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alt title(s): Fridged 
"They tell me your son squealed like a girl when they nailed him to the cross. And your wife moaned like a whore when they ravished her... again... and again... and again." - Commodus
When a character is killed off in a particularly gruesome and sadistic manner, just to give the lead a motive for revenge. The trope is especially pertinent if the victim is killed offscreen and left for the main character to find. The most damning aspect of this trope, however, is that the violence is done in specific way that the audience feels the character is being disrespectfully used only as a hero-enabling plot device. The resulting storyline does not focus on the aftermath, possible recuperation, or even ultimate fate of the victim.
Essentially, an attempt at injecting drama into a series without actually having to write dramatically, which was very common in the Darker And Edgier 1990s.
The usual victims are those who matter to the hero, specifically best buddies, love interests, Sidekicks, and C List Fodder. This fueled the creation of a protest site by comic-fan-turned-writer Gail Simone, who pointed out that these roles are not only common to female characters but lead characters who happen to be female.
The actual name of the trope comes from a particularly egregious storyline in Green Lantern, in which the minor villain Major Force left the corpse of Kyle Rayner's girlfriend literally stuffed into his refrigerator for him to find. Years later, Major Force repeated the gimmick with Kyle's mother in an oven. It was just a trick with a mannequin this time, but it still left a bad taste in some readers' mouths.
This trope appears in many media. The Throw Away Country is an extreme example, and the Doomed Hometown is in many ways the RPG Video Game equivalent. See also Disposable Woman, Luca Brazzi Sleeps With The Fishes, Mary Kellys Kidney. If it happens to multiple love interests of the same character, said character likely suffers from the Cartwright Curse.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In the manga MPD Psycho, Amamiya Kazuhiko's multiple personality disorder is triggered when the serial killer he's tracking mutilates his girlfriend and delivers her limbless but barely alive body to the police station in an ice chest.
- In Dragonball Z, Krillin's gruesome second (and pseudo-definitive) death at the hands of Frieza led Goku to become a Super Saiyan.
- Similarly, in Trunks' Alternate History, Gohan's death at the hands of the Androids triggered Trunks to become a Super Saiyan.
- During the Cell Games, Android 16 is destroyed by Cell, causing Gohan to become Super Saiyan 2 for the first time.
- In Code Geass, the deaths of Princess Euphemia (season 1) and Shirley Fenette (season 2) have been accused of being this. Let's leave it at that.
- In Gundam 00, females and males get in this situation.
- Before the story starts, Action Mom Holly Smirnov dies in a mission, which completely destroys the relationship between her husband Sergei and their son Andrei.
- Some years later, Commander Emilio Ribisi is killed so his subordinate and girlfriend Leesa Kujoh leaves the military and becomes Celestial Being's Sumeragi Lee Noriega.
- Around the second half of the first season, Hot Scoop Kinue Crossroads is killed so her little brother Saji's life gets worse AND to remark on how horrible her murderer Ali Al Saachez is.
- In the second season, Manchurian Agent Anew Returner dies in battle to screw up with the mental stability of her boyfriend, Lyle "Lockon Stratos" Dylandy.
- If we look at it a bit closer, Nena Trinity's older brothers Johan and Michael get stuffed into the fridge to have Nena's own almost non-existent mental stability weaken even more and get her swear revenge on Ali, and later on her boss Liu Mei when she supports him.
- And before that, Nena's worse act was stuffing Louise Halevy's whole family into the fridge by bombing a wedding they were attending. Louise herself almost got tucked in there as well, but she survived - and was emotionally and physically crippled.
- Aaaaaand before all of this happens, When they were around 12 years old, the Dylandy twins got their parents and little sister Amy stuffed in the fridge, thanks to a terrorist attack in Ireland. This leads older twin Neil to become the first Lockon Stratos, and after Neil's death, younger twin Lyle becomes the second one.
