As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- Art Rosenbaum's comment about how picking a name helps in the designing of a costume actually reflects the process of a comic book writer creating a character. What's the step before that? Deciding what powers they have like how Mark needed to get his powers first before becoming a superhero.
- When Invincible is fighting Doc Seismic at Mount Rushmore, he catches Abraham Lincoln's head after it was thrown at civilians. The Immortal is revealed to have been several historical figures throughout history, including Lincoln. Guess how Omni-Man kills Immortal the first time?
- After the title screen is shown in the first episode as pristine and clean with triumphant music; each following episode has more and more blood being sprayed across it. The next episode and the next shows Mark struggling against enemies and villains as well as the emotional upheavals of being a teenage superhero. The blood represents not the physical wounds he's suffering, but the emotional and psychological ones.
- The definition of "invincible" is to be incapable of being conquered, defeated, or subdued, which is not the same thing as being invulnerable (i.e. incapable of being harmed). While Invincible proves more physically vulnerable than Omni-Man during their fight at the end of the first season, it's Invincible who refuses to submit, while Omni-Man is so conflicted that he flees.
- This also fits into what Nolan and Debbie represent as Mark's parents. Nolan is Mark's physical resilience, while Debbie is Mark's mental resilience. And it is because of this mental resilience, that Mark gets his father to abandon Earth.
- Debbie managed to overcome her husband's callous exterior by getting him understand humanity and parental love. Mark is the literal and figurative product of that. The final "fight" between Mark and his father therefore can also be seen as Nolan trying to destroy his inner humanity. Mark is his father's hidden conscience trying to get him to understand that he does care about Earth and his family, which only aggravates Nolan who is in denial. However, no matter how many times Nolan attacks this voice (Mark), it never backs down and can't be silenced. In the end, he accepts the fact that Earth has changed him and gives up as a result.
- It's strange that Eve's parents have such a high opinion of Rex considering, well, he's Rex, but if you think about him from their perspective: he's a handsome, confident superhero with an offensive power that can be used to protect their daughter in fights, so if Eve insists on being a superhero then at least they know that someone who cares about her is in the mess with her. Combined with their old-fashioned views on gender it's little wonder they see Rex as being the best thing that could have happened to their daughter and completely miss the fact that Eve is much more powerful than Rex. If Eve's parents saw the news about Omni-Man's betrayal, it might only further convince them that superhero-ing is more dangerous than ever for their daughter.
- Calling other species "lesser developed" doesn't exactly seem like a turn of phrase suited to a hero. Then it turns out that Omni-Man really isn't a hero at all, and this attitude is 100% in line with his real personality.
- Also, Omni-Man's choice of words here are quite ominous. "I was relocated to Earth to be its sole protector." Sole protector. And what does he do by the end of the first episode? Slaughter the Guardians of the Globe.
- From Nolan’s perspective, he didn't lie to Mark. He genuinely believes that he comes from a utopian world that helps out other civilizations. He simply left out the genocide and eugenics.
- The final confrontation between Mark and Nolan and its ending was foreshadowed even as far back as episode 1. Swap out "bored" with "a change of heart" and the situation is practically the same. Mark took the licks, didn't actually give in, and his attacker just...gave in and left.Mark: I've got this amazing new strategy. I let him hit me until he gets bored and goes home.
- Fan opinion has been divided about Amber judging Mark for lying to her about his secret identity and breaking up with him even though she saw him risking his life to save her and William from the first Reanimen. Not helping is William and Eve telling Mark he should have been honest from the get-go, even though this is a world where villains don't have a code and will kill innocents to make a point. Then the season one finale happens, and a viewer realizes that Eve, Amber, and William were supposed to be wrong. The writers never intended for Mark's friends to hold the moral high ground. They underestimated that Mark isn't going to walk away from every fight unscathed, and they watched him suffer the ultimate betrayal that his own father nearly beat him to death with no remorse while revealing he wants to conquer Earth. While no one apologizes in words, they show by taking Mark out for burgers and giving him emotional support, since their complaints about his behavior seemed petty in hindsight.
- Based on Omni-Man's comments, he's fought Allen the Alien at least once before, yet Allen had no idea that Omni-Man was a Viltrumite until the end of the first season. You might think that Allen would figure it out given how amazingly powerful Omni-Man is, but Allen was only there to put up just enough of a fight to test the planet's defenses, and Omni-Man dismisses him as being an insignificant threat. It therefore seems that Omni-Man was able to defeat Allen using only a small portion of his powers so as not to tip him or the Council off.
