decided to back out of the eternal youth offer because he knew that he would lose Terry. In the scene in which Bruce was exercising, he looked up to see himself and a reflection of Terry who is much smaller since he's further away. It looked like he was getting away from Terry. He realized that if were to stay young, he will eventually get Terry to give him back the suit and wreck his friendship with him. He had a realization that if he keeps on living in the past, he will lose what he has in the present which is Terry. So, the title 'Out of the Past' meant that it was Bruce finally deciding to live in the present. —Lady N Omad
  • Terry's title in the official canon is the 'Tommorow Knight' which seems to be an out of continuity nod that he's a new Batman. But when you consider that the city he lives in is a shit hole, the opening credits spelling out apathy, corruption, greed, and then we get to Terry 'Hope' if there was one thing that Bruce never stood for it was hope, he was always the spirit of Justice. Gotham doesn't need someone who just stands for justice anymore, they need there hope back, Terry was the first guy in a long time to stand up for the city and go "This has gone on long enough." He's the Tommorow Knight not because he's the future Batman, but because he's bringing Gotham into a new day from an eternal night of terror. -Onmi
    • Really, Batman might have never stood for hope, but he most defiantly caused it. - HG131
  • Also Justice League, in the episode "Dead Reckoning" Grodd's big plan is to transform every human on the planet into an ape. It fails, of course, and at the end Luthor tells Grodd off for it as he usurps Grodd's place as leader of the Legion of Doom in a very snarky Crowning Moment of Awesome. It was only a long while later, reflecting on the Justice League comics' "Tower of Babel" arc that I realized something about Grodd's plan. If he had succeeded, he would have not only created an intensive worldwide panic, which means alot of rioting (rioting done by gorillas, no less), he would have made it imposssible for humanity to use almost all of their technological creations. Cars, guns, factories, pencils, none of that stuff was intended to be used by gorillas. The economy, emergency services, educational system, every human-made internal structure would have collapsed under the panic, rioting, and incompatibility with gorillas. The Justice League would have been stretched to the breaking point containing the damage, leaving Grodd and his Legion free to do whatever they wanted—J the Drafter
    • Oh wow. I did not realize that until you said it, but that is bloody brilliant!—Freiberg
    • Something that always bothered me about the episode was that the heroes undid the change in about 5 seconds by hitting the machine really hard. But it makes perfect sense when you consider that the DCAU version of the Legion of Doom is not a world-conquering army, it's a racket that allows criminals to pull off crimes with backup. Grodd knew that the plan would never work, he just wanted a few minutes of chaos to pull off as many heists and crimes as possible. He didn't bothered to protect the device that turned everyone in gorillas because he didn't expect it to last, he just needed it to provide a few minutes of cover.
  • When I first saw the ending of the Justice League episode "Wake The Dead", where Superman explains why he voted to keep Hawkgirl in the League I just wrote it off as the Big Blue Boy Scout doing his usual speech. But then I remembered the finale of Superman: The Animated Series and I realized - Superman voted the way he did because he's been where Hawkgirl is. He was made Brainwashed And Crazy by Darkseid, and as a result lost the whole world's trust. Even with all that, he was given a second chance. And when you remember that, there's no other way he could have voted.—Spotts1701
    • On a related vote, since GL abstained from the vote, the remaining voting leaguers were Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman and Martian Manhunter. Since it's quite obvious that Flash would've voted "for keeping her", just as it's obvious that Wonder Woman would've voted "against", and it was explicitly stated that Superman voted "for", the remaining votes were Batman and Martian Manhunter. Though we don't know which way they voted, we know that the two of them split. This, then, is the silent acknowledgment that the issue was so complex that a psychic (though he couldn't work as well on Thanagarians, he's still had experience) and The Goddamn Batman couldn't reach an agreement. - Wanderlust Warrior
    • Actually, not so much. It's much more likely Batman, being a part-time member and uninterested in politics, abstained from the vote. Because otherwise, John's vote wouldn't've been the tie breaker. Flash+ Superman=2 votes for. Wonder Woman+ Martian Manhunter=2 votes against. Adding Batman to that would've tipped the vote either for or against. If GL had voted then and voted "for" they would've just stalemated.
    • No. It was expressly stated that Superman's vote was the tie-breaker. If you have five people voting, the only way to have a tie breaker is if all members voted. John abstains, and WW, Flash, Martian Manhunter and Batman vote, with Superman breaking the tie. Therefore, Batman had to have voted.
  • While this troper thinks that Justice League of Unlimited is one of the best cartoons out there, she has to admit that as a Batman fan, the Bat-Embargo (as its known) ticked her off a bit. It only occured to her later that there's a perfectly reasonable in-universe explanation: this is when the events portrayed in the Return of the Joker actually happened. That is why Robin, Batgirl, or even Nightwing never joined the League; after that incident, there's no way in hell that Batman would let them. —Mew24ever
    • It's also possible that the other Bat-villains found out what happened to the Joker and realized that THAT'S how a lifelong feud with Batman will end and decided it just wasn't worth it. —Tork
    • That entry just led to a moment of Fridge Brilliance for me too. We know that Barbara was flirting with Bruce in Mystery of the Batwomen, that they dated at some point in DCAU history, but that it'd ended badly long before Batman Beyond. Return of the Joker, taking place right before the start of Justice League, might actually be the reason why it ended. Barbara said that the Joker tainted them all with his final act of cruelty, and that nothing was ever the same. We saw firsthand how Tim had mistaken Bruce's guilt and concern for his well-being for rejection and disappointment, and Barbara probably felt the same way if Bruce also refused to let her continue being Batgirl (not to mention the tension between them if she thought Tim should still be Robin). The arguments over the way he was keeping them both out of the crime-fighting loop got bad enough that he and Barbara broke things off and stopped speaking to each other. The ending scene in Return of the Joker becomes even more poignant with the three of them in Tim's hospital room, having the open, honest conversation about what happened that he should've had with them the first time. —BritBllt
      • The only thing is that in Mystery of the Batwomen, Tim is older than he is in Return of the Joker, which is kind of weird (and was made three years later too, so it's not as if ROTJ is a retcon).
      • I like the idea of the ROTJ events happening shortly after "Wild Cards." Probably right about the time he got his psuedo sanity back. Not only was it a particularly humiliating defeat for the Joker, "Wild Cards" happened right before the Justice League finale "Starcrossed," and thus not too long before JLU. My guess is that it all went down right around the time right about the time the new watchtower was being built. Word Of God is great, but I like this theory so much better. -Batfan
      • The fact that Return of the Joker takes place at the end of the series makes sense too, in a certain way. Personally, I believe that The Joker's "final joke" had been an act of desperation - with all the time that Batman spends in the JLU, fighting off Darkseid and whatnot, the Joker had begun to fear that he was no longer Batman's greatest enemy. His "final joke" was a way of reminding Batman just who is the most dangerous man he has faced... and at the same time, it could be his equivalent of a "midlife crisis".
      • Agreed - Wanderlust Warrior
      • It also explains why Batman left the league. Presumably, Robin got snatched while Batman was away on League business. After it was over, Batman comes to the decision that he's been letting the League get in the way of his mission, and subsequently pushes Batgirl and Nightwing away to keep something similar from happening. He spends the next few years pushing himself harder and developing better technology to make up the difference, leading to the breakdown that sets Batman Beyond in motion.
  • Okay, so I just realized this while reading this article. Return of the Joker = ROTJ = Return of the Jedi. Who's returning in both movies? Mark Hamill. - psychothumbs
  • In "For the Man Who Has Everything," Batman dreams of the night Joe Chill killed his parents. Chill is voiced by Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman. This can basically mean Bruce's interpretation of his parents' killer is in some ways himself, highlighting the fact that Batman holds himself guilty for their deaths.
  • Static Shock had the episode "Hard as Nails", where Batman makes an offhand comment about Robin joining the Teen Titans and how Static would meet them someday. In context, it comes off as an attempt to add the Titans into the DCAU, which never happened. Geoff Johns had also been trying to add Static to the main DC Comics titles without success. Then, years later, a combination of the animated Static and the comic Static was folded into the main DC Universe. It may have taken place in an entirely different universe, but watching that episode now just makes for brilliant foreshadowing. —TheRoguePenguin
    • Whoa... Teen Titans? Like, the animated show that came out six months later? With Robin? Even if it's not really part of the DCAU, and it was probably accidental, that is still brilliant foreshadowing. —Geort
    • What if it's not accidental. When Batman mentions the Titans, Static's response is "The who?" He's never heard of them before, and unless the people watching the show were comic book fans, they might not have either! Batman's comment that he'll meet them someday was just as much for the fans as it was for Static!
      • Well, it is accidental, as the show Teen Titans had not existed at this point yet... —Geort
    • It's now 2010, and this troper only just realized the brilliance of Static's first arch-enemy being Rubber Band Man. I mean, stretchiness sounds like a lame power against someone who can do anything with electricity until I realized... he's made of rubber! He's non-conductive to electricity! Making him the first baddie who can actually go fearlessly toe-to-toe with Static.
  • In the Batman Animated Series episode "Trial", where Batman is put on a trial by a Joker Jury (with archvillian the Joker serving as judge) by all of his villains, they claim that Batman was responsible for forcing them to become criminals. The lawyer defending Batman gives a great argument against all of this; explaining how they brought this on themselves. The only one she doesn't mention is the Joker; which is a clever nod to how the Joker is the only criminal that Batman brought on himself, all that is known is that he chased some guy in a red hood of a balcony into chemicals. —Geort
    • From the same episode: Out of all Batman's rogues gallery, the Joker is the happiest. All of the others were semi-normal people who wanted something very badly, and became supervillains to get it- and Batman stopped them. Riddler wanted revenge on his boss. Harley wants to run off with Mistah J, whose too busy with Batman. The Scarecrow wants to rule the world with fear toxins. But the Joker was a sociopath and criminal long before Batman appeared (as seen in Mask of the Phantasm). Batman didn't ruin the Joker's dreams of killing and stealing- he made them better, because now Joker's the most feared man in Gotham. So when the others take the stand to blame Batman for ruining them, Joker just sits there and grins.
  • It took listening to Christmas carols last December for me to realize that the title of the Batman episode "Harley and Ivy" was a pun on the song "The Holly and The Ivy". — Rothul
  • I was watching Batman and it dawned on me. Batman is emotionally stunted. When his parents died in front of him, he emotionally stopped growing up. He runs around wearing a costume and scaring criminals. He has a hard time having romantic relationships. Alfred still cooks and cleans for him. When Morgane La Fay turned him and other Justice Leaguers into kids, he was the only one still acting like himself. —-Lady Nomad
  • The Joker of all people makes a similar observation in the second Batman/Punisher cross over. After Jigsaw explains that Frank Castle become the Punisher after his family was killed, Joker says that he thinks a similar event must have happened to Batman, but it must of happened when he was a child because instead of reacting with bullets and violence, he reacted as a child would with a costume and gadgets. Basically Joker, canonically the most insane person in the DC universe, accurately psychoanalyzes both Batman and the Punisher based on the fact that one of them responded by becoming a vigilante soldier, the other responded by becoming a costumed superhero.
  • I saw someone complaining about the episode "Fury", about how Hippolyta knows Aresia's history even though the captian died, and how that didn't make sense, and I thought about it and it hit me. One: Aresia probably was not the healthiest when she first arrived on Themyscura, and it wouldn't suprise me if she was unconcious/delusional/babbling for the first day or two (or longer). Two: Greek and Roman mythology has a habit of oral history as their means of story telling. When Hippolyta was telling the story, it's possible that she created that in the practise of oral story telling that is part of their culture!
  • Batman Beyond again: While cooperating with Batman to rescue her parents from the Jokerz, villainous Ten gives a note to Batman to deliver to Terry McGinnis, the innocent boy she had fallen for. However, at the end of the episode, after Terry has dealt with the confusion and conflicting emotions from his relationship with Ten, he pulls the note from his pocket and throws it away without reading it, explaining that "it's nothing." At first it seems a bit cold, a sign that he is turning away from her completely, until you remember that when Ten gave him the note she made Batman promise not to read it. He keeps his promise. It is symbolic of their entire relationship, their inability to coexist because of their costumed roles. She might want Terry to have the note, but she is simultaneously making him swear never to read it, just like her history and actions are forcing Batman to work against her; the two parts of her life keep anything from coexisting with the other half. Brilliant...also a bit sad, because all her appearances emphasize that Ten is a sad and lonely girl who wants nothing more than to abandon her life of crime, but she can never quite make it until she has already lost her hopes for a normal relationship.
  • Batman The Animated Series: Mr. Freeze. We all know his first episode is a huge tear-jerker, but I was reading elsewhere on this Wiki and realized that - when written out - all of his lines appear to be pure narm. It seemed like there was no way that episode should have been able to make anyone cry - the writing seemed so bad on paper. Then I realized that his lines are over-the-top, but work so well because of his Creepy Monotone. He barely emotes at all when speaking, and somehow that gives his dialogue huge emotional power where it might have elicited eyerolls otherwise.
  • Batman Beyond: In The Movie it initially confused me why they had the Joker fight Batman physically at the end. I understood that he had all of Tim's memories and body, but it seemed uncharacteristic of the Joker...then I realized, he wasn't JUST fighting the Joker, he was also fighting Robin! In one fight Terry proved himself to be better than Bruce's greatest foe, and his previous apprentice.

    Batman The Brave And The Bold 
  • When I first saw Batman The Brave And The Bold, I thought it took Batman's "Batgod" status a little too far. After watching the episode "Game Over for Owlman," in which Owlman uses Ted Kord's BB Gun to disable Jaime Reyes, it hit me - this is a Batman to whom Reed Richards is not useless. All of the crazy, outlandish, un-Batman-y gadgets Batman uses in this show - mecha, lightsabers, space flight capable jetpack, etc. - are the results of Batman augmenting his arsenal with additions copied or suggested from his fellow superheroes! This actually makes more sense than the comic Batman sticking to light body armor and low technology despite spending so much time around mega-geniuses and alien technology. —The Evil Dr Bolty
    • ...Which means that Silver Age Batman, despite his campiness ruining the darkness of Batman, was actually the best and most efficient crimefighter out of the versions. Which also means that the Bronze Age and Dark Age actually made Batman less realistic than the Silver Age.—Yarrunmace
      • Well, shoot, in the late '50s and early '60s, Gotham City was renowned for being a pleasant, prosperous place with a fairly low crime rate, because Batman had cleaned up the city. Sure, there were weird aliens wandering aimlessly through town every couple of months, but yeah, by and large, the "silliest" Batman was by far the most effective one. — Your Obedient Serpent
  • I recently had one of these moments regarding everyone's favorite Ensemble Darkhorse The Music Meister. Setting to spoilers for everyone that hasn't seen his episode yet: So, in the final music number, we are treated to a montage of his hypnotized victems stealing everything and anything insight; at first, Fridge Logic sets in when you think there's no possible way he could ever need or collect all that is being take. But this is where the Brilliance comes into play: He KNOWS this. After his show stopping number ends, people will be confused and maybe even slightly panicked; meaning that it would take weeks, or even months, to figure out everything that was missing and what was just taken by the hypnotized masses. By that time, the Meister could be literally ANYWHERE in the world with whatever he felt he could take without being noticed. Too subtle for his character you say? That leads to another moment of Brilliance; that 'character' is an act!(A performance, if you will) He plays up the camp factor by singing all the time(When vocalizing at the pitch needed to hypontize people would be enough), wearing ever more extravagant costumes and just being as over the top as possible to hide just how subtle he can be(And possibly because he honestly enjoys it). Suddenly; an already epic character seems EVEN MORE Awesome.

    The Batman 
  • I always loved the episode "Gotham's Ultimate Criminal Mastermind", because I love when Hugo Strange appears anywhere, and I loved this appearance of D.A.V.E. So cliché and still Genre Savvy at the same time. However, I was bugged about how easily "Gotham's Ultimate Criminal Mastermind" was beaten. And then I realized that that is the point of the episode...though he thought otherwise, its not D.A.V.E. who is the ultimate criminal mastermind...
