Fridge / Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Fridge Brilliance

• Lady Van Tassel getting hoist by her own petard in the end makes perfect sense if you follow modern Wicca, which holds that whatever energy you send into the universe comes back on you threefold, for good or ill. Lady Van Tassel uses witchcraft to send the Hessian on a bloody killing spree for her own revenge plot, and it snaps back on her so hard that she gets dragged, alive, into the twisty Burton tree that the Hessian used as a gateway when he did her bidding.
• The extreme flammability of the windmill might have seemed like typical Hollywood special-effects overkill to some, but in fact it's very realistic. Flour mills are subject to the same problems coal mines are: the flammability/explosive qualities of combustible dust suspended in the air. These can cause very serious explosions, with one flour mill explosion in 1878 having killed 18 people. Even today with all our modern technology, there's roughly a dozen dust explosions per year in the agricultural sector.
• Why does Lady Van Tassel murder the servant? In addition to needing a female body to pass as hers, Sarah would also know that Lady Van Tassel busted her and the doctor having an affair and could give Ichabod vital clues if he asked her. Sarah notably 'disappears' before Ichabod can start asking any questions.
• The Church failed at holding back the Hell-powered Horseman... perhaps because it was headed by a not-so-holy Minister... thus negating any holiness that could've held back the Horseman.
  • Also it did prevent the Horseman from entering...because he was specifically summoned by Lady Van Tassel offering her soul to Satan. Katrina's magic however is benevolent, and not connected to the devil at all, which is why she drew the protective circle in the church.
• Why would Mrs Killian talk so casually about the Widow Winship's private business with Lady Van Tassel? Well, Lady Van Tassel used to be a nurse before marrying Baltus, so possibly they knew each other beforehand.
• Even as Ichabod figures out that there's more to the deaths than random chance, Lady Van Tassel never sends the Horseman after him. Well, after he visited Notary Hardenbrook, he was convinced the culprit was Baltus and Katrina then burned all his evidence - so Lady Van Tassel may not have known how much he knew or suspected, especially since he headed back to New York after Baltus's death.
  • And Lady Van Tassel, after knowing Ichabod followed her to her tryst with the reverend, begs him not to tell her husband. She would have already been to Notary Hardenbrook to find out what Ichabod had been asking, and discovered that Ichabod was suspecting Baltus. So she played the part of a helpless wife in fear of her husband.
• Ichabod is shown as an only child with his mother in the flashbacks. This is probably because his father was such a strict, religious man that he married as an assumed requirement of being a church leader, only had sex with his wife long enough to father a child, and once done (Ichabod), would never see the need to do so again.
• When Lady Van Tassel is gathering the flowers for her injured hand, she is humming the same song as the witch in the woods.
• Katrina is first introduced playing a party game, called "the Pickety Witch", that involves her reaching for other players with a blindfold. This serves as a double Call-Forward: Not only will Katrina herself later be revealed to practice actual witchcraft, but the witch of the wood is shown to be eyeless when under the possession of a familiar.