Fridge / The Hunger Games

Examples of Fridge Horror, and Fridge Brilliance in The Hunger Games. Remember to put Fridge Logic in Headscratchers, not here.

Fridge Horror

• There are no rules inside the arena except don't step off your plate for sixty seconds, the games must have a winner, and no cannibalism is allowed. Does that mean it's perfectly okay to rape your victim? Many of the tributes are underage.
  • Not very friendly to capitol audiences. Probably not.
    • Although the series does clarify that cannibalism was technically allowed under the 'there are no rules' rule, but when one contestant started getting too into it there was a convenient natural disaster to get rid of them, implying the Capitol was responsible for it as they didn't want someone like that winning the Games. Considering how they seem to have total control over the arenas at all times, it wouldn't be too hard to imagine the same thing happening to someone responsible for raping a contestant.
  • At the end of the day, the series is still YA. Rape probably wasn't mentioned because that's unspeakable for even adult media, much less something teenagers are meant to read.
  • Even Evil Has Standards. It’s hard to imagine the Capitol, twisted as they are, would find any joy in watching a child be raped. Especially when you remember Capitol and District CHILDREN watch the Games (yes, they do seem to be okay with the death thing, but 1. They likely already know what death is, 2. That’s kinda the whole point of the Games in the first place, whereas rape has no place in what is essentially a reality TV show). If anyone were to try it, they’d effectively be sealing their own fate.
    • The Capitol having standards? Their primary concern is providing entertainment to their depraved hedonistic citizen and turning the Districts against each other while also scarring them emotionally. And while rape isn't a part of "reality" TV, sex definitely is.
    • Well, maybe "standards" is the wrong word here. But much like the cannibalism example, there are certain lines that they realize they shouldn't publicly cross. Maybe it's more like they realize that their audience has standards.
  • As shown in the second movie, Johanna trying to curse on Caesar's show sees her f-bombs bleeped out. That means there are some broadcasting standards to be met, and bad language and sexual content are usually the ones.
  • More simplistically, rape isn't something that you can suddenly do, like killing someone. You have to render your victim defenceless, and you also leave yourself vulnerable to attack as well. Even if an alliance formed, someone would have to be pretty dumb to not at least think that turning your back to a bunch of people who will have to kill you to survive at some point might not be the brightest idea.
• As if Cato's death wasn't stomach-turning enough, think about this; most predators will go for an animal's throat, wait until it stops moving, and then wait a bit more for good measure. Even hyenas, who often start eating their prey while it's still alive, go for the vital organs first, if for no other reason than that they're nutritious. These things, on the other hand, have no fear of their prey and no desire to eat it. Even with Cato's armor, there's no way that the mutts chewed on the poor bastard all night without killing him unless they were specifically avoiding vital areas. They aren't killers, they're only meant to cause maximum pain. It's entirely possible that the gamemakers were hoping that a tribute would take the Mercy Kill option as Katniss did.
• How do Avoxes eat?!
  • ...Through an intravenous drip in their arm that has all the nutrients they would need from food in the IV bag?
    • Actually, no. One of the cameramen in the third book is an Avox, and he is shown eating with the rest of them in Mockingjay; it doesn't go into detail, but it looks like they just have to learn how to work around it, like talking with retainers. His "particular difficulty in swallowing" is how Peeta figures out he was an Avox.
  • Presumably, the same way as anyone who's lost their tongue eats. Such accidents and punishments are not unknown.
• What happened to the people who needed tesserae after the announcement that the drawing for the Quarter Quell would only be among past victors?
  • Tesserae is a mark that stays with you for all the years you are eligible to enter. They just dodged the bullet for that year.
    • And therefore, all the 18-year-olds are lining up in droves in front of all the Justice Buildings to take as many tesserae as they're allowed to take.
    • Would that actually happen, though? Would that time count as a year they're eligible to enter anymore since their names wouldn't be entered for the reapings anyway? (Relatedly, what about 18-year olds whose birthday is after the Games? Would they be able to sign up for tesserae if they'd become ineligible before the next games?)
    • On the relatedly: it is not about the year they turn, but their actual age. Katniss became eligible when she turned twelve, even though it was almost a year until the next reaping. Logically, an eighteen-year-old is still eligible, even if he turns nineteen the next day. This means there may have been kids who turned nineteen shortly after being reaped/going into the Hunger Games, but the difference would not have been big enough to matter. After all, they don't know how long each Games will last until it's over.
• The epilogue. At first, it seems like a glimmer of hope among the bleak, that Peeta and Katniss live to have children, who will grow up in a world better than the one they grew up in. But then, you realize that these kids are going to grow up with a severely depressed, emotionally numb Broken Bird for a mother, and a father who has difficulty separating reality from fiction and is still susceptible to mental programming that at any moment could cause him to flip out and kill their mother. Maybe having kids wasn't the best decision on Katniss and Peeta's part...
  • Except that Peeta was already beyond most of his trauma (not all, but enough to control himself) at the book's end and Katniss is a very giving person no matter how bitter she is. Plus, it's specifically stated they waited 15 years before having kids. This world has therapists, and they're smart enough to see them when kids are on the line. Their life won't be perfect, and Katniss and Peeta will always have problems with themselves but that doesn't make them bad parents.
    • No one said that they are bad parents. The only thing suggested is that perhaps it wasn't such a good idea for them to have children.
    • The mention of their children reminded me of Art Spiegelman's afterword to Maus: A Survivor's Tale. There Spiegelman, the child of two Holocaust survivors, recounts how he assumed as a child that all adults moaned and thrashed all night in their sleep. He was rather amazed by the discovery that other kids' parents didn't do this. Expect Katniss and Peeta's kids to grow up believing that it's totally normal for grown-ups to wake up screaming in the night or to stare into space muttering "real or not real?" No, far from ideal, but kids adjust—they can flourish even under very damaged parents as long as the parents are loving and responsible.
    • Exactly. They'll reach adolescence thinking their parents are normal, having never gone hungry or even tasted stale bread and not quite grasping the whole "chance of being forced to fight to the death in your teens" thing, and it'll slowly unfold to them just how hard their parents had to fight to make the world that way for them, and the scars that it left...
  • Additionally, to the above points: just because Katniss and Peeta are not 100% recovered and emotionally healthy and well-adjusted after their experiences don't mean they're still in exactly the same broken and traumatized states as they were in the period immediately after the events of the novel. Fifteen years after the fact, while they still struggle with nightmares, depression, and other issues, they are almost certainly not the basket cases the original comment describes, thanks to time, a functional support structure, and the opportunity for professional help.
  • Also, people in real life who have PTSD or trauma due to other things have children sometimes. Shock and awe, I know.
  • Katniss and Peeta are also young adults when they go through that stuff, and if they wait about fifteen years to have kids, they're in their thirties by the time they do. The brain reaches full maturity between the ages of 25 and 28, meaning that even with the trauma they've been through, if they have healthy ways of dealing with it, which it's shown they do, things will calm down in their heads especially if the world around them remains stable.
• Finnick, the heartthrob of District 4, reveals his forced prostitution under President Snow in Mockingjay. Now, with that in mind, remind yourself of how Katniss nearly got cosmetic surgery to look more attractive after the 74th Games, and the fact that she might have suffered the same fate had it not been for Haymitch's intervention (and the star-crossed lovers of District 12 thing).
  • Even more horrifying when you remember Finnick was only 14 when he won his Hunger Games...
    • In Catching Fire, Katniss notes that the citizens of the Capitol waited until he was 16 before they went after him.
    • I assumed that was the story given out for public consumption. If Snow could benefit in some way by letting someone have clandestine access to an underage Finnick, then there'd be no such thing as any Jail Bait Wait.
    • Not to mention: Finnick knows how Snow got the sores in his mouth. Where would he have gotten that secret, save from Snow himself? And Finnick says people pay for sleeping with him with secrets...
    • It could easily be that he got it from someone else who slept with Snow.
  • For further horror, remember how Katniss noted that the prep teams often sent the tributes in the parade nearly or completely naked, and considers it a near miss that Cinna doesn't do this. Almost as if they were being shopped. Then notice that the children of tributes are more likely to be chosen for the Games... perhaps because their parents refused Snow's demands?
  • The minimum age to become a tribute is 12, and stylists sometimes put tributes in skimpy costumes or even no costumes at all...is it possible that children as young as 12 have been sent out naked in the tribute parade before?
  • It should also be noted that Finnick had to become a prostitute because the Capitol threatened to kill everyone he loved. Then remember that Johanna states in Catching Fire that everyone she loves is dead. Considering that Johanna is mentioned as being one of the young and relatively attractive victors, there's a large chance that Johanna refused the Capitol's prostitution demands and the Capitol responded by killing everyone she cared about.
  • Take note that all the attractive tributes we know of (and maybe even the unattractive) have likely been forced to prostitute themselves. Cashmere and Gloss, Finnick and Johanna, probably Enobaria... And if Glimmer or Marvel had won the 74th, the same fate probably would have befallen them.
