Fridge / League of Legends

Fridge Brilliance

• It's stated that Nami is searching for a group of people with a "Moonstone". It's fairly obvious, though not stated that she's searching for the Lunari (Diana's people), who are all about the moon. This isn't so impressive to figure out. However, when you consider how closely related the moon and the tide is (and Nami is the Tidecaller), this relationship becomes a lot more symbolic and clever.
  • This also leads to a little bit of Fridge Horror when you realize she's looking for the Lunari, who were almost entirely eliminated by the Solari (which is probably why the traditional bearer of the Moonstone didn't show up).
• Talon's title, The Blade's Shadow. He worked under General Du Couteau, and in French "Couteau" means "knife."
• Why does Thresh, a sadistic monster, spend so much time being helpful and saving his teammates? He wants them stronger before he takes their souls too.
• Thresh's Flay abilily has a passive which empowers his autoattack with magic damage, applying more damage if he waits some time between his attacks. Why is that? Because he's a Torture Technician, focused on tormenting his victims instead of simply killing them on the spot; when he waits between the hits, he's prolonging the pain and suffering he's inflicting on his targets.
• After accidentally destroying a village with a failed spell, Lee Sin vowed to never use magic again. In-game, Lee Sin does not use Mana; instead, he uses Energy.
• Zac and his Casual Danger Dialogue. His dialogue sounds the most like a Real Life person than any other champion. He actually says "How's it going?" and "Why thanks! I do work out." in the middle of beating his enemies to death. It's because he was raised by loving parents (well, the married scientists that created him anyway) and had a very normal upbringing (by Real Life standards).
• Why would Pantheon, who even without memetic mutation, is very sturdy and focused, want to be a baker of all things? Well, his village would most likely always be strained for food, so a baker would most likely be just as important to them as strong warriors. As well as the fact that even if he forces himself to be a baker, there won't be enough supplies to bake enough cakes, so if he can make his village and ways be known via League of Legends, he may be able to ensure more food supplies for the village, thus he can become a baker.
  • It should also be noted that everyone in Pantheon's homeland is a warrior, or at least trained to be one. The guy baking the bread is no less capable of being a warrior, even if he isn't actively serving as one. If Pantheon did become a baker, he would be no less badass for it, and could always return to service if he wished to.
• Janna occasionally shivers as a part of her idle animations. Could put it down to her incredibly skimpy attire, or the fact her entire movelist concerns wind. A chilling winter wind, anyone?
• Much like Shyvana's gauntlets serve to resemble a dragon's head when she puts her inner end of her right hand over the inner end of her left (displayed in an idle animation), her odd choice of covering her ponytail with armor plates let her mimic a dragon's tail while as a human. This would also probably explain why she's barely armored, with what she wears greatly resembling her scales while she's a dragon - it's less for protecting herself and more for just barely conforming to human concepts of decency while making her feel as much as a dragon as she can while still in the form of a human
• Yasuo's original preview painted him in a downright villainous light, making him look as combat-hungry as someone like Zed, when in actuality he's The Atoner and merely cocky at his worst. This is because the preview was written by his brother who, much like the rest of his clan, believed that Yasuo was responsible for their Elder's death. The playerbase was fooled just like Yasuo's friends and family.
• The void monster champions all seem to consume because they have a distinct longing for something. One may say there's a void that they just can't fill.
• Cassiopeia is cursed from a trap in the tomb that had Xerath and Renekton locked in it. The tomb was opened by Sivir's boomerang. It's also now known that Sivir is Azir's descendent. In short: If Cassiopeia let Sivir open the tomb herself, she likely wouldn't be cursed. Epic Fail caused by Genre Blindness much?
• The much maligned-retconning of the in-universe League could have a point to it. It was backed by extremely powerful summoners, which means any threat to Valoran's safety was squelched immediately. One can see this in the backstory to the Crystal Scar; it was a war zone, complete with hextech nukes, until the Institute said "No. Stoppit." and stopped time around it. They could have done that at any point during the story, could still do that at any point. Which means that the Black Mist of the Harrowing is nothing more than a heavy fog to them, The Void becomes a mere annoyance in their presence, and the Demacia/Noxus cold war has no means of going hot without drawing the Institute's ire. They are literally a Story-Breaker Power.
• This a gameplay thing. Twisted Fate has the ability Pick A Card, which presents him with three card choices. One card stuns, another card deals splash damage and slows, while the third card restores Twisted Fate's mana. This mana-replenishing card always gives you more mana than it takes to cast the ability. But after playing a lot of matches where the enemy I want to hit is just out reach, and subsequently losing a lot of mana, I realized something: Twisted Fate is The Gambler. In order to win money, you've got to pay money. It's more than just your average risk vs. reward. It's a literal aspect of his character.
