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This video was sponsored by World Anvil!

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100% guaranteed to not do terrible things
to supporting characters.

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I’ve talked about this before in its own
trope talk, but character deaths are a big

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deal.

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They’re momentous occasions both in-story
and out because not only is the character

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dead, which is obviously a bummer on its own,
but it also means the total loss of all future

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potential for a given character.

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All their arcs, dynamics, relationships, everything
- all lost in exchange for a one-shot gutpunch.

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Now most authors recognize that this is a
hefty loss for their story, so they make damn

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sure the impact is worth the price.

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True non-fakeout main character deaths are
often heroic sacrifices, protracted tragedies,

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or carefully-woven resolutions to their arcs
after all the loose ends have been tied up.

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They’re usually given time and narrative
weight to reflect this cost.

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The surviving characters will process their
grief, reflect on what the loss means to them,

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and are often fundamentally changed by the
experience - maybe carrying on their legacy,

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setting off on a lengthy quest for vengeance
or viewing their layered and complex life

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as a personal inspiration to guide their way
forward.

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This is not that trope.

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“Fridging” is the cute shortened form
of the full name of this trope, “stuffed

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in the fridge”, named for a now-infamous
issue of a Green Lantern comic where green

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lantern Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend is murdered
by the villain Major Force and stuffed in

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the fridge for him to find when he gets home.“Fridging”
is the very specific subset of character deaths

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wherein a character is unceremoniously and
brutally killed specifically and solely for

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the narrative purpose of hurting another,
more important character.

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This motivation can be watsonian or doylist
- as in, an in-universe villain motivation

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or out-of-universe authorial intent.

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In watsonian cases, the killer is specifically
motivated to kill the fridge-ee because it’ll

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hurt the character who cares about them.

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In doylist cases, the killer might have all
kinds of personal reasons to want to unceremoniously

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brutalize this character, but the author’s
motivation in killing this character is only

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to make the more important character upset.

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The only narrative role this death plays in-story
is hurting a different character, and it’s

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still framed as unceremonious and brisk.

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Fridging almost always refers to character
deaths, but sometimes the character is instead

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subjected to some kind of horrible torture
or fate worse than death with the same overall

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impact - the character that really matters
isn’t the one targeted for the horror, but

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the hero who’s reacting to it, and the fridge-ee’s
personal reaction to their awful situation

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is usually glossed over in favor of how much
that focus character suffers by proxy.

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Because of Reasons, fridging disproportionately
affects female characters, often barely-developed

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moms or love interests whose only salient
character traits are “the hero likes them”,

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so when they’re brutalized or murdered,
often offscreen, their more nuanced male hero

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fam slash love interests can become deeply
unhappy about it.

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In fact, there’s a very easy litmus test
to help determine if a character death constitutes

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“fridging” or not: if it could happen
entirely offscreen and have just as much impact

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on the story - especially if it does happen
offscreen - it’s probably fridging.

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Its only narrative impact is how it bums out
the more important characters with no exploration

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of how it affects the character actually being
brutalized or killed.

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Getting killed offscreen is such a dismissive
f*ck-you to a character.

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There’s no sendoff, no admission of tragedy
- the character becomes nothing more than

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a plot device for someone else’s angst.

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Side character or not, nobody deserves that.

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Now the “offscreen” test isn’t quite
enough to say if a death is fridging or not.

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See, while fridging is intended solely to
upset another character, well-written character

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deaths almost always upset the other characters
too - and since the character themself is

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usually too dead to care, most of the lingering
ramifications of their death only affect the

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other characters, typically by… upsetting
them.

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So the distinction between a fridging death
and a non-fridging death isn’t immediately

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obvious from just this definition.

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The key difference is a fridging usually makes
the other characters upset briefly and shallowly,

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while a solid character death makes the other
characters grieve.

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Frequently, fridged characters are never spoken
of again after the arc they died in is resolved,

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or even before it’s resolved.

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(Try and convince me that Luke Skywalker was
still bummed about Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru

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ten minutes later.)

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So as a second fridging litmus test I’d
like to propose a corollary of the iconic

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Sexy Lamp Test, which explores if a story
would meaningfully change if a character was

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replaced with a sexy lamp.

