Women In Refrigerators - Television Tropes & Idioms

Dammit, we're out of misogyny! Pass the Sunny D instead, will ya?

Bad Things happen to heroes and their supporting cast. Superhero comics are no different. Characters get hurt, traumatized, maimed, and killed all the time, for a variety of reasons.

For supporting characters, those reasons can range from illustrating villains' evil, to motivating the heroes, or to giving those characters themselves a chance to overcome their victimization (if they're still alive, and that might not be a problem either in superhero stories).

However, there's one obvious distinction that seems to affect how this sort of drama plays out in comics: whether the supporting character is male or female. When Bad Things happen, especially in the last decade or two, they happen disproportionately — and in a disproportionately ugly way, including brutal rapes and murders — to women. Worse, female characters often seem to suffer these slings and arrows simply to upset male superheroes and give them motivation to defeat the villain — i.e., to do their jobs.

Even among the superheroic supporting cast of a story, a female character is more likely to suffer permanent consequences due to villains' machinations or from a fight — and in settings where concerns like paralyzation, depowering, or death can often be disposed of by the end of an issue, these problems more often stick to a female character.

Main characters aren't immune to this Double Standard, either. For example, Superman has been depowered, power-shifted, and dosed with a spectrum of colored kryptonite throughout his history. However, he never gave up his powers for an extended period of time, continued trying to fight evil as a secret agent, and had to be frequently rescued by Lois Lane, complete with a scantily-dressed and bound Clark on covers; DC left that to Wonder Woman, years back.

Now, few people suggest that comics writers in general have it in for women. Supporting characters are supporting characters, after all — being imperiled or suffering so as to affect the main character is part of their job description. Many C List Fodder heroes are female, making them handy when cheap deaths are called for, particularly in big events. Most heroes are male, so certain roles in their personal supporting casts, particularly love interests, tend to be women. Further, Bad Things happening to women strikes many people as more dramatically powerful.

However, putting aside all the sexist aspects of those very causes, they unavoidably add up to women tending to suffer and die much more cheaply — and worse, less heroically — than men in superhero comics.

Trope named for the website

and a jarring example of the trope from Green Lantern.

Note: Examples for this trope should not include every major misfortune of a female character in a story, and especially not tragedies among a mostly-female cast. In some cases the narrative in question actually benefits from the maiming or death, as in the case of Gwen Stacy's death or Barbara Gordon's rebirth as Oracle. This trope comes into play when the woman in question is not just killed, but devalued in some fundamental way (note how many of these characters die in the kitchen after attempting to stand side by side with their male counterparts). In other words a cheap, gruesome, often sexually humiliating death which serves no purpose other than to motivate a male character and is just as quickly forgotten in future story arcs. Also note that the character need not die to qualify; many female superheroes end up raped, traumatized, mutilated, brainwashed or psychologically scarred in ways rarely visited upon male superheroes.