  • Speaking of Twisted Fate, the "Burning Tides" event significantly retconned his lore, particularly the nature of his magic and the betrayal of Graves. In his new lore, he always had magic — the "betrayal" was that TF fled a fight when Graves wanted to fight it out, resulting in Graves getting caught out and captured. You know, the kind of scenario that could happen in any Normal game where one player gets himself out of a teamfight going south and gets cursed out by a player who stayed in and was killed.
• Olaf is a surprise character in "Shadow and Fortune", but if you look at the previous events, it made sense. Sejuani promised Olaf a warrior's death if he helped her 3-way campaign between her, Ashe and Lissandra. The Freljord event seemed to have no conclusion, thus Olaf possibly has little obligation to stick with Sejuani permanently until the next big battle hits the Freljord. Thus, with or without Sejuani's permission, Olaf is granted a temporary leave to seek a warrior's death outside Freljord, and Bilgewater was just around.
• Illaoi, the Kraken Priestess, is a slow character whose attacks all telegraph themselves — terrifyingly efficient if you let yourself get caught but avoidable if you keep moving. This is exactly the message of her god: don't become still and stagnate; keep moving and use your energy or you might as well just die and let that energy pass to someone who will actually do something with it.
• Annie and Syndra are actually counterparts to each other because of their countries' respective views on power and highlights a flaw in Ionia's philosophy in comparison to the Noxian. Annie was raised by her parents whom, while leaving Noxus proper, still practice the philosophy that power should be cultivated and allowed to flourish. Thus, Annie is free to explore her powers and is a brat at worst which could easily just be tied to her young age. Syndra was another girl born with incredible power but was pushed to follow the Ionian philosophy, which took her away from her parents and placed her under a mentor who placed balance above all else and inhibited her growth without her permission. Thus because of Ionia's heavy focus on balance, Syndra grew up into a villainess.
• Why does Evelynn's charm reduce magic resistance? simple, you are literally letting your guard down.
• Yasuo is a loner who was forced to kill his own brother after being falsely accused of a crime, self-exiling himself afterwards and becoming a lone wanderer. He is often misunderstood and has few friends, and is also a long-haired young Asian man with a weapon that wouldn't look out of place in Sephiroth's hands. This makes him the definition of an 'edgy' character. Riot was aware of this because Yasuo's passive, and most of his power, is built around increasing his critical hits. What's the only item in the game that augments critical hits, and is thus going to be built by every single Yasuo player? Infinity Edge.
• The lore’s vacillation over the exact nature of whether Garen is a Badass Normal or an Empowered Badass Normal seems to have a subtle but genius explanation given with the reveal in Sylas’s lore that petricite doesn’t block magic but ‘’absorbs’’ it instead. In the same way that this means that Gallio is animated by magic attacks upon the city, Garen’s armor - and possibly his sword - absorb magic that he ends up using in combat. So while Garen himself is not magic, his weapons and equipment are.
• Several of Neeko's in-game interactions suggest that she really Does Not Like Men. This fact is mostly just Played for Laughs; for instance, when shapeshifting into a male champion, she'll remark on "how weird male sho'ma feels," a line that basically amounts to a fantasy-flavored "ew, boy cooties!". It makes for a funny voice line or two, but her dislike of men begins to feel odd when it's held up against the implications of her lore. Neeko is the last living member of the Oovi-Kat, ^{(Quick lore refresher)}  ...a tribe of vastaya whose natural attunement to the spiritual magic of Runeterra granted them the unique ability to shapeshift at will. They lived on a small, remote island with no contact with any outside civilizations; and thus Neeko's "first language" is not one that's understood by anyone else she meets in Runeterra. But this isn't just on account of how insular her tribe was: the Oovi-kat "language" was neither a verbal tongue nor written word; instead, the act of shapeshifting itself was the mode through which she and her tribesmen conversed with one another. All this begs the question: why in the world would a character from a culture that plays so fast and loose with personal identity ever come to develop any gender biases, let alone have an understanding of gender as a social concept at all? Well, it all clicks into place when you look into her narrative. Neeko is a Fish out of Water on an almost existential level: she is learning to navigate a world which holds that one's physical self is inseparable from one's personal identity — a fundamental notion that she simply never internalized growing up. Having to manually re-learn such a fundamental understanding of identity is one hell of a task, and Neeko's unbridled curiosity with the world around her is her journey of identity construction manifest. The very few things she can securely identify with — e.g., Neeko's own personal way of relating to this weird Runeterran thing called "gender," — become so important to her that she solders herself to them emotionally. Neeko inhabiting the physical form of a man, when the world she's trying to fit into holds physicality and selfhood as one and the same, feels wrong to her on a fundamental level. It feels dysphoric.

