History Fridge / ArrestedDevelopment

* In-universe: The destruction Buster caused when the army exploited his man-child innocence by assignment Buster to what he ''thinks'' is a video game. Buster does not react well upon the revelation.

* Both times, the show ends with the characters forced to move on and their arrested developmnet ends.

* "Cinco de Cuatro" is actually meaningless nonsense, roughly translating as "five of" a specific four-stringed instrument, similar to a ukelele. This actually makes sense when you take into account how little Lucille cares about other ethnicities and learning more about them.

*** Most of the show's characters (G.O.B., Michael, Lindsay, Buster, Tobias, Maeby) are in a [[ManChild permanent state of immaturity]]. Even those who are not are [[StaticCharacter unable to make significant changes and are trapped in the patterns that define them]].

* With the reveal at the end of season 5 Buster is basically doomed, his crime was exposed at a public event, and as it was a mistrial, not a pronouncement of innocence, he's not covered under double jeopardy.

* With the reveal at the end of season 5 Buster is basically doomed, at a public event his crime was exposed and, as it was a mistrial not a pronouncement of innocence he's not covered under double jeopardy.

* In-universe: The destruction Buster caused when the army exploited his man-child innocence by assignment Buster to what he ''thinks'' is a video game. Buster does not react well upon the revelation.'

* The episode where Justine Bateman cameos, Michael is surprised and disturbed by her trying to seduce him (since she's a prostitute), thinking that they're related. Well of course, they are.

*** Most of the show's characters (Lindsay, Gob, Buster, Tobias, Maeby) are in a [[ManChild permanent state of immaturity]]. Even those who are not are [[StaticCharacter unable to make significant changes and are trapped in the patterns that define them]].

* "Cinco de Cuatro" actually means "five of four". This actually makes sense when you take into account how little Lucille cares about other ethnicities and learning more about them. (She calls her Korean son "Annyong" because she thinks it's a name instead of a greeting.)

* [=DeBrie=] was in a ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' movie that ended up being so bad, it got featured on ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000''. But it gets worse when you look at the details: the movie was made in 1992 and the episode featured Joel. Since Joel left the show in 1993, that means the movie managed to get on ''[=MST3K=]'' in ''less than a year''. (Then again, licensing the film out to the show could've been the only way to recoup the costs.) The production is based on Creator/RogerCorman's infamous adaptation, filmed in less than a month and intended for release in 1994. This means the version shown in Arrested Development is not only so bad they could only get the [=MST3K=] version, it was even more of a disaster than the real life one.

* GOB is of course, short for George Oscar Bluth, a bizarre combination of nickname and monogram. Where could they have come up with this? Possibly from John Ellis Bush, better known to us as Jeb (once you see the parallels between the Bluths and the Bushes, you cannot unsee them).

* The sheer randomness of health guru Richard Simmons as the celebrity spokesman of a the Cornballer.

* One of the plotlines in the ''third season'' is [[spoiler:whether Lindsay was adopted, which would mean that George Michael and Maeby were not biological cousins, and free to pursue a romantic relationship.]] In the very first episode, the narrator referred to "George Michael's cousin, Maeby" ("George Michael's cousin, maybe.")

* None of the Bluth children use their real name: Michael is actually Nichael due to a typo on the birth certificate, [[spoiler:Lindsay's real name is Nellie]], George always goes by GOB, Byron is always called Buster and Annyong's real name is [[spoiler:Hel-loh]].
* On a similar note regarding the names of George and Lucille's children, notice how most of the Bluth family seems to have the names George, Michael and Oscar or some variation of those names. The only kids to not have these names are Lindsay, Buster and Annyong [[spoiler: which makes sense seeing as they're not really George and Lucille's kids - Lindsay and Annyong were both adopted and Buster is Oscar's son, not George's.]]
* So who is [[spoiler: Buster's]] father? Although the last episode of Season 2 essentially reveals that it's [[spoiler: Oscar]], [[spoiler: Buster]] will never know for sure because [[spoiler: as twins, George and Oscar share the same DNA.]]