- Hardly anyone ever dies in One Piece, except for in flashbacks, most of which have characters die by Heroic Sacrifices that inspire the future Straw Hats. Zoro's friend and rival Kuina, however, had a particularly random and awkward death by falling down the stairs, and her death serves to make him strive to be the world's greatest swordsman (since he promised her one of them would do it, and she no longer can). She's rarely brought up, except for a few brief flashbacks in Zoro's fight with Mihawk and when Zoro encounters Tashigi- who looks like Kuina would have had she grown up.
- Naru Taru plays this trope straight and subverts it. The straight example is Norio Koga, who is brutally murdered by a group of minor villains For The Evulz; his death serves little purpose other than to further break his friend Takeo Tsurumaru, and he is only remembered for a couple of scenes afterwards. The subverted case, meanwhile, is when Shiina Tamai is suddenly shot in half by a fighter jet right after it's insinuated she might not actually be the main character, almost as if she's outlived her usefulness to the plot; fortunately, she is reborn a couple of chapters later, very much remaining the heroine.
- In Naruto, Pain attempted to invoke this trope by killing Hinata in order to anger Naruto, but it was subverted when Hinata survived.
- And who can forget Lira from Tytania? Her entire purpose in the show was to briefly go Tsundere on Fan, climb on top of him in an attempt to honey him into joining La Resistance, and later make a Heroic Sacrifice to give Fan a reason to hate the Tytania family. (Worst part, of course, is that Dr. Lee foreshadowed it two episodes earlier.)
Comic Books
Film
- In Serenity, the Operative sends warships to kill pretty much everyone the crew has associated with, so they have no place to run. He acknowledges the fact that this was a horrible, horrible thing to do.
- The death of Wash is often (mistakenly) cited as an example; Joss Whedon says on the DVD Commentary he was subverting the frick outta Nominal Importance, just to make sure the audience knew that he might very well kill ''everyone''. This was further exacerbated when Zoe is dealt a disabling blow, Kaylee is hit with poison darts...and then the doctor is shot, with his medical kit out of reach.
- Something like this occurred in the film and comic 300, in which the main heroes discover an entire village pinned to a tree (or possibly nailed together in the shape of a tree) due to the ruthless and barbaric nature of the opposing army. As opposed to how upstandingly moral and humane Spartans were in the real world...
- The climax of the film Se7en is an example.
- In the film Tombstone, the villain Johnny Ringo tempts the heroes into a duel by torturing and killing one of the protagonists and sending his body to the heroes.
- In the third X-Men movie, Cyclops would have been an example had any of the characters seemed to care (or, more accurately, had anyone been certain he was dead). Professor X is a better one...and he wasn't even really dead.
- In The Dark Knight, this seemed to be the entire purpose of Rachel Dawes. After being a badly underwritten character in Batman Begins, she got more character development plus an engagement to Harvey Dent...all so that the Joker's goons could tie her up in a basement filled with oil drums in a building separate from her fiance and hooked up to a phone with him so they could hear each other die. Harvey lived. Rachel didn't. Thus, an extra motivation for Harvey to become Two-Face. Given Joker's Xanatos Gambit-prone nature, this may be an in-universe fridging. It works doubly so because of how awesome what characterization Rachel did have made her out to be. It's not just some hero's girlfriend dying, it's one of the good guys too. It becomes a Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? moment for Harvey and felt that it ruined the movie's Two-Face subplot. (We won't go into one of those friends declaring it Marvel-ous.)
- Roadhouse.
- Local goodguy's carparts place is 'sploded while folks are contemplating action. Yeah. No.
- Most badass opponent goon has his throat ripped out and is floated across the river for Big Bad to find.
- best bud/mentor is killed and left on the bar for hero to find.
- Maximus' family in Gladiator, as seen in the page quote.
- One of the many, many tropes parodied in Last Action Hero.
Literature
- In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit451, Clarisse McClellan is killed by a car (or not; the book remains intentionally vague) very early on, after having served her purpose of getting the main character, Guy Montag, to second-guess himself.