    • More specifically, Hugo Strange's line at the end of the episode bascially says that it is he who is Gotham's ultimate criminal mastermind because he has so much knowledge of the criminal mind and psyche in the first place.

    Danny Phantom 
  • When I was a new fan of Danny Phantom years back, I had an irritating dislike for the main character Danny because for every lesson and morality he learned, he almost never seemed to grow up...or so I thought. The more I got used this show's rather excellent Character Development, the more I saw Danny was indeed, maturing and developing his personality. Sure, the writings can be lax on this at certain parts, but they've relatively kept it going at a good pace. He's such a different person he is by the last season then he was at the beginning and I've come to enjoy his presence. —Neo Yi
  • This Danny/Valerie shipper finally figured out the unique angle for the Danny/Sam ship — Sam is a total Danny Phantom Fan Girl. Despite her friendship with Danny Fenton, it's clear his alter ego is the one she's attracted to. She practically swoons while flying with him in "Fanning the Flames," she redesigns his costume (just like Cardcaptor Sakura's biggest fangirl), and she's livid when Danny apparently destroys his powers in "Phantom Planet" because she's going to miss Phantom. The Last Minute Hook Up is more female fantasy fulfillment than male, despite Sam fitting the Rich Bitch trend in Danny's Love Interests. Because, by sheer coincidence, this Lois knows this Superman's Secret Identity from the beginning, it's weird, but weird is good (still not as good as this show's Dating Catwoman, but interesting enough). — Lale
    • My God, that's why she acted like she was slapped in the face during the Grand Finale. It wasn't Character Derailment at all! Granted, it's not a part of the characterization I like, but damn it, it fits! — Mullon
    • I actually came up with a pro Sam approach to the whole situation. Sam loves Danny for who he is and always will, and when he gave up his powers to her it was just that, he gave up. It wasn't that he felt like he did his part and was finished with his share or something, he was beaten by Vlad and decided to stay down and let Vlad's goon squad take care of things for profit. In doing so he stopped being the Danny that we watched through the series getting stronger and more mature at the same time and instead in giving up he became a shadow of his old self. this made Sam feel that he wasn't the same person that she fell in love with.
      • That's how I had interpreted it from the start. Sam had fallen in love with him, not because he was a hero, but because he had overcome the obsticals without losing sight of who he is. He remained the same well-intentioned guy throughout the entire series, he just became more mature. Giving up his powers was like giving up a peice of who he is. It's the same reason Paulina's fan-girl actions towards Phantom annoyed her. She knew that Paulina liked him because he was a hero and nothing else, while Sam loved everything about him.
    • Not to mention that until the third season neither of them were willing to admit their feelings and with the ghost powers and fighting they were able to see each other as they were growing up. Danny's ghost side is what helped him become Sam's dream guy and without it she's unsure if she still would love him because he isn't the same person that she finally was able to admit even to herself that she loved.
    • Doesn't that arguably go back to the first example; that Sam liked Danny romantically because of his ghostly abilities?
  • When "Masters of All Time" first aired, I hated it because as a Vlad fangirl, I thought the idea that he was a JerkAss even in an alternate timeline was just crossing the line, especially since it came after "The Ultimate Enemy" where he was sympathized. It took nearly three years to realize that this isn't the case. Vlad having a tragic, pathetic, and sad life even in another timeline not only has a "it's not coincidence, it's hitsuzen" feel, but makes him even MORE sympathetic. Because even in another timeline, he tries so hard to find love because he's painfully afraid of being alone. Instead of being angry for his treatment, I now see this episode as an Alas Poor Villain episode and a Character Development to the Villainous Breakdown he gets in the Season Two Finale—the writing was just very subtle about it. Brilliant. — Neo Yi
    • I would see that as a Deconstruction of the Freudian Excuse. "I am not a villain! All I wanted was love!" Kudos for not being a Card Carrying Villain, but no dice on the excuse. You're evil even when you have everything you want. ~ Lale
    • Call me a Vlad fangirl, but when a villain is usually played for sympathy, I tend to think there can be more then just him "being evil". Especially when this can be proven true if the alternative Bad Future was an indication. True, it took the ghost power out of him, but it goes back to my "Hitsuzen" time coincidence remark. What happened in another time could potentially work in the current canon. It can be argued it already happened in the Grand Finale when he regrets what he has done to the planet. — Neo Yi
  • Upon watching "Eye for an Eye", I at first thought that Vlad's character had been completely derailed, going from a rather sympathetic character with questionable methods to just plain being a Jerk Ass. The one-uppance of the whole episode left a bad taste in my mouth, thinking that Vlad had lost his finesse and hit an all-time low in playing pranks. But, that was before I rewatched most of season 2 and "Kindred Spirits." I realized that Vlad's obsession with having Danny as a son took him to all-new levels in his behavior, and when Danny destroyed his clones and his lab, he blew a gasket. After that, I could easily see how Danny became less of a "son he never had" and became more of an enemy he just wanted to ruin and make miserable. - Captain Planette
  • It's reportedly taken more than one fan some time before it clicks that Vlad saying to Danny and Jazz, "You two know each other?" in "Secret Weapons" is not a goof — because Danny is in his ghost form, and Vlad doesn't yet know that Jazz knows his Secret Identity. - Lale

    Avatar The Last Airbender 
  • I was deeply troubled by Zuko's subverted Heel Face Turn in the Season 2 finale of Avatar The Last Airbender. I kept grinding my teeth in dread of the possibility that the writers had spent an entire season setting up this beautiful redemption story, only to get cold feet and default back to black-and-white, heroes and villains kiddie fare. It wasn't until about a quarter of the way through Season 3—which, given the huge inter-season hiatus meant that I had had the better part of a year to mull it over—that I realized how much better it was this way. Because what would it prove if he switched sides at that point? As far as he knew at the time, he had nothing to lose. It wouldn't have been a personal sacrifice. But after going home and being hailed a hero and praised by his father, he knew exactly what he was choosing between, and it made his eventual genuine Heel Face Turn that much more meaningful. Bravo, writers! —Karalora
    • High Emotional Torque — that's the brilliance behind that finale. All the teeth grinding, anger, outrage, and shock we all felt that night was a good thing. —Lale
    • I'm still mixed on that particular moment in the show, but I'm not as angry as I was when I first watched it. While I feel there are cons to it (mostly the aftermaths occurred during the first half of Season Three), I can see the reasons behind why the creators did what they did with Zuko, much of the reasons having already been stated above. —NeoYi
    • I realized somewhere between Seasons 2 and 3 that if Zuko and Iroh had joined the Avatar and his friends, they would have defeated Azula, taught Aang Firebending, and invaded the Fire Nation on the Day of Black Sun with the full might of Ba Sing Se on their side, thus ending the war. I figured such a scenario could probably play out in about the length of a movie. Since they were planning another whole season, I realized they had to have Zuko join Azula and betray Iroh just to draw things out. —GeneralNerd
    • I was frustrated too, which was of course the point. But Zuko's redemption at that point is what truly would have made for kiddie fare. His choice showed him to be a truly complex character with truly complex motivations, not one who makes decisions based on fiction conventions. Throughout season 3 he's unsettled but has trouble reasoning out exactly why; that's because real people don't think along the lines of "I'm bad and I should be good." - Tarsus
    • Moreover, the failed Heel Face Turn of season 2 was perfectly in character for that Zuko. He may have shown character development to the point that he is now somewhat of a good guy, but he's still obsessed with the redemption of his honor and returning home. Remember how he used the Blue Spirit mask when he was stealing? That was because he was afraid of his name being tarnished even further. So when Azula offered him a chance for the redemption that he had been seeking for years, he had to take it.
    • Related to the above, there are a couple mentions on this site about how plum stupid it is for Zuko to have a My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment in "Zuko Alone", given the hatred the people in that episode have for the Fire Nation. But put that moment in context with Zuko for the rest of the season: just setting Appa free instead of using him to capture Aang is in so much conflict with his normal self that he spends a whole episode in an Angst Coma, he uses the Blue Spirit around Ba Sing Se as noted above, he can't bend lightning in "Bitter Work"... Zuko in season two still at a core level wants to be accepted by his father and taken back into the Fire Nation fold, and sees that as the only way to regain his honor, so it makes perfect sense for him to declare his Fire Nation heritage at what he sees as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome— and this foreshadows his inability to Heel Face Turn at the end of the season.
      • Alternately, of course Zuko declared his name when he saved the villagers. He just did something worth being raised and honored for. He wanted recognition that he'd done something righteous and just and correct - and the villagers' rejection of Zuko served to highlight to Zuko just how badly the Fire Nation was ruining the Earth Kingdom, that they would hate him in spite of doing something so good for them. Its one of many slaps in the face that Zuko needs to wake him up. —Unknown Troper
      • It's also important because it highlights (along with the rest of the episode) just how terrified everyone is of the Fire Nation and the war, especially because of Sozin's rationale (given later in "The Avatar And The Firelord") that the war, or rather the occupation, would enrich and improve the other nations. Zuko remembers to throw this in Ozai's face during his defection. —Jamaican Castle
    • Zuko not joining the Gaang at the end of Season 2 makes so much sense this Troper is suprised that so many fans hated it. Along with the reasons mentioned above, there is another that becomes apparent after watching season 3. Zuko has spent his whole life trying to be what his father wants him to be. At the end of season 2 he has all but let go of his father and the fire nation. Does he then become his own person? No! He immediatly latches onto Iroh and tries to become what he thinks Iroh wants him to be. Compare his behaviour at the end of season 2 to his behaviour at the end of season 3. In the latter he is a slightly friendlier version of the Zuko we have become familiar with, but at the end of season 2 he is almost unrecognisable, he reacts to everything with a sort of bland optimism, with a forced smile constantly plastered on his face. Any decision to join the Gaang at this point would have been empty because he would only be doing what he thought Iroh wanted. In Season 3 Zuko has been removed from Iroh's influence, making his turn all the more meaningful. As Iroh tell him in the series final "You lost your way, but you found it again. And you did it all on your own."
      • Adding to that, think of who was the most important person in Zuko's life prior to Iroh. His mother. Her last words to him were: "No matter how much things may change, never forget who you are." This is why Zuko obsesses over regaining his honor. He is really trying to regain his identity as the Fire Nation prince. It isn't until season 3 that he realizes that the prince his father wants him to be is not who he truly is and what his mother really meant was to not let his father (or anyone else) change him into someone he wasn't. When he discovers that what he truly believes is that his father is a tyrant and needs to be stopped, his decision to join Aang is clear. —Element X
  • In a finale-related note, it took me a while to realize the full significance of Ty Lee joining the Kyoshi warriors... at first it just seemed an odd bit of Pair The Spares (so to speak)... but then a comment on this wiki made me realize that for a girl whose neuroses all stem from how she spent her life seeking attention and individual acclaim to distinguish herself from her identical sisters, that she has found happiness as part of a team whose members all dress and act alike shows great personal growth. - Rothul
    • At the same time, it's not as though she had to subordinate her uniqueness to the group in order to get her happy ending. They let her join because she had an unusual skill that she was willing to teach the rest of them, and teaching is a leadership role. For once she was able to be a trendsetter rather than a follower, and that's how she was able to reconcile her desire to stand out with her psychological need to overcome that neurosis. —Karalora
  • Speaking of Avatar. Sneebs at first thought that the Fire nation's abduction of Benders from other nations was simply a systematized way of Kicking The Dog and showing was bastards they were. Once one comes to understand how the Avatar's cycle of reincarnation works in the series that it suddenly made complete sense: the Evil Overlords are trying to effectively contain a threat to their schemes before it is even born!
    • Well even if he didn't know that, he would be pleased because the next Avatar would be born either in the easily conquered South Tribe, the highly isolated North Tribe, or the Foggy Swamp which was in the Earth Kingdom he had control over. After that it would take at least 12 years for him to become an effective Waterbender and there's no way for him to become a fully realized Avatar because there's no one to teach him Airbending and it is very unlikely that anyone from the Fire Nation will be willing to teach him Firebending. An Avatar with a 2 maybe 3 element mastery would be useless against a largely consolidated Fire Empire.
  • Day of Black Sun: During the chase scene, Azula was going towards the Fire Lord's chamber, so that when Aang and crew realized that she was leading them on a wild goose chase, they would go in another direction anyway. - SalFishFin
  • A lot of fans said that Fire Lord Ozai's praise to Zuko for killing the Avatar were wrong, because killing the Avatar would just result in starting the search all over again. But it isn't the fact that the Avatar's dead that the Fire Lord is happy, but that Azula told him everything, including that she shot lighting at Aang just as he entered the Avatar state. Fire Lord Sozin's—Fire Lord Ozai's grandfather—was best friends with Avatar Roku. Wouldn't it be safe to say that sometime, possibly if Fire Lord Sozin asked Roku why he couldn't "glow it up" to defeat the other nations, that killing the Avatar in the Avatar state wouldn't just kill him, but end the Avatar cycle forever? Fire Lord Ozai wasn't happy simply because Aang was dead but because the Avatar cycle was over and there wasn't anyone to stop him from finishing the war. - Ares
    • No, actually. She didn't tell that part, it seems. Plus, as long as the avatar is dead, the cycle is over, since there's no airbending teacher. Also, even if it did continue, he'd have to be reborn, and the war could've easily been won while he was one year old. - Wanderlust Warrior
  • At first, I felt that perhaps Azula's Villainous Breakdown happened too quickly. Then, I realized that her world rested on pillars. That she would always be the best warrior, especially over Zuko, that she had friendship in which she was the dominant one, and that her father loved her for how much like him she was. It was not the breakdown itself that was rapid, it was the pulling away of the pillars. In short order Zuko and Aang's group moved up to within striking distance of her, her captive friends said no we're not friends and turned, and she found out, as Zuko had, then Ozai's only love is for himself. With all that gone, the master warrior and strategist became just a teenage girl with no one who loved her. Remember, up until the finale, she had never suffered the kind of definitive defeat our heroes took as their stock-in-trade. Kind of like, on a gentler but still violent note, Naru from Love Hina 's reaction to failing her Tokyo U entry exam, it was a case of immense strength but no resiliency.
    • My personal Fridge Brilliance is about The Beach, while it had some bits of deeper stuff, it seemed to be mostly a Breather Episode. Then I rewatched it after the finale. It occured to me that Azula's awkwardness and desperate behavior was hinting at her deeper emotional problems. In retrospect it's rather disturbing to see her making strained attempts at being "normal". Additionally, at the end, the others each have a sort of a breakthrough but not her. And at the end... They've all Heel Face Turned, but not her. - Jack Cain
      • It's even better. She makes light of her past ("My own mother thought I was a monster! She was right, of course...") and dismisses it as unimportant, but in the end, that's how her Villainous Breakdown manifests, as a hallucination of Ursa.
  • Remember Zhao's insistence on I Want Them Alive with Aang, even though it's obvious that everyone else in the Fire Nation doesn't care whether he' live or dead? In that same episode, it was strongly implied that Zhao is just after Aang as a vanity project. And what's more vain then keeping your foe around as a trophy?
  • I realized that there's a good chance that the current Earth King might turn out to be the best Earth King Ba Sing Se has had in a good long while. He honestly cares about his people, or at least that's what he said before he was put on a bus, and seems genuinely interested in the needs of his people. I mean, how many other kings willingly pose as a peasant in order to learn about his country? Of course, on the other hand, he is a curious guy who was very sheltered, so it might just be that he finds "Commoner Culture" interesting. Both of these might have something to do with Long Feng. He may or may not know about his past, and if he did, maybe he was able to learn about commoners through him. Maybe. Possibly. Depending on when Long Feng took over, it's possible that Earth King Kuei was a child (In fact, probable. How else could Long Feng pull it off?), so maybe having been "raised" by a commoner caused him to see commoners as equals, instead of as lowly peasants who should grovel at his feet. -Kat
  • A minor one occured to me in the episode "Bitter Work". Earlier in the episode, Toph took Aang to take a stance... and stop a huge boulder she set rolling down the hill towards him. Of course, he does the thing any sane person would do, and jump out of the way. Later in the show, seconds before he learns to earthbend, he defends Sokka by airbending a huge beast out of the way. What i realised was that he was using an earthbending stance, and that the situation was almost exactly the same: He stood his ground against a seemingly unstoppable force, and used an earthbending stance to stop it.
