History Fridge / Us

* Dahlia clearly knows that Kitty has had plastic surgery, since she first mimics and then inflicts the surgery cuts on her own face. If the Tethered copy everything their human counterpart does, would this include injuries? If that's the case, Kitty likely underwent ''whatever'' the Tethered equivalent of plastic surgery is, ''without'' any anaesthetic.

* Jason's AmbiguousDisorder behavior may be because he's half-Tethered. If Red's story about her children being born odd is true, then it implies that those born with Tethered genetics are born with high chance of behavioral issues or disorders.

* Why is Jason the only one who seems to suspect that Adelaide is a tethered That swapped places with her original? With how much he loves trying to preform stage magic, it’s likely he knows and recognizes a few tricks -- such as swapping objects and people with identical ones in such a way that no one notices the switch.

* In one of the film's posters, we see a contrast between the main characters and their Tethereds, both groups joining hands like the chain of paper dolls that Red makes. Notably, in the "good" family, Adelaide is the only person who is not giving the viewer a reassuring smile; and in both families, Adelaide and Red are the only two whose expression is identical.

* The way that Red tells her story as a little fairy tale makes sense because she spent her childhood speaking in the real world. Once she was kidnapped she entered a world with no speaking and so her storytelling would be childlike.
* The Tethered's weapon being golden shearing scissors. In [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Greek myth]], the Fates cut the thread of a person's life - what ''tethers'' them to this world - with scissors. The Tethered want to kill their originals to destroy the PsychicLink, hence cutting the thread, making this especially meaningful.
** Also the scissors are symmetrical, with the handles resembling two heads back to back made of two identical pieces bound together to move in tandem. A very apt icon of the Tethered and their nature.
* Jason's AmbiguousDisorder behavior is because he's half tethered. If Red's story about her children being born odd is true, then it implies that those born with Tethered genetics are born with high chance of behavioral issues or disorders.
** Hitching off of this, and while not as obvious as Jason, Zora’s behavior hints at her being half tethered as well. She displays a severe lack of empathy to the Tylers after they die (asking if they could [[SkewedPriorities have their car since they were all dead]], for example) and she tends to act in a similar way to her mother, being very quiet and non talkative with the twins, as well as killing off the twins’ Tethereds a bit too easily.
* It makes sense why the Tethered were considered a failure if Red's theory on them being made by the government is true. They're too dependent on others, judging from the influence they receive from their counterparts and electing Red, the original, at an implied young age to be their leader. It's made clear from the first Tethered appearance at the end that he's been standing in place for an entire day without any food or water. Barring the fact they seem to have a natural desire to KillAndReplace their real selves, it would be especially difficult for the government to pull a KillAndReplace with a clone who needs 24/7 supervision especially one that can't speak or talk like a normal human being who would needed to have to be taught.

** It seems like a frankenstein situation; the government had these people created for a purpose, without considering that the copies would also be human with normal human development and needs.
* Notice how Jason's Tethered counterpart is named Pluto. Like his sister Umbrae (Tethered Zora), Pluto's name sticks to the theme of shadows and darkness (Umbrae means shadow) as the dwarf planet Pluto is the furthest from the sun and gets its name from the Roman god of the underworld. Pluto is also the name of a well known Disney character. Pluto the dog walks on all fours in contrast to the other animal characters in the Mickey Mouse cartoons. Similarly, Pluto is the most animalistic of the Tethered, shown several times walking on all fours himself.
** The names of Red gave her family also make some sense when you realise that she's the real Adelaide. Abraham would be a reference to Abraham Lincoln, probably ''the'' most iconic US president and no doubt someone Adelaide would have learned about before being replaced. Pluto, as mentioned above, is the name of a Disney character as Adelaide could have been a fan of Disney cartoons. Umbrae's name however is the odd one out as Adelaide wouldn't have knowledge in Latin unless by some strange miracle she is naming her after the home decor company Umbra from Toronto, as the company opened in 1979 and she was replaced in 1986, giving her enough years to remember the name of said company.
* In the climax, Adelaide enters the Hall of Mirrors and immediately heads toward a hidden door in the wall that hasn't been seen before. Of course she knows about it, she's actually the original Tether and came out that door when she swapped places with the real Adelaide.

