Fridge Horror / Coco

"Fridge Horror" reactions are defined as happening post-viewing, as such Spoilers Off applies to this page.

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• There are several subtle allusions to Aztec Mythology. Given how the dead work in this world, it seems likely that the gods died out due to not being worshiped.
  • Which, if you know anything about the brutality of Aztec god worship and human sacrifice, is probably for the best.
    • It's not like the slavery and oppression that replaced it was much better.
    • But we do see buildings which architecture is clearly supposed to invoke mesoamerican civilisations and we can even spot people with similar clothing. That suggests the far more happy ending that the mesoamerican dead just went with the times and modernized like the rest of the Land of the Dead. It is also probable that there are more afterlives, something which would fit with Aztec Mythology and seems to be supported by how the movie doesn't show non-Mexicans in the Land of the Dead (except Skrillex, apparently). Basically, all All Myths Are True and people go to whichever afterlife fits their beliefs.
  • It's worth noting that Dia de Muertos is a pre-Christian tradition that was given a Christian polish when the natives were conquered, much like Halloween came from Samhain, or Christmas from Yule (and others), or Easter from... well, Easter. Not as creative with that one.
• Miguel had angrily told Elena he didn't care if they put his picture on the ofrenda. Had he not returned to the land of the living, his family would've believed he had run away for good. And, on top of being too heartbroken by the loss, they would've granted Miguel's wish and never put his photo up on the ofrenda. Poor Miguel would've never seen his family again.
  • Not only that, he still had Mama Imelda's photo, so that would've meant both he and Imelda would never cross over again.
• One woman at the Agency seethes that she and her husband are not visiting his ex-wife's family's ofrenda. Assuming it's not a case of cheating, why would the husband want to visit his ex-wife's family? It's possible they were his first family and his second wife is actually his lover and the home-wrecker who seduced him away from them.
  • Or even sadder, perhaps his first wife died and later married the woman he is seen with at the agency. She felt like a Replacement Goldfish, and refuses to allow him to see his first wife in the afterlife and her family in the land of living, despite all parties still caring for each other.
  • Alternatively, the first wife is the one with him in the land of the dead, and is refusing to let him visit the ofrenda of the woman he remarried after her passing.
• There's a scene where a few dead souls taunt Héctor for his cause of death: that he choked on a chorizo. Héctor adamantly insists that he died of food poisoning, which is different. It's a funny scene, but on further reflection, Héctor obviously would not cop to dying in such an embarrassing fashion, at least not willingly. Someone had to spread the word that he died from chorizos. When Héctor actually died, Ernesto feigned concern and remarked "maybe it was the chorizos?" It's entirely possible that Ernesto not only killed Héctor and stole his songs, but also slandered his old friend's reputation even beyond death. Talk about Kick the Dog!
  • Not only that, assuming those who mocked him aren't heartless enough to keep mocking him, imagine their realization when it dawns on them that all this time, they essentially made fun of a murder victim.
• Hector left on tour with Ernesto because he thought he could provide for his family with his songs. In a cruel twist of irony, not only does Ernesto steal his songs, but he never provides Imelda or Coco even a bit of the money that should've been Hector's. They could've been well-provided had it not been for de la Cruz's greed.
• Had Miguel not proven to the Living world, through Héctor's letters that Mama Coco kept, that Ernesto was a murderer and a fraud? Imagine how devastated Ernesto fans would be when they crossed over into the Land of the Dead, only to find their greatest hero has been deemed a bad guy there. It was only averted because there was still proof Héctor wrote those songs.
  • Look closely in the intro: when we get a look at Ernesto's statue, there's an old couple looking at it with loving nostalgia. Imagine how hard the poor husband and wife will take it when they learn the famed musician associated with one of their romantic memories is in fact a murderous fraud.