    • ...and, in further Fridge Brilliance, he uses airbending to make the unstoppable force be unstoppable somewhere else - reinforcing that the true strength of the Avatar, as Iroh points out, is the ability to take abilities, tactics, and philosophies from all four nations and apply them in whatever combination suits the situation. —Jamaican Castle
      • Iroh also devises a firebending ability using a waterbending stance to redirect lightning, the ultimate form of firebending.
  • In the episode at the North Pole where Zuko sneaks in under the ice to get to the Spirit Oasis, I noticed he seemed unusually good at holding his breath for a long time while he was swimming. At first I was like "Well, that's Hollywood for you," but then I remembered that the key to firebending is in breath control. So Zuko probably is really good at holding his breath.
    • Aaah! This is what Iroh told him in the first episode! Iroh told Zuko to master his breathing first, before continuing to the next lesson. I guess he listened after all!
  • As a Kataang supporter, I at first felt the finale, relationship-wise, did an Ass Pull when it came to the Canon ship; Aang is on the balcony and Katara comes out and wordlessly kisses him. I felt cheated: the scene with Zuko saving Katara from Azula's lightning bolt was far more powerful, emotional, and ship-worthy. It wasn't until later as I rewatched the second season finale that I realized that Aang being shot in the back as Katara watched almost completely mirrored Zuko's near-death experience. So, it was because she saw Zuko get shot that she came to love Aang: she was able to compare the two occurences and realize that her feelings of losing Aang were stronger than if the same exact thing happened to any of her other friends, such as Zuko. After that, it was so clear that she didn't even need words.
  • I owe this bit directly to TV Tropes: I've always thought "The Southern Raiders" was a Wacky Wayside Tribe that existed solely to give Katara her "field trip with Zuko." As I was reading the Arc Words entry for Avatar, I realized Katara's quest in that episode fits the pattern of the honor quest Zuko, Aang, and Sokka had! I have no idea why it took me so long to realize that because I've known for a long time that Avatar follows the old concept of honor, not as some ambiguous, positive virtue like it is to us but a tangible possession that could be lost or taken away. This is obviously what happened to Zuko in the flashback in "The Storm." The Fire Lord stripped him of his honor, which would be restored to him when he brought back the Avatar. As a result of Sokka losing his honor when he lost the battle on the day of Black Sun, he had to restore it by rescuing his father. I knew this! So why didn't I see that Katara (appropriately) felt the murder of her mother was a blot to her honor and she had to restore it by avenging herself on the killer?! This is where the concept of the "blood price" I learned about when studying Beowulf comes from — someone who killed someone else would pay the victim's family a monetary "blood price" to make up for the loss. And, if someone didn't pay, a hero would be justified in killing whoever killed his wife or sister or whoever. The blood price is apparently not a foreign idea to Katara, or Yon Rha when he suggests "you take my mother" instead. I knew this, yet I still didn't see that episode as Katara's honor quest (just like the boys') until now. TV Tropes Will Enhance Your Life after all, I guess. ~ Lale
    • More then Honor, it's Pride, Zuko, the weak son of a warrior society, needs to take a life, Sokka, the genius, needs to validate his strategems, and Katara, the maternal character was unable to protect someone. They were all humiliated and need to get their mojo back.
      • ...and of course, Toph doesn't need a real 'life-changing excursion with Zuko' because she's quite comfortable and confident in who she is and what she can do. While just to round it out, Aang's quest with Zuko is mainly for him to not only learn to get along with Zuko, but to overcome his distrust of and hate for Firebenders in general, and to realise he needs to save the Fire Nation as well.
      • It occurred to me that the killer of Katarra's mother ended up in a such a sorry state because he actually failed in his duty as the leader of the Southern Raiders. As pointed out above the purpose of capturing Waterbenders was to curtail the coming of the Avatar and in Katara's flashback her mother is being questioned about the last Waterbender at the Southern Water Tribe. Her claim of being the last Waterbender incites her murder but makes no sense if she was the Avatar as it would cause her reincarnation as an Earthebender. The murderer's superiors would would have been enraged even if the man was pressed for time and forced him to retire, his actions could have caused the the Earth Kingdom to have a huge advantage and rendered the whole purpose of the Southern Raiders moot. No wonder he's living with his abusive mother, he must have lost honor and his pension when he panicked and killed Kya. His reaction when Katara spares him makes a lot of sense as he is now not even worth killing. - koolkame
      • I actually took this as having nothing to do with the Avatar and everything to do with Hama getting the crazy and bloodbending her way out of prison. The Fire Nation had had a policy of capturing and imprisoning the waterbenders, which was clearly what Kaya expected to happen. However, after the horrifying way Hama broke out, capturing the waterbenders would seem like much more of a bad idea.
      • Speaking of bloodbending - the fact that Katara was willing to use bloodbending halfway through on the man she believed (in error) was her mother's killer, compared to her sparing the real killer by the end is an excellent indication of how much character growth she went through in that single episode. Also, the night she was bloodbending, the moon was not shown, leaving open the possibility that she was able to bloodbend even without a full moon - an indication of just how powerful a waterbender she really was.
  • I thought Iroh's speeches to Zuko after his Angst Coma sounded familiar, but didn't realize until reading about it on This Very Wiki that Iroh was channeling the Vorlons and Shadows. ("Who are you? What do you want?") It doesn't end there, of course; his insistence that Zuko find "his own path" mirrors Sheridan and Delenn's epic speech to the First Ones ("find our own path between order and chaos"). To the WMG! —Jamaican Castle again
  • Avatar related regarding the Live Action Adaptation. I'm certain I wasn't the only one perplexed by the announcement that M Night Shyamalan would be directing a martial arts epic film, especially since he was known solely for methodically paced horror/psychological thrillers (this has nothing to do with his Fallen Creator status). Looking over his resume I remembered that Haley Joel Osment was nominated for an Oscar in The Sixth Sense, and thinking more on it Spencer Treat Clark was also very good in Unbreakable (The kid who played Bruce Willis' son). Shyamalan knows how to find and direct child actors. The Last Airbender is about child protagonists. And once realizing that, his action sequences in Unbreakable and Signs were expertly crafted, if not quite the same genre. — KJMackley
  • As I was thinking about which kinds of elements earthbenders since it seems like they can bend them all it hit me, bending is not based on the element but on the state of matter! Airbending controls gas, waterbending controls liquid, earthbending controls solid and firebending controls plasma. — Kattib
    • Eh, no. Waterbenders can also control ice and steam. Otherwise it works.
      • I looked at this and suddenly realized it could work completely: the Lion Turtle basically says that all bending styles were derived from the energy bending Applied Phlebotinum that Aang used in his fight with Ozai; perhaps this means benders can absorb and then use energy from their respective element. This means that waterbenders can give or take (usually take) heat energy from the water they're bending and make it ice or steam and firebenders create fire from nothing by transferring energy into the air. How exactly energy turns into fire escapes me, but I imagine something similar to Roy Mustang's flame happens. In that example, his gloves are made of a material that gives off a form of energy every time he snaps his fingers; then, using whatever science governs that universe (alchemy in specific), he moves and amplifies the energy for explosive results. — Numbuh214
      • Close, but no cigar, although I'm not sure if it really matters. Mustang's gloves create a spark and he uses alchemy to increase the amount of oxygen or hydrogen in the air to amplify the spark and create fire.
  • When Aang is talking to his past lives while on the Lion Turtle, he is distraught that they keep telling him to kill the Fire Lord. But they didn't! Not a one. They gave advice like "Be descisive", "Be attentive", "Bring justice". But they never said "The only way is to kill the Fire Lord". Aang was too confused to notice that. — Piearty
    • Quite arguably, Aang killing the Firelord in the wrong way (basically any way that would have made Ozai the least bit of a martyr in the eyes of anyone in the Fire Nation who sympathized with him) would not have helped the world, but instead trigger a civil war within the Fire Nation, creating even more chaos and suffering in the world. So discrediting Ozai's warmongering by defeating him, neutralizing him and sparing his life may in fact have been the only way for the Avatar to restore the balance of the world.
    • The Guru believed Aang had to give up his worldly attachments to access his final chakra and the Avatar State. The past Avatars, most blatantly Yangchen, believe Aang should permanently ground himself for the good of the world. The Lion Turtle helps Aang find the medium between the extremes: "The True Mind can weather all lies and illusions without being lost. The True Heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed." — Starshine
      • The Guru was, in a way, right. In a bit inspired by Star Wars's own Fridge Brilliance entry, what Aang really needed wasn't to sacrifice his connection to Katara, but to be prepared to subordinate it to his duty as the Avatar, exactly the way Koruk didn't. When, as in the finale, he has to split the party, or when Katara is in danger, he has to know what his priorities are. (It would help if he realized that, as an extremely powerful bender, she can handle herself a lot better than he tended to think.) — Jamaican Castle
  • In "The Ember Island Players", I knew that the exaggerated personalities of the characters in the play were based on the usual Flanderization of the characters in fanfiction. However, I wondered why this was done in context; the playwrights could have easily asked Ozai and Azula for information on the Gaang (especially since Azula has fought against them personally). Then I realized something: the play is Fire Nation propaganda. Of course they are going to make the Gaang look as harmless as possible!
    • It's also a moment of Fridge Brilliance to the Gaang as well, since even the ones who were enjoying the play realize its intention when it depicts Zuko and Aang being brutally killed. They are, of course, horrified.
  • I've noticed that many people feel that The Reveal of the previously faceless Ozai as a Bishonen was a bit of a cop-out, because the build up would make one think that his appearance would be disturbing or intimidating. However, it makes sense on three levels if you think about it.-Isador Levi
    • Prior to then, we only see Ozai in Zuko's flashbacks. Given his relationship to his father, it would make sense that he would imagine him as a distant and intimidating figure, beyond the reality of the man.
    • Ozai, like Azula, is obsessed with perfection. Given that, it would make sense for him to keep his appearance strong and attractive so that he can be the epitome of his own ideals.
    • Having some kind of disfiguration on Ozai to symbolize his evil is unnecessary. We've had such a symbol from day 1, not on his own face, but on Zuko's. Ozai's evil is symbolized on his son far better than it could be by any flaw in his own appearance.
      • The "Avatar Extras" mention that Ozai was designed to look like an older Zuko— which explains why he's so pretty— and also makes a lot of sense; Ozai and Ursa (descended from Sozin and Roku, the two sides of the Fire Nation "at war in Zuko") are the extreme "what ifs" for future Zuko, not only in temperament but reflected in their looks.
  • It occured to me recently that an important element of an episode from Season 1 (the Fire Temple) was possibly referenced much later on in the series. The Good Fire Sage tells Aang and co. that the door with the 5 fire-bending necessary locks could only be opened by 5 firebenders or a fully realized avatar. Now flash forward to the very last episode of the entire series. Aang in the Avatar State against Ozai, during Sozin's comet. Look carefully throughout their battle, Aang uses 5-pronged blasts of fire twice during the fight. Over the course of the entire fight, Ozai, supposedly the greatest firebender in the world could not ever manage more than three blasts of fire at once. More than 2 seasons after the fact, the finale of Avatar proved an inconvenient plot device to be completely true. I don't even know if this was intentional.
  • I always thought the Fire Nation was stupid for capturing and not killing the waterbenders, in case they escaped with a grudge. Especially since Zuko didn't stake out the Water Tribe in his search for the Avatar, which made me think that the Fire Nation thought that the Avatar was still a survivor air nomad (especially Zuko's remark about the avatar having remarkable agility despite his old age). Now I realize they thought the Avatar was a waterbender and were just letting Zuko roam around the world searching for a nonexistent(or so they believed) airbender to keep him out of their hair. That way, the Avatar wouldn't be born into the Earth Kingdom, a huge and not-as-easily weeded out place as the Water Tribes. At least, until the waterbenders died of old age, which I think Ozai was betting on happening after he won the war. Also, even though they don't have the waterbenders from the south pole, even if the avatar was there, it isn't likely they can master earth and fire, there is absolutely no chance of them mastering air, and so they aren't much of a threat to the Fire Nation. - Crewe
  • This is a bit of fridge brilliance that nicely wraps up two fridge logic questions- why couldn't the Earth Kingdom just sail East until they hit the Fire Nation, and why did night and day pass normallly in the North/South poles? Simple: the Avatar world is flat.
    • That's not Fridge Brilliance. Aside from the creators dismissing the "flat world" idea in the DVD commentary for the finale, you do actually get normal-length days near the arctic circle/north polar region. Not to mention that a flat world would be drastically different in everything from weather patterns to the appearance of horizons than the Avatarworld, and that we actually see the world curving below Aang when he's absorbing "cosmic energy" in Season Two. The real reason why nobody sails east is likely that it's just a vast, empty ocean with no land except for scattered volcanic island chains. That would be a difficult trip for a Fire Nation fleet to accomplish (since coal-powered ships usually needed a number of different re-fueling stations to restock on coal in real history), never mind an Earth Kingdom fleet made up of wooden, wind-driven ships.
    • Almost, though Sokka did claim in the first episode to be experiencing "midnight sun madness". I mean, if you're not exactly at one of the poles you still get day and night I suppose.
      • erm- you can still get "night" and "Day" if you are at a pole during spring or fall- and at one point, someone even points out that " at this rate we won't get there until spring" it wasn't a throw-away line at all, but an explanation.
  • This one has to do with the generation of lightning and was a case of Fridge Logic until I really thought about it. Iroh tells Zuko lightning is fueled by an absence of emotion. However, we see Ozai and Azula generating lightning when they're visibly enraged. It didn't make sense to me until I remembered that the Fire Nation had been corrupted from the true meaning of Firebending. Firebending is about life and energy, not just destruction and when Zuko lost his drive his bending became weak. It led me to believe that lightning generation isn't about an absence of emotion but a complete focus on a single task. When Ozai and Azula bend lightning while enraged they're completely 100% focused on killing their targets. The reason Zuko can't do it when Iroh's teaching him isn't that he can't let go of his emotions, but that his mind is focused on too many things at once (surpassing Azula, finding the Avatar, getting his father's praise) his mental focus is all over the place. And an even bigger bit of Fridge Brilliance is that Iroh knew the true secret of Firebending and yet he told Zuko what would have been in keeping with the Fire Nation's philosophy at the time. He kept the secret from him until he was ready to know the true way of Firebending. Lightning may be a true expression of Firebending but it is a true and pure expression of firebending in the sense of being the absolute pinnacle of a Firebender's drive.
    • It could also be that lightning bending requires complete focus on something, but "nothing" qualifies as a focus. Learning it that way, as Iroh did, grants an advantage: lightning (or firebending for that matter) based on, for instance, hatred for an individual is rendered powerless if that hatred fades. Power based on meditation and serenity, though, can't ever be lost. — Jamaican Castle
  • This seems obvious now that I've thought of it, but Toph's initial reluctance to flying on Apa isn't just the same as Sokka's or Katara's, where they don't feel comfortable flying. Toph hates flying because on land she uses earth bending to see things, while flying she can't see anything at all.
  • This is less Fridge Brilliance than "rewatching the episodes far too closely brilliance", but if you pay attention, Lion Turtles are everywhere— statues in the Air Temples, door knockers in the Earth Kingdom, the front of the Fire Nation war zeppelins; smattered across all three seasons and in all four nations. The Producers Really Do Think Of Everything.
    • I noticed that as well. I remember in the library episode, someone pulled out a scroll and commented on the HUGE lion turtle on it.