- Arguably, Mara Jade Skywalker in Legacy Of The Force: Sacrifice. True, her death was specifically painless, but character-enabling plot device? Let's count shall we? Mara's death 1) provoked Luke's, let's face it, murder of Lumiya, 2) enabled Darth
Idiot's Caedus's Evil Power Upgrade, and 3) according to at least one fan of the series, was crucial for her son's new view of things, 4) was a fight she probably should have won. Nice going, guys.
- In Homer's Iliad, the death of Achilles's best "friend", Patroclus, at the hands of Hector is what finally gets him out of his tent, making this one Older Than Dirt.
- In Streets of Laredo, Larry McMurtry discontinuously revisits Lorena Wood's kidnapping from the prequel, Lonesome Dove, in flashback in order to add in a characteristically (for McMurtry) gruesome scene where a child is kidnapped and burned to death, just so we hate the main villain more.
- In the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, love interest Diana Villiers, who had previously been portrayed as a skilled horsewoman, drives her carriage off a bridge 'off-screen.'
- In The Ghost King, RA Salvatore's most recent Drizzt novel, the role of one of the most important characters in the series is to: 1) look good for her husband; 2) be reduced to a plot device motivating Drizzt; 3) have sex with her husband; 4) say three lucid lines total in the entire book; 5) die and go to a form of heaven on Earth her husband won't. This could be explained by Salvatore's general attitude towards spellcasters, and Regis went with her, but seriously, Rob: Catti-brie's last appearance and she doesn't even get to kick any ass? For shame.
Live Action TV
- In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Jenny Calendar is killed by Angelus and left in her lover Rupert Giles' bedroom, along with a number of things to make the latter initially believe that she has arrived in his home for a romantic rendezvous. It is debatable whether this is a case of schlock or effective writing in line with Whedon's usual tropes, as her planned death had been merely delayed due to fan popularity.
- In this case one must give Whedon some credit for continuing to reference her throughout the season and then obliquely in the next. The murder of Ms. Calendar is a significant point of contention between the members of the Scooby Gang, one that threatens to destroy Buffy's friendship with Xander and relationship with Giles, particularly when it is revealed that Angel is alive and back on Earth. The character's final appearance as a disguise of the First Evil in "Amends" is disappointing, however, and faintly disrespectful. It's no surprise that Robia LaMorte was unhappy with it.
- The reason the actress was unhappy with it was because she became a born-again Christian between the two appearances, and didn't like the fact that she had become Satan.
- Tara acts as a valued member of the team and a Lipstick Lesbian love interest for Willow—then Glory drives her insane and Willow goes on a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge. The following season, it happens again: Warren shoots and kills her, and Willow's Roaring Rampage Of Revenge is so severe it causes a Face Heel Turn.
- Played straight in an early episode, where one of Buffy's favorite teachers is found beheaded and stuffed into a fridge.
- Almost used in the last season of Charmed, when the Angel of Death nearly took Leo's life by Destiny's command, which, they guessed, would have given the Charmed Ones the strength to take on the Big Bad.
- The whole first season of Dexter is a play on this trope. The Big Bad The Ice Truck Killer tries to get the interest of The Hero/Anti-Hero Dexter by brutally murdering people, knowing that he will not get mad about it. He puts most of his victims "on ice", and (as a clue to him) a dismembered doll into Dexter's fridge. It turns out both Dexter and the killer (his brother) were turned into what they are by witnessing the brutal murder of their mother and being left in the container in inch-deep blood for days. In the final episode the trope is inverted when the killer tries to kill Dexter's adoptive sister, which he thinks would reunite the brothers for good.
- This was done very frequently in Diagnosis: Murder. Any time some relative or old friend of Dr. Sloan turned up, odds were that that person would be the victim of the week (unless, of course, he/she turned out to be the villain of the week). In one episode, Dr. Sloan's daughter and her new husband were murdered offscreen and stuffed in their car. It later turned out the entire town was involved, to some degree, in the murder or the cover-up.