Examples

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Anime/Manga

Comic Books

DC Comics luuurves this trope and uses it whenever they need some Drama to happen. Some of the more egregious examples:
- The Trope Namer was Green Lantern Kyle Rayner's first girlfriend, found literally Stuffed Into The Fridge, murdered in sickening fashion by minor villain Major Force.
  - This is the incident that led to the name of the aforementioned site. And the straw fanning the justified anger.
- First Batgirl, Barbara Gordon. The Joker shot her in the spine (leaving her paraplegic), took naked pictures of her and showed them to her father, Commissioner Gordon, as the crux of his attempt to give Gordon his "one bad day" in the Batman story, "The Killing Joke." Nowadays she makes an excellent name for herself as super-hacker Oracle.
  - Fun Fact: Oracle gained much of her current popularity due to authors Chuck Dixon and then Gail Simone, who in turn wrote the Oracle-led team Birds of Prey. Gail Simone was also founder of the "Women in Refrigerators" website.
- Sue Dibny, wife of the Elongated Man, stamped in the brain and then burned with a flamethrower by suddenly-gone-completely-bonkers Jean Loring, ex-girlfriend of the Atom. And, of course, Sue Dibny was pregnant. Also, after her death, it is revealed that she had been raped years before and had her memory wiped.
  - Sue Dibny's fate is particularly egregious because of the Executive Meddling behind it. According to former DC assistant editor Valerie D'Orazio, the entire Identity Crisis miniseries grew out of DC's desire to depict a rape.
  - Jean Loring would count as well. She was seriously maligned to have the whole plot come together in the first place, with absolutely no buildup to her going psycho, making her reveal as the Big Bad come from far left field.
- Matrix Supergirl's tale is one of mind-controlling, depowering, repowering, retconning, and finally losing her husband and child before vanishing from the comics forever.
- Donna Troy's actual backstory is that she has to live hundreds of lives and suffer great horrors in all of them.
  - It may be worth noting that the Donna Troy character never actually had a coherent backstory for the first couple decades of her existence. Rather, DC gave her a new 'origin story' every few years, with each new 'origin' containing a number of details that contradicted various aspects of one or more of the past 'origins'. Writer/artist John Byrne, attempting to make sense out of this intractable morass of Gordian continuity knot, came up with the tortured-and-raped-thru-various-lifetimes schtick as an attempt to (a) "make a silk purse out of a sow's ear", while also (b) not just throwing yet another 'origin' onto the pile. While said schtick does have the benefit of accepting all the past 'origins' as valid continuity, the 'squick factor' suggests that perhaps Mr. Byrne might have been better advised to leave well enough alone.
  - Her retconned story isn't terrible (horrible to her yes, but at least it makes sense), the problem comes come her death (every time) always having to be a direct influence on the other (male) characters around her.
- Power Girl gave parthenogenical birth to a boy who aged super-fast, then romanced her. Seriously.
  - Marvel Comics upped the ante by doing this story (first) with the added feature of having Avengers member Ms. Marvel be "subtly influenced" by her son/lover's machines, yet still running off with him to another dimension after learning the truth. Thankfully, another writer realized how idiotic this was and, upon her return, had her deliver a rather justified speech against what boneheads the Avengers were for not attempting to stop an incestuous rapist with Mind Control from running off with her.
- Batman's Stephanie Brown, a.k.a. The Spoiler: so quickly disposed of after becoming Robin (this was after being gratuitously tortured and made to screw up majorly, mind you) that there is no memorial to her in the Batcave, and Bats and Tim Drake barely take the time to mourn her passing after the first plot arc.
  - Chuck Dixon then did a Authors Saving Throw revealing that Steph was actually off recovering in Africa the whole time and now she's back to her full Action Girl glory. The lack of memorial was because Batman suspected this, though, not knew - so he's still a dick.
- Big Barda's death wasn't quite this — after all, it was part of Death Of The New Gods, she was going to die some time — but it set off enough red flags to leave a bitter taste in some fans' mouths (let's see, dead in a kitchen? Check. No signs of struggle, despite the fact that she's a goddess of war? Check. Husband finds her, and her death serves to motivate him? Check).
  - Written by Jim Starlin? Big ol' check. So, Yeah.
- The female Dr. Light was beaten and depowered by the villainous male Dr. Light in Green Arrow's book, so that GA and Black Lightning could play the heroes. It's made abundantly clear that the writer Did Not Do The Research, as he downplays her intelligence (she is a physicist and a medical doctor, and knows her powers), and her status as a hero (she came out of retirement in a solo story, and appeared in an issue of Wonder Woman during the period of inactivity he claims), all for the sole purpose of painting her as inferior. And, as mentioned in the Disposable Woman Discussion, after Arrow and Lightning find her and are properly motivated, she is left sprawled on the hospital floor◊, her situation never to be addressed again in the story. Also, this being the same villain who raped Sue Dibny in the previous example, he later compares this depowering to rape. AND, if ALL THAT weren't bad enough, the villain gets away scot-free at the end of the story. Did I mention that the female Dr. Light is Japanese, and the writer has said that he's concerned about the lack of powerful Asian females in comics?? You better believe this is a case of actions speaking louder than words. It's all spelled out in this blog.
- The ~~mostly stupid~~ totally hilarious Ambush Bug: Year None has at least one good joke in it about this - it deals with the murder and fridge-stuffing of a little cartoon girl with the DC Comics logo for a body who used to appear on DC covers. In the beginning, Ambush Bug is shopping for refrigerators, and each model's selling point is how many female supporting characters it can hold.
