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Fridge Brilliance
- Many of Endora's schemes to screw over Darrin frequently involve testing his faithfulness to Samantha by putting him in an easy position to cheat. She's convinced that Darrin will ultimately cheat on her daughter, and seems disappointed or genuinely surprised when he doesn't. Endora's mindset is kind of extreme, however considering her own husband Maurice is a serial cheater (and is less than affectionate when he's around her), it's not surprising that she thinks all husbands are like that.
- Endora's and Maurice's constant transformations of Darrin may strike them as little more than pranks or snark made physical when looked at from a witch perspective. In a number of Bewitched episodes, witches have talked about turning each other into various creatures or objects as though it were an annoying but ultimately harmless prank or put-down. For example, Samantha runs into a former suitor who reminisces with her about her turning him into a frog and how he ended up with a wart that he kept as a happy reminder, while several of her old boyfriends turned themselves into dogs, ravens, animated chairs, etc. for a couple of centuries as a way to sulk over breaking up with her. Serena turned one of her ex-boyfriends into a bed warmer and another into the Loch Ness monster, and while both were annoyed with her, neither seemed much more than annoyed. Endora has happily turned herself into such things as a tree, a little girl, and a bouncing ball of light. Additionally, she usually admits from the start that she will turn Darrin back into a human eventually, usually after he apologizes. So it's likely that Endora and others see their spells on Darrin as simply a Reality Warper version of Snark-to-Snark Combat rather than as anything particularly horrific.
Fridge Horror
- Samantha has lived for hundreds of years before Darrin was born, and most likely will live hundreds of years after he has passed away, as will Tabitha and Adam, due to them being half-witches and having much longer life spans than the mortal Darrin. Makes the family dynamic between the four rather tragic when you think about how much the three will miss him those centuries after he has died.
- Within the TV series, there have been several instances in which Samantha's relatives have tried to "rescue" (read: kidnap) Tabitha and take her back to the witches' dimension to be educated. It's all but stated that they intend to make Tabitha shed her human heritage and fully embrace her witch self because of witches' disdain for humans. However, if this loathing for humans is deeply ingrained in witches from early childhood, then this would turn out horribly for Tabitha as, in having a human father and being being half-human herself, she would certainly be a target for some vicious bullying by the other witch children. We're almost grateful that the Witches' Council's attempts of whisking her away have all failed.
- The nosy neighbor, Gladys, must surely think she's losing her mind. Frequently witnessing reality-warping events must have devastating long-term effects on her.
- One episode in particular builds on this. Endora and Arthur get involved in a battle over Tabitha, with the latter conjuring an entire house onto an empty lot near Samantha's place so he can move in. Now, unlike most of the magical hijinks in the show, a house has to have property deeds and building contracts associated with it—something that is addressed in-universe in this episode. Gladys calls the cops, who discover that there are absolutely no records of a house being built on that lot. The cops themselves show up and investigate, seeing and even going inside the building, meaning that Gladys's You Have to Believe Me! defense is finally getting credit. But when the entire house vanishes at the end of the episode...the cops decide to write it off as a trick and never mention it again, meaning that whenever Gladys calls the police, she's likely to be ignored. From her perspective, Gladys is literally the Only Sane Woman in a world where everyone else appears to be going completely mad.
- Building on this—pretty much everyone in Samantha and Darrin's social circle who isn't in on The Masquerade is in danger of serious psychological problems. One character is a drunk at Darrin's favorite hangout who frequently witnesses teleportation and other magic tricks, sending him reeling back to the bar for another round or three. Other neighbors have been occasionally shown to witness the bizarre events in the community and panic. Even Larry, who at least can be conned into thinking that whatever Zany Scheme he sees is Darrin's latest advertising campaign, clearly realizes that something is very wrong in the Stephens household. All told, the other people in the Bewitched universe seem to be Conditioned to Accept Horror, which is a terrifying prospect.
- Even worse, their discomfort with the supernatural seldom has anything to do with fear or horror or a violation of science — both Gladys Kravitz and Phyllis Stephens at one point think they have supernatural powers, and neither feel any fear or horror at the prospect, merely discomfort because it's unfamiliar — but entirely arises from a disapproving terror of nonconformity. Gladys Kravitz's biggest objection to Samantha is that she is "weird" or unconventional, not that she can ignore mortal laws of physics. Phyllis Stephens' favorite insult is to call something "unusual"; at one point she witnesses Serena's hourglass that operates in reverse, and she states the the fact it is "unusual" makes her feel ill. In Bewitched, the prejudice against witchcraft is motivated nearly entirely by a fear of anything that does not conform to the tiniest minutiae.
- Within the movie, Nicole Kidman's character happily changes people's minds, alters reality, and generally plays puppetmaster. Her father outright states that he sleeps with mortal women by making them love him, and then edits their reality to make his escape. Much like the situation with the Harry Potter series, the implication is that you and your loved ones have likely been assaulted in the past and then made to forget afterward...