  • This puts a new and horrific spin on Johanna's stripping scene in the elevator and how Finnick flirts with Katniss... this is the way they know how to survive.
    • And likewise, people who have been sexually abused quite young can often have behaviour that's quite hypersexual - so the fact that she has no qualms about stripping naked in front of three people she's just met and delights in it making them uncomfortable...
  • Haymitch claims this never happened to him, and he's probably telling the truth. The Fridge Horror kicks in when you think about the only reason he must have escaped it: Snow had already had his family killed, and so had no leverage over him.
    • In this way, Haymitch is used as leverage against other victors - he's an example of what will happen to them if they fail to obey Snow, thus meant to scare them into obedience.
  • Not likely. The Capitol adored Katniss and Peeta, they wouldn't want to intrude on their relationship.
    • Agreed - but they made a big deal about them getting married in the Capitol, and considering how easy it would be to put a camera in their room... there totally would have been porn of their honeymoon sold to people who could offer political favors to Snow.
    • When you consider the proclivities of the kinds of people Finnick described, it's not hard to believe that certain particularly sadistic Capitol citizens would want Katniss or Peeta for themselves because of their famous romance- a chance to "get in on the action" themselves.
    • Or even try their hands on both of them, if they pay enough for it.
• The winners of the Hunger Games become mentors for the next tributes. Children of tributes are often chosen for the Games... there are probably some victors who had to mentor their own children, imagine how that must feel.
• Finnick is mentioned as pulling Annie back when she retreats into her own world. She's been like this for years. Well, Finnick dies and she has his baby. What happens if she starts to retreat into her own world? Finnick isn't there to pull her back.
  • The kid was therapeutic for her. It happens.
    • The psychiatric condition she is described as having may have been exacerbated by shock and PTSD but it was not caused by what she experienced in the arena. What she has is something she was born with, and having a child can in no way cure that. If anything, the physical stress of pregnancy and childbirth combined with the lack of sleep and the exhaustion that comes with parenting a small child might make it all worse. Then add the fact that she had suffered through captivity in the Capitol, possible torture (and at the very least having to listen to other people, some of whom were her friends, being tortured for hours on end) and then losing her husband, all within a short time-span, Annie's mental state would be worse than ever. Babies are not a cure for mental illness. Unless there is somebody else there to help her raise the child, that poor kid is going to have a very rough childhood.
    • Catching Fire explains that Annie became "weird" because of what happened in the Games she won. During Mockingjay, she was imprisoned along with Peeta and Johanna and had to hear them (and others) screaming from torture. When these memories come up, she presses her hands onto her ears.
    • Annie is keeping in touch with Katniss and Peeta after having her son, even sending photos. While she likely will struggle, it's indicated she's grounded enough to be a good mother.
• Katniss and Peeta are implied to have watched all 57 of the relevant tapes from the old Hunger Games in Catching Fire. So they watched over 1,300 teenagers be murdered on television in a few months.
  • The Games are mandatory viewing; they'd already seen over 300 teenagers murdered on television before becoming tributes in the first place.
  • That's assuming the death of every single Tribute in every single Games is shown on the tape. Likely it would only be the 'plot relevant' deaths shown, which isn't many.
• In Catching Fire when Gale is being punished in the square, Peeta figures out what's going on before they can see anything. Why does he know what a whip sounds like?! Go back to Hunger Games and read at the progression of Peeta's injury after the first bread scene (red weal, then swelling and a black eye) — just like with the injury Katniss gets trying to protect Gale. That awful woman whipped her 11-year-old son in the face!
  • Not necessarily, since in the book Peeta reaches the place before Katniss. He might have seen Gale receiving the whip before Katniss attempted to squeeze through the crowd. Also, several people in the crowd and Peeta urge Katniss to go away.
• Annie was only in a sheet after she, Peeta, and Johanna were rescued from the Capitol. The implications of her and most likely Johanna being naked there... as if they weren't already big enough Woobies! It's made even more horrible by the fact that Annie was mentioned to have had Finnick's son at the end of Mockingjay, and when the child was conceived seems vague.
  • Thankfully, the boy seems to be Finnick's son, as the book indicates Annie became pregnant after their wedding.
• Both a straight and in-universe example: The moment Katniss realizes that when Snow told her to convince him she loved Peeta it was not actually to preserve peace. It was because when Snow knew Katniss genuinely loved Peeta the boy became valuable as a way of torturing Katniss "by proxy".
  • This troper took it to mean the following; Snow knew from the beginning the rebellion couldn't be controlled, but scaring Katniss into not instigating anything along the Victory Tour would definitely help to keep the mood down.
• Katniss's infamous ultimatum. At first, it seems like a (kind-of) win-win: Either both she and Peeta live and the victory celebrations go on as usual, or they both die, but leave the gamemakers and the Capitol to deal with the fallout from 12 seriously pissed off districts (all of that and no one gets extra food, and no family gets their child back? Well there goes that bit of hope Snow was talking about in the movie) and a disgruntled Capitol audience who have no new celebrity to fawn over. Katniss was counting on the fact that they would prefer the former over the latter, which they did. But if they didn't, there's what we learn from the later books about how President Snow likes to deal with rebellious or disobedient victors. He almost certainly would have had Katniss and Peeta's families killed, and maybe Gale's if he found out about their relationship. And since what they did was so public, he probably would have done it publicly to teach the districts, especially future tributes, a lesson about openly defying the Games' rules. (Of course, there's what happens to Prim and Peeta's family later, but still.)
  • Probably this would not have worked out for him, however. That little glimmer of hope is important; it's what keeps the districts quiet and from an uprising. Take that hope away and the people could easily decide they don't want to play his games anymore since there's no longer a guarantee of at least one person winning. The deaths of a couple of families are immaterial when literally anyone is game. He'd probably have to resort to bombing a district to make them stop. And, of course, the most desperate districts (12, 11, etc) would probably fight the hardest. Snow could lose a lot of resources.
  • Remember, the decision to let them live was made by Seneca Crane. Snow didn't like it and Crane was executed. I think Seneca Crane probably was thinking along the lines of "We can't have no victor, we have to keep the hope alive, etc" and probably was somewhat surprised that Snow didn't agree with him. What Snow wanted him to have done was kill them before they could eat the berries—probably with some kind of bomb. If he let them eat the berries, they die on their own terms and will have made an act of defiance that may inspire more rebelling in their memory. If the Gamemakers killed them first before they could kill themselves, preferably using the as painful and horrible way as possible, a way unlikely to be a method of death in most typical Hunger Games, it would be easier for the Capitol to say something like: "They disobeyed the rules of the Games and were punished, that is what will happen, etc" and then declare Cato the posthumous victor. It still might not have worked that well, but apparently, this is what Snow saw as the best of 3 bad options, the other 2 being letting them commit suicide or having two victors. Perhaps Seneca Crane just didn't catch on quickly enough when they pulled out the berries and by the time he realized what was going on he only really had the last two options left and he absolutely couldn't let them go through with the suicide and thought they would be able to spin things as "The Capitol being merciful to hormonal star-crossed lovers" rather than "The Capitol giving in to two defiant tributes".
    • Snow says to Katniss: "If Seneca Crane had had any brains at all, he would have blown you to bits then and there." According to Snow, Peeta would have been the sole winner.
• The narration obviously spends a lot of time on how horrible the Quarter Quell was for Katniss and Peeta, but Cashmere and Gloss had to have had it really rough in those games. Knowing you will likely watch your sibling be killed right in front of you? Careers or not, that would be terrible. Especially when you consider that being victors probably made their sibling bond much stronger, similar to how Katniss and Peeta relied on each other to get through to PTSD of the games.
• Mags' fate becomes this once the plan is revealed. We go in assuming that Mags was making a Heroic Sacrifice by volunteering since even if she managed to survive for a while, there's pretty much no way she could finish off anyone else before they could finish her off. Then we find out the plan was to get them out, and she and Finnick knew about it, and her death becomes infinitely more tragic.
  • Going by scenes in the movie, this troper saw Mags' fate as less tragic and more similar to the theory about Foxface in the first movie. Mags is happy, or at least content, never shown to be angry at going back into the arena like the other victors. She also accepts her fate immediately, stopping Finnick from carrying her so that he could help carry Peeta without any hesitation. Haymitch is shown supremely pissed at the announcement that victors are being reaped, showing that he didn't know the plan to escape at the time, meaning Mags didn't either. She's had a long life, difficult by virtue of being a victor. She likely saw the Quarter Quell as an out, being able to die on her own terms, without being explicit suicide, which would have gotten her loved ones killed. And in it, she also gets to help out, keeping Annie safe by taking her place and getting a chance to give her life for Finnick or someone else inside the arena, which she did for Peeta.
• Annie Cresta went insane during her games because she saw her district partner get decapitated. Finnick, Annie's husband, is killed by lizard mutts ripping off his head
• Many people scoffed at the scene where Foxface is playing what seems to be a memory game, but what she's really doing is identifying poisonous plants, and doing very well. This means that in the film, she may have killed herself intentionally rather than by accident as it was in the books. This would allow her to die by a painless suicide (that looks like an accident so her family won't get hurt) rather than being brutally killed by someone else.
