As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- YOASOBI's opening song "Idol" is partially sung from Ai's view, including her Dying Declaration of Love for her children. Queen Bee's ending song "Mephisto" on the other hand? It reads like a love letter from Aqua (the son of the star) to his deceased mother and idol.
- Sarina dies of anaplastic astrocytoma. Astrocytomas are tumors that develop from certain star-shaped brain cells.
- Throughout the first volume, Ai is described as a Consummate Liar, which she utilizes as part of her performances as an idol. It is only fitting that her role in the story is a Decoy Protagonist.
- Aqua thinks in Chapter 28 that Ai's character cannot possibly be imitated by Akane, because Ai was one-of-a-kind and a natural talent. He ends up eating his words and comes to believe that his understanding of Ai is shallow compared to what Akane has achieved. What Aqua doesn't know or forgot is that Ai's entire performance as an idol is a lie. She is a very well-trained liar and worked on her entire performance, from the way she talked to the way she smiled to appear like the perfect idol. Therefore, Akane, who studied Ai's emotions and quirks, can replicate it because everything is after all not natural talent but fabricated.
- Viewers who pay close attention will notice that Akane's strides at the end of Episode 7 mimic the way Ai walked in the MV of "Idol", Manaka Iwami's inflection of her voice sounds like Rie Takahashi's and Akane's mouth movement looks very similar to Ai's movements in the first opening video.
- Ruby recovers much better from Ai's death than Aqua. While this has partially to do with the fact that she didn't directly see Ai die, it also has to do with her goal in life being different and that there were two important people in her life, Ai being one of them. Aqua's wish was to watch over Ai, but with her gone, he was on the brink of crossing his Despair Event Horizon if he hadn't resolved himself to seek revenge. Ruby, or Sarina, on the other hand always wanted to become an idol to see her first love Goro again. Once she discovers Goro's decayed corpse in Chapter 77, this goal of hers disappears. She similarly is out for revenge when she learns two chapters later that Ai's and Goro's deaths are related and that the culprit is still out there.
- In Chapter 98, it's shown that Akane intended to kill Kamiki with a knife she hid in a flower bouquet, just like Ryosuke did with Ai.
- After Aqua reveals his and Ruby's parentage and the reason behind Ai's murder to the public, Ruby is absolutely furious at Aqua. However, in Chapter 106 she reveals that her understanding of her mother is actually lacking, especially when compared to Aqua and Akane. While Akane is a genius with a Sherlock Scan, who studied Ai thoroughly, Aqua has a much better understanding of Ai because he was aware of Ai's "lies are love" philosophy, as he talked to her as Goro and listened to her motivations when Ryosuke stabbed her. Ruby was not present and kept on believing in the lie Ai built for her fans for years. Ruby only comes to this realization that her mother was acting the whole time in Chapter 115.
- How did Goro and Sarina know each other in the first place? Sure, Goro worked at the same hospital Sarina's parents sent her to, but he was an obstetrician, and Sarina's medical problems were brain-related. The first chapter seemed to hand-wave this by having him say that he often slacked off in patients' rooms during his residency, but it still kind of felt like a contrived coincidence. Chapter 121 reveals that it wasn't a coincidence at all: Goro deliberately chose to slack off in the rooms of patients who hadn't had any visitors in a long time. And this was arguably foreshadowed by an earlier flashback of him getting angry that Sarina's parents weren't showing up even when she was on her deathbed.
- Osaragi in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War is a preview of how idols are shown here, and especially of how Ai sees them. Ai is a very good liar, with her idol act being explicitly that, an act, with their goal being to hide all their personal problems for their fans' happiness, and she even considers her lies the way she shows love, and that's exactly what Osaragi does most of the series: she presents a calm facade and hides her feelings for Ishigami for his happiness, and shows her love for him by manipulating Kazeno into getting out of the way of his romance with Tsubame.
Fridge Horror
- Ryosuke murdering Goro just for being Ai's doctor seems pretty irrational even by the standards of a stalker, since he was just doing his job helping her with her pregnancy. Unless he was hoping something would go wrong if Ai's doctor were to suddenly go missing just as she's going into labor... (Note how he specifically asks if Goro is Ai's doctor, rather than simply asking if Ai is in the hospital.)
- Akane worries that if Kamiki really is indirectly responsible for Ai's murder, he won't get imprisoned for it because he was a minor at that time. However, Chapter 109 shows Kamiki still murdering young and rising actresses. How many more people has he murdered after Ai's death 12 years ago?
- It's entirely possible that Ai's difficulty feeling love is the result of trauma from her upbringing before she was taken in by Ichigo - having never known her father and being abused (and later abandoned) by her mother, she was likely never shown real love until Ichigo took her in, at which point the damage was done.
- Don't forget another detail. Ai entered the idol business to find and feel love through lying. But the 4 years of career didn't change anything. In fact, the frequentness of her lies only made her more afraid of facing the truth of her feelings to her loved ones. A Hoist by His Own Petard situation that would've lasted for maybe even Ai's late twenties if it weren't for the murder.