  • In Sozin's Comet, Zuko realized Azula was going to attack Katara(basically forfeiting the Agni Kai), and jumped in front of the lightning. However, he could've just as easily let Katara get hit, and taken advantage of the opening. In fact, as far as he knows, it's the best tactical decision. He is, after all, ostensibly the person best equipped to fight her. Not only did he sacrifice himself to save his friend, he also trusted Katara to save them both. —Jonn
    • Zuko was trying to goad Azula into using the lightning on him deliberately. He may have intended on winning the duel by redirecting her own lightning back at her, since he knows that defending against lightning is the one thing he can do that she cannot. So he may have been also motivated by a sense of personal responsibility when he realized that he had miscalculated and Azula was aiming at someone else.
  • Maybe it was obvious to everyone else, but I was really bugged by "Zuko's story" in "Tales of Ba Sing Se". Specifically, after he lights those candles for Jin I kept wondering how she didn't realize he was a firebender and, I don't know, run the hell away? I thought Zuko was incredibly stupid for doing that, and she was even stupider for not realizing it. But now I get it - Jin DID know he was a firebender, she was just acting coy and clueless because she thought he didn't want her to know. Why was she not scared? Why, because there IS no war in Ba Sing Se! (Though since Zuko didn't know that he was still stupid for firebending in front of her, "close your eyes" or no.)
    • Although, a badass yet absolutely stupid stunt to impress a girl is a pretty normal part of teenage life, which might have been the point.
    • Then again, she does think that he was in the circus. And as we all know, a magician never reveals his secrets!
  • The first time I watched, "The Southern Air Temple", I thought it a little odd that it shows Monk Gyatso surrounded by only around ten dead firebenders, and while an impressive number for a peaceful monk I thought it small for the person who taught Aang. But then I watched Sozin's comet, and realized the full extent of the increase to the firebenders power... And then re-watched the episode - a non-Avatar taking out that many uber powered firebenders. My mind was blown. - Fiddlesoup
  • After watching "Sokka's Master", a second time I came to an amazing realization. At the end of the episode Piandao gave Sokka a White Lotus tile, on two levels its shows that Piandao is a member and that Sokka became an initiate. - Fiddlesoup
  • You know how, in the finale, Toph managed to stick to the metal ceiling Spiderman-style when she donned the Instant Armor? Magnetism. Greatest earthbender in the world, indeed. —Unknown Troper
  • I was initially confused in "The Runaway", because the guards in the town used a wooden cell on Toph. Considering it was a Fire Nation jail, anyone they threw in there might be able to just burn their way out. Then I realized that the town's guards, through investigating Toph's scams, figured out that she was an earthbender. Thus, they knew what cell to use, especially after Spark Sparky Boom Man showed up to help set the trap. Also, it only makes sense that a Fire Nation jail would have a cell specially designed to contain an earthbender, considering they're at war with the Earth Kingdoms and thus they might have to worry about earthbending agents. —Unknown Troper
  • Long after seeing the finale, I realized (while reading one of the trope pages) the symbolism of Aang using waterbending, rather than another discipline, to put out the fires during the finale. He uses a gigantic version of Katara's "push and pull" cantrip - and the very first bending in the entire series (opening titles exempted) was Katara practicing the same move to pass the time while fishing.
  • Ozai was completely right when he says to Zuko, "You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher." At first it seems like a line that just proves his cruelty, and that's probably what he meant it to be. But here's the thing: Zuko didn't learn respect until he had suffered for a while, particularly throughout season 2. Watch as his pride is slowly broken down and he starts being less of a jerk, culminating in his Heel Face Turn in season 3, which was preceded by half a season of intense inner conflict.
  • Fire Nation troops don't usually fight in formation, which kind of annoyed me at first. After all, armies of the period tend to fight in formation to maximize the effectiveness of spears and shields. This is particularly noticeable in the assault on the Northern Water Tribe. It wasn't until after I watched a couple of films from World War II that I realized why. If you replaced the Fire Nation troops with, say, WWII soldiers and replaced the tanks with WWII tanks, they'd look very similar to the FN's loose formations, with squads of troops moving among the tanks. And that makes sense, because firebending would render most pre-gunpowder formations useless anyway, and every firebender (which makes up the majority of the FN's army) would be capable of long-ranged attacks at will - exactly like modern firearm-equipped infantry. The Fire Nation has, quite literally, pioneered combined arms tactics on a parallel with modern mechanized armies. —Unknown Troper
  • Three minor moments occurred to me while watching lately—Ama.Dear
    • Why does Zuko look so upset at the end of the Ember Island Players' show? He's never been shown to be nervous about dying before—he just keeps fighting not to die, even sacrificing himself without question. Then I realized that it's not his death that has him worried, it's the audience's reation. Everyone in the theater cheers at Zuko's death, even though it isn't even the end of that scene. These are the people he has to rule when he inherits the throne! He's not afraid of dying, it's the thought of being hated by the people he's supposed to protect that leads to his shocked reaction.
    • When Roku emerges from the room at the Fire Nation temple in The Winter Solstice, he obviously has no qualms about fighting the Fire Nation; he rebukes Zhao and the Fire Sages, while freeing Katara and Sokka. Why, then, does he also free Zuko? At that point in the series, Zuko is the Avatar-hunting Fire Nation loyalist. It's because Roku is Zuko's great-grandfather! That plot twist, which doesn't occur for another two seasons, is foreshadowed in the way that Roku not only recognizes Zuko, but recognizes that he has good in him and deserves to be freed. Zuko, of course, doesn't realize this, and runs away from his genetic destiny instead of staying to find out what's going on.
    • Speaking of Roku's motives, why does he threaten Jeong Jeong? Roku knows Aang very well, and must realize that Aang isn't ready. That is the exact reason he does it! Roku knows that, if Jeong Jeong didn't begin by teaching Aang restraint, Aang wouldn't learn the dangers of firebending, and therefore would never visit the Sun Warriors. Roku rebukes Jeong Jeong for thinking that he couldn't learn firebending again, because Aang's mastery of firebending is directly connected to his teachings.
      • And why was firebending so dangerous for Aang? Precisely because he started as an airbender, and air enhances fire! So firebending would seem easy for him at the start, making it even more likely for him to get himself into trouble with it. However, the opposite was not true for Ruko, as he learned airbending first after firebending, and found it easy. And that is probably because mastering firebending requires mastery of controlling breath, and breath is air. In a similar vein, Aang found waterbending easy, probably because since gases and liquids are both fluids, many techniques he mastered for controlling air probably applied with only minimal modification to controlling water. The order Jeong Jeong wanted Aang to master the elements (air then water then earth then fire) directly mirrors the Avatar cycle itself, and the pattern is probably a general one for all Avatars (the element immediately after that Avatar's birth element shares enough in common that the Avatar will find learning it very easy, and so will always learn it second after the birth element, the next element will be in some way opposite and therefore counterintuitive and difficult to master, and the final element will be complementary but deceptive and/or dangerous in some way, and so should be mastered last.)
  • It suddenly struck me that when Aang makes Katara a new necklace in The Fortuneteller, going by Northern Water Tribe traditions, he was actually unknowingly proposing to her. It's also in that episode that Katara first has a flash of realization that Aang might be the one for her.
  • I might be killed for this (No wait, I won't. Thank goodness for anonymity!) but I just realized that the Race Lift for Fire Nation in The Movie might actually make sense since Fire Nation IS located in the equator and thus should be populated by dark skinned people... Also in a way you could argue that Northern Water Tribe seems to use European architecture and thus it would make sense for them to be white. It doesn't excuse making Sokka and Katara white, though, since they only had one Northern Water Tribe ancestor, they should be 75% Inuit/Yupik/Aleut/youknowhatimean and look like it. Neither does it make sense for the Air Nomads to be racially random; The real Tibetans are Nomads as well but it doesn't mean they aren't a unified group. — On the other hand Fire Nation is still based on East-Asian, not Indian, cultures and the architecture is really the only European influenced part of the Northern Water Tribe so this might not be all that justified after all...
    • A bit of Fridge Brilliance about the culture: this is a world where European colonialism never happened. Instead, the avatars and benders would have spread traditionally Asian culture to every corner of the world. Thus even white people would adopt an Asian mode of dress.
  • This thought just came to me... The season of fire is said to be summer: well Fire Nation is located in a region where it's always summer. The season of water is winter: the Water Tribes are located on the poles where it's always winter. Air and earth don't properly fit into this idea, though. Although, the Air Temples are all between a pole an the equator, like autumn is between summer and winter. The Earth Kingdom still doesn't apply since it is partly on the equator too... but then again, if you look at what parts of Earth Kingdom fall on the equator: The Chameleon Bay and the Desert, two naturally scarcely inhabited areas. (Although, so does Omashu.)
  • A minor bit of Fringe Brilliance regarding "Nightmares and Daydreams." During the second half of the episode dealing with Zuko, he's upset about not being invited to the upcoming war meeting Ozai is having with his generals, and eventually confronts Azula about it, asking if she was invited. She responds with a yes, and responds that she was the Princess. This makes perfect sense. As the Princess, and second born, she isn't expected to show up, and has to be invited, as protocol. Zuko however, has no reason to be invited, as he's the first born child, the Crown Prince. he's expected to be there by default as he's technically the heir to the throne already. The entire reasoning for Zuko getting upset was that he was made unaware that he doesn't have to be invited to these sorts of things, he's expected to show up regardless.
  • When Aang shows reluctance about killing Ozai, Zuko gets pretty angry. This is less about doing what is necessary and more about the fact that Zuko knows first hand what will happen if Aang hesitates. He was the same age as Aang when he faced his father in Agni Kai. He doesn't want his friend to get burned.
  • When talking about killing Ozai, Zuko refers to him as the Firelord and deliberately distances himself. His amusing slip up (calling Ozai the 'Fatherlord') suddenly becomes a Tear Jerker.
  • When I first watched "The Fortuneteller," I initially rolled my eyes at the Screw Destiny take that seemed prevalent in a show about a boy whose destiny is to save the world. In this setting, the "mysticism is wrong and believers are blind to reality" bit, while providing some hilarious moments, seemed out-of-place. Then I realized: Aunt Wu predicted the volcano would not destroy the town, right? Guess what ended up not happening at the end of the episode! The Aesop of "we make our own destinies" isn't a copout at all; it's a lesson to Aang that he can't wait for destiny to come to him. He has to work towards his destiny, and that's exactly what he does.
  • The Fire Nation military was the most gender equal of all the four nations, but all the women seen were young women. There were no older women seen among the Fire Nation generals, and no older Fire Nation women seen in the Order of the White Lotus. And in the flashback to Roku and Sozin's youth, the women that were seen were all in more traditional roles. This suggests that the gender equality seen in the present is a recent phenomenon, possibly spurred by the exigencies of war to make up for manpower shortages (how else could the Fire Nation prosecute a 100 year war against the vastly larger Earth Kingdom?). Which would mean that it had to be one of the three Complete Monster Firelords (Sozin, Azulon, and/or Ozai) who introduced gender equality into the Avatar world.
  • This one's related to the new series. Korra is supposed to have already mastered everything except air, right? Which is also why it might be a miniseries: one element would naturally take less screen time than three. When I heard that, I figured, okay, maybe Avatars start learning earlier now...it wasn't really something I had put much thought into, since it wasn't really all that Fridge Logic-y. Then I realized it also makes a whole lot of sense in a meta fashion: after watching Airbender, we've already seen the process of learning water, earth, and fire. But we've never seen someone being trained in airbending. So in a way, it's an aversion of redundancy. Sure, it would probably be different, watching Korra learn them instead of Aang, but it wouldn't be different enough. That was really the "oh, I get it now!" moment for me.
    • Not just that... there are still plenty of waterbenders around, the fire nation and the earth kingdom are still there, so learning earth, water and fire should be pretty easy... but almost all the air noamds have been wiped out, sho who is there to teach Korra airbending?
      • Apparently, Aang and Katara's son.
  • Throughout the series, the vast majority of vehicles, weapons, etc are either powered by benders of one flavour or another or by animals. Except for the Fire Nation. Why? Because they have put the world out of balance and have lost touch with the natural world. As such, they rely on machines that cause massive pollution and ecological damage wherever they go. Green Aesop, anyone? —mulberrym1lk
  • So, the Fire Nation can develop tanks, giant drills, massive factories, etc...but no hot air balloons? Odd. Until you realize what happens when you kill everyone in the world whose specialty is manipulating air. Of course the Fire Nation didn't realize that hot air would allow flight; all of the accumulated knowledge of flight and moving with the air was lost when the Airbenders were wiped out!
  • In "The Earth King", Toph brought down the house.
  • Episodes in the third season like "The Beach", "The Painted Lady", and "The Headband" aren't just Padding or Breather Episodes (though they serve that last purpose too). Up to now, the Gaang (and the audience) has seen the Fire Nation through the royal family and the army. These episodes let us see that the Fire Nation citizens also have kids in school who make pasta art and sneak out to go dancing. They have beach parties and go to the theatre. The lower classes struggle to make a living. In other words, they're not Always Chaotic Evil. The average Fire National is no worse (or better) than anyone else in the four nations. The goal is not to defeat the Fire Nation; it's to defeat Ozai and restore the "living in harmony" between the nations. —alanh

    Futurama 
  • The End of Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs had this effect on me. At first, I thought they just couldn't think of a satisfying way to end the movie, and felt kind of cheated. Then I realized two facts that made me love the ending: 1) it was a satire- maybe a borderline Deconstruction- of the Christian apocryphal idea of the Rapture, which pointed out all the unfortunate ethical and moral implications inherent in the concept. 2) it showed off the true Crapsack World setting of Futurama. Fry's future is such a dystopia that not even "heaven" is safe from the underlying suckiness of existence. In any other show, it would have been depressing, but it perfectly fits the characters and setting of Futurama, so I found it funny. Make of that what you will. —Moogi
    • Especially considering Fry's line "I'm sorry, Bender. Robots don't go to heaven." — Andyroid
    • Futurama has many moments like this. One particular moment pops out in the second episode. At first, Fry and Leela's adventure on the moon seems like it's contrived. Why would a park make full functional rovers for a ride almost nobody goes on? But thinking about it, it showed me the stupidity of the future world, or alternatively, adaptivity by using rover that built the base. —Katana
  • In Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles, I was annoyed that they would consider the Professore being really really old worthy of voiding a lifetime discount. But in that episode, he was 161, and a year earlier had been rescued from the Near-Death Star because people are retired (from life) at the age of 160. His lifetime discount really did expire, and it was both a Continuity Nod and showing how things might become less simple now that he's not supposed to be among the living! -JET73L
  • So I'm sitting at my desk, reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and I think, "This would be impossible to adapt to film. How could you transfer the contradictory and bizarre descriptions to a visual medium (e.g. "The ships hung in the air in exactly the way that bricks don't" from Hitchhiker's Guide)? Then I thought of Futurama, specifically when Fry had to jump out of a plane. An exchange like that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Douglas Adams book. To summarise: Futurama is the best adaptation of Douglas Adams' work ever. - randomfanboy
  • The episode "The Sting" - the entire episode. You have to watch it twice just to get the full power of it. Take a screenshot of Leela's hospital room and refer to it throughout the second watching - it has the ice fields represented, along with Fry's jacket being put on Leela, and the present that Fry had bought from the novelty shop for Leela. That shot is meant to show the full extent to which Leela's 'dreams' had put her closer to reality.
  • The end of "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", originally the series finale: the show's been cancelled, and the last line spoken is "Please don't stop playing, Fry. I want to hear how it ends." So it's a nod to the fact that the show's ending, and more than that, the show's ending and the story hadn't really been finished, and we wish it wouldn't stop because we want to know how it ends. All of which is sort of apparent the first time you see it, if you know it was the season finale. The real fridge brilliance for me was the crude holophonor images of Fry and Leela kissing and walking into the horizon as the writer acknowledging their own inadequacy, that they know in their head how the story is supposed to end but they also know that they don't have the skill to show us the beautiful ending the characters deserve. The entire holophonor becomes a metaphor for the author, and, ironically, by acknowledging their doubt in this way, they did give us a unique and beautiful ending. And the episode has a running gag about irony! Futurama is fantastic.
