Good God! 'PC' stands for 'Personal Computer'! I just this second got that.

Killface, Frisky Dingo

You will someday realize the meaning of this sentence.

First impressions are really important, they build opinions and form relationships. If you screw up a first impression, it can be disastrous. You wish you could do it all over again, and once an opinion is set it is very hard to change it.

But every once in a while, it could be years later or the next day, you may gain a new respect for what you used to hate. It could be upon receiving additional information, or just that you have grown up a little.

Fridge Brilliance is this very idea. You watch a movie and something about it just seems off, you don't like it. One night, as you get up for a midnight snack, you open the refrigerator door and the light dawns on you, "This is the real purpose behind this plot!"

Because you had that epiphany, what once was a hated moment has become one of your favorites.

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. This is not a place for personal commentary on another's remark or arguing without adding a Fridge Brilliance comment of your own.

See also Fridge Logic, Wall Banger, Swiss Moment, Midnight On The Firing Line. This will probably overlap with plenty of Gushing About Shows You Like. Run free.

Has sub-pages now since the original page became too long:

Examples:

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Comic Books

I found Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland entertaining from the start, but the structure puzzled me — why was it so rambly and nonlinear? Why keep bouncing around from topic to topic like that, instead of telling a straightforward story? Then at some point it clicked: the underlying theme of Alice in Sunderland is that everything is connected to everything else. The rambly hey-that-reminds-me-of-something structure is perfect, because it doesn't just illustrate the theme: it embodies it.
- As somebody who studies in Sunderland university (name withheld to protect the innocent), I totallly agree with this bit of fridge logic. Walking around that city at any part of the day with your eyes open connects you to a thousand places and people you never realised could be connected.
I'd read all of Alan Moore's Top Ten in one go, and was literally at the fridge when I realized, no it wasn't just a fun police procedural with superheroes, it was the best police procedural out there. Furthermore, it is actually Alan Moore's most sophisicated work, because unlike some of his better known work, he never relies on any the characters being messed in the head or being in a nigh-apocalyptic scenario in order to keep the story going or to keep the reader interested; for all intents and purposes, they're just average ordinary people, facing average ordinary problems, and damn do you root for them and care about them. —Lexi Dizzle
- What got me was rereading Top Ten adter reading the Smax special, which looks just like a completely plot-unrelated spinoff, but was actually planned all along and starts getting foreshadowed in about issue five or so. —Gloating Swine
  - Issue one. "I dated Jeff. Touching him tasted like bitter ashes."
I once set about reading every Captain America comic in order since his revival in the 1960s. There's a stretch of issues where he was basically homeless, living in a series of seedy hotels before eventually hitting the open road on his motorcycle. Every now and then, he would bemoan his lack of home, family, and any sense of stability, and I would get annoyed and ask "Then why don't you just rejoin the Avengers and live in their mansion?" And then I thought to glance at the original publication dates. They ran from 1967 to 1970, making this the absolute perfect metaphor for the state of the country at the time. And it ended when Cap officially partnered up with The Falcon, a black man. Stan Lee, I will never underestimate you again! -Lexi Dizzle
I just read the conclusion to Batman R.I.P. It just hit me that IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE! What hit me a second later was: IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO! But while I'm talking about DC continuity, I originally didn't like the fact that Infinite Crisis ended, and immediately afterward, we got 52 and Countdown, which was a blatant lead up to yet another crisis. I originally thought: Wow, DC way to leech our money you bastards. But then I thought, wait... this is all one event. INFINITE CRISIS ISN'T OVER! It's in the title, it's INFINITE. And as I was typing this very statement, Ultimate Fridge Brilliance if you will, I realized that it's really a send-up of Continuity Snarl and Cosmic Retcons and quick continuity fixes, as well as a MASSIVE Take That at continuity-obsessed fanboys. I mean, the whole reason SuperBITCH-Prime ended up a villain was because he just wouldn't stop bitching about how his world was so much better and how he was gonna find his perfect earth and make everything better. It just dawned on me that SuperBITCH-Prime is just a send-up of the Unpleasable Fanbase, the assholes who get mad because their favorite comic goes in the wrong artistic direction, or somebody dies that they don't want dead. Seriously, consider his origin. He was a normal kid in a universe with no powered superheroes. SuperBITCH-Prime is what happens when you give the geek with too much time on his hands superpowers. And in the end, what happens? Continuity ends up more FUBAR than it was PRIOR to Infinite Crisis. What an epiphany. - Maximus
- It gets better. Kal-L of Earth 2, Superboy Prime, and Alex Luthor are "things were better back how they used to be," "You're doing it wrong!" and "This is unrealistic, make it darker and edgier" respectively.
