This page has been made compliant with the Spoiler policy that includes not putting spoiler tags on Fridge pages.
- In the prologue, Arni mentions having horrible dreams and we later learn that his family's tendency toward magic comes from his side of the family. It seems likely, therefore that he's a nascent mage.
- While on the phone with his boss, Michael Madsen pretends that his Oh, Crap! reaction to the news of the travel restriction is due to Magnus peeing himself. The family tree indicates that Magnus has descendants and hence wasn't neutered. The urine of male cats that haven't been neutered can be quite smelly, which means Magnus peeing himself would have warranted a small Oh, Crap! reaction if it had actually happened.
- Veeti Hollola has an original Game Boy Advance despite the fact that the devices used by other characters indicate that the console should be obsolete. The model Veeti is using runs on normal batteries that can be used with other devices. Later models of the same console line, including the one Mia Västerström seems to be using, run on batteries that are specifically made for the device and may be tricky to use to power anything else. The Hotakainen-Hollola family is the most Crazy-Prepared among the prologue characters.
- In the Swedish prologue, the Västerström family are driving to their vacation home to escape the cities, and by year 90, they had been one of the richer families in Mora. If you compare the map shown in the comic with a real world map, you'll notice that Y90 Mora is a bit further south of real Mora, in an area where there's mostly forest in the present day. It's possible that the Västerström vacation home was actually located in the area that became Mora, or even that the house shown in the comic is the same house as the one they were fleeing to in the prologue. Having been around basically since the founding/rebuilding of the city, would certainly give them the basis for being one of the better off families.
- In the present day cats are known to be very useful in detecting trolls, Giants and beasts. Having a cat would be a great help in surviving in the silent world. Hence why all the prologue characters have access to a cat:
- The Norway group has Aksel's grandmother coming to stay with them, she owns a cat which is seen with the group later during the montage.
- The Denmark group has Michael's cat Magnus with them.
- The Finnish group leave on a boat belonging to Tulli Hollola and Eino Hotakainen. Their entire family is on board including their pet cat.
- The Swedish group is travelling with their family, also including their pet cat.
- The only person we see without access to a cat is Árni Reynisson. However he's the only one who doesn't need a cat with him, he's safe in Iceland where the infection is most controlled due to their isolation.
- When closed, Lalli's collar looks a lot like a Grade A cat collar, adding to his Cat Boy motif.
- The distance at which Emil was able to throw the broken wing mirror makes sense, considering that he's been trained to throw explosives, something one usually wants very far away from oneself.
- Tuuri's family portrait is a black-and-white photo, while the one in Reynir's house is color photo. While a color photo works much better for Reynir's family narratively, it would also make sense for the more technologically-advanced Iceland to still have color photos while Finland only has black-and-white.
- While Sharing a Body with Lalli, Emil is also carrying Lalli's rifle alongside his own on his back.
- Iceland's violently enforced isolation policy in the early days seems horrifying at first, but makes sense with some cold logic. While able to be autonomous in terms of bare necessities for some time at first glance, present-day Iceland is still reliant on imports for some perks of modern life, including things that could make the difference between life an death for some people. Canon has confirmed that there was a famine between Year 0 and Year 10, with one the factors being sea beasts preventing secure fishing. On top of this, whatever imported modern-day supplies they had in stock before closing the borders were destined to run out eventually and any new children born after they ran out of vaccines would be at risk of catching various diseases. The closing of the supply routes may have started to have real consequences by Month 3, to the point that the last thing they needed was extra people coming in, regardless of whether they carried the Rash or not.
- Iceland in Year 90 has only about 60% of the population that real life Iceland had in late 2013 (190,600 to about 325,000 note ), which gives an idea of some of the effects of the famine.
- Meanwhile, the other countries could have had an easier time taking refugees in once they figured out how long the quarantine needed to last to make sure they weren't infected, considering threat of beasts, trolls and giants.
- The absence of Encyclopedia Exposita pages from Chapter 16 to the end of Adventure I. Several of the documents are implied or outright shown to be the official mission's reference material. Said reference material is probably one of several copies existing somewhere in the Known World, so it would make absolutely no sense take it along on the trek to the pickup point. The only reading material that was taken on the trek was a bunch of carefully packed Old World books that nobody would consider touching just for the sake of killing time. In other words, the crew no longer has access to the reading material they had up to Chapter 15, so the audience doesn't either.
- The Norwegian part of the prologue takes place on Year 0 Day 0. According to the paper Gøran is reading, Iceland is closing its border that day (the newspaper is a day old and announces the closure happening the day after its release). In lieu of another significant historical event, Iceland's new date system is based on the year they started isolationism.