Fridge Horror

• It rapidly becomes apparent when reading his backstory that Brand's body is just a burnt charred corpse controlled like a puppet... This also lends a terrifying edge to his line "This body is just one of many..."
• Speaking of Brand, his /joke has him doing the stop-drop-and-roll routine to put out the flames on his body. We also know that his body used to belong to a certain Kegan Rodhe. Could it be that this /joke actually represents how Kegan momentarily regains consciousness in his hijacked body, realizes that he is on fire and tries the humanly logical thing (trying to put out the fire) before the Brand personality reasserts control?
• Who created Nocturne? He was found at the Twisted Treeline, home to Thresh, who is a sadistic jailer, and both have similar death animations (struggling to stay alive in a really horrifying way). Nocturne was one of Thresh's finest creations.
  • Nah, that Treeline was a completely different one, near Zaun instead of the Shadow Isles one Thresh comes from. Noc probably comes from some alternate nightmare dream dimension that he rents from Freddy Krueger.
  • Given how the Treeline merge may have caused Nocturne to split from the Lantern and go do what he was meant to do by Thresh's orders: Kill and torture.
• As noted on her character page, Jinx, while still shown to genuinely enjoy spreading her own brand of fun (Creating chaos and mayhem), also has that creepy, vacant stare that suggests heavy trauma beyond repair. Really makes one wonder what happened...
• Ekko brings back two cases of Fridge Horror. He uses a Hextech device that let's him travel back in time, if possibly only for short hops back. Now recall the following: Zilean, is a Time Mage, who we know also dabbled in Hextech devices to control time. He's been affected by chrono-displasia. It was also his super powered Time magic which turned Kalamanda into the Crystal Scar due to how much magic was used (at least, as how the lore told us so far, as we haven't been told about how the lore for that is being retcon yet), to stop an massive war between Noxus and Demacia, and it took weeks to carefully extract everyone from the stasis bubble carefully so they wouldn't suffer from chrono-displasia as well. On top of that, Vel'Koz has taken a keen interest in Zilean, because he found Zilean's old workshop and time shifting devices. What's going to stop Vel'Koz from suddenly turning his attention to Ekko instead? Attention which typically ends in death by Disintegrator Ray to learn what objects and beings are made up of and how they function. Not only this, but he, a youth, is already being hunted by Kindred by evading death when it should've come.
  • Word of God confirms that Vel'Koz would indeed do just that, and double his effort upon learning that Ekko has some Time-Control devices. As for Zilean, while Ekko considers him a friend to learn about time control, Zilean (and possibly Bard even) would consider Ekko being reckless with his Z-Drive, and be concerned with rippling effects of messing with the time stream. And now with Kindred being added, the dual embodiment of Death on Runeterra also are very familiar with Ekko, and starting to get a bit sick and tired of him cheating them by his rewinding of time.
• In the Twisted Treeline, the West Altar warns Hecarim that Mordekaiser is not be trusted. Mind you, in Hecarim's lore, he was a knight of great renown before he and his steed were twisted into the undead centaur he is today. Then, in the puppet show, he attacked a ship full of innocent civilians, slaughtering them before they could flee. If this barbaric being needs to be warned about Mordekaiser, just how bad must the Master of Metal be?
  • Using Mordekaiser's lore, in life, he was a brutal warlord that was killed only when his foes rallied against him... but not before massacring hosts of soldiers as he was being struck multiple times.
• Creatures from the Void are stated to become more "Defined" the longer they stay in Runeterra, going from incomprehensible beings to eldritch beasts. Kha'Zix is the least eldritch of all the Voidborn, being a humanoid mantis compared to Kog'Maw, a worm-like creature with an infinite stomach, Cho'Gath, a giant red monster who can also eat anything and keep them alive in his stomach forever, and Vel'koz, a floating mass of eyes and tentacles. How long has he been on Runeterra?
• Some of Reworked!Fiddlesticks' lines are it laughing, but due to its ruined voice, they sound less like laughs and more like groans of agony. Since Fiddlesticks repeats the last words of its victims, these so-called laughs could very well be the death throes of some of its victims, right before Fiddlesticks killed them.
  • Adding to this, one of his voicelines post-rework is a horrible screech that vaguely sounds like crying, followed by the words "I'm so scared". That doesn't sound like something an adult would say, much less to the thing about to kill them. Adding to this the lines that sound like someone reassuring someone else ("Don't be scared. It can't hurt you.", "See? It's just a scarecrow.") and it sounds like at least a few of Fiddlesticks' victims might have been children.
• Vel'Koz's analysis of lifeforms includes the melting point of humans, the flexibility of bones, the transferability of skin and whether either half of a local being grows back on bisection. He also says in one quote that 'To date, none have survived preliminary testing'. Are these the preliminary tests? What does Vel'Koz do when he moves onto major research?