This Troper recently read through Watchmen, and was uncertain why exactly Alan Moore included the flashback scene where Jon is experimenting with a watch when his father comes in and throws it out, going on about how nuclear power was so much more important now. Initially I just thought it was an excuse for his turning to physics leading to the accident that made him Dr. Manhattan, but then I remembered something I covered in Religious Studies - William Paley's analogy of God as a watchmaker, whose existence is obvious by the complexity and purpose of his creation. Jon is admiring the complicated setup of a watch, and after becoming Dr. Manhattan he basically is God. Subtle, but brilliant. -Roukan
- This Troper also read through Watchmen recently, and thoroughly analyzed it word for word. Then, as he went about and pondered over what he'd read, he was reminded about how Janie Slater's clock got stepped on by a fat man, and finally drew the (somewhat obvious) paralells between the fat man stepping on her watch and nuclear power "stepping" on Jon's future as a watchmaker. But more so i realized that while Jon did pursue a future as a physicist per his father's request, his transformation into Doctor Manhattan and subsequent insight into time inevitably brought him back to becoming a watchmaker whose almost godlike powers (in line with the God-Watchmaker parallel above) actually allows him to "step" on nuclear power and become a one-man nuclear deterrent all by himself, bringing the whole symbolism back full circle to when his father urged him to become a physicist. Jon never was a physicist. He was a watchmaker all along.
  - It wasn't simply nuclear power that stepped on Jon's career, it was nuclear weapons: the Fat Man. (And yes, I only realised this while reading your comment.) —Toby Bartels
  - A watchman can refer to a guard. It can also refer to a person who repairs watches.
Another Watchmen one, just as Watchmen had themes that almost no other superhero comics had, so does Tales of the Black Freighter with pirate comics. Thus, "Tales" is the in-universe Watchmen! -Alcatrazz
- I had always thought it was weird that there were sections of some random pirate comic book tossed in. Then I realized that in a world with real super heroes, why would anyone read super hero comics?
- The first time I read through Watchmen I thought the pirate comic was fun and interesting (if squicky story about the tale of a man trying to protect his loved ones and ultimately becoming the thing he tries to protect them from, but not terribly relevant to the story. It wasn't until a second read through that I realized that the "Tales" story is all about Adrian doing the very thing he is trying to prevent. (i.e. killing millions of people in a single strike - Rabid Rainbow
  - You have just entered the zone of Internet Backdraft.
- The "Tandoori to go" line was originally made of Narm. Then I read an actual explanation - it's not that Moore couldn't think of a better line, it's that he didn't want to. It's showing that Laurie has difficulty coping with the scale of what's happened! - Count Dorku
Concerning Alan Moore's less sane characters: the Fridge Logic comes as you wonder, "Would this character really take all the food out of a refrigerator and hide in it, closing the door with just the right timing as the victim comes in, and rely on him opening it immediately, just for a dramatic entrance?" or "Would this one really steal hundreds of china dolls and make hundreds of little prisoner uniforms to dress them in, just to throw them in a fire for a dramatic moment?" The Fridge Brilliance sets in when you realize the answer is "yes". -Arsenal Tengu
For Watchmen, again, I thought it was strange that Rorschach seemed almost like he asked Dr. Manhattan to kill him. Then I realised that Rorschach is a Death Seeker, which makes his entire story make so much more sense. -Negative Zero
In one Hellblazer comic, John Constantine slaughters a mob of violent neo-Nazis using the reanimated corpse of one of their victims. The Fridge Brilliance comes at the end, when you realise that this living corpse isn't a zombie but a Golem, animated using a Jewish religious rite.
- You got that right! Taking it back to the nature of the Constantines, one realizes only the rake at Hell's Gate would consider trying this. The legendary Golem was created by an anguished, angry Rabbi who wanted to bring God's wrath down on the enemies of the Jews who had restricted them to and abused them in the ghetto. It used the name of God to imbue the clay with the power of God, and its growth each use and eroding control (to the point the Rabbi died stopping it) has been the model for the nature of vengeance and inspiration for dark consequence ever since. ONLY John Constantine would do this. (And likely for good reason—it's fairly certain he's just spat in God's face!)
It took me a while to figure this out but Frank Miller's verison of Batman is basically The Shadow in a Batman outfit.
When I first read Captain Atom: Armageddon, I thought the ending was a rather silly Deus Ex Machina, until I realized that the whole story was one giant Deus Ex Machina, and that it was brilliant. The Wild Storm universe, the epitome of the Dark Age of comics, had just gone too wrong to continue. The only way to save it was to bring in a true-blue hero from mainstream DC continuity to fix things. —Richard AK
This Troper has always understood that being a Badass Normal is what Batman's all about. He's meant to be "feasible" in our world. Nonetheless, it has puzzled me in the past that whenever they give him temporary superpowers, it's always someone else's powers or a mech-suit or something that otherwise has little to do with bats. Then it occured to me: that is precisely the point. If they gave him non-tech powers entwined in his mythos (like make a pact with some Bat-god or whatever), those powers would be much, much harder to throw-away by the end of the issue! No matter how well meaning the author of such a story, no matter how carefully he disposes of those powers, the potential for abuse is tremendous...people would be tempted to bring those powers back into the story more and more often, undermining the point of them being a one-shot deal, and it could cripple the hard-earned reputation of the Bat-mythos as the ultimate Badass Normal. - Legendarylugi

