Fridge / Steins;Gate

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Fridge Brilliance

• The ending is even more awesome than I first realized. World War III is an international arms race to develop time travel and rewrite the world. By sending Suzuha back to shift history to the Steins;Gate worldline, Okabe didn't just prevent World War III...he won it!
  • Not quite. He simply survived it, studying time travel while the war was raging. In the end, Okabe and Daru were able to make a time machine thanks to their experiments with the Phone Microwave.
    • But you could say that by sending Suzuha back to prevent the war, Okabe did, in fact, win it. There's no victory like completely erasing your adversary's motive for war!
• The achievement for clearing the prologue is named Prologue of the Beginning and the End, which at first seems somewhat like Okabe-esque Meaningless Meaningful Words but due to the Stable Time Loop that the plot follows, the prologue actually takes place at the same time as the True Ending of the game, making the Achievement's name incredibly fitting.
• The canonical ending seems a little bit like a Deus ex Machina considering the You Can't Fight Fate nature of the show. Here is an explanation that this troper came up with. In the Beta world line, Kurisu was NOT fated to die like Mayuri in the Alpha world line. If we look back in the Alpha world line, we can compare Kurisu to Rumiho's father. Rumiho sent her D-Mail and succeeded in preventing her father from boarding a plane that was bound to crash no matter what. This means that not all deaths are destined, depending on the timeline. This avoidance of death may have changed the cause, but cannot alter the eventual effect of SERN's dystopia. With this conjecture, let's get back to the earlier point. When Okabe provoked Dr. Nakabachi to stab him, one would expect Kurisu to somehow intercept the assault (she certainly would have been able to) and die to prevent Okabe from getting involved. That didn't happen. Therefore we can safely conclude that the true fated event that could not be altered was Okabe witnessing Kurisu lying dead or unconscious in a pool of blood, not Kurisu lying dead. Essentially we can make another deduction that Okabe and his crew are still in the Beta world line, not the Steins;Gate world line. World War III can possibly be a fated event of the Beta world line just like SERN's dystopia in the Alpha world line. Sequel Hook perhaps?
  • Maybe World War III was not the fated event of the Beta timeline since the time travel documents were destroyed in the plane crash. That doesn't kill the possibility that another conflict may arise however.
  • If John Titor doesn't show up in 2000 or 2010, chances are they're not in the Beta world line anymore. You can check that with a simple Goodle search.
  • I guess that they are still stuck but not in the Beta timeline but in the Alpha timeline where the badges show up.
    • The badges in the final Worldline are different from the one Suzuha has in the Alpha Worldline.
  • The event that led to all the series happening was the D-Mail Okabe sent to Daru telling him about Kurisu's murder. He can't undo this without causing a very serious paradox. But he can change the events that made him believe she was dead and send that mail, and he can also change the side-event that led to WWIII- the doctor carrying the paper on time travel to Russia, which is in no way strictly tied to him witnessing Kurisu's death, the key event of the 1% timeline. The same way he could create different versions of the 0% timeline, where Rumiho would have an alive dad or where she wouldn't, but in which Mayuri would always die, here he can create several variations of the timeline where he sees Kurisu "dead"- one where there is a WWIII and one where there isn't.
  • For the record, in the game at least, Daru mentions that the specifics of Kurisu having died were actually fully covered on the news-ergo, Okabe does in fact change history by traveling back in time.
    • Okabe sends the text that starts his adventure almost immediately after finding Kurisu in the pool of blood, before he could possibly see details in the news. History is changed, but a paradox has still been prevented, as it only depended on Okabe believing Kurisu was dead long enough to inadvertently send a D-mail. Finding out it was his own blood later on in that worldline would just be a weird thing to puzzle over.
  • One thought. I'm currently watching Chaos;Head and here's the thing: The whole universe is created from PERCEPTION. In Chaos;Head the bad guys convert images shown to people into reality, maybe the timeline works the same way? So it really doesn't matter if Kurisu dies, what matters is that Okabe sees her in a pool of blood. If he tried to pull it off the same way with Mayushii, it would probably work.
  • One thing that Okabe eventually notices is that the relationships between people tend to remain the same between different timelines, no matter how convoluted the changes may be. It's later discovered that everyone has a limited form of Reading Steiner, at least on a subconscious level. It only makes sense, then, that the relationships remain the same because everybody's Reading Steiner is telling them that's the way things should be.
