WARNING: Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies to Fridge pages. All spoilers will be unmarked.
Fridge Brilliance:
In the second episode, Stanley discusses how he sees high school football games as a tragedy, seeing as in a few years, the players will have nothing good going for them, except for the occasional batch reunion. Later on, we see that Stanley's dad is an alcoholic who doesn't do much but hold onto his old glory days while watching football. Clearly, Stanley knew who he was talking about at the game.
Flashforwards to Syd covered in blood stop happening after the second episode. They had to stop, otherwise we would have seen the police cars driving in the opposite direction, showing they weren't after her.
Even if he had survived, Brad was most probably doomed. The school punishments for making fun of Syd in the manner he did at a school event would be pretty big. Even ignoring that, his already wavering popularity would tank after he just publicly humiliated and outed someone whose dad killed themselves. There was really no way this was going to work out for him.
Fridge Horror:
Considering a student's head just exploded in front of the entire student body, what will they think about Syd? If she's already having trouble at school, the rumors and gossip are about to get a lot worse.
Despite the fact that he thinks Syd's powers are cool, Stan could've easily had the same fate as Brad, especially since they both forced Syd's telekinesis out by insulting her father and home life. It makes much more sense now why Syd was so freaked out afterwards.
