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" 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."
A character is killed off in a particularly gruesome manner and left to be found just to offend or insult someone, or to cause someone serious anguish. The usual victims are those who matter to the hero, specifically best buddies, love interests, and sidekicks.
The name of the trope comes from a storyline in Green Lantern, in which the villain Major Force leaves the corpse of Kyle Rayner's girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, literally stuffed into a 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 that time.
The term was popularized by comic book writer Gail Simone through her website " Women In Refrigerators." On that site, Simone compiled a list of instances of female comic book characters who were killed off as a plot device. The term came to be used more broadly, over time, to refer to any character who is targeted by an antagonist who has them killed off, abused, raped, incapacitated, de-powered, or brainwashed for the sole purpose of affecting another character, motivating them to take action.
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, I Let Gwen Stacy Die, and Finger in the Mail. Compare What Measure Is a Mook?. If it happens to multiple love interests of the same character, said character likely suffers from the Cartwright Curse. The intended effect is very much akin to Cheap Heat.
Compare Collateral Angst, a more general case where bad things happening to Character A are primarily important for their effect on Character B. Depending on how useful/interesting the character is, and whether their death was pointless or not, can overlap with Dropped a Bridge on Him. Not to be confused with being Put on a Bus as a Human Popsicle. Also not related to Fridge Logic, Fridge Horror, or Fridge Brilliance. Also don't confuse with Locked in a Freezer or It Came from the Fridge.
If the love interest who gets Stuffed Into the Fridge remains relevant to the ongoing story, continuing to be loved and missed by living characters, sometimes to the point of appearing in flashbacks and dream sequences, and is the standard by which any subsequent love interests are measured by, she is also a Lost Lenore.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Subverted in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. After Rena beats Rina/Ritsuko to death with a metal pipe in self-defense, she's seen stuffing Rina's body into a refrigerator in the junkyard. It's subverted in that Rina's boyfriend/partner in crime Teppei never discovers her; Rena lures him out to the junkyard and hacks him to death with her billhook before that can happen.
- 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 Naruto, Pain attempted to invoke this trope by killing Hinata in order to anger Naruto, but it was subverted when Hinata survived. Though some believe him to invoke and exploit it by hurting Hinata in a place were it looked fatal, but is harmless nonetheless, so as to rouse Naruto to kill him and prove his point of the Cycle of Revenge.
- Ghost in the Shell:
- In Innocence, Batou and Togusa visit the crime scene of a Yakuza murder. All the corpse's organs are missing and there are a lot of bloody kitchen knives in the sink. As they hand over to the crime scene investigators and leave, one man shouts from the off that he found the organs packed in jars in the fridge.
- In Stand Alone Complex a killer appears who skins women alive while recording it. This was actually a case of the trope being weaponized. The killer was a soldier who had been mentally conditioned and trained to go behind enemy lines and commit these atrocities to break the enemy's will to fight. Unfortunately, the mental damage was so great he never stopped.
- A slightly odd example from Darker than Black: Towards the end of the second season, Yoko, The Team Normal for the Quirky Miniboss Squad, is found horribly murdered, prompting her girlfriend Mina Hazuki to make an It's Personal-induced attempt on the life of the person they believed responsible. Thing is? She thought it was Hei. She was wrong.
- Bleach: Genre Savvy that he is, Big Bad Sosuke Aizen planned to specifically invoke this, killing Ichigo's friends and leaving the corpses for Ichigo to discover. Ichigo appeared in Big Damn Heroes fashion and forcibly moved Aizen out of town.
- Happens in Silent Möbius, with Katsumi's lover Roy.
- May have happened in End Of Evangelion. After all, Shinji emerging from the ruins of NERV HQ and seeing the brutally gored and eviscerated remains of Unit 02 is what pushed him over the Despair Event Horizon SEELE needed to start Third Impact.
- The Gung-Ho guns of Trigun are usually finished by one of their own after Vash claims a (usually circumstantial) victory. For example, this occurs in episode 16 where E.G. Mine nails two of his defeated former comrades atop a building, which Vash only notices once the blood drips onto the back of his head while walking. Mine then proceeds to refer to them as "decorations", making it obvious they were put there to set as examples for the Gung-Ho Guns' intolerance for failure.