- Omni-Man's alibi is that the one who killed all the heroes and attacked him got the jump on him because they cut the lights. By teleporting into the house in the dark and almost getting killed for it, Cecil proves that Omniman is lying.
- All of Season 1 can be seen as a metaphor for domestic violence. Specifically, a child standing up to their abusive father. Mark grew up viewing his Dad as the perfect role model, an indestructible and flawless superhero who can do almost anything. However, besides his powers, Mark’s perception of Nolan was based on a lie. When Mark is faced with truth, he can’t process it at first. He assumes his Dad is innocent and couldn’t be responsible for the things he did. When he finally realizes the truth, he stands up to his father. Nolan viciously beats and berates his son as punishment, and hurts many other people along the way. He even insults his mother, describing her as a worthless “pet.” He also uses standard abuser methods like victim blaming (e.g. asking “Why did you make me do this?!”). Mark stands no chance against Nolan in a fight, and only survives through showing his unconditional love, making Nolan realize the consequences of his monstrous actions.
- The first season had the running theme of more and more blood splatter getting thrown on the title screen of "Invincible", reflecting on Mark's increasing disillusionment with the idealized image of super-heroics and how effective he could be as a hero, culminating in him losing the climatic battle with Omni-Man and overall failing to protect any civilians from the fighting, even if he saved the planet overall. This season, the blood splatter fully covers the whole screen and just leaves the blood-red words of "Invincible" handing in a black background, which then starts to crack. Given it occurs on the heels of Angstrom levy's declaration of revenge against Invincible for his disfigurement, its implied the theme for this season will be people expressing doubt or distrust against Invincible's good nature on the heels of his father's reveals, expressing disillusionment in him.
- Additionally, for those who have read the comics, Mark later replaces his initial blue-and-yellow suit with a suit consisting of blue-and-black. The initial Title Card in season 1 is blue-and-yellow, the final Title Card in season 2 is blue-and-black.
- Season 2 reveals that most versions of Mark across the multiverse sided with Nolan. While whatever the other Nolans did to win their sons over is up for debate, we know that the main Nolan made the mistake of calling Debbie a "pet," which provoked Mark.
- Given how there are infinite possibilities, there are infinite Invincibles, and yet most chose to side with Omniman, but remember how badly Nolan was beating Mark into the ground. He was going to kill him. It’s not that our Mark is one of the few who hadn’t joined their dad, but chances are he’s the only one who went against Nolan, and SURVIVED.
- Rudy's alternate universe counterpart still uses his original deformed body. If you think about it, Rudy's arc in Season 1 was instrumental in revealing the kind of person Omni-Man really was to Mark, since Rudy betraying the Maulers led them to revive The Immortal etc. Maybe the fact this never occurred in that reality played a part in that Mark being swayed to the Viltrumite cause.
- Unlike in the comic, Mark doesn't easily forgive Nolan when he meets him on the Thraxan home world. This makes sense because the worst thing Nolan did to Mark in the comic was give him a harsh beatdown, something he would recover from rather quickly due to his Healing Factor. Omni Man in the tv show, not only gave Mark a much harsher beatdown, but infamously went as far as to ram his body into a train, killing all the passengers onboard. In other words, from Mark's perspective at least in the series, Nolan has a lot more to answer for than in the comic.
- Rex Splode surviving Lizard King's coup de grace is relatively plausible. People in real life have survived bullets to the head when it deflected off the skull, travelling under the scalp to push out through the skin on the other side much like Rex's wound, made more likely by his enhanced durability. The dazed state and blurry vision he suffers while dealing with King Lizard fit the concussion he would suffer from the impact even if it didn't penetrate better than actual missing brain matter. His explosive powers might've also led to more specific resistance to concussive impacts, though sadly not bites.
- Rex doesn't kill Komodo with just the charged coin, the latter's glowing eyes as he explodes suggest Rex's hand was dumping explosive energy into Komodo himself in panic as his hand was bitten off. If Rex is able to do that more purposefully, he could really start inflicting some gore.