• In-Universe: Katniss begins to wonder how the Hunger Games came about and if it was just a rushed meeting where people just held a vote where one option is "off twenty-three children every year" and another is "kill almost everyone." Not only this, but she also thought of what happened to those who voiced their dissent against holding a Hunger Games. Why is she thinking this? Well, the fact that she and a bunch of the remaining Victors were gathered to hold a vote on that exact same thing.
  • Out of universe, this exact thought process can be horrifying, especially when you couple the implications from Snow that History Repeats Itself and that District 13 instigated the Dark Days just to grab power like how they instigated the rebellion. If they actually did vote on the Hunger Games, then the idea might have been suggested by a person who held a lot of power and intended on keeping that power. Almost like Coin.
  • Things get worse when The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes reveals that the Hunger Games were a purely theoretical proposal written up as an exercise before the proposal was submitted, approved, and implemented without the writer's consent. All of this misery has been because of a proposal that was never meant to be taken seriously, but enough people lacking empathy have respected the idea over the generations.
• Peeta's bakery is near enough to the Seam that Katniss can walk there, and people are starving in the Seam. Given his mother's lack of compassion, Peeta's probably seen her chase away starving people begging for scraps, and maybe some have literally died on his doorstep. This might explain why he's so helpful to Katniss when she arrives.
  • Peeta's mother yelled people away that searched for edible waste in the bakery's trash bin. She despised those scavengers and wanted them to get arrested although taking from trash bins was legal.
• Everybody calls Katniss and Peeta Star-Crossed Lovers, but nobody mentions Romeo and Juliet, the natural comparison (especially considering they wanted to die rather than be without each other). Has the play been lost or censored? If so, what else has?
  • ...So this can be another proof that Panem is the future of the world of Fahrenheit 451 of all things!
• There's a tribute named Blight. Blight is a bad thing, and almost everyone has a meaningful name, so did his parents hate him? Also, naming your daughter Rue (meaning regret) seems like it would have an unhappy backstory.
  • To be fair, Rue is also the name of a wildflower also used as herbal medicine, and it's mentioned to be a flower name in the story when comparing her to Prim, also named for a flower.
• Johanna says in the Quarter Quell, "Frying's not the way I want to go." This probably gave the Capitol the inspiration for her torture in the third book.
• It's made pretty clear that the Quarter Quell is rigged to have the victors participate. So, were other Games rigged to kill people the Capitol didn't like, or their families? Especially since the children of tributes are more likely to be chosen for the Games. Also possibly they sometimes chose people that they wanted to pimp out if they won. And you have to wonder about the family of Cashmere and Gloss, the only brother and sister victors - did the Capitol really hate their family or what?
  • You have to remember that both Cashmere and Gloss were career tributes and actually wanted to be chosen to participate in the Hunger Games, so it's very likely they just had their names entered a massive number of times. Depending on the number of slips of paper their names were on in the bowl, it is possible that them being drawn in two consecutive years is not THAT unlikely.
  • Or even that since they're both Careers, they might have both volunteered. Their family probably wanted at least one victor out of their children and needed money/prestige so that their second child also volunteered.
  • On that note though, how many children did that family send into the games? Cashmere and Gloss made it out, but there are probably loads of dead siblings who didn't.
    • For that matter, how much is that volunteering the Careers' own decision? How many of them volunteered out of parental expectations and pressure?
  • It's mentioned that victors almost never have children because victor's children have a disproportionately high chance of getting reaped, so it's likely more are rigged. In fact, considering Snow knows about Katniss and Gale's kiss in the woods, it's possible Prim was reaped as retribution for her family's hunting.
    • Unlikely, though—President Snow kills people when their deaths can serve as a lesson to others, or for another "constructive" purpose. See the first book, where Haymitch assures Katniss that her family will not be targeted because of her stunt with the gamemakers' pig, because it was confidential, and no one would know what they were being killed for.
    • There are far worse things than being killed. Prim was reaped so Katniss couldn't refuse to volunteer and save her. That makes her a sensation and eventually it results in Katniss becoming a Victor. Now Snow can keep an eye on her and keep her on a leash. As Haymitch says, "You never get off this train."
• Katniss and Peeta announced that they were secretly married before the Quarter Quell was announced (and they're expecting a baby). That means that Katniss was only sixteen when they were "married," implying that sixteen-year-olds are legally capable of being married. The reaping goes up to age eighteen. Statistically, sometime in the past seventy-four years, this has been going on, other pregnant girls have been sent into the arena (ignoring the fact that unmarried teenagers can be pregnant too). Why is the Capitol so shocked by this?
  • For that matter, why does the Capitol care so much about an unborn child being killed when they watch twenty-three living, viable children murdered on television every year? Granted, this might be a subtle statement on the pro-life/pro-choice argument, but the book doesn't address this in any way. Not even Katniss makes an issue that people seem to value her fake baby more than her very real life.
  • The Capitol likely didn't care about those other Tributes. If somebody with (a) child did wind up becoming a Tribute, it's not out of the questions that the Capitol hid (or, for extra Nightmare Fuel, forcibly aborted) the pregnancy.
  • The Capitol audience is not caring because there is just any pregnant woman in the arena, but because it is their beloved, tragically star-crossed, Katniss and Peeta's unborn child. (Well, so they think). Just like the Quarter Quell didn't go over quite as well in the Capitol as the other Games because they were already attached to nearly all the entries as their "victors".
  • The books never state what the age of majority is in Panem. Given the situation developing in Panem President Snow wanted the engagement to go forward and so would have no reason not to give Katniss and Peeta leave to be married before being legally old enough to do so. When Peeta claimed he and Katniss got married in secret he never said they had a legal ceremony or signed any legally binding documents, he only said they had a toasting ceremony and felt married. This would be the equivalent of two sixteen-year-olds today saying vows to one another and holding their own private ceremony. There's nothing to imply that sixteen-year-olds were otherwise able to get married in Panem (my guess would be that the age of majority was nineteen). Either way though, the Capitol citizens were probably so shocked because they shipped Katniss and Peeta and were horrified that a couple they knew and loved were being sent into the arena while expecting a baby.
  • Katniss is the first female tribute to have no choice but to enter the Hunger Games. She is the only District 12 female Victor in a year in which only Victors are Reaped. But on most other years, it's reasonable to assume that if a girl were to be pregnant and Reaped, there must be at least one other girl in her entire District willing to volunteer for her. In the Career districts, it's probably never an issue because it doesn't matter who is Reaped, it's pretty much a given that the strongest male and female is going to the Games and will volunteer. In less violent but more physically active districts, like District 11, there is probably someone who is strong from years of farm labor and maybe enjoys fighting and has learned martial arts as a hobby who thinks they could stand a chance to save a pregnant friend. In fact, Katniss explicitly states that 12 is the ONLY District in which those eligible for Reaping don't also participate in their District Trade. Finnick is fourteen and proficient at spear fighting, fishing, and nets, so we must assume that out of thousands of teens there is one of the appropriate genders that is willing to risk their lives for fame and fortune and so they don't have to watch that girl from their English class get butchered whilst pregnant.
  • People don't volunteer to save twelve-year old little girls (Katniss was clearly treated as exceptional), why would they save a pregnant teen?
  • People have some pretty funky standards, especially in that sort of society. The person who's fine with a 12 year old being Reaped might not be fine with a physically disabled, child-carrying teenager being Reaped. In 12 or 11, sure, we can assume no one would volunteer. But, in some of the other Districts we know next-to-nothing about? It's pretty likely that at least one girl would be willing to save a pregnant woman and her child.
  • It might not have anything to do with morality in general, but because Katniss and Peeta are the hottest "story" of the time, and enough viewers adored them enough to want them to have a happy ending. It also effectively sets up the Gamemakers to be more active villains of the story, while they would be considered little more than background characters for the Games themselves.
• Part of Katniss' conditions for being the Mockingjay is that District 13 must pardon all the Tributes held captive in the Capitol, including Johanna and Enobaria. A pardon means the forgiveness of a crime. None of the captive Tributes committed any crimes. Enobaria and Johanna both fought for the Rebellion, and even Peeta had been brainwashed and may not even know what he's doing, so his culpability is pretty minimal. The only crime any of them are accused of is the crime of destabilizing the rebellion—-a crime that only Peeta is actually guilty of, and even he is acting under duress. Yet Coin announces that she's agreed to pardon the Tributes, an announcement that leads to grumbling and suspicion in 13. Why didn't she just say that they were innocent?
  • The treatment of Katniss' prep team. When Katniss sees them in 13, they've been imprisoned, beaten, and their injuries left untreated to the point that Katniss can actually smell infection as soon as she steps into the hallway. Katniss states that they haven't done anything to deserve being treated like prisoners—implying that Katniss believes it's perfectly okay to treat prisoners in this way.
  • Or at least, this is how she thinks prisoners are treated, and she'd be right.
