Fridge / Jumanji: The Next Level

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Fridge Brilliance

• Spencer going back into the game again makes some sense as in the first film, he was the most reluctant to leave aside from the others.
• It's not just Spencer having left his phone behind that indicates he's gone into the game. It's that the phone's location is in a pocket of his discarded coat, left lying in the basement: a coat he'd have surely needed to wear if he'd left the house, because it's December in New Hampshire.
• Why would Alex's avatar be all the way out in the snow? Besides him probably getting past the first few levels, he's also far, far away from his greatest weakness commonly found in the jungle: mosquitoes.
• The film reveals that at the end Jumanji has started sending perils into the real world. It's gone back to that, because after being broken at the end of "Welcome To The Jungle", it's been glitching. This glitch just also counts as a throwback maneuver, going back to what it did as a board game.
  • Should that be the case, to have the real life players meet their avatar counterparts is more than likely to happen.
    • Or, borderlining on Fridge Horror, there won't be any avatars for the RL players to interact with, meaning that they would have to deal with the problem themselves, as themselves, with none of the skills and abilities they had in the game, and limited to one life the entire time.
• Bethany's choice of music to sing just before the gang assault Jurgen's castle. Be Aggressive is from a 1993 Faith No More album, not exactly the kind of thing a modern teenager would listen to. Someone with a crush on a guy from that era though might just do their research into his music tastes to establish a bit of common ground, even if it's painfully obvious she didn't quite get what those lyrics were all about.
  • Bethany was a cheerleader, she's more likely recalling the cheer that predates the Faith No More song and is still performed at school events to this day.
• Fridge really seems to have it bad when going into Jumanji for the second time as not only is he in a non-badass avatar again but said avatar is also given several more weaknesses and the first one to lose a life. This all seems extremely unfair until you remember that, at the end of the last film, Fridge was the one who dropped the bowling ball on it to try and destroy it. Makes sense that Jumanji is pissed off with him!
  • That's not the only thing. Spencer thought he would be playing as Bravestone again, but didn't. Why? Because he was the one who probably suggested destroying the game and may have even suggested the method of trying to destroy it. The game put him in another character's body as punishment for his part just as much as it gave Fridge three different weaknesses.
• Martha being the only one who gets to be her actual avatar again is most likely due to her newfound confidence at the end of the previous film. Leaders need confidence to lead and Jumanji acknowledged it.
  • Alex came through in his old avatar also. Possibly both he and Martha lucked out because Jumanji figured both parties would need an Only Sane Man with a clear handle on their avatar's traits if they were to survive long enough to meet up.
• Bethany not noticing the sprained ankle can make sense. We never really see anyone take damage that can be healed. They may have regenerating health or injuries are just considered a momentary stun condition. How many games allow the hero to take repeated damage with no ill effects until Critical Existence Failure. Despite seeing what looks like a severe sprain, Fridge is quickly able to run and walk on it afterwards. He probably thought that was just adrenaline and was experiencing psychosomatic pains.
  • Another possibility is that since the waters are implied to be a Good Bad Bug caused by the game being broken, it's not too much of a stretch to think that in addition to allowing them to swap their avatars that it could heal damage too.
• There's some Fridge Foreshadowing in the scene where Spencer's suitcase loses its handle. What did Bethany call her avatar's penis in the previous film? A "handle". And what won't Spencer's new avatar turn out to have?
• Alex is the only character who does not act similar in-game to how he did in the previous film, despite retaining his Seaplane avatar - and of course he wouldn't. He's twenty years older, he isn't a teenager anymore, he grew up - he is able to maintain a steadier outlook on things and act as Team Dad for his younger teammates who are still working through that awkward phase in their lives.
• Word of God confirms that Jurgen the Brutal is in fact a Player Character - heavily implied by his left pec opening up a stats sheet and his bellowing " Who ARE you?!" at Spencer/Bravestone. This creates further dark implications - such as there being more than one video game cartridge to access Jumanji, and that the alternative version allows you to play as a World of Warcraft style Murder Hobo protagonist whose job is to kill anyone who gets in their way and constantly equip new loot such as the jewel of fertility.
  • This also adds the unsettling context to Jurgen's dialogue with 'The Brothers Kababik' - he's not an unresponsive NPC waiting for the PC's to give him right answer. He's a seasoned player growing increasingly frustrated that these two apparent NPC's won't just give him what he wants the way they usually do. He doesn't know the game is multiplayer.
  • It may also resolve one of the questions which people have been asking about this 'verse since the original Robin Williams film: What happens to someone trapped in Jumanji if the other participants in the same play-session die in real life, leaving the rest of that game impossible to complete? The antique border of Jurgen's stats sheet implies he may have been stuck in the game-world since before it was buried in 1869.
• The addition of so many new biomes to Jumanji might seem incongruous, given how the original movie implied the game-world consisted of nothing but wild jungle. Else, why would Alan have remained in the extremely hostile rainforest rather than left it for a more temperate area? But the die-roll that'd entrapped Alan specifically stated that it was the jungle he had to wait in: if he'd attempted to leave it for a different environment, he'd have been balked by circumstances, much like how Alex couldn't advance beyond the transport shed in the second film. Hence, his failure to run into Jurgen, a resident of the mountainous area, despite the latter most likely having arrived in Jumanji before him.

Fridge Horror

• The fact that Spencer, knowing full well how the game is a literal death trap, is so depressed and desperate for meaning in his life at the beginning of the story he's willing to fix the game and return to it despite its glitches.
• A piece that's been batted around since the original film. Jumanji is actively broken and fans have been speculated exactly how players would be able to beat a game that is missing key features.
• The game is still out there. In fact, remembering the previous film and its Sequel Hook, it’s perhaps alive in two distinct forms; the video game console and an app. What if these forms worked together, or worse, merged?
• What chaos caused those ostriches that were free from the game?
  • Never mind the ostriches even though their pecking and kicks hurt. Seeing them freed also implies the freedom of lions, snakes, rhinos, etc. which are far more dangerous.
    • Essentially, the dangers of Jumanji have been unleashed into the real world once again, much like in the first film.
• So Milo chooses to stay in the game because he's dying anyway. Except he has no physical body left in the real world, so sooner or later his landlord or somebody is going to assume he's a missing person.
  • Considering how the game has taken other people into it and have kept them there for years, this is basically a forgone conclusion.
• Adult Alex, playing as Seaplane, rides barebacked on teenaged Bethany, playing as the pegasus. While Bethany seems to have gotten over the sexual attraction at least by the time of this film, try not to think too hard about the implications anyway.
  • If they thought about it at all it they probably saw it as being like a piggyback ride.