History Fridge / Matilda

** This is also hinted at when the bucket is crushed as Matilda imagines the part of the story where Magnus drives off to face Trunchball.

* Before she reveals her punishment of Bruce Bogtrotter, Trunchbull has all the teachers sans Miss Honey dismissed from the room. This is likely another way she goes unreported, as while she may believe she is able to browbeat and frighten Miss Honey into silence [[spoiler:(due to being her abusive step-aunt)]] and the students themselves, but allowing her cruelest punishments to be witnessed directly by the entire faculty would make it much more difficult to cover up. Having them all dismissed (which appears to be standard practice judging by their quick response) creates PlausibleDeniability for the teachers and makes them more easier to intimidate and less likely to be spurred to action.

* In ''School Song'', the lyrics are designed so it sounds like the alphabet is being spelt out during the song. There are a few instances where letters of the alphabet are being sounded, however the actual letters aren't used (for instance, the c in cage is emphasised, but it's used for k. For the letter Q they use the word curious, and most notably for z they use the term phys-ed). However, this makes sense for children - they don't necessarily know proper spelling, or realise that different letters can sound similar depending on their use.

!!FridgeBrilliance

!!FridgeHorror

* Matilda's class stands up to the Trunchbull. Just before everyone gets sent to Chokey, Matilda writes on the chalkboard as Magnus. The Trunchbull is never seen again, and the schoolkids sing Revolting Children, which includes the two lines "And we won't forget the day we fought/for the right to be a little bit naughty". An audience member knows Matilda had to piece a lot of clues together, and use her powers to defeat the Trunchbull. ''But the kids don't''. They're in the youngest class, and managed to stand up to the Trunchbull. Just when things were looking bad for them, "Magnus" showed up and placed the straw that broke the camel's back. So they've just worked with a ghost to achieve the impossible. Fought for the right, indeed.

* Matilda mispronounces words in the play. It's easiest to tell in the soundtrack, where she mispronounces anticipation as 'ancipation', slippery as 'slippy', atmospheric as 'atmospharic', and a few other words. (Weirdly, escapologist is pronounced exactly correct.) Note those examples are from the extremely dramatic and serious 'Story' songs, not the comedic songs where mispronunciations might be funny. And while a young actress might mispronounce words in the play, presumably someone would have caught that on the released songtrack. But these mispronunciations are entirely on purpose... because Matilda, like many very intelligent children her age, learned the words via ''reading'' them, and hasn't actually practiced their pronunciation yet.
* The song "Revolting Children" is about how the kids are reclaiming the term "revolting," which is used to disparage them as disgusting by Miss Trunchbull. But the title also has a DoubleMeaning: revolting can mean "disgusting", but it's also a word used to describe a mutiny or an overthrowing of a system of power. Throughout the song, the kids are jumping around and loudly proclaiming that they won't be silenced any longer. They are ''literally'' revolting children, as in, [[ExactWords children trying to throw a revolt.]]

[[AC: The Musical (Movie)]]

* Matilda revealing where Nigel is hiding, but making the story that he was there for an extended period of time after he fell asleep and was put there for safety, not only saved Nigel, but also the rest of the children; had Trunchbull found him, he would’ve been punished, but the rest of them would’ve been punished too for trying to hide him.

* We see that the Trunchbull puts up with Amanda’s pigtails, except for the scene where she throws her across the schoolyard with them. The Trunchbull is already aggravated that morning due to a prank, and she doesn’t know who’s responsible. It’s possible that her anger about that situation was taken out on Amanda, who wouldn’t usually have had to worry about something like that happening.