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alt title(s): Women In Refrigerators; Stuffed In The Fridge; Fridged; Stuffed In A Fridge
"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, Gladiator

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 a specific way so that the audience feels that 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 almost always applied 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, The Gwen Stacy, 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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