• After Ernesto is exposed as a fraud, he'll spend the rest of his life in the Afterlife shunned and alone, unable to cross to the land of the living (since it's unlikely people will still put up ofrendas for him after learning the truth). His only chance of getting out of that situation is when people will actually forget about him and he dies for good. But since he was so popular in the world of the living- and probably still will be for his performances and celebrity status, on top of being infamous after people learned he murdered Hector to gain fame- there is little chance he'll be forgotten for at least a century, as people will still tell his story for years. So he has nothing to live for in a world where everyone hates him and he can't even off himself. It goes from Asshole Victim to an And I Must Scream situation pretty quickly. Quite a grim outcome for a formerly beloved character.
  • Adding to the above, Ernesto's situation is likely to have happened before. There's probably several of these people walking around in the Land of the Dead, convicted in both life and death and biding their time until either plane forgets their crimes. Unless they spend the rest of that time atoning, it's going to be a long, long wait until their second death comes. One can only hope that second death leads to Heaven and not Cessation of Existence. Or Hell.
    • An extra layer of horror: there are likely people in the Land of the Dead with Ernesto's level of infamy, but Hector's actual innocence. Imagine having to live through that - heinous crimes you have to repent for without actually having done them - but without someone like Miguel to figure out their innocence or his accessibility to much of the evidence that could prove it.
      • More still, there might even be murderers who were never found out to be such, either in life OR in death, and they could be assumed to have been either normal people or celebrities like Ernesto.
• Okay, the lack of children in the afterlife is somewhat relieving to see, but there's an actual whole family - mom, dad and some kids - on the in migrations office and a woman and her daughter see Miguel when he's crossing the Marigold bridge. After Mexico's earthquakes past September, this can be a Tear Jerker, especially after the viralization of the story of a man searching for the soldier who rescued the bodies of his wife and daughter.
• Why is there no mention of the family members before Imelda? She had parents, obviously, whose pictures are not on the ofrenda, who don't appear with the deceased Riveras, and whose stories don't seem to be part of the tradition. Does this mean that the Rivera family has forgotten (or never heard about) them, meaning that they no longer exist at all? She doesn't seem to have any other connections in the afterlife outside of the other aunts and uncles and Héctor. Her husband might not have been the first family to abandon her, either on purpose or by her being orphaned... making his abandonment probably hit close to home.
  • There's an entire row of photos at the bottom of the ofrenda in addition to those showing who Miguel sees in the Land of the Dead. Where are all of those people?
    • They could be the parents and/or siblings of Julio, Rosita, Franco, and so on. The family members of those who married into the Rivera family, but who aren't actually Riveras.
• On that note, Héctor's family. He had parents too, but they aren't ever seen or mentioned by him, and he seems to live in complete squalor on his own. Was he the last living person to remember them and thus they ceased to exist when he died? Or, perhaps worse, did he have siblings/family living who remembered them, but they refused to have anything to do with him because he left his wife and child? Fortunately, if it's the latter, they would welcome him back after the events of the movie.
• More "Fridge Sadness" than anything else, but it is troubling to think that, even though Héctor is posthumously given the credit he deserves for the songs he wrote, while Ernesto is justly vilified, the fact remains that the only recordings of the music that Hector wrote were most likely the songs that Ernesto sang. The only audible record of his work was performed by the man who murdered him. Let's hope Miguel can record the songs that his ancestor wrote once he grows up.
• If you expand this concept of the Afterlife to other countries, not just Mexico, and knowing that even notoriously evil people can live on as long as they're remembered...this can be a universe where people like Adolf Hitler still exist. At least they can still face judgment from the dead as well.
  • Heck even if the land of the dead was limited to Mexico stil some notorious (at least im Mexico) people would still exist in afterlife as long as rememebered: Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna,Portfolio Diaz, Plutarco E. Calles, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, etc.
  • It's said at one point in the film that the remembering must be done by someone who had known the deceased person when they were still alive. So that means Hitler and other historical evildoers are definitely gone by now. But this also means everybody in the Land of the Dead is living on borrowed time "it happens to all of us" indeed...