• This was sort of mentioned in the book, but... the 25th Hunger Games (1st Quarter Quell). To recap, it involved the districts voting on who would be Reaped. Imagine if you're of Reaping age at the time of the announcement. You're not just being randomly chosen; you're singled out. Have you or your parents offended someone with a lot of political sways? They'll lobby for your Reaping. Are you memorable for being a troublemaker? Your neighbors and classmates will vote for you to be Reaped. In the lower-population districts, the chance that this happens to you goes up.
  • On the other end of things, the first Quarter Quell offers a very tiny bit of comfort in that it probably spared the youngest and weakest children. This would have been especially true in the larger Districts such as 11, as Katniss hypothesizes that they do their reaping in multiple rounds. It's a safe bet that most of the districts, if not all of them, offered up only 18-year-olds that year. Still barbaric, but better than watching a 12-year-old be slaughtered.
  • Another mitigating factor: are you an uber-badass who eats rusty nails for breakfast without any milk? You may be voted for in the hopes of you coming home alive.
  • Just imagine being the victor of the first Quarter Quell. The people you live with on the whole literally wanted you to die in a public way, almost certainly to a brutal, gory demise...
  • After the first Quell was over, the families of the dead tributes had to live with the knowledge that their friends and neighbors voted for their child to be sent off to die a horrible death for the Capitol's entertainment. After that, how could you ever bring yourself to trust anyone again?
• Imagine how Thresh felt, hearing the rule change that two tributes from one district could live. He had been living far from Rue so that he wouldn't be forced to kill her if they were the last two left. But then he hears this rule that could have saved her, and he didn't protect her. It's no wonder that he smashes Clove with brute force; he's expressing days of grief and anger into several blows.
• The books don't give us much time to ruminate on how unpleasant it would have been had Katniss become a mentor. They mention the obvious struggle of her being forced to watch her tribute die each year, but Katniss's issues likely would have run much deeper than that. Once the tributes are inside the arena, mentors are responsible for sucking up to rich sponsors and generally acting as their tribute's hypeman in front of the Capitol's watchful eye. It's dependent on charisma, salesmanship, and performative optimism. Needless to say, Katniss probably would have been terrible at it. Even with Haymitch's guidance, she would inevitably come upon a year where she said the wrong thing to the wrong sponsor, costing District 12's female tribute her life. Yikes.
• Haymitch mentions that Finnick is the youngest ever victor (at least in the movies- in the books he is "one of the youngest"). We know that Finnick won The Games when he was 14 years old. This means that in the universe of the films, no twelve- or thirteen-year-olds managed to win the Hunger Games in 75 years. This basically confirms that anyone of that age has little to no chance of winning at all. And not just because they're the youngest, smallest and weakest: no sponsor is likely to waste money on a tribute who isn't going to survive.
  • Not to mention, since Finnick is the youngest at 14 and his victory wasn't that long ago, that also means that prior to his victory, no 14 year old ever won either, unless there's a difference by months.
    • But "one of the youngest" doesn't mean "the" youngest, so there might have been twelve and thirteen year old victors.
• The mentors' ability to elicit sponsors for help ostensibly allow them to help ensure their tributes' survival but their ultimate purpose in the Games is more sinister: they're there to reduce the chances of their more promising tributes dying from natural causes, so the audiences don't get bored by seeing the tributes succumb to exposure or dehydration. The sponsors exist for the same reason that the arena is set up with the basic supplies needed for survival: the viewers want to see kills, and the tributes dying of anything less "exciting" would be too anticlimactic for them.
• Katniss has apparently never met her grandparents from either side of her family, to the point that she didn't consider turning to them as an option when she, her mother, and her sister were starving to death. Her father was from the Seam so his parents might have starved to death, died in a mine accident, etc. but what about her mother's parents? They were from the merchant class and would be far less likely to have died from mine accidents, starvation or the usual fates that befall the poor in District 12. If they're not dead, it's possible that they disowned their daughter for deciding to marry a poor coal miner.
• It's entirely possible that Rue was reaped because she had to enter her name an additional eight times in the reaping ball to get tessera grain and oil for herself, her parents, and her five younger siblings as soon as she turned twelve.
• In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, when Coriolanus sneaks onto the train with the tributes, several of them openly discuss killing him, with the reasoning that the Capitol can't do much worse to them as punishment. Lucy Gray stops them with the warning that the Capitol can still hurt their families, however, and Coriolanus Snow would later go on to do just that during his presidency in order to control the victors. The Fridge Horror kicks in when you realize that Snow probably got this idea from Lucy Gray's comment.
• The population of Panem is stated to be around 4 million people. 4 million, living in relatively isolated towns and areas, on a land that used to have 330 million and countless urban sprawls. What could have happened to cut down the population so much and erase so much history?

Fridge Brilliance

• The Hunger Games actually do fulfill their advertised role of "bringing everyone together" — not by merely demonstrating that the regime can trample common decency at will, but rather by making everyone complicit to the regime's crimes. The entire point of this sadistic spectacle is to ingrain into the populace the thought that if you see this, and you don't do anything about it, then you're just as guilty as the organizers and thus deserve the misery the state inflicts upon you.
  • Hinted at by Gale when he says to Katniss: "What if just one year everyone stopped watching? You root for your favorite, you cry when they get killed. It's sick. If no one watches, then they don't have a game."
• In the first film, President Snow looks absolutely bored during the tribute parade. That's because he's probably the only person in the Capitol who knows the true reason behind the Hunger Games, that it's about carefully cultivating hope for the districts, and finds the extravagant pomp and circumstance of the ceremony to be ridiculous.
• This hit this troper when watching the 1st movie and thinking about a YouTube comment read one time: There's a subtle hint early on that the Capitol doesn't know the Games as well as they think ^{Why is it important?} If they did, someone on the team would've foreseen the possibility of a double-suicide instead of being totally blindsided at the possibility, and presumably have thought of a plan in case two Tributes were to ever try it. The training lady (said in the books to be named Atala) says, "Most of you will die of natural causes." But, watching the movie, literally no one dies of natural causes throughout the entire game. Unless you count Foxface (but it's theorized that could be suicide).
• Throughout the series, Katniss has trouble relating to others. She assumes Peeta is lying the entire time he's saying he's in love with her because she understands manipulation rather than emotion. Why? Because she has PTSD from her totally brutal childhood. Common symptoms of PTSD: avoidance, feelings of detachment or estrangement from others, and restricted range of effect (numbing)? Check. Sleep disturbance, nightmares, irritability, anger (and impulsiveness)? Check. Intrusive re-experiencing and dissociative recall? Less until Mockingjay, but still present early on. Katniss' bitchiness is actually well written, undiagnosed, deep-seated psychological trauma.
  • This is beautifully shown in Katniss's flashback to her kneeling in front of her mother and screaming at her, begging her to speak. Katniss says she feels estranged from her mother and even anger at her for the abandonment of motherly caretaking.
  • Even more brilliant? Prim doesn't have PTSD. Why? One of the resilience factors in not developing PTSD is having a strong sense of family providing a sense of safety for you. Katniss's mother checked out, leaving no one for Katniss, but Prim had her older sister.
• How come Haymitch doesn't look particularly Seam in the movies? Well, the Capitol is known to make enhancements to their victors. They also want to avoid reminding people of Haymitch's victory, so what better way to distance people from that thought than changing the way the victor looks? Not too much - just enough to separate Haymitch the Victor from Haymitch the Tribute who used the Games against them. Maybe by changing his most recognizable features, such as hair and eye color.
• Marvel killed Rue because he found out that she was Katniss' ally sometime after Glimmer's death but before Katniss blows up the Careers' food. Jealous that Katniss and Peeta were the most famous Tributes of that year's Games and the fact that he's a Career trained to think that only he can win and not some kids from the poorest District, he decided to take away something that Katniss had so she could lose the will to survive in the Games. Of course, it doesn't work since Katniss kills Marvel and she and Peeta both win.
  • Marvel used Rue as bait for Katniss and aimed his spear at Katniss, but she evaded his weapon.
• Suzanne Collins has made it so that you, the reader, are a person from the Capitol! Most people this troper knows love the first book, are okay with the second, and dislike the third. Their reasoning is that things start to go bad. Well, by the end of the first book, you're enjoying yourself, right? A lot of horrible stuff has happened, people have been hurt and died, but you're enjoying yourself. It was exciting! That's like the Capitol citizen, watching the Hunger Games on television and enjoying it. Then, in the second and third books, things start to go nasty. War, Anyone Can Die, stuff like that. Suddenly, you don't like the books anymore. That's because the Capitol citizen is being shown what danger is actually like. It's not fun. It's nasty. It's traumatic. It's real.
  • Supported by Collins stating her main inspiration was she felt unsettled how a reality TV show and Iraq war footage molded together in her mind. Also supported by the PR campaign for the movies and the premiere parties which contained an obscene amount of delicious food.
