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1'''As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked [[Administrivia/SpoilersOff as per policy.]] Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.'''
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4!!!'''Film:'''
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6!!FridgeBrilliance:
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8* The reveal that Gilliam's revolutionaries are controlled opposition really puts several of the guards actions into light:
9** Why do they antagonize the tail-enders so much despite carrying around unloaded guns? Because they're ''begging'' them to make a move and start the process.
10** Why is there no meaningful resistance for the first few cars? Because there's a dedicated fighting force right before the water room.
11** The sudden escalation after Curtis captures Mason and makes it to the children's classroom? They have officially gone off script and now the live rounds are coming out. This is similar to how Claude being struck with a shoe is treated so harshly and Andrew loses his arm. When tail enders (and presumably anyone on the train) do something that can interfere with Wilford's work or the engine, it is ''not tolerated'' and gets stamped out immediately.
12* Wilford's insistence that the engine is eternal borders on religious mantra...because it is. The engine is god, Wilford is the High Priest or Messiah, and the first class passengers are all his angels singing his praises. Keep in mind, the tail enders are never even see these people so for them it all becomes myth.
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14!! FridgeHorror:
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16* Why did Gilliam sacrifice his arm to save Edgar? Because if he hadn't, the population of tail-enders would certainly have been devastated, and they're necessary to keep the supply of kids going as living parts of the train.
17** That event was implied to have happened long before the culls became a regular thing, or at the very least long before Gilliam started taking orders.
18* Following the children-replacing-broken-parts paradigm to its natural conclusion would mean that eventually the train would be running on an engine that ''would be entirely made of small children.''
19* As horrific as the train's society is, Wilford and his minions ''aren't really wrong about anything.'' Everyone ''is'' only alive because of Wilford. If the engine stops running they ''will'' all freeze and die, at least until the ice age starts to end. They could and should have built a better and more just society, and they did create a horrifying cult around Wilford as a Christ figure, but on balance, Wilford's system did prevent the extinction of the human race, as they claim.
20* What happens to the children when they grow too big to work with the engine? They're not returned to their families, after all -- and as Wilford points out, there's only so much room....
21* What do the cockroaches eat? Where does the waste from the train go? The tail-enders are probably eating their own recycled feces.
22** Unless there was a stock of animal food and crop fertilizer to last for 17+ years, the waste is being recycled and everyone on the board is eating their own recycled feces.
23* The fact that the train was designed with a cockroach-grinding, protein-extruding machine at all has some pretty dark implications regarding Wilford's priorities while creating the train.
24* That the train's supplies included 50+ tomahawks and black ankle-length vinyl smocks is pretty disturbing.
25* Hey cool, there's still life around on planet Earth! It's a polar bear, the biggest terrestrial predator, a few dozen meters away from a teenage junkie and a five-year-old boy. Guess how that ends...
26* Everyone on the train is dead from the moment that the windows were shot out, unless super armored glass is easier to make than an engine degreaser.
27* Curtis procures "pure, uncut" Kronole, but Gilliam mentions that the stuff is made from industrial waste, and it's later shown to be highly explosive. This leads to the implication that the impure stuff is even worse.
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29!!!'''Series:'''
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31!!FridgeBrilliance:
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33* The grilled-cheese sandwich and tomato soup that the brakemen feed Layton as an initial bribe to get him to work for them? At the time, it was intended to be an insultingly-sparse meal, probably not even worthy of third class. Little did they know that within a matter of hours, that grilled-cheese sandwich would become ''one of the most priceless foodstuffs on the entire train''. Why? Because the avalanche in the very next episode wipes out ''Snowpiercer'''s cattle herd, thus eliminating cow's milk and all its byproducts from the menu forever. Even if the agri-cars happen to have some nanny goats to take up the slack, it'll probably be impossible to resume making cheese until decades into a post-Freeze world: dairy goats aren't nearly as productive as cows, so whatever milk they ''do'' generate will have to be dedicated to more immediate and vital functions (like feeding baby goats and/or baby humans) that don't squander most of the milk's calorie content on fermentation. What's more, familiar ''flavors'' of cheese, like cheddar, will be gone forever.
34* As of episode three, the train has lost more than 20 humans in a week. Why hasn't "Mr. Wilford" ordered a new baby lottery yet? Because announcing that 20+ pregnancies are now authorized would entail admitting how badly the death rate on ''Snowpiercer'' has spiked. Better to wait until after repairs are done and then hold several lotteries over the course of a year or so, to avoid scaring everybody.
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36!!!'''Comics'''
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38!!FridgeBrilliance:
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40* The movie is an InNameOnly adaptation to the comics. ''Terminus'' actually... ''adopted'' the movie into Canon. How did they do this? By explaining that there were ''multiple'' Snowpiercers -- which was established in the second book, which was released long before the movie.
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42!!FridgeHorror

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