  • About the people in the Land of the Dead, this is mitigated by the fact that, if the person who was alive chooses to remember them and passes down stories of who the spirit was to others, that spirit can continue to exist forever, for they shall still be remembered. That means that, by the logic of this page, Santa Anna, Porfilio Diaz, etc. should be in a similar situation to Ernesto at the end of the movie—so many people remember their wicked deeds that it's unlikely they'll ever get the sweet, sweet release of the Final Death.
• Look closely at Héctor's arms and legs. His right arm has a bone held together with rubber bands. His left leg has a bone held together with wire. We know from the Flashback that Héctor was healthy when he was murdered. This would indicate he broke those bones after his death when there was no way to mend the breaks. There's any number of ways he could have broken those bones in the afterlife. The way he's so careless with his own body, it's likely a method of staying loose to avoid more fractures that can't be fixed. Even being restored by Coco's memory and the new memories of people who now know the true story, those bones remain held together with whatever Hector had available at the time. Although Coco and Miguel saved his afterlife, he will always be a little broken beyond repair.
• After Héctor figures out that Ernesto murdered him, Ernesto tries to keep up appearances with young Miguel by gently instructing his security guards to, "Make sure he's taken care of. He's sick." However, one short conversation with Miguel later convinces Ernesto to have security take him too because He Knows Too Much. Without any specific further instructions, security takes Miguel to a 100ft deep sink hole to be forgotten... where he also finds Héctor there already. One can only conclude that Héctor and Miguel are not the first two people Ernesto has had "taken care of" this way...
• Fridge Horror only for anyone who believes the theory that all Pixar movies are connected: Assuming WALL•E is the canon future for Pixar Universe isn't exactly a happy thought when you realize: the Land of the Dead will be deserted because nobody will remember them. The passengers on the Axiom will be too busy to look back on their ancestors. (Worse, it will happen slowly and painfully, with BNL gradually taking over the world and overwriting cultural customs.)
• Just imagine how it must've been like in the Aztec underworld during the Spanish invasion, where millions of Central Americans perished, including entire family lines, which would certainly cause the "second deaths" of many spirits as well. One can imagine similar things for other cases of mass-death in the world, such as the Black Death, the Atlantic Slave Trade, the World Wars, and other atrocities.
• What about the cultures who don't have things like ofrendas, or consider speaking/thinking of the dead as taboo? Are they condemning their dead to second death? It's not clarified if a culture's beliefs change the afterlife.
• Mexico is actually full of members of The Cartel. That means that, unless the movie's universe is different, the afterlife is crowded with a lot of people that killed a lot of people without any mercy and smuggled drugs. And maybe military trained like the Los Zetas.
  • Worse yet, considering that Ernesto was still evil in death, it's likely that those Cartel members, mercenaries, and assassins are still doing horrible things even in death.
• It's never explained what would have happened to Héctor when he was sinking in the bridge had the guards not stopped him, but it probably wouldn't have been pleasant. One also has to wonder how many other times someone like him has done this and if that's the reason there are officers guarding the bridge in the first place.
• Just before the Riveras meet Imelda at customs, we see a family trying to solve some problem because they have to attend a dozen ofrendas... A WHOLE family, with little children, who maybe died recently all together in an accident and are sorely missed by many relatives and friends—hence their pictures appearing in so many altars.
• Had Miguel not been able to go back to the Land of the Living before dawn he would have died... But his family would have been none the wiser. There would be no corpse left behind, so Miguel's family would have assumed he followed the same shameful road as their despicable ancestor (minus the wife and kid): leaving his loved ones behind in order to pursue a ridiculous musical fantasy.
  • I mean, he's just a kid. There's a difference between abandoning your wife and kid as a grown man and running away from home in a tantrum as a kid. They'll be more sympathetic.
  • Alternatively, they might have came to a worse conclusion. Considering he's just a kid and ran away from home (as you see in the film itself, it's not really plausible he'd be able to follow the same road as his ancestor considering he's left with practically nothing), they've probably got worse worries. For all they know, Miguel's been kidnapped or murdered or lost somewhere while they have no idea how, where to or even if they can find him.
