Fridge / Dishonored

Fridge Brilliance

• On one note, Daud makes mention of an ability that makes him virtually immune to poisons and toxins. He's referring to an upgraded version of your own Vitality power. If Corvo had been Marked for longer, maybe he would have been able to resist the full dose of the poison he is given later in the game. Likewise, Granny Rags claims at one point, "Don't toy with me! I may be blind, but I have the sight!" She is of course referring to the Dark Vision power. If you're fast enough, you can see that Corvo is closing his eyes whenever he uses Dark Vision, since you need to be blind before you can use it.
• According to the Heart, it seems like everyone in Dunwall is a narcissist of some sort. There are several genuinely decent people, but those are the exception rather than the rule. This looks like a straight example of Humans Are Bastards, but consider the world these people are living in. Everything from the hounds to the barnacles are incredibly dangerous, and even the common housefly is stinging and parasitic. Furthermore, all the examples you see in the game are just the Urban wildlife; you don't even glimpse the truly wild places, although the severe lethality of the creatures inhabiting those areas are hinted at throughout the game. In a world where Everything Is Trying to Kill You, a greater emphasis on your personal survival is far more understandable. Historians have speculated that empathy and selflessness only became virtues after humanity became secure at the top of the food chain, and Dunwall has yet to achieve that in spite of the technology at their disposal.
• The conflict between the feral rats and the humans of Dunwall is eerily similar to the conflict between the humans and the whales; a greater quantity of smaller yet well-organized mammals are subduing much larger prey through coordination and numbers. I’d imagine that a human being run down by a pack of rats would feel quite similar to a whale being caught by a whaling ship.
• Dishonored:
  • Corvo Is Not An Honorable Man: The title Dishonored takes a whole new meaning if you are familiar with the Honor Culture of the 1700s and 1800s. Honor was not being ethically virtuous, so much as being worthy; a man could be extremely amoral and completely honorable at the same time. (Duels were not honorable because you were attacking an offender, but because you were exposing yourself to danger to prove your integrity. Refusing to shoot at your opponent would be a terrible insult to them.) Even in a pacifist playthrough, Corvo deploys stealth, uses magic and technology his enemies lack, and disgraces his marks while they are helpless/unaware of his presence. Although Corvo's methods resemble a southern European vendetta in style and execution, by the standards of English honor code he is truly Dishonored.
  • This is even more brilliant if you follow the in-game lore. Corvo is from Serkonos (based on southern Europe) while Dunwall is part of Gristol (based on England). Historically, there was often friction between northern Europeans and southern Europeans because their definition of "honor" differed. In the north, it meant upholding your integrity and worth in a composed, dignified, and public manner. In the south, it meant respecting your family by avenging every insult to them through any means necessary. And given the implication, later confirmed, that the Empress and Emily are his literal family...
  • Even more, this explains why, later in the game, the Loyalists would do something as reckless (listed on the main page under Idiot Ball, in fact) as ordering Samuel to poison Corvo and take care of the body instead of doing it themselves. It's not that they're blindly trusting the token good guy servant to murder someone, it's that they literally cannot be caught doing that kind of dirty work personally, even if it means taking the risk that the job won't be done properly. They're banking heavily on their honorable status to reach their goals, and anything that could jeopardize their honor is off the table.
  • On a related note this indicates that Lord Pendleton, supposedly representing the honor of the nobility through his presence among the loyalists, is an extreme hypocrite. For all his talk about supporting the cause, if you actually visit Pendleton's room and listen to his audiographs he seems more interested in writing his memoirs after the fact than actually making a difference now. Most of the time he simply stays at the Hound Pits Pub while Corvo is dispatched on dangerous missions. Furthermore, he even goes as far as to skip out on a duel with Lord Shaw by having Corvo fight in his place. In short, Pendleton has no honor. Is it any surprise then that he later betrays Corvo by poisoning him, instead of facing him directly?. This also reaches an appropriate conclusion in the High Chaos ending, where Pendleton, Martin, and Havelock turn against each other. If the player searches for Pendleton and Martin, they'll find the two engaged in a battle where Pendleton has no choice but to directly face his opponent, and is fatally wounded by Martin; Martin upholds his honor and Pendleton is further dishonored.
• It may seem odd that all the Lord Regent’s key supporters are, without exception, unsympathetic sociopaths. Since his duplicity isn’t publicly known, it wouldn’t be implausible for honest, upright individuals to support his rule while ignorant of his crimes. However, taking a closer look at the Lord Regent’s personality reveals that he is dismissive of intangible, unquantifiable traits such as “honesty” and “trust”. The Lord Regent appoints such amoral people in the first place because they have an obvious, tangible interest in remaining loyal, mainly because of the “favors” he can grant them as the ruler of Dunwall; he doesn't trust people who have no personal (corrupt) reason for following him.
• Delilah's enmity towards Daud in the Knife of Dunwall DLC may be because his immunity to possession makes him a threat to her Grand Theft Me plan and powers, especially as he could conceivably pass that ability to Emily.
  • The Brigmore Witches, Delilah's minions, are the Evil Counterpart to Daud's Assassins. Both receive magic powers from their leader, both tussle with the Overseers, both have weird uniforms, both factions feature a traitor to their leader (Billie for the Assassins and a witch informant for the witches), both faction leaders end up threatening the Royal family in some manner (Daud killed the Empress, Delilah tried to steal Emily's body)...