- Berserk serves a rare example where the victim actually survives. Casca is horrifically raped by Femto just to spite her lover and his former friend Guts. This forces Guts into a blind rage that involves him hacking off his arm in order to free himself from a demon that is holding him back from saving her. Unfortunately, he's pinned down mere feet away from Femto and Casca and is Forced To Watch the act proceed while he gets his eye clawed out. By the time Femto is finished with her, Guts is exhausted from the blood loss and passes out on the spot along with a broken Casca (whom Femto just threw on the ground after he was done raping her). Though she didn't die, the experience drove her insane. The aftermath of this event is what drove Guts on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge the most.
- In Rurouni Kenshin, Kaoru is stabbed through the heart by Enishi and has an X-shaped scar carved onto her left cheek just as Kenshin's, and is left nailed to the dojo wall, slumped in a pool of her own blood. The gruesome display was meant to send Kenshin over the edge with grief, knowing that he failed to save his second love. It works really well. She ain't dead after all.
- Hellsing has a rare male example with Pip Bernadotte, who dies after Zorin Blitz stabs him while he's trying to carry a blind and mutilated Seras to safety. Seras breaks down in tears, and is pushed over the edge when Zorin mocks Pip's death, calling him 'a mere insect'. Seras responds by drinking his blood and becoming a fully-fledged vampire, and going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, culminating in her painting the wall with Zorin's face.
- Kamui Den: The rape and subsequent death for the peasant girl Mine early in the first series becomes an inciting incident for two of the major male characters to fight the oppressive powers of their feudal domain.
- Aika in Zetsuen No Tempest: killed off before the series begins to spur Mahiro onto his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Sort of a deconstruction; he goes to ridiculous lengths to find her killer, and is compared to Hamlet in terms of insane, violent determination. He eventually gives up on vengeance when he learns that she killed herself, even though it was partly Hakaze's fault for telling Aika about it and accidentally making her decide to set up a Stable Time Loop via suicide.
- Happens to Flay in Gundam SEED . Despite avoiding her ship exploding and Kira shielding her from Rau's initial attempt to kill her, Rau's weapon pods snipe her from another angle, blowing her up. Many fans were angry, especially since it mostly served to force Kira to get with Lacus, the only other love interest he had, despite knowing Flay for longer. Also happens to Stella in the sequel, by Kira himself although it was clear thanks to circumstances of her life, that an early death was inevitable. Would have happened to Luna in any other series or circumstance, but because her opponent was Athrun (who still considered her a friend) he spared her.
Comic Books
- The original Stuffed into the Fridge incident was fueled by Executive Meddling: The scene, as originally drawn, showed Kyle Rayner's girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, completely intact, but still dead. DC editors thought this was too gruesome, so mandated a redraw, that showed the partially open door with the arm sticking out of it, suggesting dismemberment.
- During the end of the same third volume, Kyle Rayner had a re-match with the same villain who had mutilated aforementioned girlfriend, Major Force. This villain decided to top himself by stuffing Rayner's mother into the oven. Believe it or not Major Force later played this for laughs by pointing out it was a dummy and that he 'never repeats the same trick'.
- Sadly, Kyle's mother did not escape the metaphorical fridge in the end. Sinestro had the living virus Despotellis kill her in retaliation for Kyle branding him with a Green Lantern symbol during Green Lantern: Rebirth. Then he revealed this to Kyle to make him vulnerable to Parallax possession.
- While this time it didn't involve actual kitchen appliances, Major Force got to do this again, killing off Arisia, former Lantern, former girlfriend of Hal Jordan and current friend of Guy Gardner, suffocating her in order to bait Gardner into a fight. The scene in which he did so earned some disgust from readers, since because of the way the panel was drawn and the powers he had, it was impossible to tell whether he'd done it just by covering her nose and mouth, or by pouring his arm down her throat.
- When they cross paths during the "Battle For Bludhaven" miniseries, Hal Jordan (having learned of Alexandra's fate beforehand) gives Force a taste of his own medicine by slamming an energy construct of a refridgerator onto him.
- Kyle even has this happen with friends. Terry Berg, his assistant (who happened to be gay), was horribly gay-bashed and beaten into a coma. Like in your standard Stuffed into the Fridge story line, the story focused more on Kyle's angst that someone could do this to a friend of his, rather than Terry dealing with the trauma himself. He terrorizes the thugs responsible, then takes a leave of absence from Earth because he's despairing for the state of humanity, while his friend is still bedridden.