• Why did Ernesto already have fast-acting poison with him while he and Hector were on tour, ready for the “spur of the moment” decision to murder his best friend? Unless the decision to murder Hector wasn’t so spur of the moment, and Ernesto had been planning to kill him once they made it big so he wouldn’t have to share the glory.
  • Ernesto may have gotten the poison while on the tour, especially if the poison in question was arsenic, which is quite easy to obtain. He and Hector had been touring for some time, and there are indications Hector had been wanting to go back home for some time before he was poisoned. Ernesto could have convinced him to keep touring while secretly obtaining the poison if he couldn’t prevent Hector from returning home.
• Listen to Ernesto's speech on "how" he became famous in Miguel's video: "No one was going to hand me my dream, it was up to me to reach for it, grab it tight." Sounds inspirational at the time, until it turns out the wording sounds a lot like a metaphor for how he killed Hector, the real song writer. That is, on the night Hector decided to leave, he wasn't going to "hand" Ernesto the songs he wrote, so it was up to Ernesto to kill him in order to get the songs, "grab them tight", indeed.
• Either this or Black Comedy, a young man who appears to be Skrillex performs in the Battle of the Bands. It's possible that Skrillex somehow died in the Pixar universe.
  • Probably black comedy.
  • Or maybe the young man's a cover artist, who witnessed some relatives dancing and singing along to Skrillex last Day of the Dead, and really liked the (still-living) performer's style.
• I was just thinking this but, considering how old Elena is and how young her sister Victoria looks (to elaborate on this, Victoria looks to be in her mid-late 30s at the ver most) in the afterlife, which begs the question if she died young and exactly how she passed away. Likewise, though she looks to be in about her 40s or 50s, the same can be asked of Rosita and Imelda's brothers (especially since they died at the same time).
  • Word of God says that Victoria died at 62 (Whereas Elena is 68). Victoria just takes more after her grandmother, while Elena takes after her parents. Not helping is that they use a picture where she is at most in her 30s-40s at the end though.
• The dead only remain in the afterlife so long as the living remember them, meaning ordinary people fade relatively quickly while people infamous for their evil deeds stay there much longer. This article goes into detail on the horrifying repercussions of this famed-based system.
• A minor one, but when Miguel tells Ernesto he's his great grandson Ernesto replies "I have a great great grandson?" and then sort of just accepts it, meaning it isn't implausible he's left more than a few pregnant women behind. Now imagine how many of those descendants decided to emulate his murderous deeds in varying ways....
• A minor one, but think about that poor stagehand who accidentally leaned on the lever and caused the bell to fall at Ernesto's fatal concert. Yeah, we find out later that Ernesto got what he deserved, but that man probably carried around the guilt for that simple mistake for the rest of his life. Not to mention the blame he must've have gotten from Ernesto's fans for "killing" their idol.
  • Not only that but what if the stagehand was ostracized by the public to the point of his friends and family not putting him on their ofrenda out of shame?
• We are shown dead children, along with their families, in the Land of the Dead. While this is tragic enough, one has to wonder what happens to those who died in childhood, or in infancy, and have no relatives to look after them in the afterlife.
  • Considering how sympathetic and willing a lot of the dead strangers are to help Miguel, it's likely any stray kids would be taken care of, assuming they don't already have something set up for that in the Land of the Dead.
• The sheer, petty cruelty of Ernesto is mind-blowing.
  • Instead of the simple option of paying Hector for a copy of all his songs, he murders him.
  • Instead of even caring for the body or informing Hector's family, he doesn't notify any of them, much less send the body home to be buried or provide any funds to the widow and orphan who definitely needed them.
  • Instead of mentioning Hector in the biographical interviews, he pretends to have written everything and worked solo.