• Throughout the game, Corvo is exposed to a ridiculous amount of plague germs - more so the more chaotic he is. He's fighting weepers, he's swimming in the river, he walks around in the sewers, he runs around with open wounds, et cetera. Even if he does down Elixirs like they're candy (and in a perfect Ghost run, he shouldn't need them), you'd think by the end of the game he'd be weeping himself... until you poke around in some books and find this poem. It describes a Serkonan woman dying from the Rat Plague, or some version of it. Given that the poem was written in Old Serkonan, this means that some centuries back, the Rat Plague came to Serkonos and wiped out a portion of the population. Here's the important part: everyone who was left was then immune to the Plague, and passed that immunity on to their kids. Corvo is Serkonan. It's very likely that of all the people in Dunwall, he's one of the very few who is genetically immune to the Rat Plague. Same would go for other Serkonans in the game, including Daud and Emily.
  • Proven untrue in the sequel. Serkonans NPCs will warn each others not to get bitten by the plague rats summoned by Corvo. On the other hand, this could be due to the cultural stigma of the rats rather than any real threat of infection.
  • Alternatively it could be that Corvo is protected by the mask he wears, the one given to him by Piero at the start of the game. Perhaps the mask filters out plague germs, similar to the whalers' masks? Although this admittedly doesn't account for the handful of times Corvo goes swimming in dirty water or the sewers or walking around without his mask. Nor the open wounds. Luck and being blessed with a strong immune system are probably the reasons there.
  • The real reason for his immunity could be one of his passive abilities, Vitality. At Tier II Vitality passively regenerates Corvo's health, in other words giving him a Healing Factor, so it stands to reason that he canonically has this ability and it's preventing him from catching the plague. The same goes Daud, and the rest of the Whalers by extension, who never catch the plague despite living in the most infected area of Dunwall.
• Why are Whalers so vulnerable to possession, despite being well versed in the Outsider's powers? Easy, it's not a power that Daud has access to, so obviously his followers get blindsided by it.
• The level "Lady Boyle's Last Party" may be a reference to Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. In both cases, a high ranking aristocrat throws a masked ball in times of Plague, open only to other aristocrats, and barring all others. Later, a mysterious masked man arrives at the ball to exact punishment on the misdeeds of the host. The men's masks portray someone or something looked down upon by the current society of that world.
• Why is it that boxes and debris seem to be piled up in just the right places to let you easily climb over obstacles, even without the use of Blink? Remember what the Lord Regent said: "there’s always some idiot woman searching for her wretched lost babe, or some sniveling workman searching for his missing wife. And then quarantine is broken!" The citizenry are circumventing the city's security measures themselves in order to find their families!
• Back when she was Vera Moray, Granny Rags was one of the most powerful noblewomen in the Isles. Upon being marked by the Outsider, she abandoned the noble lifestyle, allowing her wealthy family to collapse and herself living as a vagrant, devoted to the Outsider. Given his usual attitude, you would expect the Outsider to not care much but he actually seems somewhat fond of her. However, in light of Word of God explaining that the Outsider dislikes the powerful abusing the powerless, his fondness makes some sense: It is likely that Vera Moray was one of the only people the Outsider marked to actually give up on power and worship the Outsider just for his own sake rather than in pursuit of power or revenge. Another implied trait the Outsider likes is a tendency to think outside the box, defy societal norms and conventions, and do the unexpected. That fits Granny Rags pretty well.
• While the theme and selling points of the game make it obvious right away that Corvo's return to Dunwall is going to go awry, nobody in Dunwall itself seems to think anything is up. However, the nameless guard steering the launch at the very beginning of the game comments on how strange it is to send the Empress's bodyguard away from her for months on a diplomatic errand, and he doesn't buy the official explanation either. He's not fooled because he's not important enough to fool, unlike Jessamine and Curnow. It's probably this same guard that helps Corvo in Coldridge, because he is already suspicious and would be amenable to helping a man he doesn't believe is guilty.
• The game plays out exactly alike even if the Empress' death can't be pinned on you. Even if Corvo has sword wounds all over him and a clean sword, people will still act as if it's clear you just stabbed the woman. There wouldn't be a game otherwise, of course, but even in-universe, Cambpell and Burrows are the first responders, and since Burrows has the guards in his pocket and would inevitably control the narrative, it's easy to brush it off. Even if he needed to provide some manner of proof, none involved are likely against a post-mortem stab to get the necessary effect.
• Throughout both parts of the Daud DLC, you can hear loudspeakers offering a handsome reward for information leading to Emily Kaldwin's whereabouts. The Lord Regent already knows where Emily is, so any information provided would be useless. In short, he's offering a reward he knows he will never have to pay.
  • Alternatively, it would encourage people who know snippets of his plan to make themselves known, hence they can be dealt with.
• The opening of The Knife of Dunwall might actually have a hint as to why even though he performed so many contracts he was emotionally affected by his role in killing Jessamine Kaldwin. His opening monologue reflects on how a lot of his contracts involved dealing with corrupt politicians. It is very easily possible that Daud tried to psychologically justify his career as an assassin by convincing himself that his targets were horrible people who deserved to die. Empress Jessamine Kaldwin was the first decent person he had to kill, which challenges this pre-conceived notion.
• Havelock's sword assassination animation, where Corvo stabs him in the arm and forces him to shoot himself. After his betrayal of Corvo and Emily, now Havelock knows how it's like to have something (his hand and pistol in this case) betray him.