* The Tyler's Tethered don't immediately attack the Wilsons or tries to murder them. This is because they must be friends with their version of the Wilsons thanks to the Tethered's PsychicLink and with Red, being the leader of Tethered society. They would know how important killing their counterparts would be to their friends.
* When Adelaide kills Red, she turns downright feral and even after impaling her and then going the extra mile by wrapping her handcuffs around her neck till it snapped. It also the last sign outright telling the audience that Adelaide was the Tethered the whole time. So far with all of the other tethered whose not the Wilsons are shown to waste no time in killing their counterparts as shown on the news report and with the Tylers however Red wants her counterpart to suffer before killing her as shown in their final fight where she obviously could have finish Adelaide at anytime unlike Adelaide who waste no opportunities in trying kill her. A clone created to KillAndReplace a person would have a natural instinct to quickly kill their target so they can take control of their life.
** Related to it one might wonder as to why Red was toying so much with Adelaide, considering that the entire plot was kickstarted by her wanting revenge on her clone, but when you think about it, this may very well be part of the revenge, Red ''wants'' Adelaide to become feral, in a twisted way to show both of them who is the real one, aka. The one who ''doesn't'' get an unnatural urge to kill the other, in short, Red wants to unmask Adelaide as the true monster all along.
* When the family is eating together Adelaide is eating strawberries while the rest of the family are eating fast food, demonstrating how she is not like the rest of her family.
** After having been forced to eat nothing but raw rabbit meat for the first ten years of her life she's probably a vegetarian.
* The Itsy Bitsy Spider is relevant to the plot when you think about events from Red’s perspective. She gets out of the underworld (climbs up the water spout). Then, she’s lured back down there by Adelaide and nearly beaten (down came the rain and washed the spider out) but then Red kills Adelaide (Out came the sun and dried up all the rain) and then Red returns to the surface (The itsy spider went up the spout again).
* In the last fight Red gracefully dodges Adelaide's attacks and slices at her, a marked contrast to the other Tethered's fighting style, running at their victim and stabbing them in the head or neck. This is because Red is a normal human, she can't take the damage a Tethered can. She also knows she can't take Adelaide out in a single stab, so she weakens her before attempting to land the killing blow.

* Red's line of "We're Americans". makes perfect sense. They were created by a government cloning project that uses American citizens to be used, ostensibly, by the United States for control. They were literally created by Americans ''for'' Americans.

* The reason the real Adelaide is behaving like a Tethered throughout the movie is because she was trapped in a hellish world for over 30 years, it drove her completely mad. Being cooped up underground with no real human contact made her animalistic and psychotic. She was so insane that she convinced herself that she is a Tethered.
* Josh Tyler's Tethered counterpart Tex, while still terrifying as the rest of the Tethered, also comes off as sorta comical and even a bit cartoony. He shares a name with well-known animator Tex Avery, and Tex Watson - the right-hand man of the Manson Family.
* Ophelia, the Alexa equivalent device the Tyler's own, is more than a coincidental name. In ''Hamlet'', Hamlet's love interest Ophelia goes mad with grief after her father, Polonius, is killed. In her grief stricken state, she hands out flowers, with the flowers being symbolic for different things. She later drowns herself. The namesake of Kitty's Tethered, Dahlia, is also a flower. While Dahlia does not kill Kitty herself, Kitty is killed while asking Ophelia for help by someone named after a type of flower.
* Why is Jason the only one who seems to suspect that Adelaide is a tethered that swapped places with her original? With how much he loves trying to preform stage magic, it’s likely he knows & recognizes a few tricks - such as swapping objects & people with identical ones in such a way that no one noticed the switch.

** Another connection between stage magic & the Tethered’s plan to swap places with their originals: By the time of the Tethered's attack, the House of Mirrors has since been renovated with a theme based on Merlin the Wizard. “Wizard” and “Magician” are synonyms, and as such, are used interchangeably in some cases, and only when “Adelaide” goes back to the hall of mirrors is she finally able to finish her “trick”.

* The significance of Luniz' "I Got 5 On It" as a motif: in the family unit of four (Adelaide, Gabe, Zora and Jason), Red, more than the other Tethered, is the fifth 'family member'.

** The original dressing as a Native American "Vision Quest" complete with a feathered Chief hints at themes of colonialism and cultural appropriation - the way that Adelaide stole Red's identity.
** Later, it's been updated to a magical forest with a Merlin-esque wizard - hinting that the final act of the story is akin to completing a ritual/spell, but also that the confrontation between Red and Adelaide is akin to a magic trick - for instance, a shell game...
* All of the Alice In Wonderland motifs.
** The infamous White Rabbits, being seen everywhere throughout the movie. Alice famously follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland. The tunnels under the carnival are filled fit to burst with rabbits, and rabbits are naturally burrowing animals who make tunnels to begin with.
** In Alice in Wonderland, the two characters of The Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts are often mistaken for one another despite being from two entirely different books. Much like how Addy and Red could be mistaken for the same person.
*** The Queen of Hearts is famous for her proclamation of "Off With Her Head". Throughout the movie, Red is seen cutting the heads off of things with her scissors: the rabbit doll, the paper dolls she makes, and even how she focuses on slashing the throats specifically with their scissors.
*** An often-overlooked element of Caroll's novel is that the Queen's death sentences are never carried out - as soon as she is out of earshot, the King of Hearts pardons them one by one. Similarly, despite Red's ruthlessness, none of Adelaide's family ends up dead by the end of the story.
*** Red's name could be taken from The Red Queen specifically in Through The Looking Glass. In chess, a Pawn piece can become a Queen if it crosses the board to the other side. Much like how Red, after being made a pawn in Addy's ploy to gain access to the surface, became the Queen of the Tethered.