- Green Lantern seems to be made of this. John Stewart's first wife Katma Tui is killed in gruesome fashion by Star Sapphire to prove a point to Hal Jordan while she is depowered and in her kitchen!
Katma Tui: Star Sapphire? What are you doing here?
Star Sapphire: You're not Hal Jordan, but you were a Green Lantern. You'll do.
- Continuing the tradition in the D Cn U series Earth 2, Alan Scott's boyfriend *
He's gay after the Flashpoint reboot was killed in an explosion quickly after being introduced.
- Parodied in the new Ambush Bug series. Ambush Bug is shopping:
Ambush Bug: Do you have any major appliances that don't come with a dead body in it?
Saleslady: It's a standard feature. Have you checked out our compact fridge with built-in pygmy?
- What Ever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow: A rare male variant with Pete Ross, stuffed in a box by The Prankster and Toyman.
- Superboy's first love, Tana Moon, got this treatment.
- To make matters even worse, the woman who killed Tana did it because she felt Superboy, as a clone of her father, Cadmus Director Paul Westfield, was a huge disappointment. Recent retcons show, however, that Superboy is not Westfield's clone at all, but a joint DNA clone of Supes and Lex. So Tana's death was not only nasty brutal and ugly, but the very reason she was targeted was just dead wrong!
- She's not dead, but in Batman, Hush cut out Catwoman's heart. She was somehow gotten to a machine in time. An example of an Invoked Trope, as Hush was deliberately looking for the most traumatic thing he could do to Batman. It was then subsequently subverted as when she recovered, Selina was the one who went for revenge, not Bruce. She ruined Hush, to boot.
- More recently, in the New 52 reboot run, Catwoman was killed off "permanently", for no other purpose then to further Batman's story arc. To be clear, she had her own comic series, with her own supporting cast, her own development and conflicts, and she's killed for the sake of Bats' story. Shine on, DC.
- This has happened twice to Princess Sally in Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog, though like Catwoman above, she hasn't died. The first time was way back in issue 47, where she was dropped off a building in an attempt to frame Sonic for killing her. The next time was around 230: Following her Heroic Sacrifice to prevent Dr. Eggman from roboticizing the planet, at the cost getting herself roboticized, Eggman decides to remodel her to fight Sonic. He starts off this process by taking a blowtorch to her and, as we discover in other arcs, removed several of her original parts, meaning he's gutted her. He may very well have cut out her heart.
- The Alan Moore story The Killing Joke, where The Joker shoots and cripples Barbara Gordon in an effort (which includes photographs of her lying naked and wounded) to drive her father insane. Even Alan Moore regrets its brutality.
- The fact that Babs survived and developed greatly as a character doesn't matter, because at the time, DC was essentially trying to remove her altogether. When Moore asked his editors if it was okay to include the shooting, their response was "Yeah, okay, cripple the bitch."
- This would be a lot more telling if The Killing Joke was intended to be canon. It was not. Writers at DC just kept using it as if it were. Kind of like Nextwave.
- Golden Glider from The Flash is a supervillain version of this; she's killed off mainly so that her brother Captain Cold can angst about it.
- One Flash villain actually adopted this as his ethos. Hunter Zolomon, the second Zoom, came to believe that great men are defined by adversity and tragedy, and started targeting Wally West because of it. He actually caused his wife Linda to miscarry, causing Wally to give up on being The Flash for a while.
- As if his life wasn't terrible enough, any female close to the Incredible Hulk dies horribly or suffers some traumatic events. His original love interest and later wife Betty Ross Banner had her blood tainted by the Hulk's enemy, the Abomination (She got better though) and died painfully from Gamma radiation poisoning. To twist the knife even further, she returned only to subsequently return to the grave soon after the fact. Though now she's back again. However she has been turned into the Red She Hulk and gained an entirely new set of problems.
- Marlo, one-time girlfriend of Hulk's 'Mr. Fixit' personality and the wife of the Hulk's erstwhile sidekick, Rick Jones was killed by a crazy woman who believed herself to be Rick's mother and then brought back to life as a mindless vegetable. She got better, though.
- There was also Caiera from Planet Hulk. Though at least she left Bruce two sons.
- Hulk's second major love interest, Jarella (after Betty but before Caiera), likewise died by being crushed beneath a collapsing building during a Hulk/Abomination fight.
