History Literature / FriedGreenTomatoesAtTheWhistleStopCafe

-->--''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''

* HasTwoMommies: Stump has Ruth and Idgie. He's even referred to in the Weems Weekly in the book as Ruth and Idgie's kid, suggesting that the whole thing was an OpenSecret.

* HomeEarlySurprise: Half of Frank's FreudianExcuse is that as a kid he arrived home early from school one day to find his beloved sleeping with his father's brother.

--> '''Evelyn:''' Face it girls, I'm older and I have more insurance.

** The major omission on this front seems to be Big George's family. His children are greatly expanded upon in the book and we get to follow their adventures into adulthood; Evelyn even gets to meet some of his descendants. In the film, we see only his daughter Naughty Bird.[[note]]She's the little girl in the white smock who sits on the back steps while Big George barbecues.[[/note]]

** To most younger readers, who are brought up in a world where racial slurs are intolerable, the easy way that the characters in the book use the word "nigger" is very strange and highly offensive. Absolutely justified, though, as that was how people talked to black people in the early parts of the 20th century; even with people like Grady, who likes Big George and his family, but talks down to him when trying to look big in front of out-of-town police officers, or the Threadgoodes who consider Sipsey and Big George part of the family.

* DeepSouth: As per usual Flagg work, it shows both the best of it and very very worst.

** To most younger readers, who are brought up in a world where racial slurs are intolerable, the easy way that the characters in the book use the word "nigger" is very strange and highly offensive. Absolutely justified, though, as that was how people talked to black people in the early parts of the 20th century, even with people like Grady, who likes Big George and his family, but talks down to him when trying to look big in front of out-of-town police officers.
** Ninny saying what a courageous thing it was for Ruth to leave her husband. With divorces being rather common today, some might think it's not that big and think the courage comes from leaving an ''abusive'' husband and fear of retaliation. But then one remembers that Ruth left her husband in the 1930s, where divorce was a ''huge'' no-no and when you got married, you ''stayed'' married.

->''"What is your favorite movie, book and food?"''
-->--Apu, ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''

** Stump. It's never stated directly, but Ruth's description of her married life makes it pretty plain that none of her sexual encounters with her husband were consensual. Stump never suffers for this and Ruth never loves him any less for the circumstances of his conception.

* NeverMessWithGranny: [[spoiler:Sipsey kills Frank with a blow to the head from a frying pan and serves his flesh as barbecue pork in the diner.]]

* NeverMessWithGranny: Sipsey.

->''"What is your favorite movie, book and food?"''
-->--Apu, ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''

''Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café'' is a 1987 novel by Fannie Flagg (yes, the one from ''Series/MatchGame''). It was adapted into the film ''Film/FriedGreenTomatoes'', which was released in 1991.

* CorruptHick: Both played straight and averted with various characters. The book has one of the most positive ones in existence: Apparently no one knew that the judge at the trial of Frank Bennett's suspected murderers was [[spoiler:''[[LaserGuidedKarma the father of one of Frank's rape victims]]'']]. [[spoiler:The judge can see that the book the Reverend swears on isn't a Bible, and he's smart enough to realize that the good churchgoing folk speaking in Idgie's defense are just "a pack of scrubbed-up lowlifes" (they are in fact the numerous homeless men that Idgie has fed and employed over the years) whose testimony exonerates a woman and a black man accused of killing the man who [[DefiledForever raped and ruined]] the judge's daughter. The judge's interior monologue reveals that not only does he not care that Frank Bennett is dead, but if someone else killed him, then went to the trouble of this elaborate production to protect the murderer, they probably had a good reason for it, and he dismisses the charges.]]

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: The novel. It's fairly easy to keep track of them, however, because of how they're associated with time periods and locations.

* RomanticTwoGirlFriendship: Between Idgie and Ruth. See also AmbiguouslyGay. Averted in the novel, where they are explicitly a couple.