* Adelaide's ballet recital solo that we see flashbacks to was a modified version of a pas de deux, a dance that usually requires a partner - unbeknownst to anyone present, she ''did'' have a partner, since Red was following her motions underground. This is spelled out a bit more in an extended version of a scene where Kitty asks Adelaide about her dancing, since Adelaide mentions it being a pas de deux and explains what that means.
* In the flashback we see that the escalator Adelaide used to travel to the surface only goes down - a reflection of the system that has been always rigged against her, and the rest of the Tethered, and which one must fight against to get even a chance of a good life.

'''Russell:''' That's not my fault she - well, look at me? Look at you. LOOK AT YOU!

*** Russell's lines - deflection from his neglect by trying to spread the blame - seems to become Adelaide's own inner train of thought. A conversation between the sadistic little girl she once was ("Look at me?") and the vicious, traumatised adult she became ("Look at you").
*** Lighting as a marker of the contrast between the past (young Adelaide hiding in darkness, shrouding her intentions) and the present (adult Adelaide in the light, her true self exposed to her). This also parallels with the final cut ending of Peele's ''Film/{{Get Out}}'' (Chris escaping into comforting, familiar dark night) and the alternate ending (Chris safe and yet trapped within the glaring white walls of a prison).
*** Adelaide immediately turns to Jason. Unlike her childhood self, there is no barrier between child and parent - they are able to look one another in the eye and (in Jason's case at least) get a glimpse of what they truly are.
*** Like her childhood self, Adelaide briefly smirks, gleeful at having gotten away with it - implying that this ordeal has caused her to backslide into her Tethered nature.
*** Jason, meanwhile, hides behind his mask. Where his mother is revelling in the fact that she beat Red and successfully replaced her, he has been left with the uncomfortable knowledge that he and Pluto had more in common than appearance - and that this is what led to Pluto's death. Red noted that Adelaide could always have taken her with her and lived as sisters, and maybe a similar thought is going through Jason's mind; but he had to kill Pluto to save his family, just as Adelaide killed Red to save him.
*** As Minnie Riperton’s “Les Fleurs” plays, we pan over the sight of the ambulance - which is not unlike Adelaide's clothing, a white figure marked with red - and feel the cognitive dissonance (remarked on by Universal Studios President Mark Knobloch) of being both safe and hopeful while also seeing the evidence of the Tethered's mass slaughter. But even the lyrics themselves imply that the danger is far from over:

*** The song creates further contrast between the lyrics' original meanings (symbolising the rise of an idealistic youth in the "Flower Child" Hippie generation, connected to grand gesstures such as Hands Across America) and its' new, grim connotation connected to the visual of hundreds of triumphant bloody-handed Tethered standing in a catatonic state; and the pleasant, poetic, intelligible symbolism of the music in contrast to the dissonant and stressful syllables of the opening theme.

** Take this another step further what does the very existence of the kids imply? if we take Red's story at face value then the kids aren't clones, but rather the "mirroring" shown in the Tethered goes all the way to reproduction, meaning that when the two Tethered come together in the same way as their "original" counterparts then they make the exact same kids, with the exact same link. If that's the case how many generations of Tethered have there been since what ever government facility abandoned them? Has the government even been monitoring them, or did they assume they couldn't reproduce and would die in a single generation?

