Fridge / Monster High

Fridge Brilliance

• As one of the creators once explained, it makes sense for all these monsters to go to high school, a point in everyone's life when they feel like freaky monsters.
• Some fans says that Cleo and Nefera are the less looking monsters, and they look as mortal female humans without powers. But there's some facts. Most of the first mummies (and living mummies or spirits) in fiction were seductive women without many "undead" physical features, yet still mummies. Some examples are the tales about mummies from Théophile Gautier, or The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker among others, and most of them were princesses or queens. That combined with the Universal Horror mummies that needed artifacts/objects as scrolls, or Tana tea (magical bandages in Cleo and Nefera's cases) to sustain their immortality and getting magical powers or artifacts. Even after that, Cleo, Nefera and Ramses they have cursed amulets, but also genuine powers, as sand manipulation, snake and scarab control, a powerful scream, invulnerability and super strength (this last one mentioned by Cleo in her Gloom and Bloom diary, that also is how she became a monster).
• A lot of people probably got mad at Gil for not trying to save Lagoona when she was captured, even if he did come back later to save the day, but if you think about it, he probably did the smartest thing any of us could have done: HE WENT FOR HELP! He knew that Lagoona's parents were nearby, knew that this was way too much for a couple of teens to handle, and went for help. And think of it this way: if he HAD tried to save Lagoona when he didn't, he probably would have ended up captured which would've meant that Farnum would've won.
• At first it seems like an animation error that Gil never took his helmet off when swimming the waters of Skull Shores but Gil is a fresh water monster. Most fresh water fish are unable to breathe in saltwater so keeping his helmet might look redundant but is absolutely a necessity.
• Cleo and Nefera, mummy princesses, are in charge of their fearleading squads. Cheerleaders form PYRAMIDS.
• The Frankie and Jackson/Holt paring makes a lot of sense when you realize that they are both the results of extreme science and from Victorian literature.
• Ghoulia being the smartest ghoul in school makes a lot more sense when you remember that, as a zombie, it means she has the most brains. Same with how Moanica has great leadership skills.
• Lagoona is a sea monster. She wears fishnets.
• Kiyomi is a "faceless" (not literally here) ghost that in mythology can copy other people's faces and disguise themselves as them. In her diary and the trailer, it's revealed that she used to be a Shrinking Violet but she's become more outgoing and popular lately. This is because she's been secretly spying on Draculaura and copying her style and attitude. She's disguising herself as Draculaura to cover up her "faceless" withdrawn and un-expressive self.
• There's a lot of theory going around that Cleopatra—of history, not High—was in fact genetically Greek. It makes sense for her namesake to fall for a monster from Greek mythology, then.
  • Not only that, but snakes play a big part in Egyptian mythology. And what do Gorgons have for hair?
  • Also, Cleopatra is said to have committed suicide by self-induced asp bite...tri-layered mythology gag!
• The fact that Frankie is composed of dead body parts of teenage girls yet she's really pretty. Let me explain, Frankie's dad is described as a hideous creature and he was made of different male body parts, at first he was dumb and mute but gradually becoming smarter until in the book he apparently becomes a teacher but he still has to live with being a technical grotesque beast. For the mother, well she was never actually created in the book but I'm going by movie standards and saying Frankenstein helped her become smarter... it makes sense but she must've looked weird with stitches all over her and white and black hair so for two well, monsters to create such a beautiful young girl. I know it was mostly the artist who did this but he did a good job and I'd liked to think that after years of feeling like monsters they wanted to make a child who wouldn't feel that way and picked the best parts for her, hint why they got that girl's head from Skull Shores, it's pretty clever and sort of nice in a creepy way. But that's what Monster High is for!
  • There's also something tying into the time paradox responsible for Frankie: Dr. Stein has met her, and like any good scientist probably took notes, which he passed on to his creations. Creating something that's been seen is much easier than something you haven't.