- For a gender flip, Mystique killed Ms. Marvel's boyfriend while disguised as her, in a matter that was particularly gruesome for a 70's comic (Mystique was originally a Ms. Marvel villain and was intended to be her archenemy).
- Due to the cancellation of Ms. Marvel's book, the issue showing that murder was only printed in the 1980s in the anthology title Marvel Super Heroes.
- Gail Simone, who coined the phrase (and has stated that the term has been distorted and over-applied since then) played with the trope in Wonder Woman, where Wonder Woman's best friend Etta was captured and tortured into catatonia by Genocide. She was deliberately targeted as one of Diana's loved ones, she was tortured to make us hate the villain even more, and she was left for Diana to find with a mocking note...all the hallmarks of a fridging except for the fact that she didn't die. Etta however, got better and was shown to be none worse for the wear in the long run, even telling Wondy not to feel guilty for what happened.
- Since Blackest Night was about the dead returning as intelligent but soulless zombies with the intent of overwhelming and feeding on various emotional reactions, ripping each victim's heart out in the process, it was conceptually predisposed to this trope from the beginning. Several characters, both male and female, were killed just to get a rise out of other characters. The textbook example of this trope, though, was Gen, the girlfriend of Jason Rusch, who was turned to salt and had her heart ripped out (simultaneously) while Jason got a front row seat inside her killer's head.
- The Punisher 2099 was starting to get his life back together, thanks to his girlfriend Kerry. Then Fearmaster decided to send a message to him, and turned her to glass.
- Subverted twice in Invincible. Atom Eve appears to get fridged, but in the next issue she not only survives, but saves Invincible's life. We also have villain Powerplex who essentially does this to himself. He accidentally kills his own family while fighting Invincible.
- Played straight with Omni-man and the bug people he settled down with after leaving Earth. His fellow Viltrumites slaughtered thousands of them to, in their own words, piss him off. To Omni-man's own surprise, it worked.
- In the Death of the New Gods series, this happened in the first few pages to freaking Big Barda. Granted, the assassin was targeting all of the New Gods, but her death is what motivates her husband Mr. Miracle's actions, such as using the Anti-life Equation — something he once swore he would never do in the past. To add insult to injury, she was killed off-panel and left with no signs of a struggle and her body was found in — you guessed it — the kitchen.
- Nearly every Red Lantern seen so far had people close to them brutally murdered — the rage they felt over these deaths is what draws the red power rings to them in the first place. Among them are an alien whose mate was eaten by Sinestro Corp member Arkillo, a housecat from Earth whose owner was murdered by a burglar. Their leader Atrocitus has the worst case — his entire space sector, including his family, was killed by the Guardians' rogue Manhunters. His entire reason for living is to kill the Guardians. The rage that Mera felt over losing her husband (Aquaman) and her son in addition to the rest of the crap she's had to deal with over the years and her own rather short temper was strong enough to make her a deputy Red Lantern during Blackest Night. Guy Gardner briefly became a Red Lantern when Kyle Rayner was killed (he got better).
- Karen Smith, the partner of the Martian Manhunter in his guise as detective John Jones, was murdered by his evil brother Malefic as part of his ongoing campaign to destroy J'onn's life. J'onn responded by throwing Malefic into the sun.
- Justice League: Cry for Justice, much like any other big event DC comic, has people dropping like flies offscreen, but the stuffee was not a woman, but a girl. Lian Harper, daughter of Roy. Linkara was not amused.
- Not only that, but Starman's African-American boyfriend Tony was killed in the first issue, just to give him some motivation.
- During Brightest Day, Deathstroke killed Ryan Choi, the Chinese Atom. This was basically done to make Deathstroke seem more "hardcore" and provide angst and motivation for Ray Palmer, Choi's white mentor. The resulting racial controversy was huge, and even got coverage on non-comic sites, which lead to DC Retconning the incident during the New 52. Prior to the retcon, some fans had proposed the term "Minorities in Matchboxes" for this type of situation, where a character of color is killed off to provide angst for a white character.
- Poor Sue Dibny, wife of the Elongated Man, got a quadruple whammy of this in Identity Crisis, both in-story and out. Her mysterious murder was 1) the impetus of a company-wide Crisis Crossover in which it was revealed that she was 2) murdered by Jean Loring in a convoluted attempt to make her ex-husband The Atom/Ray Palmer love her again, and it was revealed that she was 3) raped years ago, which had provoked a number of retconned events from the DC universe's past, which were 4) used to fuel future drama and storylines in the other DC titles.
