As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- Elliot's father Edward Alderson was killed by E Corp. In a flashback, Edward decides to reward Elliot for stealing from a jerk rather than punish him. This rather concisely explains why Elliot has chosen his father to be the face of his vigilante anarchist personality.
- The shoe store clerk's lecture to Angela is doubly ironic because not only is he lecturing her on E Corp's evil when SHE lost her mother to their actions but the fact is that he's doing his job for her (a member of E Corp) because he needs the money—exactly the excuse he tried to repudiate.
- Elliot saying "fuck society" at the start of the series playfully foreshadows his true identity as the founder of fsociety. The "f" in the group's name is simply a shortening of the full swear word, as in "eff society."
- The album titles Elliot chooses tend to hold a cryptic significance to the information encrypted within. In Shayla's case, it's The Cure's Disintegration, which contains "Pictures of You", the song that was played when Elliot first met Shayla, and also lent a bitter poignance by Shayla's death, and the fact all Elliot has left of Shayla is whatever information about her he could hack - literally all he has left of Shayla are snapshots - which is what the lyrics of "Pictures of You" deal with.
- In one scene between Tyrell and his wife, she's scrubbing a stain off her dress in the kitchen sink while discussing their schemes. Mundane enough activity, but considering what kind of wife Joanna is, it also doubles as an allusion to Macbeth.
- It sort of bugged me during those scenes from the first 2 seasons where Mr. Robot lashed out at Elliot by threatening to take permanent control or causing him to hallucinate when he was supposed to be his "protector". Upon finishing the series, it became clear that Mr. Robot wasn't protecting our Elliot. He was trying to keep the Mastermind in line.
- I can't believe the entire show was just an adaptation of Styx's "Mr. Roboto"!
- Leon's interpretation of Knight Rider is slightly off with it being "about man's dependence on technology", however Knight Rider and Mr. Robot share something in common. Both shows, technically, are about "a dangerous world of a man who does not exist," and both deal with a "young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless and powerless in a world of criminals who operate above the law." Essentially, Elliot and his relationship with technology is no different from Michael Knight's relation to KITT: both use technology and their skills to go after bad people who would be otherwise untouchable by the law due to their money and power.
- Very early on, Elliot finds Darlene (a girl he had only just met) in his shower. She acts like nothing is strange about this and when asked how she knows where he lives, she asks "Why wouldn't I know where you live?" Since they leave it at that, you're led to believe she and her organization have done their research on Elliot and this scene only exists to illustrate what they're capable of. The truth is much more harmless: she's been there many times before and thought nothing was weird about taking a shower at her brother's house. In fact, she was justifiably weirded out by her brother opening the shower door.
- All of Elliot's early interactions with Darlene make perfect sense in hindsight. First-time viewers will believe she's just an eccentric or that she's a Satellite Love Interest (something Elliot believes, too), but it makes perfect sense for her to act like this when he is not only her brother but also one who set up fsociety. She gets annoyed when Elliot is confused at things he should know and offended when Elliot kicks her out of his appartment or refuses to let her stay at his place.
- When Elliot goes through withdrawl on the way to Steel Mountain, Romero and Mobley sit and watch the 1995 film Hackers, commenting on how unrealistic it is. This may just seem like a joke, considering how the show tries to make the hacking scenes look as realistic as possible, but it’s an actual callback to the film’s release. When the film was released, real life hackers targeted the movie’s website and defaced it, posting a response about the film’s depictions of hacking being unrealistic. Ironically, there have been reports that despite it not being realistic in it’s portrayal of hacking, the movie inspired several people to go into the IT field and take up jobs to help companies fight against hackers, much like Elliot’s job at Allsafe.
- In the first episode of Season 1, Elliot describes "the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent" as people who "play God without permission." In Season 4, we discover the name of said group as The Deus Group. Deus is the Latin word for God.
- When Angela is killed, Price gets on the phone with Whiterose and he tells her that she didn't give him enough time to convince Angela to save herself before doing so. After Darlene and Elliot successfully hacks The Deus Group and takes all of Whiterose's money, Price tells Whiterose that her project is done and that she didn't lose, that she just "ran out of time." In that moment, it's clear that Price has drawn a parallel between them: Whiterose murdered Price's child, and in that moment, Price "killed" Whiterose's child (or at least attempted to).
Fridge Horror
- Near the end of Season 2, Angela is given a series of Armor-Piercing Questions by a young girl who looks a bit like her, which later turn out to be courtesy of White Rose as part of her recruitment. Seems weird enough, right? In a flashback in Season 3, we see a young Angela... played by the same girl. What did White Rose do?
- With both his mother and father dead and assuming he wasn't adopted by their bodyguard, the Wellick's only child is gonna have a tough life ahead of him.
- Elliot's aversion to being touched, specifically by men. "407 Proxy Authentication Required" reveals exactly why: he was molested by his father. Even before this discovery, Elliot was unconsciously reacting to his childhood sexual abuse.
- A young Elliot telling Edward that he is sick and doesn't want to admit it in the movie theater flashback. Elliot wasn't talking about Edward's leukemia: he was talking about Edward's pedophilia.
- Elliot leaping out of the window becomes even worse when you add in the unfortunate nature of Edward's behavior. Elliot hid Darlene in the closet so Darlene wouldn't suffer the same abuse before jumping out to escape it. It wasn't a random psychotic break that Elliot forgot; Mr. Robot was trying to protect him and Darlene.
- What did Angela do to Elliot when she kidnapped and imprisoned him for the entire weekend before Stage 2 to keep Mr. Robot awake?
- Was Angela even aware that Elliot was sexually abused by his father? If she knew, that would make her ill-treatment of him in Season 3 even worse.
- The real Elliot being awoken from his almost year-long slumber is presented as optimistic, but imagine yourself in his position: you are set to marry your true love, you have parents and friends that support you, and you have an ideal, lucrative career. No significant trauma has befallen you, and all is as well as it can be. Now, imagine yourself learning that everything about your life is a fiction and that you have been stuck in a velvet prison while an entire year of your actual life has been going on. Now, imagine waking up to this revelation only to discover that your true love is dead, your parents were actually terrible people who abused you, you have a sister that you forgot, and you essentially ruined countless lives without your intent. To say that the real Elliot has a very long and very painful road ahead of him would be a dramatic understatement.
- There might be a bit of a hopeful subversion, as the end shows that the memories from The Mastermind being incorporated back into Elliot when the alters finally merge back into the Real Elliot as he is given control again. That means he'll remember the trauma that the Mastermind has gone through, the pain and the remorse for actions that happened, including the loss of Angela and the realization that his parents were terrible people and now the world is much better than how he remembered it being last year. The Mastermind may have gone through the emotions and trauma for the real Elliot. And now the real Elliot now can live without having to go through those feelings again because he remembers having done so through the Mastermind.
Fridge Logic
- Season 4 ends with the great Robin Hood hack, finally the Aldersons steal all the money from the evil world oligarchs redistribute it to the people through eCoin. Except...as far as we know eCoin is only used in the USA. This means that the money stolen all over the world by the 0.01% of the people has been refunded to about 4% of them. Well it's still a progress, I guess.
- It's safe to say Darlene and the Mastermind took that into account before they initiated the hack. If anything, they may have set up the transfer of money that would have gone to that 4% to several charities in their name.