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Fan Fiction

Tabletop Games

This troper was up in arms after seeing the announcement for Dungeons And Dragons 4th edition. But after I came to consider that I hadn't played D&D for nearly a year by that point, and hadn't DMed in about two, thanks to my growing frustration with creating adventures past 13th level, that my opinion shifted to more "wait and see." And then I picked up the preview books describing changes to the assumptions of the setting, which kicked off a great storm of world revamping and creative growth, and then got a chance to play with the quick-start rules and found it so much easier to use that my opinion did a complete 180.—The Stray
- I was also rather concerned about a lot of the changes, and then I played some and discovered that the new Fighter rules and special abilities make me into the ultimate tank with much more ease than before. - Crazael
  - Nobody ever doubted that - Hydro Globus
- I originally thought the Primordials in the new generic campaign setting were a cheesy Exalted ripoff. Then I started thinking of them as more like the Giants of Norse Mythology, powerful and chaotic elemental beings that are in opposition to the gods. They suddenly became much cooler, as I am a bit of a Norse mythology fan. - Peteman
  - The dragonborn seemed like a cheesy, "here, you can play a dragon character" addition to the game, until our group started exploring the potential backgrounds in each of the races. With bonuses to Charisma, History checks, and a background involving a long-lost empire, the dragonborn sound less tossed-in, and a lot more like a race inspired by Persian/Arabic backgrounds, and even nods to Islam and Zoroastrianism. With that, my view of the dragonborn turned from "why did we need this" to "there is but one god, and Bahamut is his prophet".
    Delcan
  - Reading this Fridge Brilliance entry inspired me to realize WHY they changed the death and dying rules the way they did. (Aside from Rule Of Fun). D&D became more popular and more "mainstream" over the years. Therefore, trends in gaming changed from the "let's simulate an adventure" to a "Let's be the perfect action hero who recovers and prevails during fights!", so D&D changed to suit the new audiences demands. Pity that's what annoys me so much. -Hariman
  - I'd say that the reason is closer to "dying and creating a new character every session cuts down on the roleplay and makes fighting the only thing worth concentrating on." Why bother with real roleplaying if the personality you so painstakingly created, and the in-character friendships and contacts you've worked so hard to form, could be taken away at any second? Also, death is no longer a certainty in 4.0, as fate plays a part in whether a resurrection even works. This means that death has more impact and balance; it's more nebulous. There's no longer a sort of "resurrection hump" to cross, before which you're basically screwed and after which death is a mere annoyance. You should give 4.0 a fair chance; despite being flawed, it circumvents a lot of things in 3.5 that were plain nonsense. —Wynne
When I first picked up Deadlands, I started with "Hell on Earth" (The After-The-Bomb one.) and there were so many items that said "This will be answered in Lost Colony" (which wouldn't be published for another 3 years) that I actually wrote a complaint letter to the author about how it felt like the whole game was just a marketing ploy to sell this other game. Shortly thereafter, a friend gave me the original Weird West books, and upon reading them, I realized that the whole storyline is basically an incredibly detailed three-act play and I'd come in on the second act. Mysteries in Weird West were answered in Hell on Earth as well. Now I've got almost everything made for all three games and happily run them at any opportunity. -Doctor X
I ( Hariman ) have a friend who complains that Warhammer 40K's writers have screwed themselves over with the Tyranids. He says that this is because the Tyranids have been made out to be the biggest boogeymen of them all and so unstoppable that they cannot be stopped in universe. Then it hit me. THAT'S THE WHOLE DAMN POINT! The 40K universe is MEANT to be completely screwed. The only thing that prevents the Apocalypse from sticking is the fact that everybody is trying to wipe everyone else out! And they keep getting in each other's way. Heck. the players are Late To The Party for the apocalypse, because that's what the Horus Heresy was! Therefore, the Tyranids will be dealt with, but the Imperium (and everyone else) shall endure and everything will remain happily screwed. Because that's the way we like it. -Hariman
With so many puns in Munchkin, it would be astonishing if there wasn't one you didn't get now and then. This troper's younger sister one day just spontaneously realised the pun in "Fire Arms". This troper's version involved picking up the "Lust Monster" card and then suddenly remembering the Dn D "Rust Monster". - Count Dorku