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This is the property damage test.

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If a dead character could be replaced by someone’s
prized pokemon card collection and their loss

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would have the same or more emotional impact
on the plot, that character was probably fridged.

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Now this is kind of a rarity for this show
- but Fridging is a bad trope.

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It’s not a frequently misused trope or a
hard to handle trope, it’s bad writing.

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Character deaths are not bad trope-wise, but
fridging specifically indicates a lack of

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respect for the fridged character and their
narrative potential.

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Fridging weighs a character’s potential
worth to the story and concludes that all

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their future potential and growth and dynamics
in the narrative are worth less than another

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character feeling kinda bad for a little while.

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This is reflected both outside of the story
and in the story, since this character’s

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killer - be it the character who kills them
or the author who makes the call - demonstrably

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couldn’t give a sh*t about them in their
own right, instead choosing to focus entirely

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on how ending this character’s life will
make another character upset for an arc or

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two.

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Their own life and death isn’t as important
or deserving of focus as hurting the hero

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by proxy.

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This successfully indicates that the killer
is a terrible person, but it also reflects

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a level of dismissiveness from the author.

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A love interest/beloved character can be killed
(or deeply, deeply hurt) in a way that predominantly

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affects the plot by hurting another character
- without it feeling like fridging.

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This is largely a matter of the execution,
pun intended.

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If the death is unceremonious and quick (and
offscreen), that’s a pretty bad sign, since

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it doesn’t really give the character their
due - it doesn’t highlight the tragedy of

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their life and potential lost, it just focuses
on why and how this makes the main character

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sad.

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Every character is the hero of their own story,
and if they die just to further someone else’s,

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it denies that character the basic dignity
of being their own person, who exists as more

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than just a prop in someone else’s life.

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It takes their death and the loss of their
entire future life and minimizes it down into

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a short, brief emotional impact on another
character.

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It's dismissive.

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Now we’re about to enter the Spicy Take
Zone, because you know the MCU is my old favorite

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punching bag, but personally this is how I
felt about most of the major character permadeaths

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in Infinity War and Endgame, especially Gamora
and Black Widow.

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Loki and Vision do die fairly quickly and
unceremoniously primarily to hurt the characters

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invested in them, but they’re given narrative
weight and some dignity in the process - it

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feels unfair and tragic in-universe that they
couldn’t be saved, rather than feeling like

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bad writing.

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But Gamora… well, it’s actually kinda
fascinating.

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In the two movies she’d been in, her entire
arc had centered on escaping Thanos and his

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deeply fucked-up abusive parenting situation,
healing and growing as a person and learning

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to trust and even love her new friends.

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Her dynamic with Nebula was following that
same track - realizing they weren’t enemies,

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but victims of the same terrible situation
and the same manipulative, tortuous narcissist.

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Thanos’s shadow looms large over Gamora’s
arc as the root cause of all the pain and

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suffering in her life and the thing that scares
her most that she’s constantly fighting

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to escape.

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In Infinity War, Thanos is told by Red Skull
that in order to get the soul stone he has

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to sacrifice something he loves.

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So he kills Gamora.

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Like, permanently.

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She's dead.

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Now that’s bad enough.

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It’s worse that it works.

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Gamora believes that Thanos is incapable of
love - and quite frankly, by every indication,

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she’s right.

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He’s a raging narcissist who can’t see
past his own chins and this should have been

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the test of character that screwed him over.

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(And, also, like… “you must kill your
loved one to get this powerful macguffin and

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become strong” is like, baby’s first obvious
secret test of moral character, and it’s

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frankly criminal that killing your loved ones
was actually the only way to get the stone.

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That's just lazy writing!

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Like, you- you had the grimdark option and
you had the actually interesting option and

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you picked grimdark cuz you thought grimdark
was AUTOMATICALLY more interesting.

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That's just disappointing.)

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Anyway - but it’d be bad enough if they
just undercut Gamora’s whole personal arc

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by saying that the irredeemably evil overarching
supervillain who slaughtered her people and

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tortured her and Nebula for decades actually
truly loved her all along.

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It crosses the line twice by having him prove
that he loved her by murdering her.

