Fridge / Seinfeld

Fridge Brillance

• It's sometimes called a plot hole that Jerry tells Bookman he "doesn't drink coffee" but is seen drinking coffee at Monk's in almost every subsequent episode. But the Bookman confrontation happens fairly early in the show's run - it's possible that the authoritative Bookman's rant was actually what inspired Jerry to try drinking coffee more often from that point forward.
• The idea of Jerry having a show in Japan isn't entirely far-fetched; his old college buddy even asks, "So, would have done it in Japan, but in English?", to which Jerry says he doesn't know. Japan actually does have a rather large English-speaking community, particularly Okinawa, so it wouldn't be entirely impossible for Jerry and George to do their in-universe show over in Japan.
• In "The Chinese Restaurant," the maitre d' misremembers George's name as Cartwright. Admittedly, Bonanza does rhyme with Costanza.
  • Even more awesome when you consider that James Hong played a guest role on Bonanza as Hop Sing's cousin.
• In "The Finale", the officer keeping an eye on the gang in lockup says that the Good Samaritan Law they were arrested for breaking was based on a French law. The gang was on their way to Paris when their plane went down, so even if they had managed to get there the same thing probably would have happened to them. Karma's a bitch.
• Many of Kramer's harebrained ideas come from suggestions and tips from his offscreen friend Bob Sacamano. Bob's initials are BS, which tells you everything you need to know about how useful his tips are.
• The sub-plot in "The Abstinence" of George becoming more intelligent by forgoing sex and Elaine becoming less intelligent for the same reason makes more sense when you remember the fifth season finale ("The Opposite"). There, the plot was that whenever George gained a success (got a girlfriend, got a new apartment, got a job), Elaine would suffer the opposite failure (broke up with her boyfriend, got evicted, lost her job) due to Jerry being "Even Steven".
• "The Summer of George" ends when George falls down the stairs. To reiterate, summer ends with fall.
• "The Bris": Why was the mohel "highly recommended", despite clearly being a nutcase? Because everybody who meets him is so petrified of him that they'll give him good reviews because they're afraid of what he'll do if they don't.
• There are complaints over "The Finale" that partly stem from the fact that the entire trial for the gang was a farce, but consider the following: Jerry's show had a pilot with questionable writing regarding the law and a man being sentenced to be a butler (a point lampshaded several times), and the entire trial happens due to an event that takes place because of the show being picked up.
• Newman eagerly spearheads Elaine's plan to get rid of her neighbor's annoying dog, claiming that he hates them. It seems like yet another example of his skeevy personality, except. . . Newman's a mailman. Of course he hates dogs.
• The whole premise of Seinfeld. It's about nothing, and Seinfeld and his friends get arrested... for doing nothing.
• The library enforcer who goes after Jerry for Tropic of Cancer is named Bookman, which amuses Jerry quite a bit. But doesn't this kind of set up some kind of superhero theme with him? (He's a hero who tackles crimes against books. He's Bookman!)
• In "The Jacket", George has "Master of the House" from Les Misérables as an Ear Worm and can't stop singing it. "Master of the House" is about what a selfish, greedy, conniving Jerkass Thenardier, the singer, is. So, George is going around obliviously describing himself in song.
• "The Chronicle" (the retrospective of the show just before the finale) has a montage of shots set to Green Day's "Good Riddance (The Time of Your Life)". At first, it seems like the show is just another that heard the whole "I hope you had the time of your life" and assumed it was about well-wishing because they didn't notice the title. But the events of the finale (the gang goes on trial and sent to prison after a large number of people testify against them) seem to make the song's title completely appropriate.
• When the older couple in "The Letter" discuss the Kramer painting, the man sees him as a "parasite," a "sexually deprived miscreant" and a "loathsome, offensive brute," while the woman reads positive and sympathetic qualities into him such as innocence, vulnerability, a deep need for love, Undying Loyalty and "nobility of character." Behold the psychology of the Kavorka in action.
• In "The Invitations," Susan evicts Kramer, who's supposed to be an usher at her marriage to George, from the wedding party after he gets her name wrong. This seems a little petty (after all, he's there to represent George, not her) until you remember that he threw up on her at their first meeting, burned down her family's cabin, and had an affair with her then-girlfriend, not only making it miraculous that she entertained having him in the wedding at all, but making his failure to remember her much more of an insult.