  • This troper's saying this is only because the author knew human nature well enough to recognize how many/almost all of us are (even unwillingly) drawn to chaos and carnage as something interesting. This can be disastrous and tragic, like when a person becomes a murderer, but it can also be beneficial: consider a media frenzy over a train accident because of unsafe rails. People care about the story because it both horrifies and intrigues them, but this obsession will likely lead to steps to prevent it from happening to us in the future (new legislation/safety precautions). Similarly, a person who's drawn to action or blood might as well become a police officer or a doctor—not just a criminal or a serial killer. The point is that a person intrigued by gore isn't necessarily evil! The crime of the people of the Capitol is that they can't distinguish the line between fiction and reality, because the districts' populations are so far removed from them culturally, in appearance, and in just about any other way that they sympathize with them no more than we would with a fictional protagonist.
    • To expand on this, notice that in Catching Fire, the Victors go out of their way in the pre-Games interviews to humanize themselves to the audiences and make it as difficult as possible for them to be seen as fictional characters.
    • Well, if you think about it, the symbolism in the books is quite clear. We are from the Capitol. What do you think the US or Europe looks like to people from poor countries? Sure, there are rich people everywhere (winners). But where is the place where half of the food gets thrown away? Right...
  • Interestingly enough, there's another way to look at this one. Suzanne Collins WANTED to make the reader into a person from the Capitol and in many cases, she probably succeeded but not all. Some of us were more likely people in the districts. This troper enjoyed the first book, yes, but less for the gore and more for how pointedly well Collins showed how evil this nightmare was and felt more like the people in the districts. She also gave you a choice, the choice everyone has, really. Go along with the games and be swept up in them, or be thinking of a way to turn the tide. Then we start to see the results in Catching Fire with the decisions of people like Cinna and Plutarch.
• A minor bit of Fridge Brilliance of the Meaningful Name variety with Lavinia (the Avox girl not named until the third book). This name seemed random until I read a summary of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and read about the eventual fate of that Lavinia: among other things, her tongue was cut out.
  • Many characters have Meaningful Names, among others, Seneca Crane, Cato, Katniss, Peeta, Euphemia (Effie)...
• In Katniss and Gale's first scene together, Gale shows up with a loaf of bread (symbolizing Peeta) that has an arrow (symbolizing Katniss) stuck to it. Make of that what you will.
  • Don't forget all the times that fire and bread are alluded to in one scene. The bread scene when Katniss was eleven and the wedding rites of District 12 are two significant ones.
• This troper sort of hoped the tribute nicknamed "Foxface" would have more significance as a character in The Hunger Games. She just sort of hung around and then got killed by accidentally eating poisonous berries Peeta collected. But then you realize that is the significance of her character. Whether or not Suzanne Collins actually intended it, she answered a question that is on all of our minds: How would a tribute do if they just hid from the others, carefully scavenged food, didn't kill anyone (as far as we know, she didn't), and waited it out as the others killed each other? The answer is this: If they're as sneaky and clever as Foxface, pretty well. She came in fourth and it was only by chance that Peeta happened to have poisonous berries in his food stash right at the moment she stole their food. Remember Finnick's comment about none of the Victors being Victors by chance and all of them are lacking in compassion and quick to kill? Well, if Foxface had still been alive, in the final battle with the mutts when they attacked Cato, Katniss, and Peeta, the mutts wouldn't have backed off and Katniss and Peeta couldn't hold on forever. So she shows that maybe you can be a Victor by laying low, just focusing on stealing food and avoiding the others as they finish each other off. Who knows?
  • However, that that kind of victory would be...undramatic. The Hunger Games are put on for the entertainment of the people of the Capitol, who are starved for action and blood. The last thing the gamemasters would allow would be a victory by someone who basically spent the entire Games laying low and not doing anything. Even if she hadn't met her end at Peeta's poisoned berries, it's highly likely that a suitably dramatic death was being arranged for her anyway.
    • Peeta only did one Mercy Kill in his first Games. Annie Cresta won her Games without killing anyone because she was a better swimmer than all the others.
    • Maybe, maybe not. After, say, a five-year-streak of the Games being won by bloody battles, the sheer surprise of a non-Career tribute winning the Game through wit and strategy could have been pretty good entertainment.
  • Didn't Haymitch win, against much greater odds, that way? The other tribute who tried to kill him ended up having it rebound. Foxface's strategy could have been a winner and had been before.
  • Wasn't that what the District 6 morphings did? Camouflage themselves and lie low until everybody else had died.
• In Catching Fire, Haymitch promises both Katniss and Peeta that he'll work with them to get the other one out alive. When Katniss and Peeta discuss this in the arena, Peeta points out that Haymitch has to be lying to one of them. Although the narrative never specifically addresses it, later on, he's not lying to either of them - he's hoping to get them both out with the help of the rebels.
• In Mockingjay, it is revealed that attractive Hunger Games Victors are forced to prostitute themselves to Capitol citizens. The Capitol is based on Ancient Rome/Greece, where some... unusual and unrestrained sexual practices were performed. So, it does make sense that attractive Hunger Games Victors would be forced to be prostitutes in a Roman/Grecian-based Capitol.
• Having not read any other books by Suzanne Collins, I posit that the writing and facts contained in the book are flawed because it's told by a poorly educated 16-year-old who never really has a full understanding of what is going on. All the info dumps are done from her point of view and based on her experiences. She grew up in a small, impoverished coal-mining town. She was taught everything she knew about hunting from her father and best friend. All of that knowledge has been passed down by at least one other person since it's been 74 years since the second war, even longer since the first. Most knowledge of using bows as a sport may have even been lost before then since this is set 10 seconds in the future. Even her mother's strange healing knowledge can be explained by this (keeping flies away from open wounds when you don't have any better way of cleaning them? That's something that goes back centuries and can be explained by society being overly reliant on technology and then in a heartbeat, have it all taken away).
  • Makes sense, except for when the facts are things Katniss really ought to know about. Like facts about hunting and whatnot. The ability to shoot a squirrel through the eye seems a bit... much.
    • Unless she shot with pointed sticks at small game.
    • There are real-life squirrel-hunting competitions in places like southern Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia — Hillbilly coal-mining country, even. Bonus points are awarded for a shot through the eye. The competitions are conducted with muzzle-loading black-powder rifles even less accurate than a good hunting bow. Winners routinely turn in nothing but eye-shot squirrels.
    • Also, the point of Katniss shooting game through the eye is to not spoil the pelt, which she would sell on the local black market - The Hob.
    • I think that the original troper's suggestion here constitutes an Argument from Incredulity. Just because aforesaid troper considers Katniss a "poorly educated 16-year-old who was taught everything she knew about hunting from her father and best friend", doesn't mean that Katniss is stupid; stupidity is not a function of one's educational level. Troper seems confused about the difference between intelligence and knowledge; Katniss seems to be remarkably intelligent in that she takes the few morsels of fact that she is given and puts them together into a picture of her society that her experience more or less confirms. If anything, her experience teaches her that her society is even worse - more systematically unjust and cruel - than she imagined. Also, Katniss's conclusions about the nature of her own society are repeatedly shown to be accurate, or at any rate, she is seldom contradicted by her own experiences. So either the original troper has not made his or her point clear, or the original point is entirely wrong; Katniss' native intelligence helps her to understand pretty well what is going on, and her experience only confirms most of her worst fears about the exploitation and cruelty that is rampant in her society. In other respects, I fail to see how knowledge of how to use a bow, etc., could be so easily lost as the troper seems to believe.
    • I believe the original troper's point was less "Katniss doesn't know what she's talking about when she says the Capitol is bad" and more "Katniss doesn't know what she's talking about when she says airplanes can't fly as high as they used to because the atmosphere was burned away", which is scientifically ridiculous and most likely the product of a less-than-knowledgeable teenager poorly assimilating random scraps of actual information about a topic she doesn't consider important.
• Peeta's favorite color being sunset orange. Like fire? And note that a muted, sunset-like orange was also the color of the dress Katniss wore at the end of the first book, the one that made it look as if she was "wearing candlelight". The dress was calculated to make her look innocent, but Cinna stated that he thought Peeta would like it. Apparently, he did.
• Peeta is shown to be a smooth and remorseless liar more than once, and even though it's done for the sake of surviving the Games (specifically for Katniss to survive the Games), I wondered how a guy who is otherwise so genuinely decent and idealistic could also be so practiced at deception. And then it occurred to me that the answer might lie in his family life; with an abusive mother and a father who seemed unable to protect him much of the time, lying was probably a means of self-protection for young Peeta rather than something immoral or wrong. Remember, even his act of kindness in giving bread to a starving Katniss was an act of deception against his mother. After growing up deceiving and manipulating abusive or indifferent adults to protect himself, playing the repressive regime and the entertainment-hungry audience in order to save the girl he loved probably came naturally to him. Seen this way, his character makes more sense to me.
• YMMV on this, but when Peeta's name was called during the Reaping, he had this horrified expression on his face. Initially, being one who has never touched any of the books, I thought he was intended to be just a faceless nobody who was afraid that he was going to die. It didn't hit me until after he had proclaimed his love for Katniss that the horrified expression he had at the beginning of the movie was because he was going to fight against the love of his life. Could also have some Fridge Horror, though. Imagine you and the person you cherish the most being pitted against 22 others in a battle to the death, and the rules are, "24 enter, 1 survives."