• Ever wonder why Okabe's ability is called "Reading Steiner"? His ability to preserve his memories and from his method of timetravel is the same as the viewpoint of the audience. Now what was Steins;gate adapted from? A visual novel! That means that Okabe's power is to share the viewpoint of a reader, essentially 'Reading Steins;gate'
  • Okabe refers to a mystical power within his right hand several times, and pretends it's possessed while at the shrine. In the visual novel, the player only interacts with the world via Okabe's phone, which he holds in his right hand. His right hand holds the power to decide the fate of the world (by choosing which ending to get) and is controlled by the player.
• Notice how in the manga/anime Amane Suzuha has such a weird salutation: (O-haa!)? The reason why she doesn't know the current trends in saying hello is because she's from the future.
  • Also worth noting: that salutation was current around 2000, when it almost immediately fell into disuse.
• Connections between Episode 1 and 24. It was Okabe who screamed in the first episode, since he was trying to make Kurisu's "death" seem real in episode 24.
• Future Okabe actually ensured Operation Skuld's success. After the first failure, Future Okabe's worldline exists in a concrete enough form for the movie mail to go through. If Future Okabe's assist fails to produce a successful outcome, Okabe will simply become Future Okabe, at which point he sends the movie mail again (possibly with changes to the script) and the cycle repeats until Okabe actually succeeds. "The world is in the palm of my hand," indeed.
• Looking at the kanji used to write "Stein's Gate" in the visual novel makes the implicit explicit by rendering the term as, loosely, "Stone Gate of Fate." Okabe is told that that name was given to the target worldline specifically for the reason that "it doesn't really mean anything." Future Okabe tells him this as he charges him with his final mission to change the future. In other words, Okabe is being reminded that there is no fate but what he makes.
  • Alternatively, Future Okabe is naming the new worldline Stein's Gate purely because it does not actually mean anything (yet). Okabe often refers to meaningful events as "the choice of Stein's Gate". If Okabe succeeds in moving to the new world line, those statements will no longer be meaningless, as the phrase "choice of Stein's Gate" will become synonymous with the phrase "choice of the current world line".
• The anime intro from ep 1 to 22 is the first half of the song 'Hacking to the gate' the last ep 23 is the other half and also minor changes to the intro occur, now the brilliance is that, time line alpha and beta are similar but different, same for the intro song/video they are similar but different. So when Okabe switched time lines, the intro also got slightly switched.
  • In addition to this, the intro plays very late into the first episode. About halfway in fact, after Okabe's first D-Mail changes the world line!
  • Also, if one reads the lyrics, the the first half seems to be referring to Mayuri, whereas the second refers to Kurisu; i.e. the intro changes to reflect which girl is doomed to die in the current world line that Okabe wants to save.
• One of the things that clues Okabe in to how the Phone-Wave works is the tremors generated whenever the electrical discharge is produced. Now remember how Noah II worked.
• Moeka's obsession with "FB," which completely destroys her social skills & leaves her completely dependent on her phone and a massive psychological wreck. While the meaning of the letters is explained in the story, it may also be a subtle criticism of Facebook and a cautionary message of how social media can actually end up destroying your social life instead of enhancing it.
• While most likely completely unintentional, the few differences between Alpha and Beta Suzuha also somewhat mirror the differences between "Princess" and "Warrior" Kara from Phantasy Star III wherein her appearance and some mannerisms are dictated by whomever the 1st-generation hero marries. Alpha Suzuha is capable of taking care of herself but Beta Suzuha is far more battle-hardened.
• The three actual scientists in the group each invent a different version of time travel. Okabe invents the D-mail, Kurisu improves on it to build the Time Leap, and Future Daru builds Suzuha's time machine.
• What are the "Choices of the Stein's Gate" which determine the fate of the world? Why, they're the choices made by the player, playing the interactive visual novel Steins;Gate!
• Suzuha's father never shows up, because of Okabe. On the night Suzuha hopes to meet her father, Okabe "convinces" Daru to skip a meeting with his online friends to help prepare Suzuha's farewell dinner. When she arrives, she mentions in passing that she had just come back from a meeting with an internet forum - the same meeting Daru had been planning to attend.
• During one of the paths, Mayuri states that she can't get Lukako to dress a cosplay because "she hasn't completed Luka-chan's route". Upon finishing Luka's path on Chapter 8, guess what she does? She wears one of Mayuri's cosplays to make her happy before Mayuri dies.
• There's a surprisingly well-hidden Stealth Pun in the sequence about Suzuha's father - and it's not the one you would expect. His codename, Barrel Titor, turns out to be a pun. In both English and Japanese, such a pun is also known as... a dad joke.