  • He never even mentions the heartbreaking story of his guitar, which would have been great for the camera. Even if all that people knew was that the guitar was a deathbed gift from his best friend, that would have been enough to keep Hector remembered. This is a BETTER story than just having made it himself. So Ernesto actually weakened his own story just to push Hector down further.
• Hector got VERY lucky Miguel was too stubborn to accept Imelda's blessing terms, preventing them from ever meeting and dooming him to being forgotten and his music never redeemed for the families both living and dead.
• Can you imagine if someone else was cursed for stealing the guitar from de la Cruz's crypt? It didn't actually belong to Ernesto, but the cursed spirit would have no idea who the guitar truly belonged to. They'd have no way to undo the curse and be trapped in the Land of the Dead for as long as the living remember them, all because the guitar itself was stolen by Ernesto.
• What if Hector had refused the drink offered by Ernesto? Would Ernesto have dragged Hector back inside and strangled him/forced the poison down his throat?
• Imagine if you're Imelda and Coco, still heartsick from Hector's apparent abandonment and struggling to build a family business, and then Ernesto de la Cruz becomes a big star. Meaning that everywhere they went (at least everywhere that wasn't the Rivera household), they probably had to hear Hector's songs blaring on the radio, listen to customers chatter about the latest de la Cruz film, etc etc. Even though Coco forgave her father, she probably refused to let any music be played in her home because so much of the radio would bring up painful memories. Especially the bastardized version of the lullaby her father wrote just for her.
  • Though, it's more likely she never got a chance to hear the bastardized version of "Remember me", given her mother refused to allow her to listen to any music. In a twist of cruel irony, Imelda's music ban was just as much a blessing as well as a curse, for protecting Coco from hearing her beloved childhood lullaby be twisted into a senseless womanizing show tune.
  • Given how the family thought Hector abandoned them, it is also likely that when Imelda started to hear Hector’s songs becoming Ernesto’s big hits, she believed even more that Hector left them for stardom. She likely overheard the real Remember Me and when it was turned into a show tune like Ernesto’s version, she thought Hector had betrayed his family by selling out his personal song.
• While Ernesto probably deserved it anyway, while many people are trying to forget about him presumably resulting in Final Death; it's more likely that he won't be considering how he probably will be remembered, but more as "that guy who murdered a man and stole his music" than a beloved celebrity. Which in a way must be a Fate Worse Than Final Death in the Land of the Dead to still be remembered except everybody in the Land of the Living hates you now.
• If a person's existence is preserved and perhaps molded by the stories and memories their descendants have of them and since all of the stories and memories of Coco involve either her as the daughter Imelda had to support or the family's senile matriarch does that suggest Coco is now forever trapped in her dotage as an adult child in the land of the dead?
  • That's basically the deal in the Land of the Dead, you go the very age you died. However, age has nothing to do with how it affects your relationship with your loved ones. Be it an old lady or a little girl, it doesn't change that Coco is Hector's beloved daughter. As for how they remember Coco, bear in mind that Coco won't simply be remembered as "Imelda's one daughter" or "the Rivera's senile matriarch": she'll be remembered as the Rivera who helped Miguel end the music ban on the family.
• Considering that the audience didn't see Ernesto poison Hector's drink, that's a good indication that Ernesto had been planning to kill Hector for a while before he actually did. Think about it. Hector and Ernesto had been traveling for months. Hector was terribly homesick. The way Ernesto protested and Hector replied, "This was YOUR dream." indicates that they had had that argument more than once, each time Hector becoming more insistent that he go back home. Perhaps he only traveled so long because Ernesto kept convincing Hector that once they got success, Hector could give his family the life he wanted to give them (remember, once Imelda and Coco no longer received letters from Hector, Imelda thought they were abandoned, and that was when she started making shoes, since Hector was no longer around). So Ernesto must have had the poison already prepared so that once Hector could no longer be persuaded to keep going, Ernesto could stop him permanently.
