Fridge examples for Evil Dead.
Fridge Brilliance:
- In the first few episodes, you know Ruby is lying about being the daughter of Professor Knowby. How? Her picture is not seen at the cabin in Evil Dead 2 while Annie's picture is. You even see Annie's picture again when Ash arrives, long after Ruby's fire pit death and resurrection.
- One of the ways it is said to stop the Deadites is full body mutilation I.E: cut them to pieces, however it never seems to work, every deadite we see cut to pieces still twitches and talks, and in the case of Evil Ash he was put back together (wrongly, but apparently with no ill-effect except being unable to say "Forth"),but then you figure, it is said to stop them, not kill them, Cutting them apart just makes the host body less useful to the deadite.
Fridge Horror:
- In the American ending of Army of Darkness, Ash flubs the magic incantation and once again unleashes evil forces onto the world. It's terrible, yes, but the situation isn't entirely hopeless: Ash is something of a Deadite "expert" at this point, and (in his own time) has a near unlimited supply of weapons and ammunition at hand. However, Ash spoke the botched incantation back in the 14th century; does that mean the evil spirits were unleashed on Lord Arthur's people as well? Even with the help of Sir Henry's men, it's unlikely the kingdom could have withstood another assault without Ash's help.
- There's also the question of whether the "portal" opened by the botched incantation was open the entire time Ash was asleep. If so...that's a lot of Deadites.
- In Army of Darkness, it's implied that Sheila was transformed into a Deadite after being raped by Evil Ash. Let's just hope she didn't get pregnant as well.
- Only an issue if you watch Evil Dead II as a stand-alone now, but before Army of Darkness came out, Ash's ultimate fate was implied to be much more horrifying: when the evil force manifests in the flesh, its face has the heads of its previous victims embedded in it, including Ash's. The obvious implication being that the "Hero from the Sky" actually lost his battle in medieval times, had his soul swallowed, and has been trapped within the entity ever since.
- Or it's an aversion, as technically, Ash IS a victim of the Evil and was possessed twice. It could be manifesting Ash's head just to perform a Mind Screw.
- For what it's worth, Bruce Campbell weighed in on that, and said Ash's head appeared there because the Evil thought it was about to win, and was trying to show Ash what was in store for him.
- Throughout the movies, there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to whom the Deadites possess or why. It seems like nothing more than bad luck that decides who gets possessed, and dumb luck that Ash never got possessed except the time that he did. If they hadn't just dicked around, the entire cast would have been (even more) doomed.
- There is a noticeable detail that comes up in the films that may or may not be intentional: those who get possessed are shown to be injured, the weakest in strength or will, or dead. In the first film, Cheryl was injured by the trees raping her and then became possessed. Shelly could have been injured by the flying glass caused by the wind demon and becomes possessed after that. Linda certainly became possessed after being stabbed in the foot with the pencil (in fact, there is a closeup shot of a spider-web pattern showing the "infection" before Linda bolts upright completely possessed by a Deadite). Scotty had died while on the couch after being attacked by the trees and became possessed after that. In a cut shot from Evil Dead 2, in the flashback of Knowby reading from the book into the recorder, it showed Henrietta getting possessed right away. Ash's hand gets possessed is the same one that Linda's severed head bit. Ed becomes possessed after suffering a head injury during the fight with Henrietta. Ash becomes possessed twice, both after suffering physical trauma (the first time after the wind demon sends him flying through the woods and him crashing against a tree trunk before falling into a puddle. The second time, Jake hits Ash in the head with the shotgun. In Army of Darkness, the She-Bitch was an old woman. Shelia becomes Evil Shelia after being raped by Evil Ash. All of this could be a coincidence, but for the films alone, it seemed that the Evil purposefully targeted those who were injured (which could be a way to provide it easy access into them) or weak willed/dead.