• In "The Parking Space", George offhandedly comments, "I wish you could make a living parallel parking". He already tried that in "The Alternate Side", and it worked out very badly for the entire cast. (To wit, his parking job in "The Parking Space" doesn't go well either.)
• "The Pool Guy" introduces the "worlds" theory whereby integrating Susan into George's friend group poses an existential threat to "Independent George," who operates as a separate entity from "Relationship George." Although this compartmentalization on George's part isn't exactly flattering toward Susan, it doesn't, in itself, spell doom for their future either; in a stabler context it could just as easily be seen as a fairly psychologically sound, realistic way of balancing a social life with a committed relationship. So what's the real death knell? "The Friar's Club," in which George is more than happy to bring "Independent George" into "Relationship George's" sphere by double-dating with Jerry, even striving to get him into a long-term relationship with Susan's friend Hallie so that he can tag along indefinitely. Despite his earlier framing of the situation, George shows his hand by making it clear that he has no real interest in maintaining the integrity of his two selves—he's protective of "Independent George," but he wants to kill "Relationship George." This is right around when Susan should have run for the hills.
• In "The Hamptons," Kramer informs George that he and the others saw his new girlfriend topless and, oblivious to his reaction, cheerfully congratulates him with, "She's got a great body, buddy." This seems like a standard case of Loose Lips until you remember Kramer's earlier speculation that the girlfriend, who has never been intimate with George before, exposed herself to them in order to "create a buzz" and "get some good word of mouth going." He was trying to help.
• In "The Serenity Now," Kramer is trying to mount an offensive with a hose against some kids firing silly string at him from down the hallway, and George is supposed to turn on Jerry's tap to get the hose started at the signal. However, Jerry has recently gotten in touch with his feelings and backs a very uncomfortable George into a corner while trying to hug him. We then cut away to Kramer screaming out the signal word and getting attacked with silly string. It's clearly implied that Jerry hugged George, but they technically stayed in the "no hugging" rule by not actually depicting it.
• Several times over the Back to Front episode "The Betrayal," George uses an expression ("You can stuff your sorries in a sack, mister!") that baffles everyone else, until a flashback near the end reveals that he picked the phrase up from Susan when they were engaged two years prior. However, the tone of the line as Susan says it is completely different from the way George uses it throughout the episode; while from Susan it's an endearing "don't worry about it" rebuke for an unnecessary apology (she slips her arm around him while she says it), from George it's a "shove it up your ass" retort to any apology he won't accept. It's characteristic of George's negative, antagonistic worldview that he reads an insulting comeback into a line that was meant as a gentle tease.
• In "The Seven," Kramer insists that Elaine's declaration that she'd give her new bike to the first person who could fix the crick in her neck constituted a "verbal contract" and demands that she follow through on her end of the "deal," leading Elaine to chide him for taking hyperbolic expressions too literally. In the same episode, Kramer asks Jerry if he's become dissatisfied with the "arrangement" he believes them to have whereby "I could take anything I wanted from your fridge, and you could take whatever you want from mine" (to which Jerry fires back, "Let me know when you get something in there and I will"). Two seasons later, "The Betrayal" flashes back to Jerry and Kramer's first meeting to reveal the origin of Kramer's "impression": Jerry invited him in for a bite to eat with the words "What's mine is yours," which Kramer took him up on in a similarly Literal-Minded manner.
• In "The Bubble Boy", the Moors/Moops misprint would seem like a rather strange one considering the distance between "r" and "p" on a typical keyboard. But "Μοορς" is what would have come out if mistakenly typing using the Greek keyboard setting, which is a very possible mistake if one has that language installed on their workstation.
• In "The Soup Nazi", the titular nazi announces he is going out of business and moving to Argentina. Argentina has long been known as a Nazi haven.
  • Although the show never specifies the Soup Nazi's ethnicity, he is based on Persian restauranteur Al Yeganeh. Nazism and other anti-Semitic ideologies have a following in Iran.
• During the Falling-in-Love Montage between Jerry and Jeanie in "The Invitations", she can be seen reading from a Supergirl comic book. But of course. She's Jerry's Distaff Counterpart and his love of Superman has been well established throughout the show.