  • Good point, but you might be overstating the whole romance thing, at least at this point. Peeta had a crush on Katniss. You need to actually know the person to really fall in love with them. A better example might be finding yourself having to fight against a friend or just someone you know. Not as dramatic but still somewhat disturbing.
    • It may actually border on Stalker with a Crush.
    • If he was watching her walk home every day and covertly staring at her at school, it was probably a bit more than a crush. He was at least seriously infatuated with her, probably to the point of being in love with the idea of her. It should be noted that Peeta seemed to know a lot more about Katniss than she knew about him, so maybe he could have loved her based on what he knew.
    • Being abused most of his life, Peeta probably felt isolated - either because of the defensive mechanisms he set up or his fear of other people. When he saw Katniss singing as a child, an infatuation began. However, notice how throughout all three books, Peeta's actions and words are geared toward protecting her and taking care of her rather than a relationship with her. He even apologizes for their forced relationship. His stalker-like tendencies are his socially awkward way of watching over her. Why does he do this? Because no one took care of him. His crush evolved into a sense of duty, that was magnified by his traumatic childhood. Thus, the explanation behind his horrified face is not that he is afraid to kill his "crush," but rather that he has to kill the person he has been secretly watching over and wanting to protect.
    • In addition to that, he could have been horrified that the person he loved could kill him.
    • Going along with the above, Peeta might have identified with Katniss because she's also an outsider. Also, Peeta's dad liked Katniss' mom, and Peeta is stated to be kindhearted like his father.
• The name of the Mockingjay. Mockingjay. Not only because it's half-mockingbird, but because its very existence taunts the Capitol.
• And did no-one else pick that the name became a double-entendre when applied to Katniss? In one sense, she was "The Mockingjay", which was the name given to the rebel leader. In another, the way that Coin's media machine kept trying to set her up as a "revolutionary celebrity" by making her parrot high-sounding phrases and dramatic but empty slogans made her very much a "Mockingjay", ie a bird that mindlessly repeats everything that is said to it!
  • Mockingjays only repeat the songs of the people they like - for example Katniss, Mr. Everdeen, or Rue. Katniss repeated the words given to her by the Capitol and Coin only when they benefit her and changed her tune by shooting Coin after Snow reminded her that he would not lie to her or be so wasteful.
• The Shaky Cam in the Reaping scene. At first, it was just annoying because it was purely an artistic choice - there was no violence that needed to be obfuscated to keep it PG-13 - but it makes sense as an artistic choice because it's the most violent thing in the whole movie - it's where the characters are put in the position that leads to all the blood and gore in the Arena.
• In Mockingjay, I wondered for a long time about Katniss voting yes for holding another, Capitol-centered, Hunger Games. We get her thought process, but not her motivation. In the end it occurred to me: she had to convince Coin to trust her, but even more so she had to find out what she would do... and Coin said she'd make sure Snow knew about the last Hunger Games with Capitol children, assuming that would cause him anguish. At least to me, that is like having Coin testify that even she would not have expected Snow to bomb his own child human shields.
  • Talking about Coin said she'd make sure Snow knew, the vote was right before the scheduled public execution of Snow. I guess Coin announced the decision in public before letting Katniss carry out the execution. The crowd must have been furious (they finally understand the horror of sending their children to certain death), a riot is imminent, all they need is a spark. And then Katniss shot Coin...
    • And then Katniss' trial after she shot President Coin. They used the Insanity Defense and sent her home. The new government can't afford to execute her, as they risk uprising from the Capitol people and their sympathizers, and making her a martyr. And, of course, there won't be another Hunger Games.
  • Collins' move was perfect, actually. It's about time a protagonist lied to an antagonist's face about her stand. How many times have we seen deuteragonists (okay, Katniss isn't one, but still) mouth off to the bad guys about their plan to bring the latter to justice, only to get snuffed in the process?
    • This is the mark of a Guile Hero who can use charm and deception for good, like Peeta. Lying to Coin to convince her that Katniss is no danger to her and to get into a good shooting position was major Character Development for Katniss. At the end of Catching Fire, Haymitch told Katniss, "See? This is why no one lets you make the plans!" In Mockingjay, Snow told Katniss, "I know you can't look past your nervous concerns. You are not a thinker." Katniss proved them both wrong - finally, she learned to outsmart her opponents. And the way Haymitch locked eyes with Katniss and said, "I'm with the Mockingjay" was brilliant as well. It showed how deep the trust between those two had grown. Haymitch recognized that Katniss had a secret plan to assassinate Coin. He called her the "Mockingjay" because the revolution was not over yet. One final enemy had yet to be defeated. Just brilliant.
• I wondered why, in Catching Fire, Cashmere, the female tribute from District 1, is so controlling of Gloss, the male, and her brother. Whenever they're pictured together, she's dragging him around. Then I realized... they're siblings. And their games were CONSECUTIVE YEARS. WHAT ARE THE ODDS? So Gloss was probably selected as a tribute the year after his sister either as punishment for Cashmere, or because she was just so spectacular. No wonder she's protective of him! There was a very, very slim chance he would make it back from his games! Makes their deaths a lot sadder...
  • They were Career tributes, it's likely they would have volunteered.
    • Unlikely. Brutus is specifically mentioned as volunteering, but not Enobaria or the siblings. Also, they both go out of their way during their interviews to reflect badly on the Capitol and try to get the Games canceled. It seems like only the craziest of the crazies would want to go through that arena again.
    • I am thinking that the siblings volunteered for their first Games on consecutive years, so "what are the odds of two siblings being chosen on consecutive years?" doesn't really apply. After they won their first Games, they were promised an easy life with lots of money and no more reapings, right until the Quarter Quell rule change, and both got chosen. Feeling betrayed, and also the horror of killing each other, they tried to get the Games canceled.
    • This troper read a Fan Fic where Gloss volunteered for his Games (partly) in order to help Cashmere escape from prostitution, making it so that he can no longer be used as leverage (assuming Snow doesn't have the power to kill off victors).
• The rebellions in Mockingjay got my goat for a little while because Katniss seems to hear about everything secondhand. She never really does much. By the time Katniss joins in, all the Districts are already rebelling, and in fact, they've already won, except for Two, which is sorted out quickly enough courtesy of one single move by Gale and Beetee. There's a revolution sweeping the entire country, an empire being toppled, and we don't even get to see most of it. Even in the very end, she's unconscious and nearly dead when the Capitol's finally overthrown. She didn't have anything to do with the final battle. But then, as the ending and the epilogue went on, it hit me: That's the entire point. This is not the story of a girl who led the rebels to victory. This is the story of a girl who's used by every single faction for every single second of her life. She's not a champion. She's a tool. That's her character arc, and only in the very final pages of the series does she finally learn to live as a person again.
  • You can even see tremendous hints of this really early on, in her first Games, where the only thing keeping her alive was her public image, which was lovingly crafted by Peeta and Cinna. They made her tragic and beautiful, respectively. So, even then, her life and death were decided by other people — not just the Capitol, but even people who love her, people more talented and brilliant than she was, to begin with.
  • Is it really fair to lump Peeta and Cinna in with the rest? Everyone else was trying to control her, there's no doubt of that, but those two were purely in it to save her life, and neither was looking to gain anything out of it. Peeta, at the very least, was never trying to use her at any point.
    • I'd say that Peeta and Cinna manipulated everyone else to view Katniss as something she wasn't. It was all about what people wanted to see in Katniss, instead of who she actually was. The point still stands.
    • Furthermore, everyone else manipulated Katniss to suit their purposes. Peeta and Cinna manipulated her to appeal to the audience so she would have a better chance of surviving. Unlike everyone else, their manipulations were aimed at protecting Katniss, not using her.
• How did Theseus escape the labyrinth in the myth that inspired The Hunger Games? With a long coil of string. How does Katniss escape the arena in Catching Fire? With a long coil of wire. Destroying the force field separating the arena from the outside world was the equivalent of killing the minotaur!
• It's mentioned that Buttercup hates everyone but Prim. On the main Hunger Games page here, it's mentioned that the author takes some liberties with the care of animals. Just now, it hit me - Buttercup hates everyone BECAUSE of the Artistic License – Animal Care. Everyone else took such bad care of him that he latched on to the first person to do it right.
  • Well, it's more likely (and not artistic license at all) that Buttercup is a nasty piece of work because he's presumably a feral cat who was only barely young enough to be tamed at all when Prim found him. Note that Katniss only gets along with him at all when she bribes him with food before the REAL Artistic License – Animal Care occurs when he tames to her after Prim dies—a real cat with that behavior would probably just go feral again. Most ferals never really tame down unless they are very, very young when humans capture them—Prim is just so much a Friend to All Living Things that she can overcome it. (Another hint she's Too Good for This Sinful Earth).
  • Given that the humans in his life are struggling to feed themselves, it's no wonder they have little time left over to figure out how to care for him properly.
• Why was Katniss' squad in the Battle of the Capitol numbered 451? Fahrenheit 451, one of the earliest dystopian works.