  • The "Ret Con" (most fans will know the one as soon as I mention the episode in conjunction with Bender's Big Score) had to have been planned at least as far back as Jurassic Bark, since Seymour almost definitely had to have been flash-fossilized while still alive and what are the chances that a dog would die of old age and immediately get flash-fossilized as early as 2012? -JET73L
  • In Bender's Game, Bender creates a Dungeons & Dragons character. The character's name? "Titanius Anglesmith". 'Titanius' is an obvious reference to metal, but it takes a second to notice the nuance of the surname - Angle-smith -> maker of angles -> bender. -Anomaly
  • Fry's Flanderization into an idiot makes sense after he goes into his brain and cuts most of the wires in their to fight off the worms.
    • Flanderization? What flanderization?
  • While watching Bender's Big Score, I always considered the Time Sphere being unable to go forward in time as an excuse to get Bender more involved with the plot. Then I remembered that the Time Sphere is a code that comes from God, who is half machine. From a different perspective, the Time Sphere lets you access older data from God's memory, and you can't go into the future because no matter where you are in time, God self-admittedly can't see into the future.
  • This one might a bit of a stretch: third season episode "Roswell That Ends Well" sends the crew back in time when weird red and blue energy fields collide because Fry was microwaving popcorn IN SPACE. Fourth season episode "The Why Of Fry" - Nibbler erases Fry's memory by making his third eye...stalk-thing flash in a Shout Out to the Men In Black films. Fry asks, "Did everything just taste purple for a second?" Intentional Continuity Nod? (See also: Synaesthesia on The Other Wiki)
  • You ever notice how in other fiction (especially comic books) no matter how grotesque the male aliens are, their female counterparts will almost always be closer in appearance to (sexy) human females? But that in Futurama, the female Omicronians and female Amphibiosians look more or less like the males? So a Genre Savvy viewer could perhaps figure out that the basically human-looking Leela might not be as alien as she originally thinks...
  • In the episode Amazon Women in the Mood, the Amazons were portrayed more or less as stereotypical women with Hulk Speak while Bender, Fry, and Zap constantly belittled them. Later when the men (excluding Bender) were to be put to Death By Sex Snoo-Snoo, Kif was deemed as the most attractive of them. On the surface this seems more of a visual gag since Kif is the only non-human of the group ("Haha, it's funny because he's not attractive by realistic standards, haha!"). But if you think about it, it actually makes sense why they found him the most attractive: he is the only one of the men who was genuinely kind and didn't criticize any of them.
  • In The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings I was always distrubed by how easily the Robot Devil was able to switch hands with Fry twice without any blood. However, in an earlier episode Fry had his hands replaced after getting them bitten off by a Trex. The Robot Devil merely took those hands off the original stubs left by the Trex.
  • I was originally confused by All My Circuits. Why make a soap opera parody starring robots? Then I realized that the soap opera was a Cliche Storm becuase the robot writers lacked true human creativity and simpy stole previous plot lines from earlier soap operas.
  • At first I was wondering: why does Bender drink alcohol? At first I thought it was simple Rule Of Funny. Then I realized that we have ethanol engines today, so it's not too much of a stretch to imagine Bender having one. After all, there is plenty of ethanol in alcohol. This also explains why he acts drunk after he hasn't been drinking for a while: he's running out of juice! It makes perfect sense
    • This is flat out explained several times throughout the show.
      • To be fair to the above poster, I don't think they actually stated the "ethanol" bit; just that robots run on alcohol.
  • So why does the military stop chasing the Planet Express crew in the new season? For the same reason Nixon got to run for President again—the body's brand-new, so technically they're not the same people, and therefore anything they did before the crash doesn't carry over to them. Farnsworth is exempt from punishment because he was Un Personed earlier on.
  • When Leela was a baby, she was left with a note penned by her mother in order to convince the orphanarium that she was an alien, not a mutant. But a note written in Alienese, a language seemingly understood by many people on Earth, is untranslatable by Professor Farnsworth's translation machine? Leela's mother's exolinguistics skills meant that she could write complete nonsense on the note in a made-up language that looks deceptively like Alienese to a lay-person but without actually meaning anything in Alienese. This would be like arranging Cyrillic characters randomly on paper and passing it off as Russian text to someone who is unfamilar with the language and its script. The reason for this is so that no-one will discover that Leela is not an alien, the lack of backstory adding further credence. That way, when an abandoned Leela and the note are found outside Cookieville Minimum-Security Orphanarium, Mr Vogel has no reason to doubt that Leela is an alien, and so won't attempt to translate the faux-Alienese. This is also why Professor Farnsworth is unable to translate the note: it doesn't actually mean anything in a real language. -kryz
    • Actually, the note can be translated. It says: "Your parents love you very much."
  • In the preview of the first 90 seconds of the new season airing on Comedy Central was a joke where Fry asks Professor Farnsworth why he's suddenly covered in severe burns. The sight gag reveal was funny but the extreme extent of the injuries left you wondering why Fry isn't in agonizing pain. When the premiere episode "Rebirth" aired you learn at the end that the Fry with the burns, whom the viewers watched the entire episode was actually a robot Leela made out of grief because she thought the real Fry was dead. It then turns out the real Fry was still undergoing the rebirth process in the Professor's vat of stem cells. It explains why the Fry in the beginning didn't feel any pain from the burns. He was a robot! -Fastbak
  • I only just this instant realized that Zoidberg's accent, and, indeed, name, are supposed to be Yiddish. I know, I know... I know.- Tal9922
  • Anyone got any good Fridge Brilliance theories as to why there's "Just the one" alternate universe in "I Dated a Robot", but then the Professors manage to accidentally create gateways to a bunch of different universes in "The Farnsworth Parabox"? I feel like that's one that could benefit from some good fan-crackpot-theories. ~ United Shoes 37
    • I believe Word Of God has it that "I Dated a Robot" features a parallel universe while "The Farnsworth Parabox" featured "perpendicular universes." Sounds good to me.
  • I never had a problem with the "Luck of the Fryrish" episode's ending, but it just suddenly became more meaningful to me. It is revealed at the end that the tombstone of one 'Philip J. Fry,' whom Fry thought was his spiteful brother Yancy after taking his name, contained a heartfelt engravement on it saying that this Fry had been "named for his uncle." It was Yancy's son. Anyway, this becomes more meaningful when you think of how the name "Philip J. Fry" for the Fry we know was itself a real-life tribute to the late Phil Hartman.- Invader897
  • It just occurred to me that Zapp Braniggan is the perfect Evil Counterpart to Fry. He's a borderline retarded idiot who thrusts himself into a position of greater importance bit he never does anything for anyone else. Fry is also retarded but he's generous, and far more couragous than he gives himself credit for. Zapp was Leela's first "Fryval" and Zapp will never be better than Fry.

    Gargoyles 
  • I was making chocolate milk when it suddenly struck me what makes David Xanatos the greatest villain. It's not that he's an Evil Genius who can trick the heroes into doing his plans for him, it's not that he has the capacity to feel love and other human emotions, it's not his Dissonant Serenity and simple amorality as opposed to being a one-dimensional Card Carrying Villain or Complete Monster. It's the complete lack of a Freudian Excuse! They don't try to humanize him or make us sympathize with him because of some painful past or bad childhood. He's the type of person he is and does what he does entirely because he wants to be. And we're still drawn to him! That more than anything confirms for me that this guy really is in total control. ~ Lale
    • Concurred, though for an additional reason. Unlike the vast majority of villains, he fully embodies the Aesop of, as he puts it, "Revenge Is A Suckers Game," and refuses to indulge in any sort of scheme that makes things personal... he refuses to let his antagonists define his goals! The real Fridge Brilliance moment comes when you realize that the thirst for vengeance is a handicap for nearly every other character (even occasionally, the heroes!) of the show, and his lack thereof is a main reason Xanatos is consistently stays one step ahead. - Rothul
      • What I realized about Xanatos that made me appreciate him even more was that he is the ultimate human trickster. He's such a successful trickster that he managed to hold his own against a real Trickster, Coyote. He even had the ultimate Trickster, Puck, working for him! Also, not counting Xanatos, the show featured no less than four Trickster gods; Puck, Coyote, Raven and Anansi. The trickster myths are among my favorites, and if ABC hadn't changed the format, it would have been really cool to see them going at it.
      • And speaking of Coyotes, the fact that Xanatos named his robot double Coyote was a bit of a clue as well. Although given the robot's lack of success, I always suspected that the show's producers were homaging a different Coyote entirely. Namely Wile E. Coyote.
  • Actually, my moment is when I was given the first season on DVD, and it occured to me that the head Gargoyle is named GOLIATH, and his main adversary is named DAVID Xanatos. DAVID vs. GOLIATH! I made a huge headdesk at missing that one, though my friends pointed out that Xanatos was always referred to by his surname. - Mr. Nick
  • Would you believe that watching Gargoyles inspired a burst of Fridge Brilliance for me regarding Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? ~ Lale
  • I just realized the fact that Brooklyn's Evil Clone is named Hollywood has two layers. First of all, Broadway is in New York, and Hollywood is in L.A. However, both are entertainment capitals of the world: Broadway of theater, and Hollywood of film. It's a perfect contrast —Dynamic Dragon
  • After Maggie is turned into a mutate, she said that she's from Ohio. At first, I thought this was pointless. Then I realized that most astronauts and pioneers of aerospace are from Ohio. Maggie has the ability to fly unaided by machines— one of the first humans to be able to do so
  • While the Archmage uses the phoenix gate to create a paradoxal time loop to save himself from his fall in the chasm and give himself the tome, amulet and phoenix gate that will empower him to save himself (and loop the loop), there is a much larger loop in play here. The phoenix gate exists because nobody ever created it. It came into existance because in the future, Puck tries to trick Goliath into giving it to him, and he instead gets rid of it by hurling it into the far past where it is first discovered.

    Duck Tales 
  • Scrooge McDuck's money bin. As a kid I had a vague idea that you shouldn't store all of your money as pennies and store it in a single building for the sole purpose of swimming through it. As I got older and learned about real-world economics it made even less sense. And then I thought: Scrooge knows about this. He is so freakin rich he can afford to keep his funds liquid and inefficiently stored like that. — Chadius
    • Oh my... those funds are 'liquid'. As in 'the usual contents of a swimming pool'. I've just this minute got that.
  • I came to a different but similar conclusion... Everyone tends to have loose change that they likely keep in a piggy bank or in a jar. Scrooge Mc Duck is so rich that he needs AN ENTIRE BUILDING to hold his loose change! The fact he can swim in it is just a plus. -Game Guru GG
  • There's a more practical reason for Scrooge's moneybin. Scrooge is so ridiculously rich that if he actually spent or invested all his money, he would destroy the world economy with a lethal level of inflation! By keeping so much of his money in his money bin and out of circulation, he avoids global economic devastation. At the same time, whenever he feels like shocking someone with a little fiscal "dragon awe", he has immediate access to his gazillions. -me
    • "Coins are only valuable when they're rare... and Scrooge McDuck is the one who makes 'em rare!" (Don Rosa, "The Money Pit")
  • Thailog isn't going to be able to spend that money he stole from Xanatos, since the bank doesn't circulate the Ten thousand dollar bills. He'd have the police on him in a heartbeat. That's why Xanatos wasn't all that upset to lose the money. —ncfan

    South Park 
  • The South Park episode Butt Out appears at first to be a strange Aesop: cigarette companies aren't that bad, while the anti-smoking lobby is full of arrogant, manipulative jerks who are ready to go to any lengths to make people believe in the evils of smoking. It wasn't until recently that this Troper realized that the makers of the show were just reversing the classic cartoon cliché of "Evil Cigarette Companies trying to hide the truth about Tobacco and brainwash people into buying cigarettes". It's this kind of clever metahumor that makes Matt Stone and Trey Parker the comedic geniuses they are, in this Troper's opinion. - lonewolf23k
    • What's more, it's parodying South Park itself. Kyle constantly points out the show's format, and the Strawman Political gets taken to its logical extreme on both sides. For a show who's main message is that people should stop taking everything so darn seriously, it's utterly fitting. - Hugh Man
      • "If you ask me, your show has become so preachy and full of morals that you have forgotten how to be funny!". This and another similar quote appear in Cartoon Wars Part II, yet a lot of people still complain about how Stone and Parker can't make fun of themselves while making fun of Family Guy.
  • South Park again. The AIDS episode makes a lot more sense if you view it in the context of other South Park episodes (particularly Ginger Kids). In in many of those episodes, Cartman acts insensitively and so Kyle (and sometimes Stan) try to force him to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes", and it always backfires horribly. In this episode, it's reversed: Kyle acts insensitively towards Cartman for having AIDS, so Cartman gives him AIDS to give him some perspective. Cartman not just giving Kyle perspective on AIDS, he's also giving Kyle perspective on trying to teach him lessons! - Unknown Troper
    • He acts insensitively most likely because of Cartman's OWN lack of recognition of his own lack of sensitivity. Cartman infecting Kyle isn't just his usual Pay Evil Unto Evil mentality, but also another in a series of Moral Event Horizon crossing acts. - azul120
  • The writers of the South Park Imaginationland Trilogy weren't trying to be offensive by putting Jesus in along with the Council of Nine (nine of the world's most revered imaginary characters), they were subtly pointing religions like Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and the like don't believe in Jesus.
    • In Judaism, Jesus is emphatically not the Messiah or the son of God, but is regarded by at least some segments of the community as a respected teacher and holy man.
    • The above troper is half right. Hinduists, Buddhists, and Jews do accept Jesus' existence, but not that he is the messiah. As a result, many of his qualities are presumed by them to be imaginary. This means that they imagined that was the case, hence, why he was in Imaginationland
    • For me, the fridge brilliance kicked in the moment I realized that Jesus would've fit in Imagination land one way or another, because Imaginary Jesus is based on a modern highly-fictionalised stereotype of how people think of Jesus rather than a real human being Jesus would've been. 'Just because it's imaginary doesn't mean it's not real' indeed, Trey & Matt.
      • ...which also explains why Imaginary Jesus doesn't recognise the boys who he's met several other times through the series, if only in passing.
  • South Park seemed like horrible, low-budget, crudely-designed animation. Then I started listening to the dialogue... -nayhem
    • Just watch the episode that skewers the 'remasting' of Star Wars and Indiana Jones. If they changed the style now, it'd just be out of place.
  • Cartman might've gotten his wish in Cartoon Wars. They never did find the manatee ball that he removed. So, given that possibility, Family Guy was cancelled in the South Park universe.

    Transformers 
  • In the second episode of The Transformers, "More Than Meets The Eye, Part 2", Starscream wastes valuable energon cubes by firing some sort of energy weapon into the air. Then, he tries to defend himself, and this scene occurs;
    Starscream: The energon cubes! They work!
    Megatron: Of course they work!
    Starscream: You didn't know! You never tested them!
    • I thought this was really stupid, even for Starscream. But then, I remembered that Starscream used to be a scientist on Cybertron! Of course he would think it would be a good idea to test the cubes!
  • I was personally bugged that in Beast Wars, at least three characters - Inferno, Blackarachnia, and Rhinox - are reprogrammed, yet Megatron puts up with Waspinator's laziness and arrogance, Tarantulas' insanity, and Terrorsaur's Starscreaminess. Why didn't he just reprogram them? Then it clicked. Until Beast Machines (which, frankly, may as well not even have the same Megatron thanks to Character Derailment), there was only one hint that Megatron even had programming skills - the Transmuter, and that one backfired when Rhinox utterly wtfpwned pretty much the entire Predacon ship, and demonstrated that a fully-active Cybertronian is very very hard to truly reprogram. The only one to semi-permanently reprogram anyone was Tarantulas, and unless you're actively suicidal, you don't want to trust Tarantulas to reprogram all your henchmen. And even then, he was hotwiring protoforms rather than "adults" like Waspinator and Terrorsaur! No less than three reasons why he didn't try it until he was grotesquely misusing Sparks in Beast Machines! - Count Dorku
  • Megatron's motivation in Beast Machines. OK, so it's pretty impressive, much more creative and ambitious than generic 'take over the world/galaxy/universe', but I didn't fully appreciate it until some time after I saw Beast Wars (yeah, we didn't get Beast Wars until several years after Beast Machines had already aired). Anyway, look at how much his minions betray him - only two remain loyal, and one of those is just barely competent. Is it any wonder he would come to consider free will itself to be the problem? - Vampire Buddha
  • In Transformers Animated, Megatron spends most of the first season as a disembodied head unable to do anything but manipulate machinery around him. Then, when he finally regains his body and becomes a credible threat, he spends most of the second season hidden underground and rarely goes into battle, despite being one of the most fearsome fighters of the Decepticons. This makes sense in the context of how he was nearly deactivated in the Pilot Episode by going head-first into battle without any backup or plans and was nearly destroyed by The Starscream's treachery. As with his wariness of his minions' loyalty after contacting them in his disembodied state, his keeping underground and carefully working out long-term strategies was the Big Bad learning from his mistakes as well as the The Hero!