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Gamora’s entire arc and place in the narrative
is undercut and sacrificed to give Thanos

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a character trait that makes no sense for
him and to make Starlord sad so he acts dumb

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in the finale - oh, and to make Thanos sad,
which is given more focus and weight than

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Starlord being sad.

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Because obviously making the pure evil villain
kinda bummed out was worth the cost of one

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of Marvel’s most interesting heroines.

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Like, I see what they were going for, but
it… it didn't work well, it was a bad idea,

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and it completely undercut everything Gamora
had had in the previous movies, which is very

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disappointing.

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Meanwhile, Black Widow’s death is similar
to Gamora’s but is bad for different reasons

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- because unlike Gamora, who had too much
character weight and potential to warrant

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her unceremonious death, Black Widow was completely
underutilized by every other movie she’d

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been in with the arguable exception of Winter
Soldier.

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We had this franchise for a decade and we
never got an arc for Widow that was deeper

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than "she's hot" or "she's boning the Hulk".

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This made her narratively disposable, but
you can tell that the writers realized she

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was too disposable for it to be impactful,
because for the first half of Endgame they

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speedrun the whole characterization process
by suddenly giving her some character focus,

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a dynamic with the other heroes and an alleged
personal arc about treasuring the avengers

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as a found family all along.

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It was an attempt to make up for lost time
so we’d be sold on her Heroic Sacrifice,

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but it was clearly token.

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The fact that the movie completely stopped
acknowledging her death five minutes after

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they got back is really just kind of indicative
of how little she actually mattered.

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Tony’s heroic sacrifice got every hero in
the MCU paying their respects, a protracted

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funeral scene and an entire movie about how
hard it is for the MCU to move on without

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him - Tasha got a bench in a lake and a solo
movie a year and a half after she died.

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If we were supposed to believe she really
mattered, the story should’ve acted like

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it.

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And it should've acted like it for longer
than just, like, the hour long windup to her…

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dying.

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To advance the plot.

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For stupid, contrived reasons.

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Was she just getting to expensive?

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Is that what the problem was?

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I mean, come on, guys.

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And it’s kind of telling that the MCU has
rolled back or undercut all four of those

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deaths in one way or another.

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Loki and Gamora have time-displaced versions
with zero character development running around

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to replace their more interesting dead versions,
Vision got an actual proper sendoff in Wandavision

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and Wanda got to actually grieve, plus he’s
got his own not-quite-the-same copy running

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around now for future appearances, and of
course Black Widow is finally getting that

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solo movie we were promised, which is a damn
hard sell at this point now that she’s already

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dead and thus, frankly, irrelevant.

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If the deaths had been properly impactful
and narratively worth the cost, none of this

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rollback would have been necessary.

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Now in fairness, the fact of the matter is
that characters are not… real people.

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Characters are parts of a story and they exist
to further a narrative, and some of them really

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are just props in other character’s lives.

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And that's not a morally bad thing.

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But the story probably shouldn’t make you
think that!

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Sure, we the audience may be able to guess
that the hero’s small peaceful town and

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stern but fair father figure just exist to
get torched by the dark lord in episode one

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to set up the inciting incident and set them
on the hero’s journey, but the hero doesn’t

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know that, and that's what's supposed to be
important about this!

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To the hero that’s their whole world!

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Torching that town and icing that father figure
offscreen just tells the audience that the

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hero might theoretically care, but we don’t
have to and the story won't really convince

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you that the hero DOES care.

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It disconnects us from someone we’re supposed
to be relating to, and it undercuts the emotional

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impact of the death when the emotional impact
of the death is the only thing this trope

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has!

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Now if the father figure had been with us
for, say, two seasons or the first act or

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two of a movie - serving as a mentor figure,
for instance - we’d expect him to die with

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some fanfare, and we'd be weirded out and
upset if he didn't.

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A heroic sacrifice, a dying monologue, an
admission that the hero made him a better

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man and so very proud, several references
to him after he dies so we remember how he

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affected the hero’s journey - if we didn’t
get that kinda thing we’d feel cheated.