* FoodPorn: Lots of lingering shots of acres upon acres of pies, cakes, barbecue and all the trimmings. The book takes it a step farther and includes recipes.

* ImagineSpot: In the novel, Evelyn becomes lost in her fantasies of being transported to Whistle Stop in its heyday, where she imagines herself a beloved member of the community. She also has more violent fantasies of being Towanda, a feminist terrorist who brings about world peace by vanquishing evil men. In the film, she has a dream sequence of greeting her (unappreciative) husband at the door while wearing nothing but cling film.

** There's a family joke told several times in the film about a flock of ducks landing in a small pond. The first time it's told by Buddy to Ruth right before he's killed. The last time it's told it's told is by Idgie to Ruth on Ruth's deathbed. [[TearJerker Ruth wanted it to be the last thing she heard as she was dying.]]

* AmbiguouslyGay: The movie decided to play Idgie and Ruth's relationship as a more subtle and heavily implied thing, rather than outright stating to the camera they were lovers. The book on the other hand was quite explicit. [[spoiler: In the sequel, the relationship is quietly confirmed when Idgie tells her brother Julian that she and Ruth were more than just best friends. Julian is not surprised.]]
* ArtisticLicense : Insurance doesn't pay out on "deliberate damage," such as ramming someone's car six times...by accident.
* AssholeVictim: Frank Bennett. '''Nobody''' gave a damn that this man died, not even the judge presiding over Idgie and Big George's trial, who was actually quite happy that the man was dead.

* BewareTheNiceOnes: What really happened to Frank Bennett? Did he just take off into the night? Drown himself? Or [[spoiler: did the sweet tiny elderly black woman he had knocked out moments before crack his head with a frying pan, then serve his roasted flesh as pork in the café?]] Or maybe he just went fishing.

* BrickJoke: Sipsey holds a superstition about the heads of dead animals, so she buries them in the garden, where the nutrients make the vegetables grow huge. Later, Dot Weems can't figure out how Sipsey grew butterbeans the size of silver dollars. [[spoiler: Later, when Big George comes to dispose of Frank Bennett's body, he finds the head already missing, leading him to suspect his superstitious mother buried it in the garden. Decades later, the skull is finally discovered by workmen bulldozing the property...but by then nearly everyone in the story is either dead or long-since moved away and there's no one left to connect it to Frank's disappearance.]]
* ChildByRape: Stump. It's never stated directly, but Ruth's description of her married life makes it pretty plain that none of her sexual encounters with her husband were consensual. Stump never suffers for this and Ruth never loves him any less for the circumstances of his conception.

* CorruptHick: Both played straight and averted with various characters.
** And the book has one of the most positive ones in existence: Apparently no one knew that the judge at Frank Bennet's murder trial was [[spoiler: ''[[LaserGuidedKarma the father of one of his rape victims]]'']].
** [[spoiler:The judge can see that the book the Reverend swears on isn't a Bible, and he's smart enough to realize that the good churchgoing folk speaking in Idgie's defense are just "a pack of scrubbed-up lowlifes" (they are in fact the numerous homeless men that Idgie has fed and employed over the years) whose testimony exonerates a woman and a black man accused of killing the man who [[DefiledForever raped and ruined]] the judge's daughter. The judge's interior monologue reveals that not only does he not care that Frank Bennett is dead, but if someone else killed him, then went to the trouble of this elaborate production to protect the murderer, they probably had a good reason for it, and he dismisses the charges.]]

* DeCompositeCharacter: Sheriff Smoot and [[spoiler: The Judge]] are separate characters in the film, and neither of them indicates having any history with Frank Bennet.
* DeepSouth: As per usual Flagg work, it shows both the best of it and very very worse.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: To most younger readers, who are brought up in a world where political correctness is highly valued, the easy way that the characters in the book use the word nigger is very strange and highly offensive. Absolutely justified, though, as that was how people talked to black people in the early parts of the 20th century, even with people like Grady, who liked Big George and his family, but talked more down to him, when he was surrounded by other police officers.
** Ninny saying what a courageous thing it was for Ruth to leave her husband. With divorce rates being rather common, some might think it's not that big and think the courage comes from leaving an ''abusive'' husband and fear of retaliation. But then one remembers that Ruth left her husband in the 1930s, where divorce was a ''huge'' No-No and 'when you got married, you ''stayed'' married'.