- Omniman's Heel–Face Turn after meeting the Thraxans makes a lot of sense when you realise they basically serve as the perfect counterargument to Viltrumite philosophy: "Now or fifty years from now when he's old, what difference does it make?" The Thraxans are to us what humans are to Viltrumites. Their year-long lifespans are just as short to us as human life is to Nolan. Yet, the Viltrumites believe that self-worth is determined by how long you live and how strong you are, while the Thraxans' short lifespans make them care about all of their people even more. The Thraxans cherish every moment due to how short their lives are, which makes the point that just because life is short, that doesn't mean life is meaningless, and just because some things are physically fragile, that doesn't give someone the right to break them. For Nolan, the Thraxans were basically a more extreme version of what he experienced on Earth. So, when Nolan was breaking down upon seeing the Thraxans massacred, he really was finally feeling the true horror of what he did on Earth. The Thraxans basically remove any doubt that what the Viltrum Empire is doing cannot be justified.
- Also, when Nolan is reunited with Mark, the first thing he says is, “Hello son. It’s been a while.” Season 2 takes place 1 year after Season 1. During Season 1, Nolan hardly notices that his first date with Debbie was 20 years ago and constantly brings up his vast lifespan to Mark during their fight. But after his time on Thraxa? He now considers a single year to be a long time. This hints at how his perception of the value of life has changed. It’s no longer about the quantity of time, it’s about the quality.
- From a meta standpoint, the comic's official crossover with Spider-Man being changed to a brief Lawyer-Friendly Cameo, while DC has been able to animate some of its own crossovers like Batman vs. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Justice League × RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen, makes quite a bit of sense, given Spider-Man has a unique legal situation where Amazon would have to go through two separate rights holders, Sony and Disney, to allow him to appear in an animated production of over 40 minutes, thus it was probably deemed to be not worth the trouble arranging all that.
- The Show putting Donald through an Adaptational Angst Upgrade regarding his transformation into a cyborg and giving Angstrom Levy Adaptational Sympathy in his backstory a decent to villainy creates a unique parallel between the two in the second season, and conveys the season's Central Theme of dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic event. Both Donald and Angstrom were genuinely good people with noble intentions but mentally and physically affected by the involvement of superpowered beings. Donald was an agent who worked for the GDA for years but his selflessness and desire to protect others in the name of his department took a toll on his body and had his own memory erased so he wouldn't develop PTSD to keep him from helping others. Angstrom (aside from his dimensional portal powers) was a normal guy and an idealist who wanted to use the best aspects of multiverse's knowledge to improve his world and other universes, but his decision to involve the Mauler twins led to Invincible's involvement and nearly getting the hero killed, Angstrom wanting to stop the Maulers ended up causing the machine to explode and mutate his brain to grow down his back, and going insane from his brain overflowing with memories of his variants trauma from their encounters with evil versions of Mark killing their friends and loved ones, making Angstrom declare vengeance on his invincible and determined to kill him. Although Donald did order his mind wiped several times because he couldn't cope with his existential angst, learned that he isn't defined by what he is but rather who he is and his relationships with others and was able to accept his condition knowing that doesn't change who he is, meanwhile Angstrom's goal of killing Mark for his deformity and his Sanity Slippage from his counterparts' memories made him shed his enlightened philanthropic pacifistic self and became a vengeful and irrational maniac motivated by his own misplaced grief. Like Cecil said, "no one should handle that much trauma", Angstrom is essentially what Donald might've become if he didn't have the strength to persevere and lost himself in his own trauma.
- Why did Angstrom Levy get physical with Mark, knowing full well what he was are capable of in his alternate memories? The alternate Invincibles likely didn’t bother ever holding back… while the Mark of this world is outright Willfully Weak because he’s terrified of the damage his father caused during his rampage in the season 1 finale (and he is theoretically capable of). Levy was so far gone in his rage that he didn’t take that into account and likely assumed he already managed to push Mark to his limit when he finally deigned to get his hands dirty. He was wrong.
Fridge Horror
- In the first episode, when Mark tells his parents about his powers finally coming into play, Nolan just.. sits there with a blank, if almost annoyed-looking expression on his face. And even asks him if he's really sure before Debbie kicks his foot to make him respond positively. That isn't some funny moment of Nolan wondering if he heard that right; that was a Viltrumite warrior realizing that it was time to begin the prep to raise his son for his empire's goals and wipe out the strongest defenses Earth had. Mark's naïve innocence about finally being more like his dad was the silent trigger for all Hell to break loose, and the only person aware at that moment is a viewer armed with foresight.