- In Judge Dredd, the first-shown female Judge is killed off in a few frames by a Judge-murdering gang, just to provide motivation for a male Judge (who loved her) to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and get killed. Neither were established characters. (For a long time, Judges were prohibited from having relationships for just this reason.)
- The trope is invoked, deconstructed and played straight in Y: The Last Man. In the finale, Altar murders Agent 355 because she wanted to die by a man's hands. Agent 355 is killed off unceremoniously right in front of Yorick in an attempt to motivate him to do the deed.
- In Death Of The Family, Raya Vestri, one of the chessmasters during Nightwing's first story arc, ends up getting shot up full of Joker Venom and dies. Nightwing now has one more reason to be upset with Joker.
- In Proposition Player, Archangel Michael arranges the gruesome deaths of several people who sold their souls to the protagonist, Andy (which forced him into said big boys' game), resulting in them materialising in his makeshift afterlife (his apartment) in the state they were killed (a pile of ashes, a guy with rebar through his head, a mangled corpse, and a pile of alligator dung - it's essentially the "default setting" for an afterlife until specified otherwise) - all as a message telling him how out of his depth he really is and how he should get out of the game while he still can. Michael and his angel-goon Bill then kidnap Andy's girlfriend (whose soul is also his property), violate and mutilate her, and then present her to him, barely still alive, with a final offer: sell the souls to them and she'll get a free ticket to Heaven with her original appearance intact, or refuse and the girl spends the rest of eternity as a mutilated freak. Andy promptly slits her throat and tells them that he intends to step up the game instead and kick them from the table. As it turns out, he had earlier changed his "afterlife presets" - people now come back looking as good as they ever did in life, although it doesn't help the already deceased - so she was perfectly okay, and safer than ever. And with a reserved spot in his new pantheon.
- Batwoman: Her sidekick Flamebird is brutally mauled by The Hook, and left in a coma. Not only does this cause Kate more angst, it also allows the DEO to find Bette and figure out Kate's identity. Though following this incident, Bette does get an arc about her rode to recovery, her subsequent training, getting her back into the fight and personally defeating The Hook herself, in the end, the maiming motivated her more than Kate.
- Mockingbird, on three occasions now. Firstly, when she's raped by Phantom Rider, which acts as something of a subversion as its her who gets the most effected by it, resulting in her killing the Phantom Rider, only to be double-subverted by this then being used to make Hawkeye angst. Later, she's killed by Mephisto, resulting in Clint falling int a downwards spiral for a while and eventually breaking up the West Coast team. After she's revived, she gets shot while on a mission with the New Avengers, all just to make the team, and Hawkeye, more angry at the villain.
- Fray: Melaka Fray's friend, Loo, was killed by Fray's mentor, Urkonn, to give her the push to truly embrace the role of the Slayer. This is outright stated by Urkonn when she discovers this and sets him up for killing in turn, acknowledged by Fray herself just before she kills him.
Fan Works
- Alleged to happen with Narcissa Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Methods Of Rationality. According to Draco, Dumbledore burned her alive as a warning to the rest of the Voldemort-supporting Malfoy family. Unreliable Narrator is in full force here.
- In Circles of Power
 , another Harry Potter fanfic, Draco defects to the light side. In retaliation, the Death Eaters kill Draco's good friend Pansy and then break into the house where Draco has been taken in by Harry and his friends for protection, just to leave Pansy's mutilated body on Draco's bed.
Film
Literature
- In Leo Tolstoy's novelette Hadji Murat, the reader is first aware of the death of Hadji Murat when someone shows off his head in a sack. This rather brilliantly makes a death that for the history savvy reader is inevitable something rather shocking and horrifying, just as it is to the characters in the story, who do not have the benefit of hindsight.
- In Firestarter, Vicky is murdered and stuffed behind the ironing board.
- In Leon Uris' Exodus, a story about the founding of Israel, the lover of a main character is kidnapped, raped dozens of times, and dumped in pieces near her home.
- In The Lies Of Locke Lamora, Capa Barsavi's daughter was killed by the Grey King and sent back to him in a barrel of horse urine.
- In Twilight, James attempted this trope, videotaping him torturing and killing Bella to make Edward seek revenge and start a "game" with him. Lucky for Bella, Edward was fast enough to avert it.