* DomesticAbuse: Frank Bennett beats Ruth Jamieson.

* FinallyFoundTheBody: Frank Bennet's truck is found in the river. [[spoiler: Years later, while the café is being bulldozed, workers find Bennet's skull in the garden.]]

* FreudianExcuse: Novel Only: Why is Frank Bennet the scum of the Earth? Because he was the child of an [[AbusiveParents abusive father]] and walked in on his [[FreudianExcuse mother having an affair.]] Now he hates [[HeManWomanHater all women.]] Passionately.
* FryingPanOfDoom: [[spoiler: Sipsey]] clobbers Frank Bennet over the head with one to keep him from kidnapping Stump. [[spoiler: Frank doesn't survive.]]
* GiftGivingGaffe: Buddy "Stump" Threadgoode and the Erector set mentioned under AgitatedItemStomping.

* GoodShepherd: Reverend Scroggins. He doesn't quite get along with Idgie all the time, but is a good man and [[spoiler: Provides her an alibi during her trial]]. He's also the only person in the movie to ever refer to Big George by his full name.

* HangingJudge: Judge Smoote finally has who he thinks are Frank Bennet's killers in his courtroom. He's been after them for years. [[spoiler:[[InvertedTrope Although the exonerating evidence is the biggest load of crap he's ever seen, he throws out the charge of murder.]]]]

* HumanResources: [[spoiler: Frank Bennett gets cut into steaks and served in the diner]]
* IAmAHumanitarian: [[spoiler: After Sipsey kills Bennet, she and the others at the Whistle Stop Café take a page from Sweeney Todd and serve him to the investigator looking for Bennet in order to hide the body]].
* ImagineSpot: In the novel, Evelyn becomes lost in her fantasies of being transported to Whistle Stop in its heyday, where she imagines herself a beloved member of the community. She also has more violent fantasies of being Towanda, a feminist terrorist who brings about world peace by vanquishing men. In the film, she has a dream sequence of greeting her (unappreciative) husband at the door while wearing nothing but cling film.
* InspectorJavert: Smoote's ''own daughter'' was raped by Bennet, but he still hunts for Frank's killer. [[spoiler: He does talk to Idgie about his daughter when investigating and suggests she make sure no evidence is left to be found.]] He later becomes the judge at Idgie and Big George's murder trial. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope by which time his daughter has died, and he dismisses the case despite knowing the evidence of innocence is fake]].]]
* IronicEcho: There's a family joke told several times in the film about a flock of ducks landing in a small pond. The first time it's told by Buddy to Ruth right before he's killed. The last time it's told it's told is by Idgie to Ruth on Ruth's deathbed. [[TearJerker Ruth wanted it to be the last thing she heard as she was dying.]]

* KickTheDog: Or rather, kick your pregnant wife down the stairs as she's leaving you. Frank does this in the film without a shred of remorse, earring him a YouMonster reaction from Idgie's brother Julian, who nearly assaults him. Really ninety percent of what Frank does could count as this, but that moment really stood out.

* LethalChef: Subverted--Sipsey's a SupremeChef [[spoiler: but what she did to Frank with a FryingPanOfDoom was very literally lethal]].

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: The novel. It's fairly easy to keep track of them, however.
* MercyKill: In the novel, [[spoiler: Onzell does this for Ruth, who is dying slowly and painfully of cancer.]]