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Theater

~~This Unknown Troper~~ has always loved Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, more for familiarity's sake than anything else, but always found the romance between Viola and the Duke Orsino to be a little... mm, lackluster, overly convenient, it seems to pale beside the romance between Viola and Olivia. And yet, while I was in the middle of writing about Twelfth Night for an essay test, it occurred to me that Orsino starts off the play as a real Emo Teen with this over-idealized idea about love, and what Viola does - plucky, brave, outspoken Viola - is she shows him that love doesn't have to be this train of sighs and pun-making. And suddenly it all fit. And I had a great essay. - Vifetoile, proud Twelfth Night fangirl
I loathed Shakespeare up until college. I thought he was a terrible writer for using such complicated, incomprehensible language and that the plots themselves were incredibly slow and boring and padded. Eventually, I learned that due to changing times and the effects on language, Early Modern English is not Modern English, and the playwright wouldn't have sounded incomprehensible to his own audience but clever, and with some help from footnotes and such, I was able to actually appreciate his wordplay and Double Entendres and clever use of language. Once I could understand them, I realized the actors I'd seen performing the plays (or heard reading them...) weren't acting but reciting, so I read them to myself picturing normal voices and acting instead, and I was able to fully appreciate the stories and characters — try to imagine what's going on in Prince Hamlet's head, cringe at each new atrocity in Titus Andronicus, and cheer when Macbeth was finally killed. Is there An Aesop to be learned here? Shakespeare is NOT for kids! ~ Lale
- Early on I thought Shakespeare's work was simply overrated - good, but not worthy of the "best of all time" status its given. Getting more exposure to a wider selection of his work, especially stuff like Othello and Lear, convinced me that he truly wrote exceptionally dense, rich and layered fiction. - Tarsus
  - A large barrier to appreciating Shakespeare is how it's so rarely acted and most often performed as if it were some completely different form of stagecraft, an attitude that plants it on a lofty pedestal and as a result does it a complete disservice. Now if you see an actor who can drop the pretensions to hold the heart of their character, they can take what's essentially a surreal speaking style and make it feel believable and natural. This is the kind of treatment elitist critics absolutely despise, while holding Shakespeare so sacred that only canned recitation can do it any justice. Compare Kevin Kline and Mel Gibson's performances as Hamlet, and then compare their treatment in reviews. — Anyhow, my moment of Fridge Brilliance revelation to Shakespeare came when trying to adapt the premise of King Lear to a futuristic western, and started cross-referencing Magnificent Bastards throughout his other works. - Dok Enkephalin
  - I HATE the way that schools teach Shakespeare. All of my English teachers loved going on about how Shakespeare's works are "Great Literature". THEY ARE MEANT TO BE ACTED!!! Simply reading through a play and being TOLD what everything means ruins the joy of SEEING and FEELING it all played out.
Again, Shakespeare, but this troper used to dislike Romeo And Juliet. No, he practically despised it. He was convinced that it glorified teenage angst and falling in love at the drop of a pin and then acting like an idiot afterwards. Compared to shows like The Taming Of The Shrew and As You Like It, the romance seemed more about horomones than anything deeper. Then, he read it again in college. And realized that, while Romeo still comes off as a lovestruck teen, Juliet comes off much better. She's the one who makes plans and follows through with them. She's the one who sets up the scheme at the end for them to be together. Only at the end, after both the love of her life and the arranged husband that she agreed to "look to like if looking liking lead" are dead does she succumb to despair and turn to the dagger. Of course, this troper also suspects that the high school version may have had all the good bits pulled out of it for space and bowdlerization. - Fuzzy Boots
- More Romeo And Juliet issues abound here; when this troper read it as a teen, she hated it, convinced Romeo was just a fickle teen - evidenced by how quickly he switched his affections from Rosaline to Juliet - and was unable to feel any sympathy at all for the idiot. Coming back to it years later, she now sees that Rosaline was put in so the audience could see the difference between Romeo-with-a-crush and Romeo-experiencing-true-love. She still doesn't feel any sympathy for the idiot, but at least she now finds his love for Juliet convincing. - Weez
  - High school teachers regularly screw up teaching Romeo and Juliet because they assume it was written to appeal especially to youth. This causes them to concentrate only on the love story, as if everything else going on was irrelevant, and teenagers end up viewing the play as sappy and maudlin. But Romeo and Juliet is much more than a love story, and it was written primarily to appeal to adults (the people who bought tickets). The Aesops one can take from the play range from "we can't always get what we want, because the fates can act against us and there's nothing we can do about it" to "if you keep your daughters stupid they're likely to fall prey to the local lothario" to "Italian customs bad, English customs good". Elizabethan audiences would have seen the Capulets as negligent parents, Romeo as a liar and a con artist who took the opportunity to get into the pants of an emotionally distressed thirteen-year-old, and Paris as a sleaze who wanted to marry a barely pubescent girl. (The trope of the time was that marrying a virgin would cure syphilis, so any man who wanted to marry one was assumed to be poxy.) Most playgoers in the 17th and 18th centuries who described the play in their diaries or otherwise (such as Samuel Pepys, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, and David Hume) universally disliked it, seeing it as brutal, heartless, and even coarse. It took the chocolate-box Victorians to play up the love and romance angle and to discard everything else. - Blurgle, who has taught Shakespeare for years and who is constantly unamazed at how badly high school teachers screw up every single play
- You get an entirely different look on the works of William Shakespere, once you realize the man wasn't trying to create Fine Art, but was just writing and directing plays as a job, adapting historical tales (Mc Beth, Richard III, the Death of Caesar, etc) and writing 'stock' drama, comedy and romances, not for scholars and kings, but for the commoners who routinely attended his shows. This makes William Shakespere the Elizabethan equivalent of a Hollywood director, and his most famous plays are the period's Blockbuster movies. So whenever you see Hollywood rip off Shakespere's plays to make a movie, keep this in mind: He'd probably have approved. - lonewolf23k
On The Fiddler Of The Roof during the Disney Acid Sequence of The Dream, when the chorus pass one to another about the arrival of Lazar Wolf's late wife one of them say "Why not?". I always thought it was just meant to be a funny line... until I heard it again and thought about it... and remembers this whole sequence is meant to be Tevye inventing a dream to his wife, so this is actually him saying Throw It In. - Maxmordon
When I saw Avenue Q, I loved it, except for a couple things...with one big exception. I hated the song Schadenfreude and the Bad Idea Bears. After listening to the CD an uncountable number of times, however, I've gone so far as to plan and rehearse with a friend to sing Schadenfreude at a performance. I would've been Gary =P. Unfortunately, due to also wanting to do I Wish I could Go Back to College" and our third person never fully committing, the plan flopped =(. My initial hatred of the Bad Idea Bears gradually melted away as I began to liken them to GIR Care Bears. Now I absolutely love'' them. ~Tzapporah