  • Also from Transformers Animated, I was wondering why Optimus turned into a fire truck rather than a semi. Then I realized that he has an axe and a foam blaster, both tools of a firefighter.

    The Princess and the Frog 
  • This didn't occur to me until days after I saw The Princess And The Frog: True Loves Kiss is actually much Newer Than They Think; in the original The Frog Prince Fairy Tale, the frog changed back when the disgusted princess threw him against the wall... similar to Tiana's and Charlotte's initial reactions of crushing it with a book. Excellent Mythology Gag! ~Lale
    • Oh! The inclusion of Lawrence would also be that, wouldn't it? In the original fairy tale, the story ends not with the prince being freed from the spell, but with him and the princess riding off in a carriage drawn by the prince's loyal servant. Said servant apparently was so distraught at his master's fate, that he bound his heart with three metal bands, all of which break when his heart swells to see the prince freed. In this movie though, the servant is put-upon and is quite eager to give Naveen retribution for all of the humiliation he endured.
    • The breaking of the curse on Tiana and Naveen is proven to have been a solution that essentially Naveen was carrying around with himself the entire time - if he marries anyone, that person becomes a "princess" and would be able to turn him back. Lest we forget, though, it's marriage that Naveen is so desperately afraid of! And not only that, but Facilier instantly figured that out about him, and so he gave Naveen the key to his own problem, knowing that the spoiled prince would never be able to go through with it.
    • Also, Big Daddy LeBouf is clearly a very... shall we say, "big" fellow indeed, who loves his beignets. Doctor Facilier's plan is to murder him via a pin through the heart of a voodoo doll as soon as his daughter is wed to the fake Prince Naveen. This is certainly a stealthy way to kill someone to begin with, but nobody would find a heart attack on a man LeBouf's size to be suspect.
    • Listen to "Friends on the Other Side" with the knowledge that Naveen is going to be turned into a frog. To elaborate, Facilier says that "if ((Naveen and Lawrence)) relax, it will enable me to do, anything I please". This means that if they let him, Facilier will do as he planned, turning Naveen into a frog and corrupting Lawrence. Also, although he shows dollar bills, it's clear the verse "It's the green, it's the green, it's the green you neeed!" alludes to Naveen's fate, as well as being "free to hop from place to place", and the words "transmogrification central". There's even a lily pad in the background of the final tarot card. And before that, at one point his shadow turns into a top-hatted snake. As you may know, snakes eat frogs...
      • There's another layer to that. Snakes eat frogs, but some frogs are poisonous, which represents how Facilier's plot resulted in his own undoing
    • Additionally, "And when I look into your future it's the green that I see" could not only refer to frog!Naveen, but to Tiana, who is wearing a green dress after she and Naveen are turned human again.
      • I just realized that the lyrics "you need to marry a little honey whose daddy's got dough," are a double or even a triple entendre: he is a rich man, but he is also quite large, and, well, doughy. In addition, he loves those beignets. - karmadoodles
      • And when he winds up marrying Tiana, it still works, since her father wanted to open a restaurant, which would mean literal dough
    • Not to mention "But in your future, the you that I see is exactly the man you always wanted to be." This could allude to the way Laurence always wanted to be like Prince Naveen — handsome and swooned over, able to do whatever he wanted and with lots of money and influence — and his role in Dr. Facilier's plan to take Naveen's image and his place during his wedding to Charlotte.
    • Facilier also mentions that Lawrence has been pushed around all his life, and will be pushed around in the future too. Lawrence becomes Facilier's sap, pushing him around to achieve his own goals, since he can't conjure anything for himself.
      • Specifically, Facilier says that Lawrence would be "pushed around by [his] wife", should he be married. Had their plan gone successfully, Lawrence would have wound up married to Charlotte, who is a rather... energetic person and rather forceful. Who wants to guess how their marriage would have gone if it had happened?
    • Tiana and Facilier as motifs for racism: both are black and disadvantaged people living in 1920's New Orleans. Facilier's eaten up by jealousy and spite. You really think he was talking entirely about Larry when he mentioned the "fat cats" in their cars? Tiana is best friends with a rich and spoiled white girl, yet we never see any indication that she resents the difference in their stations. By the end, Tiana gets her happy ending through perseverence and doing what's right, while Facilier gets devoured by the dark powers that he sold his soul to in his attempts to get to the top. Anvilicious? Maybe, but Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped.
    • The Evening Star, upon which everyone wishes, could also be the Northern Star... which Tiana's predecessors would have used to reach their dreams of escaping slavery by running North from their Southern slave-owners.
      • Speaking of fridge brilliance and the Evening Star, though I'm not quite sure if this was intentional, I just realized that The Evening Star is not really a star, but the planet Venus. Ray is in love with the planet named after the goddess of love.
    • This troper had a moment when reflecting on Charlotte's decision to kiss Naveen but let him marry Tiana, completely willingly and without a second's hesitation. The moral of the movie was that people need to concentrate on what they need rather than what they want, with the "need" being love (family, friends, significant others, etc) and the "want" being things like a dream job, or a lot of money. In Charlotte's case, she wanted to be a princess but needed her friendship with Tiana and knew that Tiana needed Naveen more than she did. So really, Charlotte fit into the wants vs needs theme just like Tiana and Naveen!
      • Going a little further, take note of when Facilier strikes a deal with Naveen and when Facilier tries to strike a deal with Tiana. In both cases, they're being offered exactly what they want for seemingly a very small price. During his bargain, Naveen gives into his wants and suffers for it. When she is being tempted though, Tiana has learned enough to appreciate her needs and refuses the deal as a result, ultimately being able to stop Facilier and save the town. The two are foils to each other!
      • Even deeper than that is the reason why Tiana becomes a frog upon kissing Naveen and Charlotte doesn't has to do with her motivations for doing so, in regards to want vs need. Tiana's motivation for kissing him? The Green. And she gets what she wants! Charlotte's? True friendship, which some would argue is a form of love. Granted it doesn't work because Charlotte isn't a princess, but I digress.
      • Symbolism: Color Coded For Your Convenience ! Tiana spends most of the beginning of the movie (as a child, as a waitress, and at the party initially) wearing yellow - it's even the leading color in 'Almost There,' and so it becomes associated with hard work and diligence. However, when Tiana is reduced to wishing on a star and kissing a frog to get her restaurant, she's wearing a blue dress with sparkles. You could practically call that dress "Evangeline Blue" - Evangeline who represents faith and hope and love and magic. And then in the conclusion Tiana wears green - the union of hard-working yellow and loving blue!
      • and frogs, don't forget frogs!
    • This Troper's favourite mythology gag ever actually comes from this movie. Upon Ray's death, he turns into a star alongside Evangeline. Now, where else did that happen...Listed under Fridge Brilliance because it took most of this Troper's friends a while to get it.
      • Explain please?
      • I think s/he may be referring to when Timon tells Pumbaa that stars are actually "fireflies that got stuck up there in that big... bluish-black thing." Which this troper actually thought of immediately when that scene occurred.
      • Also, perhaps it was like Mufasa's speech at the beginning- where he explains to Simba that the stars were the "Great Kings of the Past, looking down on us." We can assume that, since Mufasa was a "great king", he turned into a star as well.
      • I [not original troper] was thinking Stardust until seeing the Pot Hole's link.
      • Also, as of the end of the movie, there are two bright stars side-by-side in the sky. Peter Pan, anyone?
    • There's also Naveen's dialogue during his first "mincing lesson," in which he describes himself as completely helpless outside his cocoon of wealth and privilege. As a younger son who won't inherit the throne (he wouldn't have been disowned if he were crown prince), Naveen has grown up feeling useless and unnecessary. The revelation that he's a worthwhile person with a real contribution to make is the greatest gift Tiana gives him.
      • Um, he's the older son. His brother is six.
      • Doesn't mean that Naveen isn't a middle child, with a brother older than he is.
    • It just hit me that the whole idea of Wishing and Working isn't all that new in Disney Cannon after all. In the original star wishing story, Gepetto wishes on a star that Pinnochio could be a real boy. Yet that Blue fairy only takes that PART of the way by bringing him to life instead of making him a real boy. Then Pinnochio has to go on a long journey to learn what it means to be a real boy, and only after his Heroic Sacrifice does Gepetto's wish finally come true. And who said that this was a refute of that old Disney tradition? You always had to work after that star "takes you part of the way". -Eric W
    • When I saw the two asshole realtors in the donkey suit I thought it was rather odd to wear a Donkey costume to a masquerade. Then it hit me! They're wearing the symbol of the Democratic party! Before the presidency of FDR the Democratic Party was essentially ruled by conservatives in all issues including race relations, after his presidency the Democrats did a Heel Face Turn on that issue. Essentially they represented both personal and political racism without at all being Anvilicious. Rhyme Beat
    • Early on Tiana tells Charlotte the way to a man's heart is through his stomach and Charlotte uses Tiana's food to try to seduce Naveen. Not only is Tiana the one who ends up with Naveen but one of the scenes showing Naveen and Tiana starting to fall in love is her teaching him to work with food. And to top it off when Naveen attempts to propose he brings Tiana a ton of food.
    • In the "When We're Human" sequence, Naveen says that he's got a redhead and a brunette in each arm, and the blondes surrounding him just "hold the candles". He then ends up with Tiana (a brunette) because Charlotte (a blonde) held up a candle for their relationship while disregarding her childhood dream. —MiraShio
      • Does that mean the only redhead of the film, Big Daddy, is in Naveen's arms? Brain Bleach, please.
    • I noticed that the reason they showed Steamboat Willie at the start of the film was because, hey, the film takes place when Steamboat Willie was created, and when the Disney company was founded.
      • That's actually just the logo for Walt Disney Animation Studios; it first appeared at the beginning of Meet The Robinsons, I think.

    Teen Titans 
  • Okay, Teen Titans: "Things Change." Season 5's big idea is that Beast Boy has to learn to grow up. We all thought the Brotherhood of Evil, his old nemeses, would do it. We thought his early days with the Doom Patrol would handle it. Nope, by the end of the Doom Patrol cameo we learned his first name. By the time the Brotherhood was beaten he made a brain freeze joke (all the titans groaned at that one.) No, the point of the last episode wasn't to sink ships. It wasn't a desperate attempt to write off Terra. It was there to remind you there are more things than heroes and villains out there. Terra lost her powers and she was glad for it; she couldn't handle being a hero or villain. At the last scene Beast Boy finally gets it through his head that there is more than Black or White morals out there and is finally ready to move onto the next stage of his life. The ep is quite a bit of Cerebus Syndrome from normal (and I expected a Batman cameo based on the title) but here we are. - Chadius
    • Another Teen Titans example for me is the much-maligned episode "Troq", usually accused of being anvilicious about how racism is bad. And it really is, but there are two subtler, much braver aesops hidden within it. One is that racism isn't always confined to Card Carrying Villains and Complete Monsters. Val-Yor's presented as a genuine hero who really is (all Alternate Character Interpretations about the Locrix being innocent victims aside) trying to save the galaxy. At one point, he even orders Starfire to leave him behind and save herself - and yet he's also a racist bastard toward Starfire. Now usually, in a television show where an otherwise sympathetic character is a racist, he'll learn his lesson by the end of the episode, which leads to the Broken Aesop that it's somehow up to the victim to win over racists. But Val-Yor doesn't change, and the Titans instead accept that there will always be people like him, and simply refuse to tolerate his behavior and tell him he has to leave. This is actually a much more subdued and realistic aesop than the usual message that either only complete monsters can be racists, or that any racist who's not a complete monster can always be redeemed by the victim working hard enough to prove herself. - BritBllt
    • When you stop to think about it, the episode "Stranded", despite being a (very fun and cute) filler episode, has this incredibly well done subtle theme of miscommunication and breakdown in communication running all throughout it. The Titans are in space because a satellite space station stopped broadcasting. The Monster of the Week's power is a sonically disruptive scream that breaks up radio waves (among other things), directly leading to the Titans mistakenly separating and being scattered on the alien planet, out of contact from each other. All three conflicts of the episode involve mixed signals regarding communication-Starfire and Robin's misunderstanding of their feelings and the nature of their relationship, Cyborg's feeble attempts to instruct the mechanically inept Beast Boy on how to fix the T-ship, Raven's inability to convey her annoyance to the miniature egg-people following her. The symbolism is particularly noticeable when Robin and Starfire are discussing the definition of 'girlfriend'; not only does obscuring fog spring up concealing the two from each other, but then they discover a wide chasm has appeared between them. It's pretty freaking brilliant.
    • Woah. At the start of Trouble In Tokyo, when Saikotech kicks open the sprinkler systems and just vanishes right in front of Robin, Beast Boy's joking and immediately dismissed possibility for his disappearence is that Saikotech "just wasn't waterproof". As we learn later, he's made out of paint, so he really wasn't! BB was right!
    • In "Snowblind", the team meets the radioactive hero Red Star. The character who spends the most time with Red Star and forms the greatest bond with Red Star is Starfire. Random choice? Probably not. See, Red Star is the hero's second name. His original hero name in the comics, from his first stint in the Teen Titans comic was Starfire.
    • Also, this is probably a coincidence, but 5 in Japanese is "Go". The theme song says One, Two, Three, Four, Go! Teen Titans!
      • And who sings the theme song? A pair of Japanese pop stars
    • In the episode "Overdrive," this troper initially considered the ending where Cyborg and the rest of the Titans to use a series of incredibly realistic holograms to beat the villain Billy Numerous a bit of a Big Lipped Alligator Moment that came out of freakin' nowhere. Then he realized two things: First off, Robin had used a hologram in "Masks," so that technology is not beyond the Titans. Secondly, the way the Titans beat Billy Numerous is the same way Billy had managed to keep the upper hand on a supercharged Cyborg throughout the episode: by tricking him into overtaxing his abilities. After Cyborg spent most of an episode convinced that he was a One Man Army and nearly killing himself in the process, this final battle was about him stepping back and letting Billy exhaust himself. It fits nicely with the episode's theme of realizing you're an individual and can only do so much in a day. Teen Titans has some pretty damn good writing. -Romanticist Caveman

     Everything Else 
  • As I watched Blazing Dragons, I noticed how infatuated the queen was for Sir Loungelot and how on Loungelot was repeatedly kissing the queen's ass. At first I thought it was simple humor, but then I later read up on the King Arthur mythos and learned about the triangle of Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot. Eventually, it hit me: the queen and Loungelot's behavior was a reference to said triangle!
  • I always thought of Beavis as being the more hopelessly idiotic of the two, and Butthead's mental inferior in every way (which is saying something). After the show was canceled, though, it occurred to me that Beavis had always been more 'people smart'. He was a pretty nice guy most of the time, and often seemed close to getting some pity sex before Butthead ruined it by being a Jerkass. -Ryan W

  • In The Simpsons, Krusty says he owns a racehorse with Bette Midler called Krudler. For a long time I just thought the joke was that it was a horrible-sounding amalgam of the names "Krusty" and "Midler", and that was funny enough. Only later did I realise that if they'd taken the other part of each name, the horse would have been called Misty. - Whogus The Whatsler
    • Another Simpsons example: I must have seen the episode "A Streetcar Named Marge" a couple of dozen times, before I realised that the totalitarian daycare that the family enrol marge into is named "Ayn Rand's School For Tiny Tots". Oh how I laughed - The Real CJ
    • In another Simpsons episode, "Treehouse of Horror XIII," in the second part, one of the zombies is the "most evil German": Kaiser Wilhelm. The joke is, of course, they don't say Hitler. But then I realised that Hitler was actually Austrian.