Fridge Logic

• Fridge Logic:
  • How does the bird Anivia wear her speed increasing boots? And why is she slower than everyone, even the zombie?
  • Why is it that Anivia, Cho'gath, and Rammus are the only non-humanoid but still bipedal champions?
    • It might just be a design choice to make most bipedal champions human-like. I mean, you wouldn't normally consider bears, gators, or trees humanoid, would you?
  • How come only Corki is the only flying champ who can actually be more than half a meter above the ground? And even that is not as high than Tristana's Rocket Jump?
  • Some of the components and corresponding results for advanced items are frequently fairly strange.
    • One example is the (sadly removed) Will of the Ancients, which starts off as two books... which fuse into a gun... which combines with a magic wand to become another book... Book Ends?
  • Players shall either forever be confused how oranges remove all crowd-control effects on Gangplank, wonder if they could get oranges to work for them like that too, or just decide to forget about caring.
    • Runeterran Oranges, aka Gangplank while eating it also sprays a stinging citrus that is corrosive enough to ward off enemy champions' negative effects.
    • Scurvy is an illness caused by a deficiency of Vitamin C, a person with the ailment looks pale, feels depressed, and is partially immobilized. As scurvy advances, there can be open, suppurating wounds, loss of teeth, jaundice, fever, neuropathy and death (from wikipedia). It was a common illness among pirates, as fruit goes bad really fast, so it would've been a waste of space carrying rotten food on board. To treat scurvy, someone needs to eat lots of oranges, lemons, etc. Riot did their homework. What I DO wonder, is how Gangplank cures his scurvy with just a couple of oranges...
    • Runeterran Oranges, if you didn't read Gragas backstory, the oranges are magically infused citrus which have an even more beneficial effect.
  • How does Zyra, a sentient, malevolent, killer plant have no sense of morality but does have the instinct to form parts of her body into something resembling clothing?
    • To lure hapless male mages into her sweet embrace. Too bad unlike Maokai she derives no nourishment from consuming her prey (aka no sustain). Which is a fridge brilliance on why Zyra's plants don't heal her naturally.
    • Hang on, wouldn't it make more sense for her NOT to clothe herself then?
    • It's the only thing she knows when she created her body. She mostly would have learned that you can entrance others by teasing them more than you can by showing off the goods, which is what she needs to get others close, plus she is still, for the most part, a plant, and thus even if she learned the proper shape, she most likely wouldn't be able to replicate the actual sexual aspects of a real woman.
  • From this video: "Wait... how can I blind Lee Sin?" "How can [Corki] fly faster with boots?" "How can [Cassopeia] turn Malphite to stone?"
    • Well, to answer the last question, there are two important aspects to petrification. One is turning to stone; the other is immobility. Malphite might already be stone, but that doesn't mean Cassiopeia can't stop him from moving or slow him down.
    • Riot finally gave an official answer to the Teemo one in Riot Asks: Teemo's Blinding Darts temporarily give Lee Sin the sensation of sight again, which is just as disorientating for him as blindness would be to anyone else.
      For as we know, Teemo is the Devil. And only the Devil would restore sight to a blind man, even momentarily, only to take it away again.
    • But Lee Sin wears a blindfold, so he wouldn't be able to see anyways...
    • Blind eyes do not see darkness, they see nothing. The blindfold would prevent Lee Sin from seeing anything useful, but he would still suffer the disorientation of having a new sense connected.
  • The idea with Nasus' slow (Wither) is that he ages the enemy champion, causing them to become less mobile. Why doesn't this make Annie stronger?
    • Because Nasus' wither effects rather than chronologically age something is more like it withers away the target's vitality, so Nasus gives Annie some kind of magical progeria when he uses wither on her, and works similarly on any champion for that matter.

