Fridge Brilliance:
- The entire plot is Karnak's way to help all the children, not just the one who gets resurrected. By giving them the opportunity of a last performance, he gives them the chance to work through the emotions left from life. He even restores a rare measure of agency and meaning over their fates to help the acceptance: by having the resurrection be a unanimous vote from the choir, each gets to consciously choose to make peace with their deaths and get to move on knowing that they've helped another while doing so. Karnak just gives Ocean more focused treatment because he already knows she'll spend the musical emotionally reeling and needs the most help to come to a point where she can accept her death. His lack of engagement with Jane, the other one most in need of outside help, foreshadows how she's the one to be resurrected, as being given her life back is the only way he can help her resolve her issues.
- On that note, when Ocean says to Karnak, "You knew all along I could never do it[...] Choose myself", it's not just about Ocean realizing what the prophecy meant. It's Ocean realizing she never had to prove she was a good person to Karnak after all. So many of her actions are about proving she is a good person who is worthy of being resurrected, to the point she was actually being selfish. But her most selfless act was one Karnak predicted at the beginning of the show — choosing not to get resurrected. He knew she had it in her and wasn't just out to get her.
- Karnak's second purpose in creating the musical was to restore and honor the children's individuality. While he never directly comes out and says this, he calls the musical "a eulogy" for the children, outright telling the audience that when the Canadian national media had collectively dubbed them "Our Six Saints”, they’d been “robbed of their individuality”, and “lumped together in a mass tragedy”. As a result of the media’s actions, the only thing the general public really knew about the six kids was that they were from a dead-end town, members of a Catholic school choir, and died tragically while riding on a carnival’s shoddily built roller coaster. When Karnak talks about Noel’s funeral, he brings attention to how wildly mismatched it was from who he was and what he liked as a person, despite the presumably good intentions of the living who planned it and participated (it was catered by Taco Bell, the dead-end job he only worked at so he could save enough money to move to France, and because he once said he liked a Christina Aguilera song as an ironic joke, the mourners took it seriously and decided to have it played - on the bagpipes). This is why the musical styles of each song are so drastically different and mismatched- they’re specifically written to emphasize how different and unique the children are from each other, rather than being lumped together as a nameless tally, as mass tragedies often are. This is again another reason why Jane is the one planned from the beginning to "win," because she's the only one whose individuality can't be honored and eulogized.
- Jane Doe says her parents never came to inquire about her, which is partly why no one knows her identity. If Jane is the same Penny Lamb from Richmond's Legoland, there's a simple explanation: Her parents are in jail for growing marijuana.
- In "What The World Needs," Ocean lumps Jane in with the "losers" despite the worst thing she can say about Jane being "she's a freaky monster!" It seems harsh to call her a zero because of it, unless you assume Jane's zero doesn't mean a "loser", but a blank slate. Ocean calls everyone else zeroes because she thinks they have no future—Jane is a zero because she has no past.
- Jane's vocalizing in "The Ballad of Jane Doe" shares the rising and rapidly falling leitmotif that accompanies the Cyclone crash in both "Fall Fair Suite" and "Uranium Suite." As she has no memories, being in the crash is the only thing she knows about herself.
- The video footage of the choir's last day of life in the 2016 version persistently fails to clearly show "Jane Doe," who is there if you really look for her but is usually obscured from the camera's view by another choir member. On the coaster, this is because she's in the back next to Ricky and the camera perspective from the front of the cart means the back seats can't be seen if there are riders in the front. But why was she always obscured on stage? Simple. She joined "at the last minute." Choir performances, especially school choir performances, are choreographed to maximize the visibility of the performers, but the St. Cassian Chamber Choir was choreographed for five members, and all their dance routines before Karnak intervenes appear to be based on a five-member configuration—the four more mobile members symmetrically dancing around Ricky, with him in the center back. They probably didn't have time to change the routine to allow Jane much visibility, so they stuck her in the back next to Ricky and she ended up difficult to see behind the performer directly in front of her.
- Depending on exactly how last minute she was in joining, she might also not have been on any of the choir's paperwork yet or had her name added to the competition's program.
- In one of the earlier intro versions, "Fall Fair Suite," Ocean sings that she "heard the crack" after which all present members of the choir suddenly freeze where they are and join her in the next line: "Felt the drop knowing that I'm never going back!" Everyone who participates at this moment doesn't go back; Jane Doe is introduced later.
