alt title(s): Jellybean Moment
"By the time you figure out what was wrong with that, it won't matter anymore!"
Half an hour after the show is over, J. Random Viewer is staring into his refrigerator, vaguely bemused by the fact that his six-pack of beer has somehow become a two-pack of beer. Rather than work out how this might have happened, it occurs to him to wonder how in the hell
Sydney Bristow went from Hungary to Melbourne, Australia, then to LA, all within 24 hours.
It hadn't bothered him during the show. It wasn't until he discovered he was running short of beer that it became an issue.
Fridge Logic has been the writer's-room term for these little internal-consistency issues for a good while, as in "
Don't sweat the fridge logic, we've got bigger fish to fry. We've only got 20 minutes left to work in three costume changes, a foreign language, and a weird wig." The phrase is often attributed to
Alfred Hitchcock, who referred to the delayed recognition of a
Plot Hole as "the icebox moment."
Stories with a
Tomato Surprise may
count on this phenomenon to prevent you from questioning oddities in what appears to be happening. By the time the
Fridge Logic would have hit the audience, they've explained what was really going on, and those problems are explained to be clues that something was up.
Ronald D. Moore talks about
Fridge Logic extensively on the commentary to
Battlestar Galactica episode (2.02) "Valley of Darkness", likening it to the type of logic used to figure out whether the light in the fridge stays on when the door is closed.
The writer David Gerrold refers to this as the "refrigerator door question" in his book on writing,
Worlds of Wonder, which is described as the question that hits you square in the face as you're opening your refrigerator door for a late-night snack after the movie is over. He also gives an example: in the movie E.T., if E.T. can make the bicycle fly at the end, why doesn't he use it in the beginning of the film to avoid pursuit?
Note that, with equal probability, some Fridge Logic leads to
Wall Banger Land and some leads to
Nightmare Fuel City. And sometimes, Fridge Logic can
turn an otherwise
Happy Ending into a
Bittersweet or outright
Downer Ending, as
Cracked.com's list of
Six Most Depressing Happy Endings in Movie History
demonstrates. (Contrast that with Gundamania, the phenomena of openly avoiding the Happy Ending as a non-issue being one of
Mobile Suit Gundam's defining characteristics.)
When fans notice these
during the show, it's a plain old
Plot Hole. For more examples and discussion, see
It Just Bugs Me. Not to be confused with the un-tasty
Oven Logic. If the characters themselves fail to ask questions about a given plot development or device, then it's because
Apathy Killed The Cat.
In science fiction circles, this is also known as a Jellybean Moment. This refers to a story by
Harlan Ellison titled
"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman, where the climax of the story involves gumming up the works of the society with the application of jellybeans. It's only after the story has been read that the average reader thinks "Where the heck did he get the jellybeans?" This phrase is at the core of
a famous story involving Ellison at a Worldcon.
See also
Fridge Brilliance for when there's actually a really good explanation when you think about it, and
Fridge Horror when something is incredibly scary when you think about it. This is also related to the
MST3K Mantra, which allows you to just go along for the ride, and not sweat the details.
NOT related to The Wrath Of Khan, where
Spock gets
Stuffed Into The Fridge. Also, NOT to be confused with
Nuke The Fridge.
By the way, we have a whole
section of this wiki dedicated to these issues. Please see
It Just Bugs Me. This article just defines a term. It neither needs nor wants any examples. To discuss fridge logic issues — which can be a lot of fun — see
It Just Bugs Me, or any of our fine
Forums. No examples here, please.