- In the climax of Lord Of The Clans Blackmoore hurls the head of Thrall's human surrogate sister at his feet when the Orcs besiege his castle, trying to break his spirit. Unfortunately for him, Orcs do not work that way.
- Worst Case, one of the latest books by James Patterson, has the villain use this to taunt the police and families of his teenage victims. His second victim, a 17-year-old girl, was tortured with hypothermia and shot in the head, then stuffed in a fridge so the serial killer could dump her corpse somewhere public without arousing too much suspicion. Her neck and limbs were broken to get her body to fit, and the forensic team had to cut the top of the fridge off just to get her out.
- The entire plot of The Count of Monte Cristo is Edmond Dantes doing this to the people who betrayed him and had him imprisoned, culminating in an Aesop about how revenge ultimately corrupts one's soul.
- A Song of Ice and Fire has a rare example of the sexes being switched for this one - Khal Drogo's fatal injury and subsequent death are all to motivate Daenerys to take her next level in badass.
- Later on, Lady Hornwood was married to Ramsay Bolton for politics, then promptly shut in a tower and left to die. She was found with her own fingers gnawed off in hunger and desperation. Her cousin Wyman Manderley was not pleased and is now plotting his revenge against House Bolton.
- Manderley is also taking revenge against House Frey, who had allied with House Bolton, to take down the Starks, the banner-lords for Houses Bolton and Maderley.
- Both Eddard and Septa Mordane's heads are displayed on the Red Keep's walls by Joffrey to traumatize Sansa.
- Eddard's death, however, is not for the express purpose of traumatizing Sansa. His death does set off a civil war.
- In the backstory of Sword of Truth, Zedd's wife has this done to her. She's viciously beaten and raped by D'Haran soldiers, and just to twist the knife in further, she's left for Zedd to find. Zedd, being a Wizard of the First Order, naturally attempts to heal her, only to find that doing so sets off a trap spell designed to kill her painfully in response to any magical healing. Ouch.
- Richard finds Kahlan like this. People stop him from healing her for that reason. It takes her months to get better.
- Richard does this with Brother Narev, for Jagang to find, and then later has this done with all of the Fellowship.
- Charlie Parker's wife and child are murdered by a serial killer and left in the kitchen of his house for him to find in John Connolly's Every Dead Thing.
- Connolly tends to use women like that. In Dark Hollow, Charlie Parker is motivated by the gory death of Billy Purdue's wife and son.
- In The Killing Kind, Charlie Parker's ex-girlfriend is found killed, and he is hired to find out what happened, and ultimately chooses to continue the job even after he is effectively fired, so he can bring some justice to Grace Peltier and the rest of the Aroostok Baptists.
- Tim Rackley's young daughter, Ginny, is raped and cut up, leading to the Deputy Sheriff to go on a mad rampage in Gregg Hurwitz's 'The Kill Clause'.
- A rare heroic example occurs in the Guardians Of The Flame series. The heroes adopt the habit of mutilating the bodies of slavers they kill in humiliating ways, then leaving them for other slavers to find as a warning.
- In Villains Inc. (sequel to "Wearing The Cape"), this is played with. Early in Villains Inc., Astra is presented with a superhuman murder where the victim was reduced to soup-in-a-box. Then she learns that Blackstone, one of her teammates and mentors, was killed in the same fashion in a potential future. The threat is very motivating.
Live-Action TV
Music
- Music writer Tom Ewing accused Kenny Rogers's "Coward of the County" of this.
Tabletop Games
- A character with the Signature Move "Sacrificial Buddy" from Hong Kong Action Theatre has an Extra in every one of their movies who is a friend or relative of the role they play, whose main purpose is to get killed by the bad guys (usually in this fashion) and give the role some serious motivation for revenge.
- Aleena the Cleric's fate*
Aleena appeared in a solo get-acquainted adventure in the player's guide and was murdered with a magic missile by Bargle the wizard, giving the player a reason to seek revenge. in the "red box" version of Dungeons & Dragons was some 1980s gamers' first introduction to fridge-stuffing.
Video Games
- 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. In fact, this happens with nearly every female character Jack encounters, save for one in the Retribution reboot.
- The death of Lucien Lachance in The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion.
- In Assassins Creed II, Ezio is driven by the death of his father and two brothers.
- 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.
- Not only that, but you can make Matthew get support conversations with Jaffar, where he brutally calls him out. With very sad results.