Outdated Fridge

League is ever changing, so realizations that relied on obsolete info have been placed here to make room for relevant ones.

• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The lore shows champions doing extremely powerful things prior to their League admittance: from Maokai nearly destroying the entire Twisted Treeline along with all champions and spectators, Kayle using her typically one-target ultimate on everyone to protect them from the previous champion's Vengeful Maelstrom, to Renekton easily putting down his brother and getting past three opponents before being stopped. Just feels like Riot wants the champions to look incredibly awesome at first, but then again the Institute of War is probably heavily toning down their strengths when they enter the Fields of Justice. Now imagine what they could do if they had all the champions under their control at the same time in which they gave them full access to their powers.
    • No need to imagine it. The Doom Bots are effectively this; champions without limiters. Lux and her 12-Direction Ultimate say hello, Urf probably also works like this, a non-toned down champion is probably a doom bot with urf stats and that is terrifying.
    • That also gives an in-universe reason for how they get stronger and stronger during a game - gradually undoing the Restraining Bolt.
  • Sona, despite being able to "speak" to her summoner has no vocal emotes. This is because emotes can be heard by other summoners and Sona is in fact mute. Despite being able to telepathically talk, playing her instrument is the only way to "taunt" or "tell jokes"
  • The ammoral mutant scientists in League of Legends both have a damage dealing spell that does a percentage of health (Warwick and Mundo). Guess they know enough about Runeterran anatomy so that they do damage on a unit's maximum health. Likewise most of the Void Champions have a silence.
  • How can Lissandra be admitted into the League even as a high risk target? Season 3 has a lot of Freljord themed items. She came in with a huge bribe...
• Fridge Horror:
  • The Dominion Map, Crystal Scar, is described in backstory as being uninhabitable due to what amounted to a magical nuke being dropped on the place to flush everyone out and prevent diplomatic tensions reaching breaking point. In gameplay, it inflicts the permanent status "Crystal Scar's Aura", which boosts magic regeneration, makes champions take more damage, and makes them harder to heal. This isn't some Summoner-induced Competitive Balance thing, Champions (who still feel pain) are suffering from magical radiation poisoning while they're in the arena.
  • The very idea of Champions being friends or lovers is strangely horrifying. How could you want to spend any time with someone who was doing his or her very best to murder you a couple of hours ago?
    • Perhaps they're aware that they can't be perma-killed, and those who are close simply see it as a good old fashioned spar?
• Fridge Logic:
  • Out of all the skills in the game, Poppy's pre-rework Ultimate is the only one that does NOT MAKE SENSE. How the hell do you prevent others from whacking her or another champion with some unknown skill!?
    • Diplomatic Immunity, bitch!
    • Poppy already has a passive that shrugs off really powerful attacks. It simply channels her inner mental reserve to unspeakable levels except for her enemy.