* There are oh, ''oh'' so many hints dropped throughout the show that [[spoiler:Lucille was really the one responsible for all the awful things the company did,]] the most blatant being her telling the press that George is "hardly a criminal mastermind" in the pilot episode. But the one that makes it the most obvious is that George, for all his schemes, manipulations and so forth, is the only one of the two consistently shown to actually ''care'' about his kids--from his distress at Michael and GOB falling off the balcony to his constant thanking of Michael for looking out for him to paying off his inmates so they won't sexually harass Lindsey when she visits him. (His complete disregard for Buster can be explained by the fact that [[spoiler:Buster's not his son, and his resentment of Oscar over the affair could easily have trickled onto Buster, especially given that he was left to raise him after having already gotten three kids.]]) Any moment Lucille appears to have of genuine emotion, on the other hand, always turns out to be just another way of manipulating them. In fact, George Sr. [[spoiler:taking the hit]] is easily explained by the fact that he seems to genuinely care for Lucille even if Lucille doesn't seem to reciprocate.

* In the third episode of Season 1, George Sr. tells Michael that Buster spent eleven months in the womb. [[spoiler: Lucille likely slept with Oscar at a time when George Sr. was unavailable, then covered up the affair by lying about how long she'd been carrying the resultant child. This is not only consistent with such [[ConsummateLiar classic Lucille shenanigans]] as raising Lindsay to believe she's three years younger than she is, but also serves to explain how Oscar can be so confident that Buster is his son, given that there's no way to test paternity.]]

* [[spoiler: Michael hooked up with Rebel because she reminded him of his late wife. George Michael is also dating Rebel due to some wacky mishaps. Ergo, George Michael is dating his mother.]] Man, George Michael just can't get away from this whole incest-but-not-really situation can he?

* Gob's insane ramblings during season 4 are foreshadowing of [[spoiler: his sexuality and/or his being trapped in a roofie circle]], but one particular line in episode 5 is noteworthy. [[spoiler:When speaking to Tobias, who says that Gob 'looks like he (Tobias) feels'. Gob replies, "Gay?", which seems like another TransparentCloset joke about Tobias. After the whole season wraps up, it becomes apparent that Gob was desperately seeking someone who might understand what he was going through - Tobias was too conditioned to laugh such statements off to notice it.]]

* In "Altar Egos", Maeby hires George Michael to mark the correct answers onto a test she took. She even got her name wrong, which she puts as S. Funke. She provides a ridiculous explanation about the school wanting students to put an S. if they're single and an M. if they're married. However, [[spoiler:later in the same episode we find out that she's invented a fictional sister Surely as part of a scam, and has been taking tests as Surely (S. Funke), and then re-taking them with the correct answers as Maeby.]]

* Given the GenerationXerox motif of Season 4, it's interesting to note that Maeby's storyline, in which she [[spoiler:repeatedly goes through high school]], is not unprecedented among the Bluths: Buster hid out at Milford for two years after he was supposed to have graduated and later cycled through [[ADegreeInUseless graduate programs]] instead of getting a job, remaining a student into his 30s.
* The fact that Maggie Lizer and "Surely Fünke" are introduced in the same episode [[spoiler: nicely [[{{Foreshadowing}} foreshadows]] the fact that Maggie is also [[ObfuscatingDisability faking a disability for her own gain]].]]

* [[spoiler: With the reveal at the end of season 5 Buster is basically doomed, at a public event his crime was exposed and, as it was a mistrial not a pronouncement of innocence he's not covered under double jeopardy.]]

* Due to the real life [[spoiler: execution of Saddam Hussein]], it's hard not to think about the fact that in the Arrested Development universe the [[spoiler: one who got executed was a lookalike who was forced to take his fall]] as revealed near the end of season three. The worst part is, the real one is at large.