Gehenna's death in Blackest Night is definitely this. We're introduced to her and her boyfriend Jason Rusch (the current Firestorm) talking about how they love each other and want a life together. By the end of the isse, she spends three pages being tortured while her boyfriend helplessly looks on, merged with the zombified body of the previous Firestorm, before she's turned into salt and has her heart ripped out. All to both provide another death to get over how horrifying the Black Lanterns are and to most likely set up Jason's eventual kicking of ass and/or taking of names. But damn was it terrifying...
- Blackest Night also provided a twisted lampshading/inversion of the trope by having Kyle Rayner's reanimated murdered girlfriends show up and try to stuff him in a fridge (he was rescued in the nick of time, of course).
Marvel Comics is quite fond of the trope as well.
- Gwen Stacy is the ur-example. Just as Gwen and Spider-Man were getting their act together as a couple, the Green Goblin dropped her off a bridge (partly so the writers wouldn't have to marry them off). In 1972 it was pretty much unthinkable for a long-running comic book superhero's love interest to die, so it was a bit of a surprise.
- Spider-Man's aunt May Parker is pretty much the punching bag of the comic. She's been killed, discovered not to be dead, implanted with a bomb, sniped, attacked... everything but made pregnant, probably only because she's way past menopause by this point. And if they hadn't chosen to Ret Con Trouble out of the timeline, she would have had that covered, too. And despite all that, Aunt May is total opposite of this trope. Despite her numerous deaths, the writers (and editors) can't seem to keep the old bitty in the ground and actually let her death have any significance. Uncle Ben on the other hand...
  - Note that not only was Trouble never canon, it could never have been canon — the May of that series has a teenage pregnancy, and Spidey's Aunt May is canonically more than fifty years his senior. Of course, that didn't stop them from wanting it to be. There's interviews out there where the editor at the time said he hoped the fans would be happy to accept this as the true origin of Spiderman. This was during a period where Jemas and Quesada said anything to get media attetion, hype etc.
- In a recent comic, a young superheroine named Gadget, who had an interesting premise — she found herself inspired by Tony Stark and built a suit of Powered Armor ~~IN A CAVE~~ in her garage — was on her very first adventure, encountered a bad guy with gravity powers, and was crushed into a ball the size of a melon (this was not shown, but was described as the result by another character) — but not fast enough to stop her from shrieking "Noooooo!" off-panel.
  - Her whole place in the story was to lay a guilt trip down on Iron Man, being such a low-totem character that (in-universe) he couldn't even remember her the time he did meet her, but he still went through three issues to avenge her death.
- Psylocke is the X-Men's resident whipping girl. She's had her eyes removed, been brainwashed, died, brought back to life, brainwashed again, severely injured, died again, and then resurrected. Her powers have gone through so many variations that some comic book fans don't know what the hell she can do anymore. (Though psychically powered Action Girl sums it up pretty nicely.)
  - Just Psylocke? You speak as if the X-Men has non whipping girls. Or boys. They must have one hell of a fridge. And a deep freeze.
  - Look at Jean. The excuse of correcting her coming back doesn't fly when the writers are forced to kill her off in continuities where DPS never happened. The only one they are allowed to keep her is Ultimate, where she has the same hair and costume as Rachel.
- A rare subversion was Storm's tenure without her abilities, after one of Forge's inventions stripped them from her? This actually went down very well with the fans, and remained for an extended stint, during which she gathered many survival skills that enabled her to continue leading the X-Men, instead of ceding the leadership to Wolverine. Anyone who's been reading before Gambit showed up already knows where she learned her burglary. Even as a child...after being an adult...being depowered didn't make her a weaker person or have terrible things (well, extra-terrible; she IS an X-Man, after all) suddenly start befalling her.
- The Wasp, in all of her incarnations (except as Giant-Girl in the Lighter And Softer Marvel Adventures), is honestly the most put upon female in comics I've seen, period. It's like humiliating her—to death, even—is every writer's entire MO.
  - Probably to match her Butt Monkey ex. Whether it was sarcastic or not Gail Simone twittered after the last issue of Secret Invasion to say how glad she was the character had been fridged after Jan was offed. It doesn't get more put-upon than that.
- Tigra is a strong, confidant, brash woman who doesn't so much fail to defend herself when a lone thug breaks into her home as fail to even try to defend herself. Not only does she do nothing but scream while he brutalizes her and tapes the whole thing, but she gets shot in the back because she was trying to run away. Keep in mind that this is a woman who once threw herself headfirst into a platoon of fully-armed guards and proceeded to hand them their collective asses. Made all the worse by the author straight-up admitting that he just doesn't like the character.
  - Whether as a throwaway joke, or because he really didn't like the scene in question, the current writer of The Initiative has explicitly referred to her upcoming rematch with The Hood as "coming out of the refrigerator, scratching, clawing, biting".
- All love interests presented in Daredevil. Three girlfriends dead so far (one suicide, one killed in a pointless way after they weren't together anymore, two killed by the same man with one of them revived but the shock of her death had great effects of Daredevil's psyche). One of them (his wife) is currently on a mental institution after being driven crazy by villain Mr. Fear (to the point of brutally beating her own nurse). His latest love interest was shot at and attacked by The Owl, though it seems the relationship won't be more developed for the time being.
- Considering how many Comic Book Tropes are subverted in Invincible, Atom Eve's death is played surprisingly straight - she rushes to her boyfriend's defense against a one-off villain and is promptly killed so that we can get an Its Personal moment from him.
  - She survives and saves his ass in the latest issue. Consider this subverted.
- Runaways, Gert is murdered by Geoffrey Wilder when she goes to save her boyfriend, whom she was just fighting with and pretty much dumped in a fit of anger.