Fridge Horror

• The fact that after Okabe makes the final jump to the Steins;Gate worldline, whatever major events in it occur from here on out are basically pre-determined and unavoidable due to the Attractor Fields that reside on this new worldline. While the story ends on a very happy and upbeat note, with everyone including Kurisu alive again and reunited, Time Travel never being invented, and SERN/Other Countries never getting their hands on it to start World War III, the fact remains: whatever significant events that change the course of human history for better or worse are still pre-determined in this worldline and will always be fated to happen, meaning if something were to happen such as World War III by other means, or Kurisu/Mayuri/any of Okabe's other friends dying to some other event, Okabe can no longer fight against what fate has in store for him anymore, and certain events, good or bad, will always be fated to occur. And considering some of the horrific and nightmarish things that happen unbeknownst to him in his world...
• In chapter 2, Kurisu easily breaks down in tears after Okabe angrily berates her for calling him by his real name instead of his 'Chunnibyou' name. If you think about it, she's crying because Okabe's anger reminds her of her father who was emotionally abusive out of envy that in her childhood, Kurisu studied Science even the university curriculum beyond her age level to gain her father's approval of love by simply correcting his time machine theory which caused Kurisu and her mother to leave him behind and migrate to America. By the end of the final chapter, her father actually turns out to be Dr. Nakabachi, real name: Shouichi Makise who hasn't become a better man, resorting to plagiarism for his theory that Okabe calls him out on, and worst of all he's planning to kill Kurisu not only for his petty envy at her but to steal her time machine thesis to take credit for himself.
• One interpretation of how Reading Steiner works is that it overrides the Okabe of one timeline with the Okabe of another at the very moment that information is sent back in time. In the final episode, an Okarin in the future sends Suzuka back in time in order to modify the timeline. That means that, a few decades from now, our Okarin will be replaced with the one who's been living in hiding since WWIII began.
  • Averted, since Suzuha is coming not via D-mail world line changes or Time Leap world line changes, but rather within the world line on an actual Time Machine that can physically move the entire person.
  • Except future-Okabe still sent the video message, which amounts to a video D-mail. Future-Okabe also still exists in a future whose world line is about to change drastically, so surely still present-day Okabe is fated to be overwritten. Compare this to the times he sent D-mails to himself about Suzuha - twice - he doesn't remember what he did or receiving those messages. The only real way to explain this is that Okabe's "present" has some sort of priority, which would also justify why Reading Steiner kicks in at the point of D-mail send and not D-mail receive (or any other time) to resist changes to his memories.
  • Alternatively, this works the same way as saving Kurisu: All he has to do is send the message, even though Kurisu's been saved, and then Future Okabe is in the same timeline and hasn't changed anything.
  • In the true end of SG0, Okabe gets in a time machine and goes to the past immediately after recording the video message. He instructs Luka to send it, but we don't actually see it send because Okabe time travels first. This may have been intended to prevent Reading Steiner from activating; SG Okabe can't be overwritten by beta Okabe in 2025 if Okabe doesn't exist when the D-mail is sent.
• If left alone, the Time Leap Machine can create monsters like TimeLeap!Nae. Even Okabe himself is not an exception; Judging by his Sanity Slippage in one of the endings, it's safe to say that he would've fell to the same pit of despair as TimeLeap!Nae if Suzuha didn't save him from his own inner demon.

Fridge Logic

• How does a little girl manage to push a fully grown woman far enough to get hit by the subway? Granted Mayuri is small and was caught off guard, but it still defies physics. It's even worse in how Nae pushed Mayuri by tripping.
  • Diabolus ex Machina at work perhaps? She was fated to die anyway. I think Nae tripped and as Mayuri saved her, she fell off as a result.
  • If you revisit the scene, she trips and then nudges Mayuri into the track. It wasn't a situation where she would've fallen into the tracks and Mayuri sacrificed herself.
  • Given what Nae's role is in the VN, there's at least some chance that it was intentional.
• Here's one I noticed on my second watch. When a D-Mail is sent, the number of seconds on the microwave corresponds to the number of hours the message is sent back in time. When they sent Ruka's D-Mail, it has to go back seventeen years; that's precisely 148,920 hours. In the anime at least, however, the microwave's timer display only has five digits◊, so it's reasonable to assume that the furthest back they could have sent a message would be 99,999 hours (i.e. not nearly enough). So unless the microwave could handle six-digit numbers despite not being able to display them, there's no way that message could have been sent.
  • Remember that they don't enter the time on the microwave. They enter it through a phone program, the one they used Mayuri's voice for. So depending of how the phone microwave was programmed (Daru IS an excellent hacker) it perfectly works. You just have to take the cell phone's input instead of the microwave's, something that is hardly a problem.