• If we assume that Frankie's father is the monster from Frankenstein (by Mary Shelley), then it makes a lot of sense why Frankie is pretty. In the novel, he gets heckled and judged by everyone because he's so hideous and strange. Said monster is also very intelligent, so he could have very well created his own wife (who is better looking than he) as well as other members of the undead. By the time he got to Frankie, he was very good at aesthetics.
• Medusa is known as hideous, but Deuce has ridiculously good looks. This makes sense when you realize that Medusa used to be beautiful until Athena caught the lovers in her (Athena's) temple and turned Medusa ugly. Deuce probably got this beauty. His hair is likely a result of some clause in Athena's curse making the snake hair congenital.
  • What? It's just the Gorgeous Gorgon trope in action, popularized by art to send a message of "beauty is dangerous".
• Mouscedes King's family helped to build Boo York, and she refers to it as a "crazy maze" of a city. Laboratory rats are often put through mazes to test their intelligence.
• Luna Mothews is a Boo Jersey ghoul who doesn't resemble her namesake. The closest real-life match? The cecropia moth, which is found in New Jersey.
• Whisp's jealousy makes a lot of sense when you realize that she's literally in Gigi's shadow.
• Gloom Beach Frankie's shoes seem fairly basic, being sandals with chunky straps and buckles. But then you realize those straps are meant to evoke the restraints on Frankenstein's operating table!
• Alivia Stein's design has some of this. She looks mostly facially identical to Frankie, for one. Why is this? Frankie just used the same plans that her parents used for her! Also, she has eyes that are the reverse of Frankie's...Frankie finally found the missing matches to her eyes and decided to use them for her sister!
• Hoo Dude has “it’s complicated” written for Parents in his bio. This makes sense considering he’s a living voodoo doll and Frankie is basically his “mom”.
• Catrine De Mew = Catherine De Neuve. Madison Fear = Madison Beer, etc.
• In G3, (despite being more powerful) Clawdeen is more shy than her G1 counterpart. Wolves in general are shy in real life, due to their past interactions with humans. Why Clawdeen is too shy and meek in G3? Due to her interactions with humans most of her life that in her words, they made her life miserable.
• Some people says that Cleo's curse in G3, is wrong because she mentions Horus, and no Set (god of storms and chaos) in a magic storm and plague made by her. But if you think, Cleo is a human culture fan #1 in G3, and she has been studied humans for years. Set sounds like Seth, a common name of humans in America and other parts of the world. As Cleo wanted the attention of humans, she probably mentions a god of popular knowledge between humans to impressed them, as the power is actually by her own. She is also a showgirl mainly.

Fridge Horror

• It's repeatedly hinted at that there are high tensions between monsters and normies. That alone doesn't seem so bad, more like a metaphor for racism and such. Then enter Van Helscream, a self-proclaimed expert of monster human relations. He's the one responsible for most of the tensions between monsters like vampires and werewolves, and everybody thought he was a hero for equality. The fridge horror starts to kick in when you start to wonder how long he's been at this, how many schools has he destroyed that were like Monster High, and even worse, what kind of damage he's done on the HUMAN side of things?
  • Apparently a lot of damage as seen in Ghouls Rule: the cop decides to give Holt "the trick or treatment." That might sound ridiculous, until they strap Holt into this rather creepy machine that looks like it's going to BEHEAD him! All for a couple of harmless pranks!
  • The true horror? In reality, there exist people like him in real life, that put fear, discrimination and tension with lies in the population to create hate against other people, putting themsleves as the heroes.
• Valentine's love spell. In Why do Ghouls Fall in Love Valentine puts a spell on Draculaura to force her to fall in love with him. The implications alone are pretty frightening, but it gets worse when he reveals that if he doesn’t harvest her heart before three day’s time, she’ll lose her heart permanently. At first it seems more depressing than frightening, but then you realize that along with her ability to love, she’d also lose her compassion, her kindness, her mercy, and basically everything that makes her Draculaura, and possibly even turn her into a cruel and horrible person.
  • Not just that, a vampire without a heart is a vampire who would not turn down a chance to suck blood. In short losing her heart would have meant her pretty much becoming a killer...