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Web Comics

In Erfworld, the ongoing stream of asspulls that kept screwing up Parson's plans and allow him to be defeated by Ansom despite Ansom's stupidity and pride seem irritating until it is revealed that the whole scenario is SUPPOSED to be a Kobayashi Maru, that the GM is supposed to cheat, and that only way for the player to win is to cheat better, instead of merely exploiting the system. Parson realizes this and decides to reanimate a volcano. — Wodan46
Odd-ish example: I never really appreciated the drama in El Goonish Shive until the second read-through, even though I was hooked after the first time. However, this may have been because the first one was in the dead of night, and not everything clicked. But it still counts. — Loustar Jogger
- I wrote off El Goonish Shive as just some weird little guy's twisted fantasy regarding fetishes I wasn't into, but after reading John Solomon's scathing review, which basically described EGS as "shit, but not utter shit," I was curious enough to give it a try and ended up falling in love with it. I'm still not turned on by furries or sex-changes, though. — Filby
Grim Tales from Down Below was frequently criticized for it's implied Brother Sister Incest scenes, and this troper just assumed it was Author Appeal and accepted that he was going to feel vaguely uncomfortable reading the series. Until a recent comic revealed that the sister actually has (unreciprocated) feelings for her brother. Sweet. -Jonn
- Likewise. I like this twist because of the way it changes the brother's character. He goes from being a jealous and petty sibling to being the Only Sane Man in a setting that makes the universe of Invader Zim look like My Little Pony. - M84
  - And you now may want to reclassify it as Author Appeal, since this comic shows that Junior does reciprocate. -Nickel
- I still think Minnie's a great big stinking Mary Sue (and that her brother's therefore at least somewhat justified in his jealousy, since he's ten years old and has that for a sibling; it's like how one of a set of real siblings sometimes resents the other for being apparently perfect, only turned Up To Eleven), but the unrequited Brother Sister Incest aspect — and it not being treated as acceptable by the author — does go some way to redeeming her character in my eyes. - Cameoflage
I read Order Of The Stick, and always thought it was pretty good. I enjoyed the universe's neat little backstory but didn't think too much on it. Then I read Continuity Snarl over here, and reread those strips outlining the history of the OotS universe, at which point I realized Rich Burlew is a genius. - JDubya
- I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I didn't the Vaarsuvius/Pompey joke until like a month after I read it. - Japanese Teeth
I'm currently in college and taking a ton of computer science and math related courses, and about twice a week I learn something that makes an xkcd suddenly become absolutely brilliant. -Elan
I first wrote off the tour storyline in Dominic Deegan as just another filler arc that gave Mookie an excuse to draw some new things and bring back one of his old creations. With the latest strip, that all changed. I liked the character of Brian, the cheerful jovial necromancer, but I was floored by the revelation that he is actually Rilian, the First Necromancer incognito. All of Dominic and Luna's major experiences during the vacation were actually engineered by Rilian. The entire tour was a Secret Test Of Character to see if Dominic was stable or at risk of Mindbreak. This not only made the arc deep and meaningful, it also brought new insight into Rilian's character. How much Brian's behavior during the tour was just an act and how much of it was Rilian's real character beyond his grim appearance was another interesting thought this arc introduces. After reading the most recent strip in the arc, try re-reading the entire tour storyline from the start, but with the new knowledge that Brian is actually Rilian. It becomes much more interesting. Furthermore, take a look at this strip. I was left wondering just how that merman knew Luna had issues in the first place, and I thought it was just a Plot Hole. The last strip in the arc answered that question, and now I realize it was clever Fore Shadowing. Notice how, out of all of the people Rilian brought into the conspiracy, not one of them is from the Wild Edge. Take another look at this strip and this one after it. Then think about what kind of "bad experience" Brian had in the Wild Edge "a few years ago". Okay, you know what? Just give this storyline another look. With all the revelations the last strip brings to light, this arc went from being a snoozefest to revitalizing my interest in the comic! This strip has Brian gushing over