  • Even if it's purely using the microwave's internal chips, unless it has outright Inventional Wisdom architecture for a household microwave which would make it unreachable with Okabe's monetary situation, if it can store and handle 99.999 DMail-Hours, it can store way more than 148.920 DMail-Hours. See Binary Bits and Bytes, but in short, the real hard limit would be well over 2 billion. Sure, the display might cap off at 99.999 or glitch past it, and there might be some security checks Daru would need to hack out, but it's hardly impossible without considering Daru's Super Hacka status.
• When they successfully hack into SERN and find all of the reports of the dead human subjects, why didn't they just go to the police and have that organization arrested for unethical experimentation? Sure they might have gotten that information through illegal means, but it should still have been considered at the least.
  • Given what happened when SERN did anything in ep... 12, was it? and a lot of the conspiracy theories you'll find (after all, science adventure always include this in one way or another. Look at SERN's dystopia), this is a more dangerous choice than anything else. Something that has enough power to work on time travel and make it work certainly isn't just a "small organization" like "our" CERN, they certainly have way more influence over the world in order to be covered, and who knows what their reaction may be.
• An inconsequential bit: Remember how excited both Mayuri and Okabe got when she managed to get that rare metal Oopah toy? Now think about whose hands it ended up in when all was said and done.
  • Okabe probably gave it to Mayuri.
  • I'm not sure I understand the point here. IIRC the anime clearly shows it slipping into the letter.
  • Neither do I. Okabe won the Oopa from the machine, then gave it to Mayuri, who lost it. Kurisu later picked it up and put it in the envelope containing the paper on time travel theory, which was then stolen by her father.
• In the Alpha timeline, Suzuha went back in time to retrieve the IBN 5100 so that the Future Gadget Lab could hack into SERN and delete the first D-mail. If this were the case, why didn't she tell Okabe exactly what to do with the IBN 5100 (i.e. delete the D-mail from SERN's database) as soon as she saw Okabe and Kurisu bringing the IBN 5100 from the Yanabayashi Shrine?
  • Possibly because he used his alias Hououin Kyouma instead of his real name.
• If the story starts on the Beta worldline like is implied, why does John Titor (Amane Suzuha) talk about CERN at all? That happened on the Alpha worldline, not the Beta one. Beta is destined for WWIII.
  • That's actually based directly on the real John Titor posts. As in, the ones that actually happened in real life.
  • This troper's theory is that it's a stable time loop. Future!Okabe, who experienced the events of the Alpha timeline, told Beta!Suzuha to go to the year 2000 and talk about SERN's dystopia so Past!Okabe would have this information when he ended up in the Alpha timeline (and therefore John Titor would be a name significant to him).
  • Another possibility is that Beta Titor's CERN statements are, to her, lies meant to obfuscate the truth (like the many-worlds interpretation). The reason why she came up with CERN and not something else may be because of Reading Steiner causing her to remember some of Alpha Titor's memories.
    • It could also be as simple as the fact that CERN/SERN is a research organization that has access to the Large Hadron Collider, which has, at the very least, rumors about micro-singularities surrounding it. Since the not-quite-true information Suzuha planned to post involved posting the truth that her machine uses micro-singularities, she might have just picked it for sounding plausible.
• At one point in the visual novel, I remember Kurisu saying that a side-effect of using the Phonewave seems to be microwaves being broadcast via the phone network, or at least spread over a wide area. The long term effects are likened to putting the entire city in a giant microwave oven, with potentially horrendous consequences. During the course of the VN, the hot weather is commented on several times. In fact, the whole city seems to be going through a heatwave. Coincidence?
  • Perhaps. It would make more sense if the story took place in a season other than summer.
• When Okabe prevents himself from stopping Suzuha from leaving, couldn't he have just given her a helmet and written directions to find the IBN 5100? Then, she wouldn't get a head injury and forget her mission, and even if she did, she would still know what to do.
  • Convergence, probably. Much like the LOTTO SIX experiment, it might be hard to get Suzuha to trust written instructions, especially if she was amnesiac and confused. And while a helmet would help, it's still possible (and knowing how contrived convergence can get, probable) that she might still lose her memory. Maybe the memory loss would be caused by something else instead. Her poorly repaired time-machine passes through a singularity, so much like Okabe and Kurisu's fears about repeated time-leaping... yeah.
• Okabe's chuunibyou rants about the "organization" are all fun and games until you realize that he's basically dealing with the Committee of 300 throughout the plot! And the even worst part is is that he's pretty much about it!
• A very minor headscratcher: Daru didn't win a ticket to the concert, and the characters lampshaded that by saying he should've won. Does that mean the tickets were rigged?