    • The Simpsons page quote for Reverse Who Dunnit works as a straight out joke with a bonus for Columbo fans. Y'see, in the episode Wiggum refers to, the victim was a pianist (with big honkin' piano that was key to the scene), not a cellist. So obviously, he couldn't remember the beginning of the episode!
    • The episode "The Great Wife Hope" features yet another attempt by Marge to stop everyone's fun. Nelson inadvertently gives her great advice on how to get together other pissy moms, clergymen, etc.. He claims this is because he secretly enjoys event planning, but the real more subtle joke is that what Marge wants to do is essentially bullying.
    • In the episode where Homer is escaping the plant and he's attacked by a Giant Spider, he's told that the spider will be defeated if he says a Bible verse. Of course, he can't remember any, so he simply kills the spider by throwing a rock at it. The Fridge Brilliance comes in when you realize that Homer just killed a gigantic enemy by throwing a small rock and hitting it between the eyes.
    • Between a rock... And a hard place....
    • [sarcasm] let he who is without sin cast the first stone[/sarcasm]
  • In Total Drama Island, Heather engineers Justin's elimination very early on. Seems completely unfair and unprovoked at first, but recent episodes have allowed Justin to show his true colors, as a conniving monster who takes advantage of girls by using his good looks. Now it all makes sense; Heather recognized him for what he was, and snuffed him out before he could manifest any sort of threat to her or the team. My hat's off to you, Heather! - Ian
    • When I first learned who Sierra was, I groaned out loud. A female character that seemingly only exists to stalk Cody, speaks in internet slang, and obsesses over all the characters? Sounds like The Scrappy, right? Well, now I understand that she is a Take That at hardcore Cody fangirls, as well as "hardcore" Total Drama fans. Heck, she even resembles a Self-Insert character. Your Milage May Vary on her, but because I now know this fact, I find her more tolerable (Although her voice is kind of annoying) - philipthepatsy
    • When I first heard the songs for this season, I thought the producers were lazy in their approach with song writing. Then, I realized they're supposted to be bad. They're being made up on the spot by a group of teenagers and under the most obscene of circumstances (ex. Warding off scarab beatles, being chased by alligators, free falling from a plane, getting you tounge stuck to a flag pole, trying to prevent an avalance, getting tied up and captured by an ancient Peruvian Tribe, etc.) It'd make sence that way for these songs to be so terrible. Keane23
    • Thinking about the huge entries on the Flanderization and Character Derailment pages for this show, it makes sense when you realize that this is also a game of the worst kind. The physical and emotional torture that the contestants go through at the hands of Chris and each other causes the derailment, not the different writers. It's just as easily explained because they're not fed well, often have poor sleeping conditions (aka economy class), constantly have to worry about being voted off, have to do crazy challenges which have a real possibility of dying, being surrounded by people you hate and a sadistic host who has no boundaries. Which would, of course, make the best players the ones that could survive three seasons without going through that kind of mental deconstruction - Owen, for example.
    • While watching "I See London..." this troper wondered why Alejandro seemed so upset about Noah not trusting him and calling him an eel, even though Heather hadn't trusted him from the beginning and had called him much worse insults. Then later this troper realized that while Heather had simply seen through the facade and then told him right away, Noah had done something entirely different. See, Alejandro's entire tactic is fooling people into believing he was friends with them, and he thought that he had already managed to trick Noah. But now it's revealed that Noah was only pretending to fall for Alejando's "friendship" tactic, which means Noah had managed to defeat Alejandro in his own game, and THAT was what ticked Al off the most. -Musouka
      • See, this troper just chalked it up to the Ho Yay and Foe Yay, but that works even better.
      • Given that Noah was actually the only member of the team Alejandro tolerated, that might have played a part as well, but like I said, it's mostly because of the whole "Beaten in his own game" issue. -Musouka
    • Alejandro's dad is an ambassador, so the family travels a lot. That's why he was able to a) speak in Japanese for no apparent reason, and b) understand Jerd's clusterfuck of an accent.
    • It seems that Tyler's horrified expression during his Stealth Hi Bye to Gwen and Duncan's kiss is just there because...well, because it's hysterical. But then this troper remembered that he's also a Gwody supporter! So it's also a nudge at the reactions of the horrified sunk-shippers.
  • Winnie The Pooh And Tigger Too, which I'd seen probably a decade and a half ago. The narrator makes himself known to Tigger, and then helps him and Roo down from the tree. In other words: Tigger uses the fictional medium he's in to escape his predicament. Not only that, but since this was a movie, with the book merely as a Framing Device, said fictional medium itself was fictional.'' That wasn't just Painting The Fourth Wall, that was tearing it down, building up a new one, and refurbishing the whole building. -Kimiko Muffin
  • Sonic the Hedgehog's series finale, "The Doomsday Project", was already the best episode of the series, but the climax seemed... well, anticlimactic. Sonic and Sally infiltrate the tower, put the Deep Power Stones together curvy-side first rather than pointy-side first, and destroy the place while a few robots prove completely ineffective in trying to stop them. It wasn't until years later that I realized that it was a Take A Third Option scenario — Sonic and Sally went in fully expecting to blow themselves up along with Robotnik and the Doomsday Project. Only the realization that they could just as easily destroy the whole world stopped them. The scene where Sally insists on going with him just became a lot more meaningful... - Caswin
  • I used to think Him was the best villain on The Powerpuff Girls because, come on, how many 5-year-old girls have Satan as a regular member of their Rogues Gallery? In fact, I often wondered why Mojo Jojo was considered their Arch Enemy and main threat (unlike on Powerpuff Girls Z, where Him is promoted to Big Bad, with Mojo reduced to a rather Harmless Villain). Recently rewatching several of Him's episodes coincidentally right after The Movie made me realize how much more evil and threatening and even cool Mojo is as a villain compared to Him. First of all, Its Personal with Mojo, which goes much farther towards Arch Enemy status than how powerful you are. Second of all, Mojo is actually much more successful at manipulating the girls than Him, who repeatedly underestimates their ability to conquer the anger or fear he relies on to destroy them and then helplessly laments "But you were supposed to..." The girls always eventually beat Him at his mind games, but Mojo's mind games actually succeed, so the only way they can defeat him is by brute force. It's a scary thought, but Mojo Jojo is actually more evil and manipulative than Satan. ~ Lale
    • Yes, being afraid of spiders is no big deal... to you or me. To a character like Buttercup who prides herself on her toughness and invulnerability, the reality that she might have even a little fear of something as mundane as bugs (shared by her sisters but ranked insignificant next to the fears exploited for them in "Power-noia") is devastating. Devastating enough to make her feel powerless ("I can't fly!"). ~ Lale (I've been re-watching this show a lot lately.)
    • It didn't matter that Rainbow the Clown apologized. The Powerpuff girls did something most kid's cartoons were scared to do. The aesop of the episode was that being sorry does not make something alright. Especially since his entire justification was I'm not pretty anymore, so I'm going to commit evil. Heck, it was no more punishment than they eked out for other badguys, or even the opening credits. -DC Horror
      • It also might be because he's a bloody moron. Get a new outfit, change the makeup and you'll be just as annoying as before, but happy. Seriously, I think they just were beating on him for being stupid.
  • In the The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy episode "Billy Gets an A", Billy using the scythe's magic to change the grade on his exam somehow created a Bizarro Universe, which affected all but Grim and Mandy. Initially, I thought the lack of change was to give Grim someone else to snark with. However, it wasn't until later that I realized that Mandy had already manipulated her bizarro-self into being just like her in an earlier episode. -Pinkbaron
  • When I first saw the Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 1 finale, I was disapointed by how lame Cad Bane's ultimate goal was. He broke into the senate, took a dozen senators hostage......All so he could free that whiny pile of crap Ziro the Hutt? That was it? Until he saw the season 2 trailer. It all made sense. Jabba hired Bane to get Ziro freed. The whole point was to show what lengths Bane would go to, in order to complete his mission. He broke into the senate just to do some second rate job. HOLY CRAP. That makes Sidious hiring him in season 2 all the more suspenseful. Since if that was what he went to do Jabba's job, then what will he do to accomplish Sidious' ones? - Emperordaein
  • In Dexter's Laboratory's movie, the first robot fight of Dexter was against robots from the future, but they just stood there and did nothing, making it seem like the animators were very lazy. But then after it's revealed they were in fact CREATED by Dexter in the future and sent back to the past to kill Dee Dee, it makes sense how they just stood there and did nothing; they were waiting for orders!
    • The whole climax involves Dexter and his three future incarnations trying to destroy Mandark's invention and "save the future," helplessly watching Dee Dee do it instead and then build the above-mentioned robots that the past Dexter will just destroy anyway. How can none of the future Dexters not remember what's going to happen and point out "This isn't going to work!" True, the oldest had the excuse of Alzheimers or something, but what about the others? The reason: Dexter's ego is so massive that his desire to be the hero makes him forget about it even as he re-lives it over and over again! The movie took the concept of "those who don't remember history will repeat it" and takes it to a ludicrous yet brilliant level. Not only that, but NOW the movie's title, Ego Trip, makes PERFECT SENSE!!!!!!
    • This is even further displayed by the fact that despite his knowledge that Mandark ruined the world and exactly how he came to power in the first place, he has no desire to act to prevent it despite how easily he could have done so. Not even the his young adult and middle aged selves (the ones closest to the events) bother to suggest such a solution and happily put out a hit on their own sister who had no idea what was going on. Why would he let his worst rival put himself and humanity through hell for decades? Answer: Dexter's ego is so great that he simply can never accept a future where his brilliance isn't worshipped by mankind and doesn't care who has to pay for it. Geostomp
  • When I first saw the Family Guy episode "Barely Legal", I thought the ending where Quagmire "straightens Meg out"... by having a heart-to-heart talk with her about how she doesn't need a boyfriend to have fun as a teenager (he even gives her a copy of Shel Silverstein's The Missing Piece), was pretty funny in that it subverted our expectations about what Quagmire would do, but it did seem like a subtle Meg bash, since it seemed like suddenly even Quagmire didn't want to sleep with her anymore. But later I realised that scene was Quagmire's one and only Pet The Dog moment: He, a heartless sex maniac saying genuinely kind words to her, the show's Butt Monkey. Now for me it is a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming and a much better episode ending than her just being used and thrown away by him! Now if only she were treated as kindly by all the characters all the time...
    • On that same note, Meg is the only girl that Quagmire seems to be actively waiting to hit 18. He has implied, and even said outright, that he has indeed had sex with girls younger than legal age. (A sixteen-year-old cheerleader tied up in the bathroom, a twelve-year-old crossing-guard even though it was accidental, and when Connie D'Amico said she was 16, he pretended he heard "18.") Yet when Quagmire approached Meg in one episode, he asks if she's 18, she says no, and he just says "Alright," and walks away. Shocking as it is, he actually does respect her enough to wait until she's legal!
    • Think about the book he gave her, though. Do I have a dirty mind, or do the book's plot and title seem like a metaphor for something? That was the true fridge brilliance, in this troper's opinion.
      • The message he's passing on to Meg here is that just like the circle with the missing shape, she doesn't need a missing piece to 'fill her wedge', as it were. Her happiness is where she decides to find it and doesn't have to be inside some guy's pants.
  • Two possible reasons Kevin is out of the Null Void by the outset of Ben10AlienForce:
    • Firstly, we find out that he's Kevin Ethan Levin, son of Devin Levin, who was Max Tennyson's partner-in-crime for a time. Max knew Kevin's father well and knew an Osmosian's abilities would come in handy if Kevin was trained in how to use them. So, he was bailed out of the Null Void and trained during the time skip between the series.
    • Secondly, he may have been a horrific mashup of the original Ben 10 aliens, but he was still an eleven-year-old boy on the inside. Eventually, someone with a way out got to him.
    • But how does this solve the problem of him being completely human? We don't know exactly how Kevin's power worked with the Omnitrix; it could have only lasted a year or two after he used it, or it could have been reversible in 5 years; it's definitely a long time...
  • Vilgax's return in Ben 10 Alien Force season 3 had him trying to take over Earth by challenging Ben to a legally-sanctioned gladiator match between the two that awards the winner control over the planet. The fan outcry about Vilgax suddenly caring about honor and laws seemed odd for the usually lawbreaking Evil Overlord and after thinking about the end of season two I realized there were two very good reasons for Vilgax to take this route.
    • First off, Ben had recently helped to save the galaxy from destruction, in addition to giving the Highbreed a way to save themselves from their genetic decay. He has the gratitude of entire alien species, as attested by the mound of medals he keeps in his closet, and is also best buds with the Highbreed Supreme Commander. Even if Vilgax was actually able to kill Ben, he'd have to deal with massive backlash from the rest of the galaxy and a race of beings that have a far larger fleet and no qualms about wiping him out. Alternately, if he attacked Earth with an invasion fleet and Ben called for help, the Highbreed would most likely respond and be through the jumpgate in the Los Solidad military base in time to back him up. Ben takes the Power of Friendship to new levels and Vilgax is smart enough to realize this.
    • Second, it also happens that every time Ben and Vilgax have tangled in the past he's had help from his family and allies like Azmuth, Tetrax and even his future self. Vilgax has pumped himself up with bionics and threw a robot army at Ben but lost because he had other people to encourage him, save his butt or unlock a new power for him. Vilgax has to know at this point if he's going to beat Ben it has to be one-on-one and it may be he wants to be the one that kills the one sentient being that's caused him more trouble than anything else in the universe. That's why he defeated the other world's champions so he could take their powers and weapons to add to his own, it was to match the diversity of the Omnitrix's forms. If he defeated Ben in fair, legal combat he would be safe from reprisals and have ownership of the Omnitrix, the item that started the whole rivalry with the Earth boy in the first place and which will give him the edge he needs to conquer the Universe. It's not [1], Its Personal and smart. —koolkame
      • As a person who likes Alien Force, thank you so much for this! It makes re-watching the fight even sweeter without "[2]" hanging around.
  • Gwen and Kevin, [3]? Maybe. Or maybe it's what happens when a slightly education-obsessed nerd girl starts trying to hook up with a Jerk With A Heartof Gold whose affection for his ride puts the "car" in Cargo Ship. Kevin is heavily implied to have had a bad home life before he mutated in Ben10 and lavishes way too much attention on his car to be considered healthy, Running Gag or not. Gwen's love life isn't really brought up, but anyone who takes someone to task about why they haven't asked her out does not seem too knowledgeable about flirting. It hit me that of course they would have a mixed-up chemistry since these are two people who have probably avoided relationships for fear of being hurt (Kevin) or because their focus is on higher learning and are separated by their intellect (Gwen who is attending a prep school.) I never saw the red string snag because I had already classified them as a textbook case of Opposites Attract, not terribly original but still a classic combination. It does make the few times they really connect all the more poignant like the season two finale where Kevin calls Gwen back from going full Anodite even if it meant she could save the universe or their dance at the end of "Save the Last Dance." —koolkame
    • Remember too that both had more than likely felt separated from "normal" society from a younger age, so more than likely had felt uncomfortable getting close to other people, leaving them disaffected with the possibility of finding love, or even feeling a close connection with most people. Kittyhawk
      • Exactly! It's pretty clever that the two aren't that different when you consider their roles in the show, Gwen as being Closer To Earth for the boys and Kevin who is actually fairly intelligent on matters such as alien technology and engineering so he may not be that far off in the IQ points department from Gwen. Book Dumb Ben may be the most "normal" of the Power Trio, for better or worse.