** He's a Klansman in the movie as well, as Idgie points out because she recognizes his shoes when he's in his robes, and when he says he "doesn't recognize" the Georgian Klansmen that show up in Whistle Stop. Apparently [[EvenEvilHasStandards Whistlestop Klansmen have different standards for how they treat black people than the Georgia ones]].
*** Except he actually isn't. Idgie mentions offhandedly that she recognizes the "size fourteen clodhoppers" she believes Grady wears. In a deleted scene, Grady reveals the truth--his feet (and thus his shoes) are actually quite small, and thus he couldn't have been who Idgie saw in those robes.

* PassFail: Examined. One of the novel's subplots involves Big George's granddaughter Clarissa, who is light-complected enough to shop in white department stores. Unaware that his niece is trying to pass, her dark-complected elderly uncle Artis hugs her in public (in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1950s). Artis is violently ejected from the store, while Clarissa burns with shame over what she's done to him, but is unable to intervene, knowing she'll be even ''more'' violently ejected if the white employees realize they've been deceived.
* PintsizedPowerhouse: Sipsey, who's small and wizened in stature but who has been wielding ten-pound cast-iron frying pans with both hands since childhood. [[spoiler: Frank Bennett underestimates her, to his peril.]]
** In the film, Idgie is played by Mary Stuart Masterson, who at 5'4" is significantly shorter than many of the full grown men she stands up to. (Subverted in the novel, where Idgie's described as tall and lanky.)

* RailroadTracksOfDoom: Two instances of this trope happen in the story. In the second incident, the victim did ''not'' walk away in one piece. In the first, the victim didn't walk away at all.
* RelatedInTheAdaptation: An odd but minor example: in the novel, the woman Ed and Evelyn visit in the nursing home is Ed's unnamed mother. In the film, they go to visit Ed's aunt Vesta Adcock. This is an interesting (if random) switcheroo, since in the novel, Vesta Adcock is a long-time resident of Whistle Stop whom Mrs. Threadgoode has known for many years, while in the film, they're only fellow nursing home residents and there's no evidence that they knew each other previously.
** Inverted with Ruth and Buddy Threadgoode: in the film, they're love interests. In the novel, Ruth is cousin to the Threadgoode children and Buddy was dead well before she ever came to Whistle Stop; there's no indication that she ever met him.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler: Ninny survives until the end of the film. She dies in the novel.]]

* TapOnTheHead: Justified, [[spoiler: Frank Bennet]] died after a one smack on the head with a frying pan. A very heavy, iron frying pan that weighed about 5 pounds and [[spoiler: swung by a woman with both hands]].

* HasTwoMommies: Stump has Ruth and Idgie.

* BeeAfraid: Averted. Idgie can walk right up to a beehive, jam her hand in it, and rip out a fist full of honeycombs without getting stung.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fried-3_1397.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300: Ruth, Idgie, and the whistle stop café]]

''Fried Green Tomatoes'' tells the story of two enduring friendships. The first, set in [[TheEighties the modern day]], is between Evelyn Couch, a dissatisfied, middle-age, menopausal housewife too frightened of death to commit suicide, and Ninny Threadgoode, a boisterous and talkative octogenarian who bolsters Evelyn's spirits with her storytelling. The story she tells is of another pair of women: incorrigible {{Tomboy}} and raconteur Idgie Threadgoode and sweet, stubborn SouthernBelle Ruth Jamison, a pair of strong, spirited woman who together ran a café in [[TheGreatDepression Depression-era]] [[TheDeepSouth Alabama]].

''Fried Green Tomatoes'' tells the story of two relationships. The first, set in [[TheEighties the modern day]], is a friendship between Evelyn Couch, a dissatisfied, middle-age, menopausal housewife too frightened of death to commit suicide, and Ninny Threadgoode, a boisterous and talkative octogenarian who bolsters Evelyn's spirits with her storytelling. The story she tells is of another pair of women: incorrigible {{Tomboy}} and raconteur Idgie Threadgoode and sweet, stubborn SouthernBelle Ruth Jamison, who ran a café together in [[TheGreatDepression Depression-era]] [[TheDeepSouth Alabama]].