- In the same game, Limstella, The Dragon kills whichever Reed brother you defeated by sucking the life out of him. The Reed brother you didn't fight finds their corpse, and blames Eliwood and pals for killing his brother.
- Your entire party in Planescape: Torment. In the best ending, though, the Nameless One resurrects them.
- Deionarra was killed specifically to become a ghost so she could provide inside information. The one who made her that way? YOU.
- The murder of Harry Mason in Silent Hill 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.
- One of the hauntings in The Room is a dead cat in Henry's fridge.
- 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.
- The tradition carries on into 'Wing Commander Prophecy, albeit retroactively, when Hawk reveals to Lance Casey that this happened to Iceman sometime after Wing I''. Substitute 'fridge' for 'his own jet'.
- 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 original Double Dragon was about Billy and Jimmy Lee's quest to save their lady-friend Marian from the clutches of the Black Warriors gang. In the sequel, Double Dragon II: The Revenge, the same girl is brutally gunned down by the gang's leader, leaving our heroes with the duty of avenging her death instead.
- 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.
- In The Godfather, Aldo's Love Interest Frankie Malone gets abducted and killed by Tattaglia goons, complete with a Hope Spot when we briefly think she's okay... Nope.
- In Dantes Inferno the hero returns home to a scene right out of the aforementioned film Gladiator, thus setting up the entire rest of the game.
- Jenny in game based on The Darkness.
- Amie's death in the prologue of Neverwinter Nights 2 is arguably there just to piss the player character off.
- Galerians Rion's parents. Actually most of his life. But specifically his mother, who he finds in the fridge.
- In the beginning of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle some goons kill Travis' best friend, Bishop Sidax, and toss his head in a paper bag through Travis' window into his bedroom.
- Subverted in the cutscene before the Final Boss. Travis is presented with what appears to be the severed heads of his girlfriend Sylvia, his half-brother Henry, and fellow assassin/spurned love interest Shinobu in an attempt to demoralize him before the fight. Halfway through the first phase of the fight, Henry bursts through the window and saves Travis's life before explaining to a surprised Travis that the heads were just replicas. Sylvia makes a reappearance at the end of the fight, when she saves Travis from falling to his death in the aftermath of the struggle. Shinobu doesn't make an reappearance or get even a passing mention in the epilogue, but considering Henry's and Sylvia's deaths were faked, it's safe to assume that her's was as well.
- In the second chapter of Return To Krondor, William's girlfriend Talia is lying on the floor bleeding in her father's bar. She dies surrounded by James, Jazhara and William. Apparently, Big Bad Bear raped her and then fatally wounded her.
- The death of Leandra Hawke, the player character's mother in Dragon Age II in the middle of the second act of the game is one.
- In Police Quest: Open Season, a severed head is found in the Big Bad's fridge.
- In Hatoful Boyfriend, this can happen to the player character.
- Final Fantasy VII has Aerith. Interviews with the developers claimed that Cloud, Barrett and Aerith (the first three main characters that were created before the rest were added) were all candidates to be killed off. Since Cloud was the main character and it would be "too obvious" if it were Barrett to make the last stand, they decided to have Aerith murdered so that her death could offend players and motivate Cloud, which seemed "more natural and realistic."
- Saints Row The Third gets about three missions in before Johnny Gat gets killed off screen.
Web Comics
- 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.
- Almost everyone in the Ciem trilogy. But Erin Flippo is especially egregious. Doesn't help it's made with The Sims, and keeping characters alive too long encourages file corruption when they're moved from set to set.
- 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."
- Homestuck has several Ensemble Dark Horse characters killed off rather suddenly to show the stakes of Sburb, as well as a few just plain Dropped a Bridge on Him deaths to clear out the massive Cast Herd. Hussie has lampshaded both.
- Subverted twice in Sluggy Freelance.
- Lampshaded in the superhero-deconstruction Heroes.inc, when a retired superhero tells his wife who was just attacked to stay 'home', because he thinks the attack was meant to get at him. His wife furiously replies that she won't be his 'private "Woman in the fridge".
- The B-Movie Comic: Mopey pulls this to provide encouragement to Biff here.
- Blur The Lines subverts this trope. [1]
- This Exterminatus Now comic combines this trope with Goldilocks, when their boss (an anthropomorphic bear) is royally pissed with the protagonists' latest screwup.