- This unfortunately happens quite a bit on Heroes due to their Anyone Can Die policy, but the saddest loss, in this editor's opinion, was of Ted Sprague, who had his scalp removed while dangling upside down in a flipped-over truck just to have his brain and power stolen by Sylar so that there could be built up tension towards the finale as to who will end up blowing up New York. Heck, Sylar ended up never even using the power. Isaac didn't really have to go either. Or Niki, stuffed into a burning warehouse.. There's a fine line between story-enhancing drama and simple shock value, but the second season left no question which side of the line Heroes occupied. Hell, even in season 1, Simone was an egregious example. Instead of anything like characterization or consistent motivations, she got a fridge.
- Bob's off screen death in The Butterfly Effect could be seen as this, though it was more Real Life Writes The Plot - his actor had been in an accident which would require him to wear a neck brace for a while.
- Daphne dying recently in this volume really felt like this to me since it got Parkman to really go after Danko. Especially frustrating as that subplot didn't really go anywhere.
- Or how about D.L., who is shot by a no-name pimp (literally) even though he has survived being shot at before multiple times? His death only leads to further conflict in Niki's story line.
- Early episodes of MacGyver would often introduce an old friend of the title character, who would be killed off in close proximity to him by the bad guys. This would set the stage for the rest of the episode, where MacGyver will then foil the greater plan that necessitated the killing. These characters were almost never mentioned or alluded to ever again.
- Walker Texas Ranger uses it that way quite often. Many episodes open off with an "old friend" showing up. By the end of the episode, you can guess they'll end up dead, and in the rare cases they don't, something bad will happen to them if they ever show up again (which is itself incredibly rare, normally they're never mentioned again). Most of these deaths take place when the friend stumbles upon the villains plot, and get intercepted by them on the way to telling the rangers. It also makes it seem like Walker and company are "good friends" with pretty much everyone in the city with the frequency it happens, but that's another story.
- This is a common occurrence on the FOX series Prison Break. Whether it's Veronica Donovan being stuffed (literally) into multiple Hefty bags, L.J.'s mother and her husband being killed by government agents, or Sara Tancredi's head getting sent to Michael in prison, there aren't many happy endings on the series.
- Sara got better, though.
- How the hell could she get better when above is stated that she got her head removed? Please Elaborate this for people who haven't seen the show.
- It wasn't actually Sara's head. Apparently they just took the bad guy's word that it was hers, and never verified it.
- This happens literally in the Millennium episode 'Walkabout', when the police find a body stuffed into a fridge.
- Law And Order has an episode without a crime (Aftershock), it's just watching the characters deal with seeing an execution. The whole episode is based on putting every character into a less centered place. Claire Kincaid is killed by a Drunk Driver at the end of the episode. Now, why does Law And Order need more drama? Nobody can say. It has a few in-show mentions after the event by Briscoe and McCoy due to how they were involved with the character or the accident.
- Kincaid was killed off because her actress, Jill Hennessey, was leaving the show to pursue a movie career. The producers originally intended to have her paralyzed, thus explaining her leaving the DA's office, but when Hennessey refused to come back for one last episode in the next season to show this, they decided, during the summer hiatus, that she was killed instead.
- And they hit the fridge again with ADA Alexandra Borgia kidnapped, beaten, stuffed in a car trunk, and abandoned to choke to death on her own vomit.
- Annie Parisse (Borgia's actress) left to pursue a movie career. Dick Wolf told her, ‘Oh, thank you for coming in early. You don’t mind if we kill you, do you?"
- These Law And Order examples - particularly the first - stem partly from the writers and producers aiming to give their actors more 'personal' material to deal with; more than one regular actor on the show has complained how the show's standard template makes it very difficult to engage with the dialogue after a while, as it tends to degenerate into a repetitive and formulaic series of standard police / prosecutorial questioning techniques ("Did you get a good look at his face? What car was he driving?" and such).