• At the end of Miguel's performance in the music festival, he and Hector end up falling out. In a fit of blind anger, Miguel throws away Hector's photo, while the latter reacts in horror and desperation, trying to get it back. Since the photo is the only way that Hector can avoid being Deader than Dead, Miguel indirectly put a forgotten afterlife dweller in danger, his ACTUAL relative no less!
  • Later in the movie, Ernesto steals Hector's picture and gets his bodyguards to prevent the latter's family from getting it back. This is practically a geyser of Fridge Horror for many reasons: Ernesto was leaving Hector to die a slow, painful death just like in the past, and judging by his determination to stop the photo from being retrieved, Ernesto WANTED Hector dead. As for the bodyguards, how would they react if they found out that the celebrity they were guarding was trying to kill someone by taking away their only saving grace from being forgotten?
• Coco is still elderly when she enters the Land of the Dead, and so was Héctor's friend, presumably. Since we know Héctor died young, does this mean that Imelda, Miguel's other relatives, and the other young skeletons in the afterlife (including the children we see in crowd shots) died young too?
• "Remember Me" is a ridiculously popular song, even among the deceased. In fact, it might be more popular in the Land of the Dead, since most of Ernesto's original fans have probably passed away by now. So that means Hector —particularly around Dia de los Muertos, when Ernesto has his yearly party — has to hear the bastardized version of the lullaby he wrote for the daughter he might never seen again, not to mention be constantly reminded of the fact that Ernesto never gave him credit for writing his songs, year in and year out, over and over again. Poor guy. (For that matter, it can't have been a picnic for Imelda, either.)
• The afterlife in Coco seems to be very hispanic-based, judging from what we saw. What happens to non-hispanic dead people in the Coco Universe?
• Just how many of those skeleton cops were murdered on duty when they were alive?
• Given Imelda's perception of events leading up to the alley confrontation, one can't help but wonder if Imelda thought Miguel had been Driven to Suicide.
• It seems that people cannot age in the Land of the Dead, as evidenced by the fact that Hector (who died at age 21) now appears to be physically younger than his own daughter (who died at age 100). So does that mean that the dead are permanently stuck in whatever stage of development they happened to die during? Because while that might not matter for people who died in adulthood, it's actually a huge deal for anybody who died young... including Hector himself. It's thought that the human brain only finishes developing at about age 25, which is a milestone that Hector never got to reach. If the dead have their brain development frozen in time the same way that their physical age freezes, then does Hector have a permanent cognitive disadvantage compared to people who died older than him? And how extreme does this get for people who died as very young children? Are dead kids doomed to be naive and dependent on others for all eternity, never able to truly grow or develop?
• Hector mentions that being forgotten is inevitable, and it would eventually happen to everyone. People don't usually trace back their entire lineage, and ancestors would get forgotten the further down the family tree goes. However, famous people are less likely to be forgotten from the public consciousness and would last longer in the Land of the Dead. This would mean that Hector, who has now received the fame he deserved, would likely outlive the rest of his family again, as they aren't as famous and will probably fade from people's memory much faster.
• The concept of the Second Death is tied to the fact that when the last person who remembers you dies, then you "fade away" because no one remembers you. Now imagine being that last person: You've just died, and you're excited to see your loved one again... only to learn that they vanished from the Land of The Dead the moment you entered it. In a way, you've caused their second death and have no way to apologize or make it right. Making it even worse is that, had Miguel not stepped in (most especially at the last minute upon his return to the living world), this exact thing would've happened to Coco. Imagine Coco, now at the Land of the Living Dead, will search for her father Hector. And providing that everyone at her dead family knows the truth about Hector but failed to rescue him at the last minute if Miguel fails to jog Coco's memory, she might realize that her father is Deader than Dead.
• Not only Ernesto is revealed to not be Miguel's lost great-great-grandfather, but he actually murdered said ancestor. When he starts offering his blessing to send back Miguel to the world of the livings, what would have happened if the petal ritual had been entirely completed, performed by a complete stranger who also killed one of his relatives? Nothing at all? Would it just work as intended? Or would it backfire and curse Miguel, worsening his condition even further?