• There are countless hints throughout the book as to how the love triangle will end. To avoid too much stuff in spoiler tags I'll just name a few:
  • Katniss describes how her mother got depressed when her husband died and almost lost the will to live. When Katniss has lost Peeta at the end of Catching Fire she goes through a period of not wanting to live, followed by a long period of depression.
  • Katniss is the girl on fire and Peeta is the boy with the bread. Put those together and you can get toast. In District Twelve no couple feels married until they have made a fire together and made toast.
  • Peeta is portrayed in a very positive light throughout the books, almost to the point of having no faults. The books are not written in third-person but told through the eyes of Katniss. People tend to not see the faults in the people they are in love with.
  • She also seemed to notice him an awful lot to entirely indifferent. To name a few examples: she noticed that he was exceptionally strong and a talented wrestler, that his hands were continuously burnt and scarred by working at the ovens, that he had several bruises following the bread scene, and also that he kept watching her. This, of course, could easily be attributed to the fact that they were classmates and that he basically saved her life by tossing her the bread prior to that.
    • If it can even be considered a triangle is given that the feelings of both guys were initially not reciprocated by Katniss. She had only ever thought of Gale as a brother until he forced her to reconsider her stance by deliberately making a pass at her. Suffice to say, it was only Peeta's kisses that have stirred something akin to passion or arousal within her. Gale himself points this out in Mockingjay, signaling that Peeta may have been the only real option all along.
• In The Hunger Games, the Gamemakers use burning trees and firebolts to turn Katniss back towards the center, and in the film, it's even directly stated that she's too close to the edge. Of course, the Gamemakers want to keep the games interesting, but Catching Fire turns it into Fridge Brilliance: it is revealed that Haymitch used the edge of the arena to his advantage in a way the Gamemakers wouldn't have thought of (and didn't approve). After that stunt, Gamemakers for later Hunger Games would make sure to keep the tributes away from the edge. Bonus brilliance: Why can they go near the edge of the arena in Catching Fire? Why, because the leader of the Gamemakers was part of the rebellion, of course!
  • Doubled Fridge Brilliance in that Haymitch just so happens to be Katniss's mentor and so the Gamemakers had some valid reasons to suspect this could be a strategy they devised.
  • Two additional layers to that last thought: How does he get away with letting them come close to the force field? By making it strong enough that it can electrocute and kill the tributes. Which, in turn, is probably necessary for their planned method of breaking out to work.
• Prim is portrayed as a nearly perfect person whose closest thing to a flaw is being too good. Why? Because we see her through Katniss' eyes. Katniss's sister is one of the few people who have never let her down at some point or appeared to do so. Also, even if she knows what she's done in her life has been good for some people, she has to kill others to win the Games, she has to watch horrible stuff happen in the war to overthrow the Capitol, knowing that she sort of started it. Protecting her sister is the only thing she's done that she (and the reader) can be certain is unambiguously good. No wonder she makes Prim out to be an idealized character.
• Why District Twelve? Because Suzanne Collins-and the fans-like underdogs? Maybe, but maybe also because someone in charge of the rebellion wanted someone without much power or knowledge of what went on outside their District, that they could control as a rebel symbol without appearing to. Cinna asked for that particular District. The rebels could have manipulated the Games from the inside like Plutarch did long before Katniss pulled out the berries. They couldn't have known it would happen exactly as it did but it sounds like they were planning to make a rebel symbol out of somebody.
• Katniss finding a bow and arrow that was roughly the right size for her, or at least close enough that she could use it without injuring herself severely seems farfetched until you remember that the Gamemakers want her to be able to use it. It's more entertainment for the masses in the 74th Games and in the 75th there's at least one Gamemaker with a vested interest in keeping her alive. In fact, Glimmer probably just looked incompetent with a bow because it wasn't the right fit.
  • Assuming that Glimmer was most likely a Career tribute and didn't choose the weapon on a whim without having any previous archery experience, it is also possible that the bow's grip could have been fashioned to accommodate her non-dominant hand/eye (although an experienced archer is capable of overcoming such handicap). This is merely a hypothesis, though, as, in the film, both Glimmer and Katniss seem to prefer their right hand.
• For those who follow goofs, it is often pointed out that there is no cannon for Rue or Marvel. The film makes it pretty obvious that the Gamemakers have complete control over the arena, able to create forest fires and fall trees at will, and they do not first fire the cannon until some time after the opening bloodbath. They probably didn't want to ruin the emotional scene between Katniss and Rue.
  • That, or Katniss simply doesn't hear them because she's so focused on what happened to Rue, she's deaf to anything else, which IIRC also happened when Prim was reaped and when she watched Prim die. If I am remembering correctly, then it's some pretty good Foreshadowing.
• Rue's death is foreshadowing. Rue didn't survive the Games, Prim won't survive the war.
• Both Snow's and Coin's names hint at their true nature. President Snow is as cold as his name and, like a coin, Alma Coin has two sides to her, the public face that she puts on and her ruthlessness that leads her to bomb the crowds
• Some fans have wondered why Rue, who seems to come off as a Morality Pet to almost everyone she meets, had nobody volunteer to take her place in the Hunger Games. The second book shows that District 11 has a huge population, so the reaping shown on television is most likely the final stage of several eliminations, by which time anything of that nature would have been sorted out. However, there's a second, more tear-jerking possibility. Not only are parents forbidden from volunteering for their children, but Rue is the oldest of her siblings and probably told them not to take her place. Seeing as how the entire district salutes Katniss during her victory tour, it's possible that this was an agreement amongst the entire community.
  • Well, being the oldest of the siblings at twelve, and assuming her parents weren't six years old when they had her, meant that none of her family could have taken her place anyway. They were all either too old or too young.
• The existence of the Careers:
  • It's stated that the Careers are trained from birth for what they do. What better way for the wealthiest Districts to protect their own children? The families who offer their children to be Careers are probably the poorest, the ones with too many mouths to feed. Taking only two or three Careers per year would mean sending their babies to certain death, but taking several gives families hope that their kids will get the benefit of training without the sacrifice at the end. It helps the parents rationalize their decision, and the Districts can pick the best out of a larger training pool. And the richer families can live in relative peace, knowing that the Reaping is just a formality and a Career will always step forward to volunteer in their child's place. It's the tesserae concept all over again, cranked up to eleven.
  • Many of the families must emotionally distance themselves from their Career kids as much as possible, knowing they may volunteer someday. The Games are probably the first, last, and only entity to really "want" kids like Cato and Glimmer. They draw their entire sense of self-worth from the Arena and the promise of immortality and glory for their District. No wonder these are the kids who volunteer and leap into the Games' metaphorical arms, delighted to "put on a show"!
  • And why does the Capitol turn a blind eye to the training process? Two reasons. It suits their purposes to divide the twelve Districts into conflicting upper and lower classes, within and between themselves. In that sense, the unofficial Career program keeps the citizens of District 1 and 2 feeling privileged and special - their children can grow up without true fear of the Reaping, and their populaces are well fed and prosperous. Citizens from these Districts are probably a major source of talent for the Capitol. And furthermore, a regular string of Career Victors allows the Capitol to divert most of the Victors' spoils into their wealthiest districts, keeping the larger and more populous agricultural/logging/mining districts as poor and starving as possible, and deflect their resentment onto Districts 1 and 2 for "cheating". If a poorer District tried to set up a training program, they'd be shut down by the Peacekeepers in no time.
  • Also District 2 is one of the chief suppliers of fresh meat for Capitol's Peacekeeper force, so it's highly probable that the training academy exists primarily for this purpose.
  • Tributes from District 4 seem to be added to the Career Packs mainly as an afterthought; they die off faster and easier and are probably recruited mostly to swell the ranks of the Pack in the early part of the Games, when numbers count, and to ensure an alliance with any potential Finnick-like people. (In fact, depending on when it started, their inclusion may even be one of Finnick's legacies.)
• In the first book, Peeta tells Katniss that his dad had wanted to marry her mom back when they were younger. It didn't hit me until much later that he said this on national television, and you know the gamemakers aired it because of the "star-crossed lovers" storyline. If his mother didn't know already that her husband basically settled for her before, she knows now, along with all of District 12 and the rest of Panem. (I even read a theory from a commenter on an HG fansite that Peeta may have revealed it on purpose to subtly get back at her for what she said to him before the Games. And knowing how slick Peeta can be, I wouldn't put it past him.)
• I had a thought when I was reminded of the fact that Peeta's father was in love with Katniss's mother as a youngster and pointed this out to Peeta when he was a little boy. Originally, this detail annoyed me. it seemed too cute of detail or too much of a coincidence that Peeta would fall in love with the daughter of the woman his father fell in love with. But I realized that maybe Peeta's infatuation with Katniss is born from the idea of his father being with Katniss's mother instead of his own. With Peeta having a downright terrible relationship with his mother and her being abusive towards him his whole life, perhaps he would escape that pain with the fantasy of his father being with Katniss's mother instead. And of course in his fantasy, she would be lovely and nice. So perhaps he took that idea and transferred it to Katniss. As if Katniss is his chance to get away from the abuse of his mother, or the abuse his potential wife might bestow on their children.