- A perp once attempted this literally on SVU, by putting an older witness/victim of his into a fridge with a tank of oxygen, thinking that she would either suffocate or succumb to a heart attack from panic before Benson and Stabler find her. They do, and the vic is alive (but traumatized).
- The writers' stated purpose for Shannon being "gut-shot" and killed on Lost was to create tension between the original cast and the tailsection survivors. They later acknowledged in a podcast the large number of female characters who've been "gut-shot."
- The opening episode of the second season of War of the Worlds. The military general who has been giving the team missions throughout the first season has been kidnapped and presumably killed by alien beings. The military lieutenant leading the main characters is kidnapped, cloned, found by his former comrade (who swears vengeance), then shoots himself in the head out of desperation to save a little girl (who is being held hostage by the clone). The wheelchair-bound tech support character is shot multiple times, then shot AGAIN when he activates a panic button. And then they both get blown to bits in an exploding mansion. Only the wheelchair-bound character is ever mentioned again.
- Male example: Sydney Bristow's original fiancé. She found him in the tub with his throat slit, after which she turned on her evil employers.
- A similar thing happened in the first season of Damages, with David, Ellen's boyfriend. And guess what did Ellen do against her boss Patty Hewes in Season 2.
- In an episode of Inspector Rex, Moser and Rex manage to save a guy who was actually stuffed into a fridge in the attic.
- Kate's death on NCIS had this effect on Gibbs. Even though Ari had a bead on Gibbs, he killed one of his team instead because it would cause Gibbs more pain. He learned the hard way that you do not mess with team Gibbs.
- He then tries to go after Abby, barely missing (it is debatable on whether missing was intentional).
- Supernatural: The killing of Jessica by the yellow-eyed demon is this all over. And Their Mum. And Ellen and Jo to a lesser extent.
- Star Trek The Next Generation: Worf's old flame, K'Ehleyr, turns up to help mediate the line of succession from the previous Klingon chancellor between two candidates, Gowron and Duras, the latter supposedly having evidence of the charges against Worf's dad. Duras kills her when she gets too nosy, motivating Worf to kill Duras no less than 5 minutes later.
- Done by Moffat in the pilot of Airwolf. Whether pissing off Stringfellow Hawke was the intent or not, it certainly had that effect, leaving Moffat with a life expectancy only slightly longer than the series Theme Tune.
Theater
- A classic example is in the play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare. In a stroke of stupidity, Macbeth kills Macduff's entire family, which gives Macduff a reason to take an army of 10,000 men given to him by the King of England to go and kill Macbeth, making this trope Older Than Steam.
- Jacobean revenge tragedies had this as their sole plot device, with bodies piling up on stage until often only a minor character remained to speak the final lines of the play. It's a (perhaps extinct) trope of the revenge plot — 'What Price Revenge?' or the like. Notice that in Hamlet the same thing happens; the basic rule is that no matter how noble & good the cause is, the main character's desire for revenge ought to act like a Touch Of Death on everybody who can't take cover. The reason why it was usually a minor character who remained to speak those lines? Minor characters were the only ones with a chance to stay out of the splash radius. See Pyrrhic Victory.
Videogames
- In the Civilization 4 mod Fall From Heaven, Einion Logos' flavor text describes him returning from making a truce with the demon civilization, only to find his wife brutally murdered - a ploy by the demons to incite him into breaking the truce right out of the gate. Even worse, Word of Kael says that it was another human civ (the Amurites) that did it, not the Infernals. It only looked like the demons did it so that Einion would take the Amurites' side against the infernals.
- The death of Hildi towards the end of Dead to Rights. Stuffed through a window, to be precise.
- The Nightmare Fuel death of Lucien Lachance in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
- Before your first mission on the Dread Isle in Fire Emblem: The Sword of Flame, Matthew's love interest Leila, whom is spying on the enemy organization is not only found dead, but is left in such a way that the main characters don't realize this and try talking to her before realizing what has happened.
