StuffedInTheFridge / DisposableWoman distinction?

What exactly is the difference between Stuffed in the Fridge and Disposable Woman?

Stuffed is "A character is killed to cause someone else anguish", while Disposable is "A character that exists to be killed to cause someone else anguish."

Doesn't seem like there's any significant distinction between them. I correct Stuffed examples all the time but I get the feeling that I'm not understanding the trope(s).

Discussed Recently in the duplicate cleanup thread.

Stuffed in the Fridge is where the love interest is killed by the villain to raise the stakes of the story and the rivalry with the hero. Disposable Woman is about how easy it is to kill the female love interest out of the story for some drama. The connotations of "fridging" is that the death is targeted, deliberate and cruelly set-up (ie, presenting the body in the fridge to be discovered), while disposable woman is either a "casualty of war" or an unspecified Soap Opera Disease. Both do have commentary about the overuse of killing women as a source of male pain, though technically Stuffed in the Fridge is not gender specific.

Actually, our definition of SITF isn't that. It's about killing someone in a brutal way and then displaying them.

You are right that the death has to be brutal, but it has to be done specifically to torment the hero. Without the "cause the hero pain" angle that would just be Dead Guy on Display. Otherwise EmeraldSource's definition hits the nail on the head.

I did note in the other thread that "fridging" in popular use is a lot broader than our definition of it.

Also, neither are actually required to be love interests, they just commonly are.

Given the misuse I think we should just rename Stuffed in the Fridge.

Misuse?

That's going to be tricky because Stuffed in the Fridge is an existing term with wide usage outside of TV Tropes. If the case we want to make is that it's too broad to be definable as a trope, then we need to at least preserve the name to explain the terminology.

The thing is, the way we define Stuffed in the Fridge "Someone is killed gruesomely and their corpse is displayed for their loved one to see", is much more narrow than how it's used outside this wiki. Much of the misuse is due to people using the common definition of Stuffed in the Fridge instead of our definition. On top of that, being "Fridged" is a term that gets misused a lot. I remember reading about how Gail Simone herself felt people were misapplying the term to any time a female character gets hurt. To me, the name is a contributing factor to the trope's misuse.

We try to catalog terminology that has caught on to real world use, but there is often a disconnect between our definition and how it tends to be used elsewhere. Our definition of MacGuffin is slightly different from the way professionals use it and the general public.

Stuffed in the Fridge has a more precise definition than many understand, but it's such a fine line that many bad examples are not exactly harmful misuse. I recall Gail Simone even argued with people on Twitter that Vanessa's death in Deadpool 2 wasn't fridging because of the exact definitions given (not targeted, not done to mock the hero, spiritually reappeared several times throughout the movie).

I am planning to do a wick check for SITF if that helps.

Ping me when you start; this is a pet peeve trope of mine so I wanna help

Sandbox Here. I'm also adding it to the Wick Check project sandbox, so if you want to work on it, feel free.

Something went wonky when I was adding examples and it looks like I accidentally deleted a bunch. Sorry!

I think we both checked the Hitman Contracts wick but put it in different folders LOL

I haven't played Hitman Contracts, but it was definitely not an example. Agent 47 is like a clone or specially trained super soldier or something, no? He doesn't have any loved ones to kill. It's just a (needlessly descriptive) colloquial usage.

Is the Anime.Wolverine example in the correct folder? It's listed in correct usage, but lacks context. All I get from the example is someone dies, causing someone else to want vengence.

I removed Hitman from "ZCE / Partial Context / Stray Potholes", and left the same example in "Disposable Woman / Colloquial Usage" and moved Wolverine to Partial Context.

Edited by Eagal on Apr 30th 2021 at 9:39:50 AM

So what I'm thinking is SITF has four requirements:

1. Loved one (or someone otherwise liked by the heroes)
2. Is brutally hurt/tortured/murdered
3. As a targeted effort by the villain
4. To cause pain to the heroes.

Our current folder "Disposable Woman and other colloquial use" covers 1 and 2 (minus the brutal requirement). I think we should have a separate folder for "villain goes after hero's loved one" (1, 3, and 4) but doesn't specify the horrificness of the crime. Because there's a difference between

• Bob's wife is killed by a drone strike and this motivates him to join the army (Disposable Woman)
• Bob's nemesis Colonel Murder cleanly assassinates Bob's wife to get back at him (Stuffed into the Fridge but without the brutal part).

That would cover PlayingWith.Angsty Surviving Twin and possibly others.

Also, I see a couple of literal 'bodies in fridges' examples, might be worth splitting those off into their own folder as well.

Thanks for adding examples, though I'd have preferred it if ya'll alphabetized them Not the end of the world though. It looks like we'll get this thing done in no time.

The new folder idea also sounds good.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 30th 2021 at 2:23:46 PM

I can get behind that.

They are alphabetized by work name, not by medium.

I guess that's fine, I always alphabetize by both though, so I didn't realize. (So Anime/ always goes above Literature/, but Anime/BobAndAlice goes before Anime/KingCharles.)

Again though, no big deal.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 30th 2021 at 2:28:38 PM

I'm also gonna tweak the Anime.Mobile Suit Gundam 00 example — one doesn't have to be a love interest to be SITF'd. In practice it's a list of names that the example claims were stuffed.

EDIT: And I think Anime.Ranpo Kitan Game Of Laplace fits Disposable Woman, since the sister's death motivates the guy to become...something.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 30th 2021 at 1:52:43 PM

Went into a trance and got us to the big 5-0.

Is "exploded" brutal enough to count as correct? I put these two examples in the 'targeted death' folder because I wasn't sure:

1. Characters.Alex Rider Protagonists: "Invoked by Razim. Jack is blown up by a landmine just to make Alex cross the Despair Event Horizon because Razim wished to see how much emotional pain it would cause Alex. But it's actually just an empty car; Jack was extracted and the car detonated later."
2. Recap.Young Justice S 3 E 9 Home Fires: " Defied. The Light is well aware that they could easily go after the heroic Justice League's families to hurt them, but doing so is the 'nuclear option' that would make the League come after them with a vengeance. Lady Shiva even offs Ocean-Master for trying to bomb the playdate."

I think so. Being blown to smithereens is a pretty brutal way to go IRL.

Anyway, sweet! Into the Completed Folder it goes

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 30th 2021 at 3:30:51 PM