- Octopus Pie heavily exaggerates this, although non-canonically in their 2010 Halloween story arc: Greg is cut apart and his body parts self-reportedly stuffed into multiple cupboards throughout the house. Hannah eventually comes across this sight, and has such a violent physical reaction to it she ends up dying as well... It's a comedy arc. Link
- Jane, a fairly minor character from Our Little Adventure was unceremoniously stuffed naked and bloody in a tree trunk by Umbria/Zaedalkaah. It would be terrible for Jason and Trevoricus if they ever found her like that.
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.
- This fueled the creation of Women in Refrigerators, 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 to lead characters who happen to be female. A healthy amount of debate has risen up about whether the list is good evidence or not, but the meme, at least, lives on. BTW, if you an opinion on the topic, please keep it to the discussion page.
- See the "Ode◊ to Aeris." Also known as◊ "Patron Saint of wannabe girlfriends that get dumped The Hard Way."
- This on LJ fanficrants.
- Parodied in The Nostalgia Chick's Dark Nella Saga. Dark Nella captures Lindsay in parts 1 and 2 and stuffs her (alive) in a conveniently empty fridge. She gets out both times. It helps that said fridge is Bigger on the Inside.
- The Hangman does this to Aelia, Gaven's guide, during the Third Night of The Tale Of The Exile by yanking her up a building and strangling her while Gaven is speaking to her, solely to spook Gaven into running into a trap set by Despair.
- Samantha from We're Alive is killed on the floor of the Arena by a sadistic zombie who "likes to play with his food." We never actually hear her dying but can only imagine how gruesome it was and it leaves Datu scarred from then on.
- In Broken Saints, Shandala's mother, then later, pet cat are fridged by Lear as part of his plan to drive her across the Despair Event Horizon so she can become a living component of his Kill Sat weapon system. This is an interesting case in that it involves the planning of two identically similar deaths, done several years apart, with the second death providing the victim with final push towards insanity.
- In the Feminist Frequency video Women in Refrigerators Anita Sarkeesian says, "Writers are using the Women in Refrigerators trope to literally trade the female characters life for the benefit of a male hero’s story arc. They are making clear that women, even powerful female superheroes, are basically disposable."
- In Demo Reel, the two main women are Rebecca Stone (who has a Rape As Backstory that she's dealing with) and the memory of Elissa Hoffman (Donnie's mom who committed suicide). "The Review Must Go On" ass pulls that Demo Reel was a purgatory punishment for The Nostalgia Critic, and all the characters were never-alive-to-begin-with constructs to help him along. Abuse victims and people who lost their mothers were pissed.
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. But as Blackarachnia, she fared little better, being a Faux Action Girl who wound up the Damsel in Distress every time she appeared.
- Futurama did a jokingly literal version of this in "Jurassic Bark". When Fry's dog is annoying the hung-over cryogenicist, he turns to his partner and tells him to freeze the dog until the owner arrives. The partner claims that he can't solve all his problems by freezing him, to which the cryogenicist points out the company motto: "You can solve all your problems by freezing them." The camera then pans to a housewife stuck in one of the tubes, frozen in mid-nag.
- The second season of Young Justice has been doing this after a five-year Time Skip.
- Beast Boy is now on the Young Justice team after getting his superhero origin last season. But the episode "Earthlings" reveals through flashbacks and dialogue that his mother, who shared his original spotlight episode, was killed in an accident that was really orchestrated by supervillains. This traumatized Beast Boy deeply. But he is an orphan in the comics, so his mom was sadly Doomed by Canon.
- Aqualad has gone through a Face Heel Turn after being driven mad by the death of his former girlfriend, Tula. This turns out to be a ruse to that Aqualad could infiltrate the enemy's cadre. Tula certainly is dead though.
- In the Wakfu special "Goultard the Barbarian", the villain Katar kidnapped and murdered Goultard's wife and children just to piss him off. Katar wanted to make Goultard look like a more appetizing host for the parasitic rage eating demon inside him. It worked, but Katar only got to enjoy a few seconds of freedom before Goultard finished him off.
- Exaggerated and parodied 3 times in The Boondocks episode "It's Goin Down". Jack Flowers's 3 successive girlfriends are decapitated, pushed off a skyscraper and then exploded in midair, and tied to and fired from a cross-town rocket then blown up. All three are lampshaded, ending with "what kind of fucked up, Wile E Coyote shit is that?".
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