    • On the topic of Kevin, we learn in Vendetta that his father was a plumber killed on duty, there's a possibility that his step-father (as he mentioned Devin as "My real father" one time) was likely abusive toward him for being part alien. Add that with the hint dropped about the frequent use of his powers (As his father used his energy absorption powers, he seems glad "nothing happened this time" after using it subsequent times) especially being eleven years old and suddenly his Troubling Unchildhood Behavior is quite justified. Unfortunately, it leads to a bit of Fridge Logic in that Max Tennyson, who was with Devin at the time of his death and was asked to take care of his son, had to not have recognized him in order to justify not explaining to Ben why he was acting the way he was. - Metal Shadow X
      • Re-watching "Kevin 11" answered this problem for me because Max never sees Kevin in his human form except for a brief moment at the end IIRC. It's possible Max thought that it was another Osmosian boy or his hiding of his Plumber past made him keep quiet about knowing Kevin's family; heck, Max lied to his WIFE about being a Plumber and it's likely Devin Levin did the same with his son. Plus, the bad effect of absorbing Energy for Osmosians pretty much explains Kevin's change during the Time Skip: if Devin was worried about a one-time use of energy absorption, Kevin's near-constant use could not have been healthy for him. Think back to Kevin's baggy eyes in Ben 10 and he becomes the PG version of a young junkie with the Alien Force Kevin being on the rebound from addiction. -Nice Ret Con, Mac Duffie - koolkame
    • Since we're on the subject of Ben10, let's talk about how the Omnitrix didn't make him change into an unwanted alien in the first 2 seasons of Alien Force. It seems to be justified in season 3 of AF simply by having been screwed up at the start of the season but this wasn't a problem in the original series. But then I realized when Ben tried using Humongosaur in one episode and he ended up being turned into Lodestar: Ben habitually uses stronger aliens. And when his ego decides to be a problem, he doesn't give much thought of strategy. The Omnitrix is most likely trying to make sure Ben's ego doesn't get in his way. —Master Knight
  • Phineas And Ferb features an episode where Buford, the bully, is hysterically upset his goldfish got lost while they were swimming in the ocean, complete with a sad musical montage of Buford trying to play various fish-unfriendly games with him. It might seem silly, but then you stop and think: this kid is all alone, trying to play Ping-Pong with a fish. Being that lonely goes a long way to explain his anger issues. After this episode, Buford is regularly seen hanging out with the other main characters, and is at least somewhat less gruff; it seems Phineas, Ferb and the gang saw how sad he was about Biff and realized he just needed some friends.
    • The episode "Finding Mary Mc Guffin" is heartwarming enough as it is, but take a moment to consider. Doofenshmirtz has a new Freudian Excuse for his villainous plan of the week, mostly about his Hilariously Abusive Childhood. In this episode, Vanessa reflects on her father being such an Amazingly Embarrassing Parent, but that, now he's given her that doll she always wanted, he's "not so bad a Dad after all." Considering the horrible parental examples Doof had — his father made him pretend to be a Garden Bnome and stand perfectly still for hours, for one thing — the fact that the worst offense he'd committed against his own daughter is apparently clapping to loudly at a recital of hers becomes quite touching. It's adorable.
  • I rewatched season 2 of The Venture Bros recently in preperation for buying season 3, and during the episode where Rusty gets Dean a speed suit, I realised that Hank was Rusty's Un Favourite, backed up by a later scene in the car where Rusty praised Dean and chastised Hank in the same breath. Later, it struck me that this explains everything about Hank's character - his headstrong and assertive nature is him trying to impress his Dad. He latches onto Brock and everything Brock does because Brock pays attention to him like a real dad. He teases and belittles his brother because he's secretly jealous of him. It's present without being Anvilicious, it adds some Hidden Depths without seeming out of character at all, it makes a character I formally viewed as the most cartoony of all the characters (even more so than Dean) into a real person, and it ties in perfectly with the overall theme of failure. God, I love this show. - randomfanboy
    • Watch the episode where Killinger becomes a consultant for Dr. Venture, and flashes back to the first time Doc ever felt inferior to his father. The cereal he's eating is "Alpha Dog"!
    • In the finale of Season 3, Brock fools one of the assassins by shaving his head and placing his hair on a shark. He then decides that he's lost his touch and quits as the Ventures' bodyguard. Brock... Samson. -Wookie72
    • Phantom Limb manages to be a) a tribute to the superhero The Phantom, b) a direct descendant of pulp criminal antihero Fantomas, and c) a joke on "Phantom Limb Syndrome" at the same time.- Wookie72
  • Something hit me recently about Not All Dogs Go to Heaven. At the end of the episode Meg becomes very Chick-like in her beliefs. This would seem like a Wall Banger but listen! She was converted by Kirk Cameron, and anyone who knows Kirk Cameron knows his past with the rest of the cast on Growing Pains and what he put them through. Makes perfect sense.
  • There's a Robot Chicken Sketch that features a June Cleaver type giving a group of kids, including a very excited one saying "yay", cookies. After the kids gobble them down, the "mom" announces now, they'll find out who got the posion cookie. Typical RC "people are jerks humor. Except a sudden realization hit me when I went to the fridge (yeah, really!). Rushing back, I replayed the clip— "Yay" boy had NOT gobbled his cookie down, and in fact, threw it away at Mom's announcement! — Eddie Current
    • So... He's just obfuscating retardation? (Here's a link to that video, by the way)
      • Maybe he has brain damage from "winning" the game before.
      • It can get even simpler— much like how my cousin waits until his mom finishes talking despite his own mental handicap, the boy simply listened to everything the authority figure said before acting, because that's what you do. —Eddie Current
  • The double meaning of 6teen just jumped out at me. It can mean their age, but it can also represent the "six teen"s of the main characters even when they aren't sixteen anymore!
  • I realised one day that the reason Beowulf removes his clothes before every battle is because if he had been wearing his clothes he would have been harder to animate. Although, it still doesn't make much sense for him in the context of the story.
    • Um...I know it's bad form to poke holes in these but he removes his clothes before fighting Grendel because that's what Gaiman and Avery wanted. He absolutely does not remove his clothes in the poem, and this change had absolutely nothing to do with the ease of animation, considering they have entire battle scenes with fully clothed warriors on both sides later in the movie.
    • If you read the original Beowulf, he removes his weapon and clothes because Grendel also has no clothes, and Beowulf believes he will lose out on precious glory ("dom" or "los") if he doesn't best Grendel on Grendel's own terms. It's the same as a man in a barefisted boxing match refusing to be the only one to wear boxing gloves, or a football team refusing to wear protective gear if their opponents can't wear them. -me
    • Regardless, adding a loose piece of clothing to a moving character generally calls for major additions to a 3D rendering pipeline. Programs like Maya give clothing their own physics toolset.
  • In re-watching Lady And The Tramp this year (2009), as I do every Christmas, I noticed an implication about Tramp that hadn't fully registered on all the other many viewings. I've always thought his rant against babies suggests that the reason he's a stray is that the birth of a baby caused him to run away from, or be thrown out of, his original home. But it didn't occur to me until now that the moment where he pauses to coo over the puppies in a pet shop window is meant to imply that his whole tough facade of living free on the street is just a front; deep down inside, he yearns for domesticity. Which adds extra resonance to the straight-to-video sequel, in which Tramp extols the virtues of home and family to his son Scamp, who longs to be a tough street dog.
  • The episode of Ed, Edd, and Eddy, "They Call Him Mr. Ed", at first seems like a mediocre episode. But then I remembered The Movie and how Eddy has made previous attempts at being popular and cool (For example, "Pop Goes the Ed", "It's Way Ed", and "Cry Ed"). Then add the fact that this was an season 4 episode and season 4 was meant to be the final season. It was then that I realized that this was Eddy's last desprate attempt at popularity and he's so desprate, he is willing to give up making money through scams and try giving off the appearence of a legit business just to boost his ego and self-confidence.
  • I just realized that the end of the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Squeaky Boots" is a reference to The Telltale Heart.
    • I just realized something about the decorations in Spongebob Squarepants' living room. They're giant fishing lures, right? Seems kinda morbid, until I realized—they're like the underwater of fishing trophies. Fishermen have their best fish stuffed and hung up on their walls to show everyone what they managed to pull on... Fish put up the biggest fishing lures they've managed to take down with them for just the same reason. - Freezair For A Limited Time
  • Johnny Test, despite being annoying and subpar in my opinion, still manages to keep my interest. I couldn't figure out why I didn't completely hate it until I realized this: it's Dexters Laboratory, with the focus on Dee Dee. On both shows, the Book Dumb kids is blonde and the geniuses are red-haired. The parents have the same apperance with the roles reversed. They both have an annoying evil genius with a bowl haircut. It's the same show, only Johnny Test more formulaic than its predecessor.
  • I literally JUST this second realized that the Cartoon Network anime block Toonami was a pun on tsunami. As a kid, I just thought it was some gibberish word they came up with to sound Japanese.
  • The proper name for the family of dinosaurs which triceratops comes under, is termed as 'Ceratopia'. It's pronounced 'Sarah-topia'. Suddenly, Sarah the Three Horn from The Land Before Time has a name that makes sense.
    • Actually her name is spelled 'Cera'—as in Tri-cera-tops.
  • The ending of Adventure Time's "Tree Trunks" episode was a total Shocking Swerve... until I remembered that "Slumber Party Slumber" established that candy people explode when they're scared. So what about other extreme emotional reactions...? Finn does mention that she has a weak heart...
    • Marceline says she just sucks color out of things, not blood, then turns a strawberry white to demonstrate. But when she bites Jake, he shrivels up. He was faking it, sure, but she didn't find it odd. Well...do you know what color strawberries start to turn when they rot? Sure, Finn eats it, but he seems more interested in Marceline than the strawberry.—Red Wren
  • When I was young, I started thinking that Scooby Doo was getting somewhat stupid, not that kinda way but I mean by how every time they saw a monster or ghost they'd always run but it always turned out to be fake in the end. I didn't understand why they wouldn't catch on UNTIL I saw the movies with real monsters. It explains why Shaggy and Scooby are always scared of the monsters because they know real ones exist and can't tell if their fake or not while Fred and the others haven't seen real monsters...not until recently anyway.
  • Megas XLR features Kiva, a girl from the future with exotic features and orange skin that don't match any race shown on the show, apparently first for the sake of her filling the "hot space chick" quota. It's been theorized in the future, as interracial relationships become commonplace, the dominant race will be a sort of genetic mash-up with, among other things, orange-ish skin and slanted eyes.
    • The post-series reveal that Coop would accidentally bring about the creation of the Glorfft was funny in the Nice Job Breaking It Hero humor of the series, but ''holy freaking cow'' it explains why the Glorfft can't beat Coop even when they had him dead for rights: the whole series is a Stable Time Loop. The Glorfft can't destroy Coop because without him they wouldn't have been created. And without the Glorfft MEGAS would never have been built, Kiva would never have stole it and sent it back in time, Coop's not having MEGAS would mean the Glorfft would never exist and... and... I need to sit down. That's why Coop and friends always survive through luck and Contrived Coincidence, time itself will not let them lose without causing a paradox. Who knew that a Deconstructive Parody could be so effing brilliant. - koolkame
  • On King of the Hill, Dale is obsessed with conspiracy theories about aliens, the government, etc. Everyone dismisses Dale as kook. Recently, realized something. The characters of King of the Hill once made a cameo appearance on The Simpsons. Therefore, they must live in the same universe. In another episode of The Simpsons, Homer meets Mulder and Scully from The X Files. In oher words, King of the Hill exists in the same universe as The X Files. So Dale could be right about everything!
    • Though if you take that in, it becomes Fridge Horror since Homer Simpson appeared in the Family Guy episode PTV at the end of the intro, meaning that King Of The Hill would be in the same universe as Family Guy. It's... odd... thinking that a "regular" series could be in the same universe as the wacky Family Guy, and even worse seeing Peter Griffin's crimes through out the show's run. Sure, from the FG side, his "crimes" are funny if you like the "random" humor, but imagine a person like Peter, especially him from the later seasons, in King Of The Hill... he'd be a Complete Monster who's very appearance would shift the show into High Octane Nightmare Fuel. — Great Pikmin Fan.
  • During the first season of Codename Kids Next Door, having the Delightful Children show up in every episode like some sort of Mandatory Line was something that bothered me at first, as many of their apperances were irrelevent and seemed forced. After thinking about it recently, it hit me: that was the point! Their repeated apperances were meant to get the audience jaded enough so that by the time they did do something important (picking up the age changer), no one would suspect it was a Chekhov's Gun! (This was before the audience was aware of how tight the show's continuity would be.)-Michael JJ.
    • Another KND-related one, this one related to a very late series spoiler: I was recently wondering where there was an earlier hint of Chad's true alligience (read: with the KND). Apparently somebody said that there was one in ELECTIONS, when Chad and the high school kid were discussing how the high school were about to deal Gallager a Curb Stomp Battle and apparently Chad got worried. I checked the scene in question: Chad's evil face does go away, but he's still smiling. So I eventually decided to leave the subject, then just now I thought about some RL issues of mine, and then somehow I thought of this: why didn't Chad just avoid any interaction with Nigel so that Chad would have an easier time trying to launch the Moonbase into the sun without being detected until it was too late, hanging the KND out to dry? There's your hint: right at the beginning of the whole issue. -Master Knight
  • The Fairly Odd Parents, the episode The Boy Who Would Be Queen gave me a couple fridge brilliances. The first was the fact that Timmy was transgendered during the entire episode except for the end, and as such was technically a lesbian because of "her" attraction to Trixie, the second was when Timmy was checking to see if he still liked comic books instead of it being awesome fights or POWERHOUSE EXCITEMENT it was "Muscular guys in spandex fighting crime." which to me suggested "she" liked comics for a different reason now.
    • The Live Action Adaptation, featuring Timmy as a 23-year-old manchild, may also qualify. Back in the early episode "The Big Problem!", he wished to be an adult and then had to start acting like a kid again so he could still have Cosmo and Wanda turn him back. This thing about him acting like a child despite now having an adult body may be the reason how he still has his fairy godparents despite having already passed the age where he would've lost them.
      • In fact the live action adaptaion has another moment of Fridge Brilliance. In the movie "Channel Chasers", at the end Timmydecides to hit the Reset Button so he can keep his Godparents. As Cosmo pointed out: "He loves us more than he hates her (Vicky)." He could love his Godparents so much that he would rather stay a kid forever than growup, fall in love, and have a normal life.
  • The Goofy short "Motor Mania" features a "Goofy Everyman" as Mr. Walker, who wears glasses and looks like a stereotypical mild-mannered nerdy man. When he gets behind the wheel of his car, he turns into Mr. Wheeler, who is supposed to represent arrogant drivers who think they can do whatever they want when they're driving. In his "transformation," his glasses come off. I used to be annoyed by this because I saw it as a stereotypical "character can't have glasses if they're being tough and wild" scene, but I just realized something about that. Someone who needs glasses should definitely be wearing them while driving, so the fact that Mr. Wheeler takes his glasses off may show that he's being so reckless that he doesn't care if he can't see well while he's driving! - Rainbow
  • In Invader Zim, one of GIR's quirks is storing food in his body to eat it later (usually at the most inappropriate time for Zim's purposes) Even given that GIR is insane, it seems very strange until you recall that in the very first episode, when the Almight Tallest are explaining the SIR units' function, Purple declares "It's also a thermos!" which, of course, is designed to carry edibles.
  • The 2003 revival of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was a great reboot that made this old-time fan happy and I particularly liked the character of Prince Adam who was much more developed and behaved like a spoiled teenager who had to become his world's version of Superman. He-Man, though... one could chalk up his Cape-like demeanor to a throw back to how he acted in the old series, puns and all, but it eventually hit me that it makes perfect sense for Adam to act that way since he's supposed to be a legendary hero: he's ''over-acting'' in universe! Why else would he dub the good guys "Masters of the Universe?" It sounds exactly like something a teenager would come up with for a garage band or something. One could even imagine that Adam read a lot of Eternian comics or the equivalent of. They really did a good job on that series. - koolkame
  • At first I was VERY annoyed at the Series Finale Wuncler won and at the end of it it just went back to Status Quo Is God. But a few seconds after watching the episode I started laughing my ass off. I hit the reealization taht it thats the best way it could have ever ended. it makes sense in the context of the series and it was perfectly hilarious.

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