  • It's likely that nothing would happen; you'll notice that the petal Ernesto picks up never glows, unlike any of Miguel's actual family members, where it starts to glow when they say his name.
• All those people who married into the Rivera family such as Julio, Franco, Luisa and Carmen had to give up music to do so. Miguel says they're the only family in Santa Cecelia who doesn't like music. That's a recipe for stigma, especially since the ones who married in probably still have families who love music. Did they have to fight with their families and possibly have to cut them off just to marry their partners? Rosita is Julio's sister, and yet she hangs around the Riveras and never mentions seeing any other family such as her parents or other siblings, despite only being related to the Riveras because her brother married one. Did Julio's family disapprove of him wanting to marry Coco and disown him, and Rosita left in protest? Or worse, did they disown her too for standing up for his choice to marry Coco?
• Three generations of Riveras (Coco/Julio, Elena/Franco, Carmen/Berto and Luisa/Enrique) had weddings without any music or dancing. Imagine what that had to be like, and how the in-laws’ family (if they still attended) as well as the in-laws themselves felt, especially when they might have previously dreamed of a lively wedding with music and dancing, and then not even being able to dance with their new spouses.
  • This doesn't just apply to weddings. Given that music is almost practically everywhere, chances are the Rivera family don't have much of social lives. How many of them were invited to events or hangouts, but couldn't go because of the music ban? They could either request there be no music, but risk the resentment of others for ruining the fun or not go, but allow others to give up on including them. Which can be supported by the fact that they didn't go out to the Día de los Muertos festival, even though they celebrate it.
• What happens to families that were a Single Line of Descent? Since the memories of people are usually passed down from stories to their children, an only child would have to remember a LOT. And what happens to those who are Last of His Kind? What happens after the last member of a family dies, or if the latest descendant dies childless and the family line is extinct? Unless that last member passed their stories to a dedicated friend, generations of people could face their Final Death.
• Ernesto throwing Miguel into the cenote is bad enough on its own, but consider what would have happened if Imelda hadn't found them. Miguel has cousins close to his age, which means that he could be trapped in there alone for sixty or seventy years. And that's assuming his family never talks about him. There's a good chance that, unlike Hector, they'd see him as a victim of his circumstances, and put his photo up, and tell his story, meaning it could be centuries before he'd get the relief of the Final Death.
• It's a good thing everyone else in the family was too scared to stand up to Imelda. Otherwise Miguel would have gone back to the world of the living without learning that Hector was his great-great-grandfather, and Hector would have eventually been forgotten.
• Although she's in the wrong for banning music, perhaps it was a good thing Imelda didn't focus on looking for her husband after he left. If she had come searching for him, and ran into Ernesto, there's a chance he would've done away with her when they were alone, so there would be nobody else snooping around for his murder victim. That would've left Coco an orphan who would later struggle in life to remember both her father and mother. So it was a good thing that Imelda focused on building a family, and good business to provide for them. And later in the (after)life, her family exposed the truth about Ernesto. Or given how Ernesto isn't above hurting a child like what he did to Miguel at the climax as a desparate attempt to keep his secret from being unburied to the living world, he would have both Imelda and Coco killed if Imelda decided to search for her husband.
  • Besides, in the Land of the Dead, there's no way Ernesto can do anything to hurt Imelda or the Riveras: they're already dead, so there's no way he can even kill them to silence them, even if he wanted to.
• Aside it being a joke about how Hispanic (and other non-Anglo) mothers and grandmothers overfeed kids, could it be possible Mama Elena's concern about Miguel being thin was related to the death of her sister? That maybe Victoria died young as a result of not seeming nourished enough? Especially how Victoria is very thin and looks younger than most of her fellow dead relatives, it's possible she was at the most in her 30s when she died and Elena (whether she knew the true cause of death or didn't know how) probably concluded her sister wasn't eating enough.

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