his hero Rilian, and asking Dominic if Rilian really did do everything he lists in the second and third panels. Thing is, Brian KNOWS Rilian did all those things because the last strip reveals that he IS Rilian. Brian isn't really gushing, he's BRAGGING. Now it's hilarious on a second read. I just wish we could have seen Brian's face as Dominic listed all the admirable qualities he saw in Rilian. You know what? This whole arc could be considered Fridge Brilliance. It might even be deserving of being a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for Rilian, the webcomic itself, and Mookie as a writer. And FYI, I'm not even that much of a fan of Dominic Deegan. As mentioned before, I thought the comic was growing stale with this arc and considered dropping it. Now I can't wait to see what Mookie will come up with next.-M84
- Plus, it reveals that getting Dominic punched in the balls by a dwarf was part of a master plan. You can't devise a better conspiracy than this. You really can't. —Snarker
  - What do you mean? The Groin Attack was obviously to test Dominic's fertility! "BRILLIANCE" — Another Snarker
One night, I was having trouble sleeping, and decided to browse through some back comics of Megatokyo. While doing this, I had the following revelation: during the Anna Millers incident, Kimiko becomes extremely disillusioned with her fans, realizing that they actually only love her celebrity persona, and not her true self. She proceeds to angst about whether it is possible to truly love someone for who they are, and not for who they appear to be. Around the same time, she gets in a massive fight with Piro, whom she is coming to realize is not the idealized Knight In Shining Armor she had imagined him as; however, they soon make up an cement their status as the comic's Official Couple. And that is the answer to her previous angstings: she was able to find it within herself to love Piro for who he is, despite his flaws, so it is only logical to assume that others are capable of the same. Fred is a genius. —Taelor
- It wasn't until I actually tried playing a Dating Sim that I realized that Piro's actions make a lot more sense than they did before. Notice how he repeatedly assures himself that Ping is just a robot, Yuki is too young, Miho is evil and that he doesn't like Erika in that way, often when directly asked about it by others. And remember that he thinks he's in a Dating Sim scenario. These actions imply that he's actively trying to get Kimiko's route and not someone elses, and it may also mean that he doesn't really think this way: he could believe Ping is much more human than she should be, but is afraid of what would happen if he says it. Hell, this means he may think the world is a game more than Largo does! And yes, this train of thought scares me a little... —Shotgun Ninja
Upon first reading Nanas Everyday Life, I found it well-written, if rather indecisively plotted, but horribly depressing. The major thrust of the plotline is that a quadriplegic girl is trying to find a figurative place in the sun, a life where she is happy and loved. But every time it looks like she's found it the cruel vagaries of fate dash it all by killing or tearing away from her every shred of happiness she'd accumulated. It is heartbreaking and devastating and put me in a funk for literally something like two days. I was convinced that the author had a sadomasochistic relationship with his readers, and I still am. However, one day some time later when I was in a gloomy mood and reflecting on the comic, it struck me that this cycle of joy and pain works both ways. To use an old expression, Nana is "riding the wheel"- just as every moment of hope sets up the eventual cruel dashing of said hope, every crash into despair sets up a rise out of said despair. The story, in other words, can be seen either as most people first perceive it- a gut-wrenching story of a cruel, unfair world- or as the opposite- a uplifting story about eternal hope and the triumph, brief though it may be, of joy in our lives- or, with a bit of perspective, as both at once- an extreme to the point of absurdity expression of life's give-and-take. Awesome. -Bellos The Mighty
Demonstrated in Another Gaming Comic.
This episode of Eight Bit Theater made absolutely no sense, but spawned a thousand Epileptic Trees. Then, five whole years later... I am suddenly almost willing to forgive the Cerebus Syndrome, on account of it having been brilliantly planned beforehand. -KillerClowns
- Also, Onion Knight has been confirmed to be Sarda's past self. This makes much more sense if you note that Onion Knights traditionally have extremely high stat grown in their later levels.
  - As an extension of the above, Onion Knights come from Final Fantasy III. The best magic casting class in Final Fantasy III? Sage.