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But just because we the audience haven’t
seen the chapter 1 dead dad for very long,

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the author feels comfortable torching the
place offscreen after a single expository

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line of dialogue and then expects us to feel
for the hero when the story hasn’t made

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this death feel meaningful!

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In this structure, the amount of weight a
character death is given is not proportionate

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to how important the character is, it's proportional
to how much screentime the character was given,

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which has nothing to do with how the characters
should be reacting to this loss.

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Fridging is a very disliked trope for several
reasons.

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For one thing, you’ll be hard-pressed to
find a heroic death trope people that like.

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Heroic sacrifices are basically the only one
that’s even halfway appreciated, since for

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the most part killing a character is gonna
feel bad.

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But more importantly, fridging lacks the counterbalancing
qualities that can make a character death

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feel satisfying or earned.

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A hero might die gallantly defending their
loved ones, which is heartwarmingly heroic,

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with an element of free will and choice - or
fully at peace with their fate, making their

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death a natural conclusion to their arc - or
with some other caveat that makes the audience

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believe that their death works to end their
personal arc.

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And if their death is tragic and unfair, it’ll
often be tortuously prolonged to really drive

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home to the audience that, yeah, sorry, it’s
not a fluke or a fakeout, this character isn’t

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making it through this one.

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For a classic Fullmetal Alchemist example
- spoiler alert - Maes Hughes, professional

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funnyman and sweetheart, is unexpectedly killed
fairly early in the series because he figured

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out the overarching plot way too early so
the villains needed him out of the way.

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His death serves as a major motivation for
most of the heroes, most notably Roy Mustang

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- but it’s not just a token heroic motivator
to get the protagonists in gear.

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It feels awful.

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It’s tragic, it’s unfair, he fights very
hard to stop it from happening, his wife and

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daughter are devastated, and the ramifications
are felt all the way up to the finale.

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This death would not work the same if it happened
offscreen and could not be replaced by a binder

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of pokemon cards.

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It means too much to the story, so it’s
not fridging.

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Fridged characters do not get this kind of
treatment - and frankly they’re lucky if

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they get personal arcs at all.

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They die only to make another, more important
character feel sad or mad.

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It’s not a heroic sacrifice, they have no
agency in it, they’re not at peace with

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it and their personal arcs (if they get them)
aren’t neatly resolved in time for it.

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Their death or brutalization is cruel and
unfair because it’s designed to feel cruel

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and unfair to the character they’re supposed
to hurt or motivate, but as a result it undercuts

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the only semi-okay parts of character deaths
and just makes the experience relentlessly

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unpleasant and catharsis-free for the audience.

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Now this is not a mistake - this is an intentional
part of the trope, because it essentially

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sets up an unstable narrative situation the
protagonist must now work to stabilize and

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resolve - usually by hunting down and stopping
the killer.

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This is a motivation that starts an arc, so
it’s not meant to feel like an arc resolution,

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which is often the only part of a character
death the audience halfway appreciates.

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But it betrays a fundamental dismissal of
the fridged character, which undercuts the

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very emotional impact they’re trying to
invoke.

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As an example, when Alan Moore wrote the Killing
Joke, Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, is shot,

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paralyzed and brutalized by The Joker - entirely
to upset Jim Gordon and Batman and kick off

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one last terrible joke.

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She’s not even killed, but how this traumatic
event affects her is… entirely glossed over

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in-story.

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In fact, all she says to Batman afterwards,
from her hospital bed, is how worried she

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is about what the joker’s gonna do to her
dad.

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It's heroic of her to be concerned, but that’s
not why her reaction was written that way.

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Barbara didn’t matter to this story.

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Alan Moore has actually said he kinda regrets
treating her that way - he thinks his editor

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probably should’ve reined him in instead
of responding with, and I am apparently quoting,

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“yeah, okay, cripple the bitch.”

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That fundamental dismissiveness on the part
of the creator really does drive home that

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fridging is a fundamentally broken trope.

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If the author doesn’t care about the character
enough to give their pain narrative weight,

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they’ll have a very hard time convincing
the audience to care when they suffer.

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The only way the author can make the audience
care in this situation is by making this unimportant

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death hurt another, more important character
- but since the author doesn’t care about

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the fridged character, they’ll have a hard
time writing the more important character’s

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reaction to their fridging!