- Iceland was the first nation worldwide to close its borders, and Denmark the fourth. The only in-comic indication that the second and third were Japan and Madagascar respectively is the appearance of their flags in the news report announcing Denmark's border closure. It's an early hint that the reader is going to need to be good at recognizing flags to be able to fully enjoy the main story. The presence of both the Icelandic and the Danish flags in the line-up also hints that they will need to be good enough at this to tell the difference between two Nordic flags, which all have the same basic design.
- The reunion between Lalli and Onni in the dream world in Chapter 7 with Reynir's accidental help happens late enough in the real-world day that Emil and Sigrun are already out book salvaging. That part of day is Lalli's usual sleeping hours and Reynir was almost forced into having a nap by Mikkel on account of his insomnia the previous night. But why was Onni sleeping at this hour? He had probably already left Keuruu at the time, and the travel resulted in him sleeping at unusual hours.
- In some early scenes of the comic, Sigrun needs to more or less translate Mikkel's words to Emil because she understands Danish better than he does. This reflects the situation reported on page 195
, according to which Norwegian bridges the gap between Swedish and Danish. - Why was Pastor Anne able to help the Sleipnope ghosts pass on to the afterlife? Because she's from a religion that the majority of them, created at the time of the Rash outbreak, would at least be somewhat familiar with (if not actually practising) rather than the Nordic religions that re-emerged in the ninety years since then.
- When the Nordic council is mentioned to be holding an auction for some of the salvaged books in Chapter 1 of Adventure II, it first seems like the fact that the whole book reselling plan was supposed to be kept hidden from official channels according to Chapter 2 of Adventure I was forgotten. However, the intial book reselling plan was made assuming that the crew would be able to get back to civilization via the Denmark-controlled route they used to leave. The plan likely got a few re-arrangments after the return trip turned into hitching a ride on an Icelandic ship after having run the book-salvaging operation right under the eyes of an Icelandic civilian they weren't planning on having around.
- The "many different nationalities" document mentions that attempts to reconquer Denmark's old lands resulted in an outbreak of the Rash on Bornholm that claimed many lives. With that fact taken into account, it makes sense for Bornholm's quarantine policy to have become as strict as Iceland's by the time the main characters get to travel through there.
- One of the faster Veichlepedes seen being a milk truck actually makes a lot of sense, as not only is milk highly nutritious and a source of warmth for any living being, allowing it to serve as a source of food, but its thick, protective, temperature-isolating, shell would allow it to keep its body-heat much better than a car, keeping it less frozen and therefor, allowing it to retain much more of its mobility as result.
- Emil's drawing on page 584 seems a fair bit more impressive than his artistic rendition of the dog beast. As he mentions early in the comic, he was homeschooled, and his curriculum most likely included art. The cat he draws strongly resembles what you'd learn in art class in pre-school.
- Slight overlap with Fridge Horror, but when the team is passing through decontamination to get into Mora, Emil nearly gets arrested for trying to take his cleanser explosives into the town without a permit, while Lalli's rifle doesn't even merit a second glance. Quite a lot later, we find out that a tiny vial of said explosives is enough to blow an entire house to smithereens. No wonder that stuff isn't supposed to be anywhere near populated areas without the proper safety procedures in place.
- Emil's uncle and aunt have convinced him into going on what most right-minded Scandinavians would consider a suicide mission. If his parents (if still alive) know, it makes that worse, somehow. How many others on the board are throwing their "disappointments" at this to see if they'll sink either quickly or, with luck, just slowly? Taru is getting distant, back-country cousins on board, for instance.
- Trolls and beasts are somewhat inconvenienced by the Scandanavian cold. So how much worse is it in warmer climes?
- Consider, too, that some of the world's largest metropolitan areas are between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, where there is no winter to speak of. Jakarta and it's surrounding area, in particular, have more than 35,000,000 inhabitants. If the infected near a city like Copenhagen, less than 1/30th that size and plagued by freezing cold for a decent part of the year, are capable of stopping an army like the one that tried to retake Denmark, then what would be waiting for someone foolish enough to make an expedition to Northwestern Java, or down the Congo to the vicinity of Kinshasa and Brazzaville? It's possible that there are still people alive in the mountains of insular Southeast Asia, or in the dense jungle of Central Africa, but going anywhere near what used to be a major city in the regions closest to the Equator would be a Suicide Mission.
- Sigrun, the most experienced troll hunter in the group, considers a first mission a rousing success if nobody dies. Think about that for a few minutes.
- After determining that a stray cat is too badly hurt for him to save, Mikkel puts it down via lethal injection. Given that they didn't bring any animals with them (Sigrun and Emil found the cat entirely by coincidence), there's no logical reason for him to have those supplies... unless they were intended for use on the crew. They're out in the middle of a Death World, with only a poorly-supplied field medic and weeks away from the nearest hospital; if one of them sustains an injury that Mikkel can't treat, that needle will probably look pretty attractive compared to the alternative of slowly dying in agony.