- One of the lyrics in “The Ballad of Jane Doe” is "Time eats all his children in the end" - likely a referral to the myth of Cronus, the titan of time, and his habit of eating all his children when they were born to avoid having them overthrow him. This happened to 5 children - Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Only, when it came time for his youngest, Zeus, to be born, Zeus' mother Rhea gave birth in secret and tricked Cronus into swallowing a stone instead. Time never ate all his children. The last of the 6 escaped... Like Jane. 1 of 6.
- Not only that, it references her catchphrase about a lion who, jealous of the fact that his mate’s cubs caused her to stop making love to him, eats them - and instead of being upset, both parents proceed to go on as if they’d never existed. This also ties into the world’s seeming apathy over “Jane’s” death.
- Mischa's favorite movie is mentioned to be Saw V, but the plot he describes is actually that of Saw VI. In the movie, one of the traps is called the Shotgun Carousel, and there are 6 people that are in the trap. The person the audience follows through the trap plot is forced to choose who lives and who dies, similarly to how Karnak later chooses Ocean to have the deciding vote on who returns to life. Also every person in the carousel is given a short window of time to give their reasoning as to why they should be allowed to live, much like everyone in the musical has at least one song to perform that serves the same purpose. Unlike in the movie, however, only 1 of the 6 contestants here is chosen to live, rather than 2.
- Constance's favorite ride is the Cyclone itself. At first that just seems ironic, because that's what killed her, but she ends up being the only one who appreciated her life for what it was, the only one who loved the roller coaster that is life.
- Karnak's prophecy is "The one who wants to win it the most shall redeem the loser in order to complete the whole." Obviously by the end we know that the one who wants to win it the most is Ocean, and she votes for Jane, who lost her memory. But the "complete the whole" part doesn't just refer to completing Jane's body and thus identity, it refers to completing the choir, since Jane's survival means every member of the choir is identified. And on a meta level, it refers to completing the musical, because once Jane's resurrected, the purpose of the musical as indicated by Karnak—to recognize the individuality of all of the choir members—is complete. As per this line in "The Ballad of Jane Doe," lamenting the loss of Jane's identity:Jane: And from the ground beneath my feet / I hear the anguish of the street...The rest of the Choir: A choir never complete!
- Each character’s song shares a theme with one other character.
- Ocean and Mischa: Themselves. they also have an additional song.
- Noel and Ricky: Suggestive dreams.
- Constance and Jane: Their deaths.
Fridge Logic:
- Most bodies are identified by their fingerprints if there are no dental records or identifiable features available. Did something happen to Jane's hands that made this impossible?
- Fingerprint matching isn't an exact science and it's only feasible if you have a pool of subjects to compare from. As a child, Jane may never have needed to be fingerprinted before. Penny Lamb has a criminal record and may have been fingerprinted upon arrest, but it's unknown when this story takes place in relation to Legoland, if the two share canon at all.
- At least in the earlier productions, the newspapers clippings show photos of the choir performing with all six kids (though "Jane's" face is obscured), and the footage of the choir on the Cyclone shows six children, though "Jane" is only shown from the back. If “Jane” did join the choir “at the last minute” as the Uranium residents rumored, then even if they didn’t know her well, they should’ve remembered performing with her simply because she was so new to the group - Ricky in particular, since he appears to have been next to her in the performance and on the coaster. So why do the other kids act as if they've never met Jane Doe before her headless introduction, and treat the existence of a sixth contestant as a surprise? Just how "last minute" was “Jane's” last-minute membership?
- It doesn’t explain why they can’t recall a sixth member at all, but since it’s implied Jane has used her doll’s head to replace her missing one, it’s possible they don’t recognize her because of that. Maybe they’re also suffering a less severe form of Ghost Amnesia since she’s such a recent addition to their lives?
Fridge Sadness
- When Ocean brings up Mischa's history, she mentions he ended up in the choir as a consequence of stealing three cases of communion wine. He defends this by saying it was his cousin's birthday, and in Mischa's country, it's a tradition to drink to celebrate one's birthday. Ocean then retorts that his cousin was in Grade 4 and had to get his stomach pumped. Given what we later learn about Mischa's family situation, and the unlikelihood that Ocean would know (or that Mischa could deliver wine to) a Ukrainian cousin, this implies that despite the alienation he received from his adoptive parents, Mischa actually continued attempting to reach out and positively engage with his adoptive family members... only for it to blow up in his face and get him further labeled a problem. And, indirectly, cause his death via forcing him into the choir.