Fridge Horror

• In one episode, Elaine gets bitten by a dog, and she fears she may have gotten rabies. After her doctor, who doesn't understand much English, cleans her arm off, Elaine asks him if she needs a rabies shot. The doctor thinks she's asking if she was shot by a gun ("Woof! Woof! Not, Bang! Bang!"). Elaine does get a rabies shot later in the episode, but only after showing symptoms of rabies! Okay, so this doctor who speaks poor English.... how many other patients has he misdiagnosed, or not properly treated due to not understanding certain questions?
  • This could have been a lot worse if it hadn't been a TV show. The chance of living once symptoms of rabies begin to show is so low that she'd only survive due to being a main character.
  • Another one involving Elaine and doctors. In "The Package" Elaine has difficulty getting her doctors to treat a rash she has all because she has a notice in her file that she's "difficult". A notice that stemmed from her simply not wanting to wear a hospital gown. Subsequently, Elaine tries to be friendlier and easier to work with to get her rash treated, but every doctor she sees brushes her off, or immediately dismisses her the second they see her file and see the notice that she's difficult. Watching this episode it's not hard to see that these doctors are merely looking for ways to not treat a patient, not do any actual work, and still get paid. Elaine should have sued their asses.
• George is a moron and an amoral schemer, but man does his life SUCK. Especially in regards to how his relationship with Susan's parents soured. As a matter of fact, in one part of the series finale, Mr. Ross was shown buying a handgun. Yes, you saw that right. Susan's parents dislike George to the point of wishing death on him.
• In an episode where George sleeps with a married woman, the woman's husband declares his intent to "sew his ass to his face, break all his joints and reattach them backwards", etc. One wonders what kind of treatment his poor wife was in for when she returned home from their tryst.
• In The Hamptons, the group go to their friends' beach house to see their new baby. It's mentioned that they did the same thing two years ago when the couple had their first child. However, when they get there, the two year-old is never seen or mentioned. What happened to it?
• There's a Cracked article theorizing that George caused his own brother's suicide.
• Jerry admits he was making out with his girlfriend during Schindler's List, but defends himself by saying he started during the previews. Thing is, previews are often based on the kind of movie you're going to see (like if you see a horror movie, the previews are probably for other horror movies).
• In "The Pony Remark", after offending Manya (who had a pony in her childhood), Jerry can't understand how an immigrant could have been so well off to have had a pony. However, given her age and that she was Polish and probably Jewish, it's probable that she may have been well off when young but lost it all when she had to flee the Nazis! A remark in her funeral even mentions her being in that apartment since World War 2. Suddenly makes Jerry's remarks seem more insensitive and her upset more understandable.
• "The Serenity Now" seems to indicate that Jerry is incapable of feeling real emotion most of the time. This may indicate that he has high-functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome. On the face of it that doesn't sound too bad (he's able to hold down a successful career and afford an apartment in one of the world's most expensive cities), but keep in mind that the show took place in The '90s and the cast seemed to be in about their 30s or early 40s then (the actual Jerry Seinfeld was born in 1954), which would mean that Jerry's formative years were in The '50s and Sixties, when autism and Asperger's syndrome were much less understood, and attitudes toward neurological issues were much less enlightened. Therefore Jerry might have had a rather unpleasant childhood.
  • On top of that, Jerry possibly having autism/Asperger's might explain some of his less sensitive remarks and actions throughout the show (including in "The Pony Remark" mentioned above).
  • Someone on Reddit theorized that all four of the main cast might have autism/Asperger's. So, also being children of the '50s and '60s, they may also have had awkward and unpleasant childhoods. It may also explain George's very strained relations with his parents.

Fridge Logic

• In "The Outing", George ends up watching a good-looking male nurse give a sponge bath to a good-looking male patient. This is obviously a reference to the female-female scene in "The Contest", but in Real Life, male and female patients (George was visiting his mother) do not share rooms.
• In "The Invitations", Jerry immediately regretted getting engaged to his girlfriend, why didn't he just use the Pre Nup Blow Up suggestion Kramer gave George earlier in the episode while standing 5 feet from Jerry.