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The more important character cares more about
the fridged character than the author does,

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so how is the author supposed to write their
grief when they clearly can’t even imagine

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it?

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00:14:17,480 --> 00:14:20,060
It comes across as shallow and hollow because,
on a very real level, it is.

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A fridging isn’t just lacking in resolution
- it’s usually lacking in real emotional

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weight.

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We’re lucky if we really know the character
who dies, and if we don’t, then killing

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them only affects us by how it affects the
characters who care about them, and only if

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we care about those characters in turn.

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Killing off a character we’re not invested
in tells us that character was never going

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00:14:36,769 --> 00:14:40,160
to matter on their own merit, which can disengage
the audience from the story as a whole.

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So opening a story by fridging someone sends
a pretty clear message to the audience that

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most characters don’t matter, which speedruns
the “disengaged audience” problem right

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out the gate.

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Fun fact, this is how Supernatural begins.

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I tried watching it way back when and lost
interest after the first season or so, but

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I remember the pilot cuz it’s burned into
my brain.

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Even at the time I could kinda tell the writing
wasn’t working.

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First scene: we meet our protagonists as young
children in an idyllic home with their father

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and mother.

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00:15:04,079 --> 00:15:06,209
Smash cut to the night, their father wakes
up to see his wife stuck to the ceiling with

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00:15:06,209 --> 00:15:07,209
a horrified expression.

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Then she explodes and the house burns down.

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00:15:09,170 --> 00:15:12,200
Smash cut to the main plot: it's a couple
decades later, brother #1 is in college and

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has a girlfriend, brother #2 shows up and
tries to give him a call to adventure to make

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00:15:14,980 --> 00:15:16,220
the actual plot happen.

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Brother #1 refuses because he’s got so much
going for him in his personal life right now.

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00:15:19,730 --> 00:15:22,769
Then brother #1's girlfriend gets stuck to
the ceiling and explodes so it's time for

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00:15:22,769 --> 00:15:23,769
a road trip!

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00:15:23,769 --> 00:15:25,839
The first time it happened it was kinda spooky.

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00:15:25,839 --> 00:15:28,470
The second time it happened I actually laughed.

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I looked this up to make sure I was remembering
the details right, and apparently in the plot

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00:15:31,860 --> 00:15:35,440
both of these women were killed specifically
because the bad guy had plans for the protagonist

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- and in the case of the girlfriend, he’s
the one who introduced them in the first place

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specifically so he could manipulate the protagonist
by killing her.

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00:15:40,569 --> 00:15:41,569
That’s just…

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00:15:41,569 --> 00:15:42,569
I mean, god.

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That’s so funny.

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That's the PILOT.

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00:15:44,569 --> 00:15:46,060
No wonder death is meaningless in this show.

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So fridging tries to have things both ways.

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00:15:48,670 --> 00:15:51,980
It gives us a character who clearly doesn’t
matter on their own and then kills them in

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00:15:51,980 --> 00:15:55,050
a way that highlights that they didn’t matter
to the story by their own merit, but then

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00:15:55,050 --> 00:15:58,720
tries to tell us that their death really really
mattered to the character we’re supposed

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00:15:58,720 --> 00:16:00,000
to sympathize with.

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00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:03,839
It’s like the worst kind of damsel in distress
- a character in trouble whose only trait

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00:16:03,839 --> 00:16:05,750
we’re given to care about is that they’re
in trouble.

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00:16:05,750 --> 00:16:07,570
It’s almost the epitome of tell don’t
show.

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00:16:07,570 --> 00:16:10,870
If we don’t care about the character and
they die quickly and unceremoniously, we never

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have a reason to care.

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00:16:11,940 --> 00:16:15,000
If we do care about the character and they
die quickly and unceremoniously and all we

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00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:18,960
focus on is how bad it makes someone else
feel, it feels like a bad use of their potential

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00:16:18,960 --> 00:16:21,970
and makes us aware of the hand of the author,
which is never a good thing.

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00:16:21,970 --> 00:16:26,399
Now some authors recognize this without really
recognizing the problem, and will try to play

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00:16:26,399 --> 00:16:27,470
it one of two ways.

