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Fridge / The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

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Fridge Brilliance

  • The entire film is essentially a presentation about the nature and various aspects of life and human mortality.
  • In "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", Buster refuses to play another man's hand in the saloon at Frenchman's Gulch, with a Frenchman at the table. In "The Mortal Remains," a different (but very similar-looking) Frenchman tells an anecdote in which he refuses to play another man's hand.
  • Buster refusing to play the "dead man's hand" is a metaphor for the hubris of thinking one can cheat death itself if one is wily enough. Unfortunately for Buster, refusing to play the hand does nothing to prevent his demise several minutes later. The Aesop is that we are all playing the hand we're dealt from the moment we're born, and it's always a dead man's hand. We can avoid playing the game or living life by not playing the hand, but we can never prevent the game's ending.
  • In "Meal Ticket", the Artist is replaced by Gallus Mathematicus, a chicken that can do math. In "All Canyon Valley," the Prospector justifies stealing a single egg from an owl's nest by reasoning aloud, "How high can a bird count?"
  • In "All Gold Canyon", the bloodstain on the Prospector's back from his bullet wound continues to spread throughout the time that the Young Man rolls and smokes his cigarette. The Prospector is later revealed to still be alive. This explains why the stain spread. If he hadn't been alive, no blood would have been pumping against gravity out the wound on his back.
  • In "Meal Ticket", one of the texts recited by the Artist is the story of Cain and Abel (in which Cain, son of Adam and Eve, commits the first murder of humanity by killing his own brother Abel). Interestingly, "All Gold Canyon" is a kind of retelling of the biblical tale. It takes place in an Eden-like valley. The Prospector and the Young Man seem alone on earth. The Young Man attempts to kill the Prospector (and then the Prospector kills him), bringing sin into this Eden.
  • Everyone killed by Buster Scruggs disrespects or underestimates him. The only one who recognizes him and gives him due respect is the one who kills him.
  • One of Buster’s monikers mentioned by the Kid is the “Herald of Demise.” Buster is the first death in a series of stories about people dying before their time.
  • In "All Gold Canyon", the Prospector only taking one egg from the nest has another meaning near the end where nature comes back after he leaves and explains why he was spared despite his greed. Normally, it would be a good opportunity to claim ownership of the gold vein and get even richer, but once he is satisfied he just leaves with no apparent intent of coming back, even filling the holes he dug back up. He is an old man who just wanted enough to end his life comfortably instead of permanently ruining the valley.
  • After Buster Scruggs dies, the Kid kicks dirt over his dead body. According to cowboy lore, kicking dirt over a fallen opponent was the ultimate sign of respect and meant to release their soul to the afterlife. Notice how Buster doesn't ascend until the Kid does that.
  • Buster refutes the idea that he would ever "shoot [someone] in the back." While this seems hypocritical, as he literally did exactly that earlier in the story, it is true in the metaphorical sense. He made every effort to alert the bartender to the fact that he had the drop on him, and gave him a (brief) chance to move away from his gun before Buster pulled the trigger.
  • In the first saloon Buster Scruggs is surprised and admits to "sloppy shooting" when one of the drinkers was still alive after being shot. It's foreshadowing that he's losing his touch with age, and his inevitable defeat at the younger (and faster) Kid.

Fridge Horror

  • The Impresario buys Gallus Mathematicus, a chicken he's told can do sums. However, "educated animal" acts such as these, particularly with chickens, are really just tricks. The animal isn't actually doing sums — it's just being made to look like it is by the owner. The owner fools the Impresario into believing that purchasing the bird will give him the entire act, but in reality he's just sold a useless bird to a sucker for an extreme mark-up. There's no telling how many times the con artist has done this scam before. Since the Impresario ejects his only "meal ticket" from his wagon, and the Impresario doesn't have any of the skill to pull his new trick off, he's perhaps doomed both of them to death.

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