- An interesting use in this case as Matthew is the one most affected by this rather than one of the three main characters, and asks the next mission off to pay her proper respects. You are not forced to, but conversation elements would be different based on whether you brought him along on the next mission or not, having a similar effect to Player Punch only more indirect.
- Hector was still 'very angry and shaken, as evidenced when Leila's murderer Jaffar has a Heel Face Turn and joins the group with his Morality Pet and girlfriend, Nino.
- Not only that, but you can make Matthew get support conversations with Jaffar, where he brutally calls him out. With very sad results.
- Your entire party in Planescape Torment. In the best ending, though, the Nameless One resurrects them.
- The ladies in Ash's life never fared too well in the movies either, but hey; at least one of 'em survived those. They get it much, much worse in the games.
- The murder of Harry Mason in SilentHill 3, motivating Heather to seek revenge against Claudia. Also done to "fill her heart with hatred" to nurture the demon god she is pregnant with. And then there's Vincent's death near the end of the game, which nearly pushes her over the edge into birthing the God.
- Spirit in Wing Commander II gets a Stupid Sacrifice when her fighter is damaged and rather than eject, she kamikazes into the Heaven's Gate station. Her death is not brought up afterward, except in a passing reference by Jazz, who wanted revenge on the Tiger's Claw crew for the death of his brother, and her death seems to exist to facilitate Maverick and Angel getting together. In Wing Commander III, Angel gets killed off as soon as she's introduced, although the player doesn't learn of her death until much later, and this sets up the last mission as being one for revenge.
- In the first Phantasy Star game, Nero dies, which spurs Alis on her adventure to begin with. Alys' death in the fourth game is very obviously for the development of Chaz's character more than anything else, but was handled extremely well, substituting gruesome violence for a slow, suffering demise, and punctuated with a huge Tear Jerker death scene.
- The arcade version of Double Dragon II: The Revenge begins with Billy's girlfriend Marian, who was already rescued from the bad guys in the first game, being gunned down by Machine Gun Willy, providing Billy and Jimmy the motivation to fight the bad guys again. She did get better in the NES version.
- Anton in Guild Wars gave information to the Charr in exchange for the safety of his wife and his village. It worked out exactly like you think it did, and the quests to gain him as a hero in Eye of the North have you helping him track down the Charr he made the deal with.
Webcomics
- Completely subverted, with a lampshade thrown in for good measure in this Super Stupor strip.
- The Green Lantern case was lampshaded in this Casstoons strip.
- One humorous scene from 8-Bit Theater:
Ranger: Honey, I'm home. Apparently. Hmm, a note... covered in blood, hair, and brain.
"Dinner is in the fridge.
-Your Wife."
Ranger: How strange that she would not use her name or handwriting. Oh well! <looks in the fridge> O.J., purple stuff, my brutally murdered wife...
<arrows>
- Subverted twice in Sluggy Freelance.
Web Original
- This occurs in Survival Of The Fittest with the death of Adam Dodd's girlfriend, Amanda Jones, at the hands of Cody Jenson. Arguably, it was overshadowed by the simultaneous death (and rape) of Madelaine Shirohara.
Western Animation
- In an episode of Samurai Jack assassin robots destroy several villages and kill their inhabitants (surprisingly unsettling, considering the only onscreen victims are robots) solely to draw the title character to them.
- Probably the horrific brutality with which it's done, which had they been human would have bumped up the rating two or three notches.
- This has happened at least twice in Transformers Animated, first to Ratchet—while Arcee didn't actually die, having your memory completely wiped is still pretty bad. Next episode we find out that Optimus' friend (and Sentinel's implied girlfriend) Elita was eaten alive by giant spiders. Or so they thought...
- This was silly to the point that the writers actually promised at a convention that they were going to make at least one female Transformer who didn't have something horrible happen to her. Of course, being Starscream's Opposite Sex Clone still must be pretty unpleasant.
- There is always Strika and Sari.
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