- Debatable, may have been a deliberate overdose of something like morphine.
- Reynir's runes catch fire in the presence of ghosts. Emil kept his in his pocket. The flames reached the bottom of his waist belt. Mentally replay that scene with explosives on that waist belt instead of just on his bandolier.
- In the prologue, Ulrika Västerström stopping a riot in the car via dangerously swerving it while her daughter is in the back without a seatbelt, with two animals and most of the family's luggage. When it happens, it can be seen as a partly justified Dude, Where's My Respect? moment, with the riot happening while she's in the middle of literally driving her family away from the Rash. The Year 90 Västerströms seem to have a mild Parental Neglect thing going on. This makes one wonder if that car swerve was just a single moment of frustration or actually illustrative of Ulrika's everyday habits. It gets even more worrying when you realize she did this after she got gas at a station that was obviously abandonned, which indicated there would have been no way to get help if someone had actually gotten hurt from this.
- In the same vein: hiding the real reasons for their trip from their seven-year-old daughter was one thing. But why did Stig and Ulrika neglect to tell Stig's adult and (to all appearances) mentally sound parents that they were fleeing a deadly disease, especially given that the main reason said riot happened in the first place was due to them being unaware of the seriousness of the situation? Not to mention that they were only protesting in response to the refusal of some pretty basic and reasonable requests, like wanting to see the newspaper or even to get a bathroom break. This puts Ulrika's admonition to her husband to "control his parents" in a considerably more sinister light.
- When the team first finds out about a potential vaccine for the Rash, Siv and Taru advise them not to detour to investigate, and instead just let whatever's been there for ninety years wait a little longer for a better prepared expedition. However, Sweden is the only country that has been confirmed to be working on a cure in the story. So strong odds says that if the protagonists had stuck to their original travel plan and left the vaccine for the next expedition to investigate, the next team would have likely been primarily Swedish. Swedish people can't be mages, and are firmly of the opinion that magic isn't a thing, so that team would have decent chance of not including a mage. With nobody able to see the spirits, that team would have either been killed by the ghosts or ended up briging both an unfinished cure whose horrific side effects are Invisible to Normals and the ghosts back to Sweden. The supposed cure being brought back to Sweden could have very easily ended with humanity getting taken out for good.
- Between the The Famine and the urban exodus, entire sections of Reykjavik have been abandonned. Sections big enough that if a troll nest grew in one of the buildings, nobody would notice.
- Väinö's filing cabinet and a offhand comment from him brings a layer of horror unnoticed at first thought of its specifics. Namely, how it only keep track on the "living" and the "dead" travelers, not if the living are still "human" or not.
- The Vehiclepedes kind of solve a previous mystery: the carved swathes of flattened cityscape forming giant "footpaths" through what had been masonry make sense when you realise just how big construction equipment, trucks and busses can get. Yeah — heavy-duty forestry or mining vehicles used as sunshades/ bulldozers by intelligent, networked souls... Now consider this: Minna hid this in plain sight from very early. We've seen ruined cars with dead Rash victims in them from right back.
- When Tuuri killed herself via drowning, Lalli clearly felt some sort of pain in his chest. Depending on how the phenomenon works, he may very well have felt pain in his shoulder without showing it when she was bitten.
- This webcomic's most famous page, its language tree, hides a bit of fridge horror that can take awhile to sink in. The tree for the Known World as of Y90 is dominated by the "Big Four", Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish. Like the tree for the present day, however, it also includes minor languages closely related to those, still spoken by a few thousand people at most. All of those, though, are languages from roughly the same regions as the Big Four. Although the descendants of people speaking foreign languages would likely have picked up the dominant tongue of their new country, it's hard to believe that pockets of people speaking English, Spanish, etc. wouldn't have developed if large groups of tourists had been trapped in communities of survivors once those countries closed their borders. With the exception of Danish travelers stuck in Southern Sweden (which actually went on to become a part of Denmark), there's nothing that would suggest countries allowed temporary visitors to stay after imposing their lockdowns. In fact, the known risk of running out of staple goods for a country's own citizens would make mass deportation almost inevitable. Especially given that European countries other than Iceland sealed their borders only after it became clear that the Rash Illness was deadly, this implication conjures up a horrifying image. Imagine being in Iceland, a safe place where no cases of the disease had been reported, and then being told that your ship back to Liverpool left in the morning and you would be getting onboard. The experience would have to be even worse for people visiting from even further afield. A tourist from Japan, which might realistically still be holding out, would have to know that their boat back home had only a low chance of ever getting there.