• Zombies are reanimated corpses. This means that Ghoulia, Slo-Moe and all the other members of the zombie population used to be normies- until they died and were reanimated as functioning corpses. Though whatever animated them seems to prevent body decay, they do still suffer from lessened mental faculties and physical reflexes(even considering Ghoulia's high intelligence, she is unable to actually speak anything other than the zombie "language" of groaning).
  • Frankie's made of body parts. Body parts of teenage girls; probably already dead ones, which means her father and mother had to go get them. In her diary, she says her father was yelling 'It's alive!' and that he believed kids needed a strong sense of tradition, so it's likely she was made the same way he was. So basically her mom and dad went around and stole from graves.
  • What is also horrific is in Escape From Skull Shores the group finds pictures and videos of a woman who looks just like Frankie! They never give what the exact time period is, and we don't know if Frankie's Parents have always lived in that one place; they might have traveled a lot. In the book, they are described as geniuses; so what if they were travelling to this island and met said young women, she died unexpectedly, and they took parts of her body and made that teen daughter (they could have frozen those body parts until they were ready to use them)? There was a twitter or Facebook post where the creators said the woman was Frankie's "mother", but why does the woman look EXACTLY LIKE FRANKIE? They made it clear her parents didn't actually have her: they made her. There's family resemblance, and then there's... that.
  • Considering that Neighthan Rot is canonically the son of a zombie and a unicorn is entirely possible that zombies come in two varieties: reanimated corpses and "they were born that way"
• There is really a lot of fridge horror considering the doll's backstories. Like what made Draculaura go vegan to a point where blood makes her faint? Where did Operetta get those scars (very decorative scars too..)? What caused Spectra to become a ghost? And the fact that Cleo is afraid of the dark. And of course there is Robecca's story involving losing her dad because she missed a train ride home. When one thinks about it this line has quite an interesting, dark undertone to it.
  • Three of those explained: Operetta's is a natural marking like her father's, but supernaturally clear in design- not the result of injury or torture. Robecca did lose her dad, but that's because he went on a dangerous expedition, and she was able to recover him, and Cleo does have a dark backstory of imprisonment and abandonment in her tomb- but that's why she's scared of the dark.
  • Draculaura always found her father’s blood diet pretty grotesque. Unfortunately, plant based diets weren’t a thing until the 20th century.
• The early Draculaura diaries stated that her father was an ancient Roman nobleman and that the "famous" Dracula was a "less powerful upstart" that took the name and was defeated in combat when Dracula objected. The recent diaries name this upstart as Vlad III the Impaler and indicate the conflict was perhaps less about the name and more about Vlad's actions while using the name. Now think of how many people the real Vlad killed, and in what ways, and realize that this is part of the franchise's world history of this doll line meant for girls to play with.
• Peri and Pearl are conjoined twins, and daughters of the Hydra. This accidentally gives a lot of sympathy to the Hydra, since each head is its own being. This makes Hercules seem much more brutal when he severs the heads, and leaves a lot of questions as to what exactly is happening when the new heads appear.
• In 13 Wishes, Howleen wishes for Gil's parents to like Lagoona. The result of this wish is to turn her into a freshwater monster, which makes her insane. The message is the usual "don't change who you are", but the result of the wish tragically implies that Gil's parents wouldn't be able to like Lagoona any other way.
• Whisp is made lamp genie so she gets the job she's always wanted. But she has no way to see her own sister, endures long periods of loneliness, and unless she uses Valentine to communicate with those at MH somehow, she's completely isolated. Also, her profile doesn't list Gigi as a BFF, which may be due to guilt from her actions or lingering resentment. Unless you interpret her I Love Fashion release as a return to the cast (perhaps due to a freedom wish, and the fact that she resembles a newer Gigi doll with the same hairstyle ), Whisp is taking her situation surprisingly well.
• In Ghouls Rule when Jackson is lying to the police officer on how Holt "escaped" he suggests that maybe he was a type of monster that had the power to open locks but his defeated and awkward tone implies that Jackson feels like this was a flimsy idea that would give him away. However, there really are monsters with powers to open locks, namely the dullahan which is what Bloodgood is, meaning that Jackson's lie was far more plausible than he thought.