- Based on his conversation with Olga, Red Rush suffers from being stuck in Bullet Time constantly, so he experiences everything at a slower pace than normal. The slow motion sequence as his head is being crushed shows that he is even experiencing his brutal death in slow motion, dragging out the agony.
- Nikki, the little girl who was helping Martian Man train his abilities, is clearly homeless with the hero being potentially her only caretaker. Now he's dead, there's presumably no one to look after her. She's seen eating at a community center in episode 5, showing that she's at least getting some support but also confirming that she's still living on the street.
- If Martian Man had taken her to Guardians HQ like she asked, five will get you ten that Omni-Man would've killed her too.
- At the end of the first episode, Darkwing leaves some criminals stuck to a water tank on a roof to come back to later after he answers the distress signal. Unless someone goes up to the roof and knows how to disable the high-tech gear of a deceased man, those two crooks are going to starve.
- Becomes Ascended Fridge Horror in episode 2 of Season 2, where the rotting (and skeletal) corpses of the two criminals are shown.
- The Immortal was the resident Superman Substitute until Omni-Man showed up. In both their confrontations, it's shown that the latter is simply on another level compared to the former. As well protected as the Earth is, it's at the mercy of a Viltrumite. Imagine both Cecil and the Guardian's shock when the one man they can't defeat ends up being their enemy.
- In Episode 3, Dupli-Kate is shown to be feeling pleasure from Rex having sex with one of her clones. This means she feels everything that her clones feel. This means that every time she fights, she repeatedly feels herself being brutally killed, and she’s so Conditioned to Accept Horror that she doesn’t even react when this happens.
- The more you think about Monster Girl's Cursed with Awesome power, the worse it gets. Hulking Out out too often has forced her to look like an adolescent despite being 24 years old. She can't live the independent life of an adult in such as state: driving a car, owning property, going out after dark, going to bars, or having any genuine social relationships outside of her hero group, to say nothing of the obvious problems with romance. Given her immature squabble with Rexplode, it's possible that her brain also suffers from her de-aging. And if she hulks out too often, she might be capable of Death by De-aging. Her only hope is if Robot puts her in a clone body that won't de-age as she uses her powers.
- Damien Darkblood warns Cecil, before the latter exorcised him, that he's going to a place worse than hell. What could be worse?
- Cecil and Omni-Man both repeatedly sabotage Mark's love life while they're trying to focus him on his superhero training and duties. For Cecil, he's being perfectly honest about needing Invincible to become another weapon of the state to protect the world. For Omni-Man, however, it becomes clear that he didn't want Mark to develop any more human attachments before he revealed his real purpose.
- In "Here Goes Nothing", Omni-Man tells the Flaxan army, "You don't seem to understand. Earth isn't yours to conquer." It sounds like a Declaration of Protection at the time, but it becomes clear in "Where I Really Come From" what he meant: his people, the Viltrumites, will be the ones to conquer Earth.
- The universe Angstroms Levy visits that managed to kill Omni Man and captured Mark seems safe until you remember that sooner or later the the Viltrumites are gonna come to check on Nolan’s progress and unlike the prime universe that we are following Mark’s not gonna defend them.
- In real life, Komodo Dragons are built to devour their prey in ways where even if the body of the food is almost comparable to their size, the Komodo Dragons have the digestive system strong enough to contain them. Just like with Shrinking Rae's case with Komodo Dragon, the latter's Super-Toughness, coupled with his digestive system based on the Komodo Dragons gives him the body needed to endure the full size of Shrinking Rae expanding inside his body.
- The events of "I Thought You Were Stronger" must've been massively traumatizing from Oliver's perspective. A strange, scary man breaks into your home and holds you and your mom hostage under the belief that your older half-brother will turn evil and take over the world while torturing the two of you out of sheer hatred for your brother, even nearly killing your mother. That totally won't have any negative side effects on Oliver when he grows up!
- After Mark realizes just what he's done to Angstrom, we see a POV shot of Mark looking at his wrists, turned red from Angstrom's blood. The color makes it look like he's wearing Omni-Man's gloves.
