Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help.
It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread
for ongoing cleanup projects.
I don't think it is explicitly stated, it's by the very nature that Fridge Horror is something is only terrifying upon reflection. A lot of the "imagine if the character had died" entries are commenting on the explicit stakes of a scene—for it to be a proper example, I had the impression that whatever could have killed them needs to not be acknowledged by the work or narrative as dangerous.
Saying "imagine the PTSD nightmares this character will have" is definitely speculative on top of that. PTSD is not a guaranteed trauma response.
The issue with Fridge is that there doesn't actually seem to be consensus on what the exact rules for it are. I remember making a discussion to try and figure out how a cleanup should go but we never got anywhere. This is a gray area.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI definitely don't like those entirely speculative entries. You might as well just write "What if the main character died of a random heart attack?" on every single page. Why not? It can happen to people, and that's scary! Technically doing that isn't against any rules, right?
regulation pigeonThe problem with that example is that it assumes the characters will have life long PTSD. It's a theory not a certainty. We see them mourning, and moving on. If we revisited them at a later date and had proof of PTSD then it could count as FridgeHorror right?
I think there's a spectrum between confirmed to have PTSD, likely to have PTSD, and could have PTSD
Like, in the former, sure, Nightmare Fuel or Tearjerker. The story outright says it happens, no Fridge element.
You can have a character who is "likely to have PTSD", ie: "Bob has a history of it for other events, and surely the events of the story will just add to Bob's trauma." The story itself never covers Bob's emotional baggage from the story, but elements of the plot and bob's character make this outcome logical and likely if you think about it. This would be Fridge Logic.
"Everyone could have PTSD from this" is speculative troping. Especially if there's no sign to support any of them having a history of it or that it'd be how they respond to trauma.
Edited by GhilzFridge entries have to be things not addressed by the story one way or another. If they clearly do happen, that's not Fridge because it's explicit in the text. If they clearly don't happen, either because it's stated in the text that something else happened or because the rest of the story wouldn't be possible if it did, that's also not Fridge.
I guess the question here might be, could the rest of the story happen exactly as portrayed if the characters were suffering from PTSD?
Edited by KayubeWell, it's in future-tense. It's not claiming that the characters already have PTSD, it's presuming that they'll get it and then get nightmares from it.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallIf it's speculation is it FridgeHorror? Just checking the way the way the wind is blowing. Personally I'm ok with the example being gone. Is anybody feeling it should be re-added?
I don't see the problem with the entry. Overthinking the story and its potential consequences beyond what the story intends is what Fridge Horror is about at its core. Maybe it warrants further discussion?
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.Not really. Fridge Horror has to be based on something.
You could put "One shudders to imagine what PTSD nightmares are awaiting the surviving characters." on like...a hundred different work pages. It might even be accurate, but it's still a poor entry to the point of deserving deletion.
You could put that on the page for Finding Nemo for crying out loud.
Yeah, as much as a lot of valid Fridge Horror comes from ignoring the story's narrative to point out a dark aspect of the story, the dark aspect still has to be a logical consequence of the facts presented in the story. If it were a fact that people invariably develop crippling PTSD in response to all forms of trauma maybe it would count. But, to put it very simply, it is not, so it doesn't. Ghilz's explanation of when to add entries like that put it best imo.
Edited by OctoyaSo, after an in-depth discussion. I'm going to say by consensus alone the removal correct and matter resolved? Genuinely speaking not enough of a foundation to definitely call an example of FridgeHorror.

I just deleted a Fridge Horror entry "One shudders to imagine what PTSD nightmares are awaiting the surviving characters." I know that sort of thing has been discussed on the forums before, and it's disallowed on the same level of "imagine if she hadn't dodged and had been killed" Fridge Horror; the text isn't directly leading to that conclusion, it's a pure hypothetical. I'm just having trouble finding where the rules actually got written down. It's not on the page in question. Or hey, maybe I'm wrong and that's a valid example.
The page was Fridge.Arcane, for the record.