• It's more of a fridge-horror-shoutout, but the Inner Monster line, which draws from Japanese manga/anime art styles, features a subtle motif shared by each doll. Every Inner Monster is contaminated by the spiral. Feisty/Love has them on the spider legs, Sweet/Fierce has them in the soft-serve hair, candy stomach charm, and wing engravings, Shy/Silly has them in the tentacles, eyes, and vines, and Sad/Happy/Excited has them in the wings and, most overtly, in the twister-hair and tail.
• The Monster Family line introduces younger siblings for Cleo. Younger like baby younger for her sister Sandy. And all of them have newer-looking bandages than Cleo's...
  • Lux, Pharrah, and Sandy are prequel characters. When exactly were they born, and how and when did they die?
• How exactly did Toralei manage to take care of herself if she was all alone for 15 years? You can’t exactly leave a baby or a kitten in the street without anyone noticing.
  • She wasn't actually an orphan- her diary refers to her parents. That was just a story Spectra made up.
• While Cleo was angry at Amanita for abandoning the De Niles, we don’t exactly know how Nefera dealt with it. Is that why she’s so mean?
• Alivia is basically made of dead young girls, probably 14-year-olds at the most, since she’s around Howleen’s height. It’s both tragic and sickening.
• Batsy is only 17 years old, the youngest of the vampires. Was she born a vampire, or was she turned at age 17?
  • And what about River? She’s a ghost at age 14, and her bio doesn’t calculate her age in monster years...
    • As the grim reaper's daughter, she might have been born like that.
• It’s implied that the zombies’ body parts don’t reattach, unlike other cartoon zombies, since one of Ghoulia’s diaries mentions “I wonder if it’s easier for Frankie to get dressed since she can take her arms off”.
• Cleo’s mother Dedyet was still human when she was separated from her family. That means Dedyet died thousands of years ago, and her family was clueless as to why until she finally came back as a mummy thousands of years later. So Cleo and Nefera spent millennia without a mother and not knowing what happened to her.
• Headmistress Bloodgood’s age is listed as “young enough to be your sister”. Yet she’s an adult. So how old was she when she was decapitated?
• Widowna’s bio says she doesn’t like “black widow jokes”. In real life, female spiders typically eat their mates, and the mothers usually die after giving birth. So is she an orphan? Or fatherless? Granted she’s a humanoid spider, but still.
  • It could just be a comment on stereotyping, not necessarily something related to her experience.
• Spectra’s and Porter’s sclera match their hair. If you take into account that they’re transparent, we’re seeing the back of their heads through their eyes.
  • On top of that, they're dead kids! It's glossed over, but all the ghosts are teenagers. Spectra occasionally mentions her parents, so did the whole family die together?
• Ghouls Rule brings up a lot of this- there's a plot point where Holt Hyde, a 16 year old, is going to be publicly beheaded, and the only people who give a damn are a bunch of other kids.
  • Bloodgood isn't that upset when the "Monster Elder Council" refuses to do anything about the execution of a minor (for vandalism)!
  • That also implies that either it's legal to behead people for vandalism in this universe, or worse, monsters are seen as so subhuman that you can just straight up kill them with no legal repercussions. The second theory is reinforced by the cop locking Holt in a cage during the news broadcast, like he's an animal.
  • Holt and Jackson share a body. By executing Holt, they're also killing Jackson, who hadn't been accused of any crime.
  • Plus, Holt didn't even do anything, and the sheriff knows that, he just doesn't care. He's willing to kill an innocent teenager to make a point.
  • The entire movie from Jackson's perspective. Imagine waking up in a jail cell with no memory of why you're there and then finding out you're going to be executed for the crime you don't remember committing.
• One of Neighthan's parents is a unicorn. Let's just hope unicorns are a sentient species in this universe, or this could be really gross.
  • Nevermind, it was established in Neighthan's diary that unicorns can take a human form.

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