* It seems like the Tendered can easily track down their counterparts due to their psychic link. If that's true, then there is no place on earth to hide from those monsters. You can have plastic surgery and change your name, your clone will still be able to find you.
* If what the main entry says re: Main/EvilFeelsGood, then every single loving, fun, gratifying sexual experience Adelaide ever had up top was the equivalent of rape and sexual assault for Red.
* Red was handcuffed to one of the bunk beds but isn't given a key; likely she had to break the bones in her hand to get free.
* The Tethered only take their place in the Hands Across America recreation after killing their above-ground counterpart. So when the helicopter shot at the end shows hundreds - if not thousands - of Tethered linking hands and covering miles of territory, that's basically the movie's body count.
* The very troubling implication that, up to the final minutes of the movie, Adelaide had repressed her own memories of escaping the Tethered shelter and swapping places with Red until ''just after'' killing Red. Especially because, with Red's theorizing that Tethered's and their counterparts share a soul, Adelaide will have felt an unexplainable sense of dread and pain her entire life - the way a Tethered experiences their counterparts' on the surface - which ended the instant Red was dead. In the final moments of the film, what she's feeling, having killed her double, is elation and relief.
** Indeed, all her life, Adelaide has been fighting to suppress that sense of dread and pain, and has been striving to seem happy, upbeat and normal, and such is the life of an African-American woman such as her that anybody around her who has noticed her doing this ''has considered that to be perfectly normal behaviour''. Adelaide, and everyone she knows, takes it for granted that she'd feel like that most of the time. This is arguably the greatest Fridge Horror of the whole film.
* Further to the above point - horribly enough, Adelaide is living proof that the Tethered experiment ''can'' work, and a Tethered can replace the original human they copied, so long as it happens early enough in development. Unlike other Tethered, Adelaide can socialize, resist (most of) her violent urges and speak intelligibly (even if she retains certain personality traits such as a proclivity to violence and an estrangement from non-Tethered humans). But this success is a hollow victory, since the cost is condemning Red to the life she would otherwise have led.
* Red outright states that she doesn't love Abraham, implying that Pluto and Umbrae are the children of a mutual sexual assault, neither parent having total say in their actions. At first, you'd think that this would lead to the logic that ''all'' tethered relationships are like this, deepening the horror of their existences. However, the other Tethered couple we see interact, Tex and Dahlia (mirrors to the Tylers) seem at least somewhat happier in their relationship, never displaying the thinly-veiled frustration and contempt that Kitty and Josh have, and Dahlia breaks down when Tex is killed before attempting to get revenge by killing Zora. With the revelation at the end that Red and Adelaide switched places and ''Adelaide'' was the Tethered one, that may be why; Red was never meant to be with Abraham or ''any'' Tethered in the first place. If true, it makes sense why Abraham seems so depressed in comparison to his family and sad when Red says she doesn't love him; in the horror of their existence, he would have been denied even the comfort of a matched partner that the others had.
* If you want to have sympathy for the Tethered or Red in particular, consider this: The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake happened while she was in those tunnels, keyword being ''tunnels'', tunnels running less than 10 miles from the epicenter of California's second "Big One". Honestly, it's amazing all those tunnels didn't collapse.

*** All of these questions assume that Tethered anatomy is a perfect match for their counterparts - which is not guaranteed, since they appear able to take much more damage than a surface human, up to and including a self-performed Caesarean Section. They may eat when their counterparts eat, but who says they need to?

* After meeting up with Red in the classroom Red spends several minutes explaining the origins of the Tethered Why does she do this? Both Red and Adelaide know all of this given the fact that Adelaide was the Tethered one all along. Nothing Red says should be much of a revelation to her.

** Adelaide was only a child when she switched places with Red. While she may have understood how horrible the underground was she may not have understood why she existed. Red could also be using this as a "remember who you really are" BreakingSpeech.
** Adelaide had no language until she came above ground. It's possible there was information about the Tethered and their origins underground somewhere, but until Red went down there none of the Tethered (including Adelaide) could understand it.
** Red could have just been flat out taunting her. Explaining what she had learned and what Adelaide should already have known. Perhaps hoping to elicit some sort of "I know!" reaction from her to force her to admit to what she had done.
* The Tethered eat nothing but rabbits, but what do the rabbits eat? For that matter, if The Tethered truly are an abandoned Government project and thus no longer receiving funding or oversight, who or what is supplying them with exact or close-enough replicas of their human counterparts' clothing? Where did they get that many matching red jumpsuits, fingerless gloves, and fancy pairs of scissors?

* The Tethered badly break Gabe's leg upon breaking into the house. He's shown limping several times, but other than that, it never affects - or it seems, even clouds - his ability to perform extremely brutal stunts such as killing Abraham (especially on the water!) or Tex. Sure, it's a shout out to ''Funny Games'', but just seems to create unnecessary plot holes.

*** Lighting as a marker of the contrast between the past (young Adelaide hiding in darkness, shrouding her intentions) and the present (adult Adelaide in the light, her true self exposed to her). This also parallels with the final cut ending of Peele's "Get Out" (Chris escaping into comforting, familiar dark night) and the alternate ending (Chris safe and yet trapped within the glaring white walls of a prison).

*** An often-overlooked element of Caroll's novel is that the Queen's death sentences are never carried out - as soon as she is out of earshot, the King of Hearts pardons them one by one. Similarly, despite Red's ruthlessness, none of Adelaide's family ends up dead at the end of the story.