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Web Original

After repeated re-viewings of Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog several things that were subtly hidden under the Dramedy became apparent — particularly Billy's realization that being evil will not really impress Penny. But what really hit hard was realizing later about Billy's desperate attempts to keep his Horrible persona in check, and vice-versa. The lyrics of Slipping and Dr. Horrible's theme are almost line-for-line a tug-of-war between Billy and Horrible, making it that much more tragic. —Indigo
- This troper posted a rather long analysis of Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog in the WMG, positing that Billy was actually suffering from multiple personality disorder, and giving a break down of Billy/Horrible's mental division, and how Dr. Horrible was gaining more and more control over time. The whole theory came together whilst reading the WMG someone suggested about Billy having a mental disorder, but didn't state which one. —The Tubstar
After seeing the container labeled "Wonderflonium: Do Not Bounce", I figured it was just a quick joke. I thought the gun was damaged by the fall, but then I read a post on this site, and realized... it *bounced*. And that set the wonderflonium off. ~tinlv7
When I first found out that the official name for "On the Rise" is actually "My Eyes," I just shrugged and kept calling it whatever I wanted to. But after I got the soundtrack and spent a rather worrying amount of time with it on a loop as background music, I suddenly figured out that it's called "My Eyes" because it's not just about the plot, it's about how the exact same situation can appear totally different to another person. ~~Phoenix Fire
With the recent shop update to Gaia Online, all the NP Cs got new art. Ruby's shop art was changed from a southern belle's outfit to what appears to be a fairy's outfit, in accordance to her shop's change from only selling hats to the much wider range of "cute, quirky and quintessentially Gaian styles". I thought "oh, okay, quirky, I get it, I guess." Later, I realized that her fairy's outfit was not a fairy's outfit, but actually represented a goddess's outfit—in other words, her new outfit is based on the goddess Gaia. Brilliant. —Shroopliss
At first, I thought that making Kirby into a psychopathic killer in There Will Be Brawl was going a little too far in making a Super Smash Bros universe Darker And Edgier, but when you think about it, that's pretty much what you get when you strip away the games' layer of cuteness: You get a guy who savagely attacks people for even slight offenses, and will eat anyone who gets in his way.
- Furthermore, it explains making Kirby into a baby in the anime Kirby: Right Back At Ya. Even toned down as it is, Kirby could only get away with some of the things he does by virtue of the fact that he's too young to know any better.
Here's one for Whateley, even Murphy's Law has Loopholes. At first, it seems like a fun team-up story, with Loophole and Murphy getting along. It took me about 12 hours and a bit of sleep to realize that Loophole is the world's biggest rules lawyer and planner. Murphy is someone who, basically, ensures that any plan will go horribly wrong by her mere presence.
At first, the constant swearing and toilet humor coming from the Angry Video Game Nerd turned this troper off... until he realized how much he himself swore during video games.