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Film

Literature

In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, this was arguably done with Mara Jade Skywalker in the ''Legacy of the Force series to prove just how evil and badass her nephew Jacen Solo had become. Some poitns:
- Jedi die like dogs all the time, Jedi, maybe, but not Jedi main characters. Compare Mara's death with comparable male main character deaths in New Jedi Order: Anakin and Chewie each got Heroic Sacrifices which at least accomplished something, as well as Kyle Katarn in the Legacy of the Force, who was stabbed through the heart by a lightsaber and survived. Mara got to give the villain an Evil Power Upgrade, and, following this trope to the letter, provoked her husband to go on a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge which led him to murder Lumiya. Even Darth ~~Idiot~~ Caedus got a better death than that''. Stuffed In The Fridge? Absolutely.
  - Then there's the fact that if the writers had just allowed her methods to play out logically, Caedus would have died in that first pass with the StealthX. Then she takes it to her own territory, fighting dirty like an assassin and not a Jedi, and it's Caedus's stupid cheap shot that wins.
- So in the end, Mara joins the shameful history of all of Luke's other love interests over the years: Jem, Gaeriel, Teneniel, Ta'a Chume...and Luke himself sends Shira to join them. About the only one known to be still kicking is Leia, which is really disturbing when you think about it. Are Callista and Akanah still alive?
Elizabeth, the Love Interest in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, making this trope Older Than Radio.
- The monster only kills Elizabeth because Frankenstein destroys his mate. At this point he had already murdered Frankenstein's friend Henry and his 5 year old brother William.
Subverted in the novel Fools Die by Mario Puzo (yes, he wrote The Godfather). The protagonist is a writer and his mistress makes a comment to him that he isn't to have her die like the women always do in the stories. Later in the novel, she dies from a cerebral hemorrhage.
To This troper's shock and horror, the most recent Drizzt novel, The Ghost King, did this. The signs were unfortunately there in the previous book, The Pirate King, but in no way was this expected, given Salvatore's history with the character: probably the second-most important character in the novels is reduced to a mobile plot device, mentally tortured into catatonia, is used to motivate male characters, speaks three lucid lines total, has sex with her husband, and then dies. There's even a scene where Drizzt convinces himself that only by killing the Ghost King will Catti-brie be healed, even though he consicously knows it's probably not true. And to top it all off, the the text indicates her husband will not get to go to the same heaven she does when he dies. This Troper can think of have a dozen reasons why Bob decided to do this, and can think of a dozen better ways to have handled the specific reasons—including ones where Catti-brie still dies.