Fridge Horror

• Possessing someone causes them to vomit once you leave them. As mentioned in Game-Breaker, possessing Whalers and leading them to a secluded location to knock them out is one of the easiest ways to get through the Flooded District. Whalers wear gas masks. If you use that strategy, you're going to cause a lot of Whalers to fill up their own masks with vomit. Plus, they use those masks to breathe in the plague infested air. You just made it harder for them to avoid becoming weepers. Assuming, of course, that they don't drown in their own vomit-filled masks.
• Even in a no-kill playthrough, many of your actions have the potential to ruin people's lives. Disable a wall of light in an infested area? The guards there may be overrun by weepers the next day. Loot a low-rent apartment? You just deprived a poor, starving woman of her only remaining funds. Knock out a guard and dump him in a corner? He could be sacked or redeployed to the flooded district for napping on the job, being unable to prove that he was attacked. One particular example is in Dr. Galvanni's house; you find a note by the Dr. which states he wont have to feed his lab rats for a few days because of an "altercation with the maid". (There is a severed arm on a platter in the same room.) You find another note nearby where he warns the current maid to avoid his lab at all costs, or suffer dire consequences. Tamper with the lab and avoid detection, and the good Dr. will be all too likely to blame the poor girl... This is shown to be the case in the first mission of The Brigmore Witches DLC. A number of guards who were on duty while Corvo escaped from Coldridge are being executed for either negligence or on the off-chance that they actually assisted him.
• Callista Curnow's fate in a Low Chaos ending: lost at sea, which is so ambiguous that you're left guessing what happens. Did she simlply get caught in a storm and her boat was sunk? Attacked by any of the horrific sea monsters that actually exist in this world? Run across and captured by pirates? (Especially horrifying considering what an entirely male crew of cutthroats would do with a young, attractive woman.) Or did she truly get lost and run out of food, slowly wasting away while trying to get home? Anyway you look at it, it's an entirely undeserved end for one of the nicest characters in the game.

Fridge Logic

On the headscratchers page.