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00:16:27,470 --> 00:16:30,779
In one school of thought, the soon-to-be-fridged
character will suddenly be given an unprecedented

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00:16:30,779 --> 00:16:34,180
amount of onscreen focus and a handful of
purposefully heartwarming or cute character

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00:16:34,180 --> 00:16:37,880
traits to quickly get the audience invested
in this hitherto non-character so it feels

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00:16:37,880 --> 00:16:39,509
halfway momentous when they die.

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00:16:39,509 --> 00:16:42,790
I like to call this the Whedon School Of Fridging,
or the Coulson Effect.

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This is the author’s attempt to speedrun
the Getting The Audience Invested process

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00:16:45,720 --> 00:16:50,339
without having to actually make the character
stand on their own, or, like… matter.

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00:16:50,339 --> 00:16:54,090
And on the flipside, sometimes a fridged character
will give some kind of token justification

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00:16:54,090 --> 00:16:58,040
for why their death is Okay Actually, usually
along the lines of “I’m at peace now”

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00:16:58,040 --> 00:17:01,450
or “I already have everything I wanted”
or “the real treasure was our friendship”

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00:17:01,450 --> 00:17:02,450
or something.

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00:17:02,450 --> 00:17:05,800
This is an attempt to kludge together a “satisfying
character resolution” so it doesn’t feel

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00:17:05,800 --> 00:17:10,370
completely unceremonious, but it suffers from
the fact that the fridged character definitely

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00:17:10,370 --> 00:17:11,760
didn’t have an arc leading up to it.

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00:17:11,760 --> 00:17:15,171
It doesn’t fully counterbalance the disengaging
gutpunch of an unceremonious character death

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00:17:15,171 --> 00:17:17,280
because it feels token and disconnected.

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00:17:17,280 --> 00:17:20,800
If the character’s arc was really resolved,
we probably shouldn’t need to hear them

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00:17:20,800 --> 00:17:24,860
say it out loud seconds before they die - it’s
like how we shouldn’t need to hear the characters

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00:17:24,860 --> 00:17:27,623
say “I love you” to know they’re in
love, you know?

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00:17:27,623 --> 00:17:29,960
“I love you” shouldn’t be a surprise
to the audience and neither should “I’m

348
00:17:29,960 --> 00:17:33,740
totes cool with death now” - both just end
up feeling like a way to compensate for inadequate

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00:17:33,740 --> 00:17:34,740
writing last-minute.

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00:17:34,740 --> 00:17:38,640
You may recall, Black Widow’s death in Endgame
did both of these things, and it was bad,

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00:17:38,640 --> 00:17:41,480
because neither of these writing tricks make
up for wasted character potential.

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00:17:41,480 --> 00:17:44,310
Avoiding fridging is a matter of giving the
character their narrative due.

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00:17:44,310 --> 00:17:47,800
It’s about treating them like they really
are the hero of their own story and writing

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00:17:47,800 --> 00:17:51,570
their death or brutalization as if that’s
where the story actually ends.

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00:17:51,570 --> 00:17:54,980
How much more impactful would a fridging be
if the story actually acted like an important

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00:17:54,980 --> 00:17:56,590
story was ending with their death?

357
00:17:56,590 --> 00:18:01,120
And how many riots would there be if an actually
important main character was iced as unceremoniously

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00:18:01,120 --> 00:18:02,530
as these fridging victims are?

359
00:18:02,530 --> 00:18:05,850
If Captain America had gone over that cliff
with a token little half-smile and an "I'm

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00:18:05,850 --> 00:18:09,120
at peace now" there would've been f*ckin'
riots in the streets and you know it.

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00:18:09,120 --> 00:18:13,710
I guess this is another trope that just boils
down to “it’s better to write actual characters

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00:18:13,710 --> 00:18:17,120
with agency and personal goals instead of
people-shaped plot devices.”

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00:18:17,120 --> 00:18:19,150
It's funny how often that happens.

364
00:18:19,150 --> 00:18:20,150
So… yeah?

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00:18:20,150 --> 00:18:22,000
And thanks again to World Anvil for sponsoring
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00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:25,130
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