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Live Action TV

Played sort of straight in Supernatural: The deaths of Jess and Mary served to spur Sam's and John's respective revenge hunting. However, Jess's death was part of a four seasons long Batman Gambit.
Tara on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. She 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.
- Earlier in the second season 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.
- Another contentious example are the large number of Potential Slayers killed off in season 7, which seem to fit many characteristics. Young Females? Check. Killed off by the Big Bad in particularly brutal ways to show how evil they are and to sustain drama? Check. Serves the main purpose of giving the hero something to wangst over and make sure Its Personal? Oh yeah, Check.
  - Of course, as mentioned, Buffy has always been an Anyone Can Die show, it was made clear long before their arrival that all potential slayers are young females, and indeed may better be viewed as the similarly short-lived characters of soldiers in a war movie.
In the first season of Angel, Gunn's sister Alonna is kidnapped by a gang of vampires to lure him to their lair. They turn her into a vampire just to torture him. He ends up having to stake her himself. He doesn't mention her again until a few episodes into the second season, and then seems to completely forget about her.
- He barely APPEARS until the second season a few episodes later and it's made very clear this has been torturing him horribly and he can't bear to talk about it.
Star Trek The Next Generation: Poor K'Eylehr. A semiprominent recurring character and excellent foil/love interest for Worf, perfectly capable of handling herself in a fight, plus an Ambassador— brutally and easily murdered by ~~a total loser~~ a very powerful and influential blood enemy of Worf's who happens to be one of the claimants to the position of Chancellor, thank you, to give Worf a reason to angst, kill him, and confront the reality of his and K'Eylehr's young son, Alexander. Even worse is that K'Eylehr and Alexander are promptly forgotten for quite a few episodes. Status Quo Is God.
In the BBC version of Robin Hood Maid Marian herself was killed off for what was (by the writers' admission) nothing more than shock value. Needless to say, this creative decision backfired spectacularly, and the combined forces of fan outrage and a crummy time slot meant that ratings for Season 3 plummeted through the floor. Despite attempts to set up for a forth season, the show was canned by the BBC.
Happens literally, yet subverts the trope, in Dollhouse. A kidnapped girl is stored in a refrigerator, but she's still alive, and gets rescued.
- Later on DeWitt sends Hearn to kill Mellie. Then she remotely activates Mellie's active programming, whereupon she gets up, fights Hearn off, and breaks his neck on a coffee table.
NCIS: Invoked. Ari kills Kate, and goes after Jenny and Abby, just because he knows it'll hurt Gibbs more. (Gibbs' first wife and daughter were murdered while he was deployed in Desert Storm.)
- Less deliberately, or at least without apparently considering the Unfortunate Implications, most of the recurring characters killed off on NCIS have been female: Kate, as mentioned above, Jenny, Paula Cassidy, and Michelle Lee. Compare male recurring characters: Gerald (shot but not dead), Ari, and La Grenouille, and consider the latter two were villains.
  - Agent Brett Langer, killed by Lee, might count, as a male. He was brought in under Gibbs' recommendation, set up as a protege, then killed off as a supposed mole. It haunts Gibbs for several episodes, and he is spurred to clear his name.
LOST: A repeat offender. Shannon and Nadia for Sayid, Libby for Hurley, Charlotte for Faraday, and possibly Juliet for Sawyer. Fans of the couple hope that Penny won't be killed to bring Desmond to the island for revenge.
Heroes gives us Eden, Simone, Elle, and most egregiously, Maya. Maya suffered the particular indignity of being duped by Sylar, shot by Sylar, resurrected, and then kidnapped and nearly killed by power-crazed Mohinder. Early in S1, Claire was sexually assaulted and killed by a classmate, which served primarily to illustrate her father's ruthless protectiveness afterwards.
- However, it was Claire herself who found out he'd made a habit of this and had raped another classmate, and so got him into a car and then crashed it at full speed. She healed, of course. Lucky, very lucky, that she wasn't trapped inside for paramedics to discover her Healing Factor...
In the second season opener of Sanctuary, Will's Shallow Love Interest Clara is killed off for no clear purpose beyond causing him angst. This is especially egregious because she had only been introduced in the season one finale.

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Video Games

Subverted by Star Craft. Kerrigan is betrayed by Mengsk and left for dead. It initially appears that she has been Stuffed Into The Fridge to motivate Jim Raynor, but after briefly addressing Raynor the bulk of the game (and its expansion) shift focus almost entirely to Kerrigan. And oh, is she pissed.
- And its sequel. She is now, in fact, the Big Bad. And oh, is she still pissed.
Both used and inverted in Baldurs Gate II: Just before the game starts, Minsc was forced to watch as Irenicus murdered Dynaheir. This kind of backfires, as his rage at the act, stoked by main character's words, allows him to escape. Meanwhile, the party discovers Khalid, who was mutilated after being killed. Jaheira, his wife, naturally gets a little...intense.
Two party members get rather arbitrarily killed in Neverwinter Nights 2. No points for guessing their genders.
- Only one female (note: Female) party member has to die, and she's already clearly the least capable member of your team AND is left alone in potentially the single most dangerous area in the world. Granted, yes, it is indeed possible for all female cast members to die (you have to kill 2 yourself if your influence is too low, the other one just flat out leaves).
  - It's two if you count Amie.
  - Of course, in these cases it is not done to motivate the character, but in fact motivates the big bad to actually join you, so consider it a subversion. Averted when the fan favorite Neeshka survives when Rocks Fall Everybody Dies.
Otacon, from the Metal Gear Solid series, is best described as a walking refrigerator. Any female character that has anything to do with him will get killed off in a cruel and horribly unnecessary way just so he can suffer beautifully.
- Even his Heterosexual Life Partner/Partner in Ho Yay Solid Snake isn't immune to this, as he's slowly dying from ~~the FOXDIE virus~~ accelerated aging due to intentional shortening of the telemeres on his DNA.
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars had Ling as the unfortunate girl to die, leaving the game to be a psuedo Blue Bishonen Ghetto.