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Real Life

Admit it. This has happened to everybody at least once. I just realized that my entire childhood was formed around the same personality "flaws" that plague me to this day. Life is crazy. -Slothful
Fridge Brilliance is what eventually made me realize that no one looks like models, not even the models. The whole concept of what beauty is was created by advertisement executives. If they were to decide tomorrow that size 14 was popular, suddenly people would be trying to put on weight and the majority of the sheep out there would change their perspectives. -whomajigi
Applies to a great deal of life. It's nearly universal to look back on one's earlier life and think society/culture/etc then was better, but this is really simply Fridge Brilliance (as it didn't look that way at the time). Maybe an inversion, since it shows that things weren't as good as we like remembering them. But hopeful too, because it teaches us that our perception and attitude is what makes the present good or bad. - Tarsus
- Kinda proves the Red vs Blue PSA line: "Take your current age. Subtract 10 years from it. Were you smart back then? Of course you weren't, you were a goddamn idiot. Fact of the matter is, you're just as big of an idiot today, it's just going to take you 10 more years to realize it." -Ramen King Roshi
Fridge Brilliance helped me get over being an Emo Teen to one who finds happiness in even small things. Our world probably not all that great with all the terrible things people do to each other and whatnot. What's the point in living life to the fullest when life has so many ways to turn so very wrong? What's the point in commending the few decent folks when most people seem to be such selfish assholes? Why bother focusing on the nice stuff people are capable of when they're capable of doing such horrible stuff too? Then I realized that that's what makes those things so special. Being nice and happy where everything is all great and dandy? Okay. Finding the strength to be nice and happy despite all the surrounding horribleness? Simply amazing. I'm just sorry I can't find a more eloquent way to express just how much that little realization brightened up my entire outlook. - Malchus
A major wave of ego-crushing Fridge Brilliance engulfed me the first time I saw the Pale Blue Dot image, taken by the spacecraft Voyager, billions of miles from Earth, and reading the late Carl Sagan's speech accompanying it. Watching a video of it was even more effective. It just dawns on you how pointless everything we do is, and no matter how great somebody is or how major and event is, it's all pointless on the grand scale of things. The cosmos, more vast than what the human imagination can percieve, really puts one in his/her right place. I cannot put it any better than Sagan's speech, so I shall speak no further, and direct you to the original words. -Skrim:
For some time during RPs, I haven't used my OC during the non-RP parts where me and my partner usually MST the RP we're doing, which I thought was just laziness on my part. It hit me just recently when I thought about his backstory, that it makes perefect sense! He grew up isolated from the rest of his world with only his Jerk Ass father pushing him to train every day! He doesn't understand social norms and feels safer alone! - Trope Kira
I used to be part of the group of Fan Fiction writers too scared to post their stuff to anywhere public because they were afraid of their characters being labelled Mary Sues until the time came when someone asked me for advice on how not to make their character one. Without even thinking, I launched into a discussion of how even a character who tries not to be one can still be an Anti Sue and then it finally hit me to follow my own advice! Relax. Making characters not Sues is easier than people think. - Hourai Rabbit
Applying this trope to one's parents/teachers/[insert authority figure here] is pretty much the definition of "Growing up." -Yun
ACT.org makes three tests. The EXPLORE, PLAN and pronounce the third as individual letters—Ace-See-Tee. I just about fainted when I realized it was set up as you EXPLORE your strengths (a test taken in 9th grade), PLAN for the future (a PSAT-like test for 10th graders) and... ACT as in, act our your plan and take [one of] the test[s] to go to college.
This one probably had quite a look on his face after realizing that his current friends hate him in exactly the same way his old friends did, for exactly the same reasons, and they took about as long to get to that point, too.
Just today I realised that merely by adding the (in English language) unnecessarily flowery 'u' to the satisfactorily descriptive 'poser', the word 'poseur' is itself a Take That to the kind of pretentious people it describes. ~ Doctor Nemesis

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