• Katniss's father once said to her, "If you can find yourself, you'll never starve." She did — not only did she find the katniss roots, but she also discovered her purpose in life and what she was good at while trying to save her family from starvation. She found who she was meant to be.
• Before Haymitch won in District 12, or if he had died due to his alcoholism - or really any district without a victor - would not have a mentor for the children, which presumably means that they won't have sponsors or be able to get gifts from their districts during the games and would leave their chances of survival very, very low, if they even survived the Cornucopia.
  • There was one 12 Victor before Haymitch, who's never named and apparently died long enough ago that he or she is no consequence to Katniss. The interesting question would be, did they die before Haymitch won? After?
• In the film, unlike the book, Peeta doesn't lose his leg. This is likely in part because of another difference between the film and the book: Katniss is able to Mercy Kill Cato not long after he falls off the Cornucopia instead of spending hours listening to him die inside it, which means Peeta gets medical attention sooner.
• The Career tributes are necessary to keep the games functioning as planned. Without bloodthirsty Careers, there's no guarantee of anyone actually fighting. After all, it's not like the tributes like the idea of being forced to kill each other, but neither is there anything preventing the survival of all tributes if none of them choose to fight.
• At the epilogue of the series, it's Katniss who narrates and while Peeta is mentioned, he doesn't appear. Why? Because, due to all the trauma of those years, Katniss has never psychologically grown past 17/18. Peeta, on the other hand, was the one who kept recovering and growing, enough to get to a point where he could marry Katniss and want children. The reason Peeta doesn't appear is that he would be a very different person now than he was in the last chapter, and it would be jarring for the reader.
• Reference keeps being made to how Peeta is good at camouflage because he does cake decoration. This seems pretty absurd until you hear about his skill in painting, recreating people and scenes with amazing realism. That is where his skill at camouflage comes from, just like the morphlings. He's able to recreate camouflage realistically because he's spent time studying and remembering the subtleties of his environment for his art.
• Finnick spends the training sessions of Catching Fire trying to impress Katniss, he's acting like the cock of the walk because, as he admits in Mockingjay, he's misjudged her. He thinks that, like him, she's a calculated act, that she only went with the star-crossed lovers routine to save her own neck, rather than to save hers and Peeta's necks. He thinks that if he displays himself as her best chance of survival (the same thing Gale says will drive Katniss's choice between him and Peeta), she'll choose him as an ally and allow him to protect her during the Quell. But instead, she chooses Mags, Wiress, and Beetee as allies: people she'd have to protect, not people to protect her. It's not until he starts to lose the glossy veneer that Katniss warms up to him, and it dovetails prettily with the fact that Katniss entirely misjudged his act, too. It's not until they drop their acts and see each other at their worst that they really become friends.
• In the first book there seem to be a lot of coincidences that lead to Katniss winning the Hunger Games (her grand opening, the high score, the bow in the Cornucopia, the woodland environment of the arena, the unexpected tracker jacker nest, the number of gifts she receives, the refusal to allow her death over the berries), many of which are under the control of the capitol. However, given that for the Quarter Quell, there must have been a female victor from District 12 it doesn't seem so coincidental anymore, It seems as though someone in the capitol knew they needed Katniss to win and did what they could to make it happen. (It makes this troper wonder what would have happened had Prim been the tribute.)
  • Except that Plutarch says that no one knows what the Quell twist will be until the card is read— the plan to break the tributes out is specially mentioned to have been formed "from the moment the Quell was announced." If the Quell hadn't involved the previous victors, of whom Haymitch, Finnick, Johanna, and Beetee, at least, are resistance members (and may also have included Mags, Wiress, Cecelia, Blight, Woof, Chaff, Seeder, and the morphlings, all of whom are revealed to have been in on the plan, and Lyme, who leads the army of 2), the Games would have probably gone on as normal.
    • Just because a character says something is the case it doesn't mean that statement is true, even if that character is not lying. In any case, the Quarter Quell required a female victor from District 12, so someone must have known that the victor of the 74th games must have been the District 12 girl in order to make it happen.
    • What does Katniss being the 74th victor have to do with anything? In the books, Katniss seems to assume that the Quell cards were written when the games began, she notes that the box the card is drawn from is very full, suggesting that someone sat down and dreamed all the twists up at once, then put them in to be drawn when relevant. Plutarch supports this idea when he says that he only tipped her off about the clock arena assuming she'd be a mentor, implying that he had no idea what the Quell twist would be until Snow read the card. Now, Katniss also acknowledges that it's possible Snow rigged the cards so that he had an excuse to kill off the victors that were thorns in his side— this is supported by the fact that so many of them were sympathetic enough to the rebels to be let in on the escape plan. But the idea that someone knew 12 would have a female victor in a particular Games is silly, considering that 12 has had exactly four victors in 74 years, and Peeta is a weird case. Now, if Snow didn't tamper with the Quell twist, and if Katniss never won, then the idea of what 12 would do to make up for the lack of a female tribute is an interesting one. But the idea that someone knew Katniss was going to win the 74th Games before she did (beyond a betting capacity) doesn't make any sense. It's most likely that Snow tampered with the Quell after he saw how much trouble Katniss caused, in order to ensure her death, and then rigged the rest of the reapings to punish the other rebellious victors— notice that both Annie and Finnick were reaped. Given that 4 is a Career district with a larger victor pool than most, the fact that the two lovers, with Finnick implied to be a crucial member of the rebellion due to his secret-gathering and Annie being his major weakness, were both chosen is a pretty grand coincidence. Ditto Wiress and Beetee, who have a coded conversation with Katniss about how they hoped 12 would rebel as 3 did.
• I think Plutarch was lying to Katniss about not knowing about the Quell; otherwise his risky action with the watch makes no sense—see the WMG. However, I highly doubt that the Quell's specifics were general knowledge among the Gamemakers before the announcement and certainly would not have been an issue in the planning of the 74th Hunger Games. If Prim had been in, she would have been killed surely; maybe she would have teamed up with Rue. The "coincidences" helping Katniss were probably intended (by the non-rebel Gamemakers) because she and Peeta were the popular star-crossed lovers and (by Plutarch and any other rebels working with the Games) because she was the Girl on Fire of District Twelve, whose winning would be a provocative act that could work to their goals of mobilizing the Districts.
• A little audio foreshadowing in the film (obviously): the sound that the microphone makes at the Reaping when Effie taps it to check whether it's on is the same dull "boom" sound effect used for the cannon signaling the death of a tribute.
• The three shown gimmicks for the Quarter Quells have similarities to certain gimmicks that Reality TV does.
  • The first being that the Tributes are people who are voted to be Tributes refers to elimination-based Reality TV shows like Survivor and Big Brother, where it's done via voting.
  • The second having 48 Tributes refers to Game Shows where they do more than their usual amount of contestants.
  • And the more obvious Quarter Quell, where past victors partake in the Games, refers to the "All-Star" editions of the game shows, like Survivor.
• When captured by the Capitol in Mockingjay, Peeta recounts the damage done to the districts on television, saying that a dam broke and flooded District 7, thus foreshadowing Johanna's fear of water caused by her torture.
• President Coin's name might just hint to more than just her two-faced nature. Coin's district managed to be on both sides of the little coin called War: the winning side (The Rebellion) and the losing side (The Dark Days).
• Katniss' Heroic Self-Deprecation throughout Catching Fire and Mockingjay. Katniss, unlike everyone else feels that Peeta would've made a far better symbol for the rebellion, despite what everyone tells her to the contrary. At first, it comes off as an inferiority complex, but after re-reading Katniss' reflection of her first encounter with Peeta: in one act of kindness, Peeta restored her will to live. Katniss is basing this on her personal experience with Peeta, not solely because she has a low opinion of herself.
• Concerning the soundtrack of the film: "Horn of Plenty", the song playing during the chariot parade, shares it's first four notes with Hubert Parry's hymn "Jerusalem", to which William Blake's poem "And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time" is usually sung. This poem contains references to archery ("Bring me my bow of burning gold, Bring me my arrows of desire") as well as the mention of a "Chariot Of Fire", which interacts quite well with the corresponding scene, especially concerning Katniss and District 12's chariot.
• At one point (before Thresh saves her life), Katniss wonders why Thresh and Rue didn't ally with each other. It's clear that Thresh cared about her (enough to kill Clove in anger and spare Katniss). Thinking about it though, Thresh and Rue teaming up would be bad for both of them. Thresh stayed hidden in the wheat field, and he didn't even dare enter it. Although Rue might have done ok there, her best strength was climbing and trees - there are none of those in the wheat field. Meanwhile, Thresh would have been vulnerable in the forest, since his weight would be a disadvantage in climbing, and would make Rue more vulnerable too (same as how Katniss suffered when teaming up with Peeta. Katniss's skill set, on the other hand, complemented Rue's, making them perfect allies.
  • Plus, it seems like a bad idea to team up with your District-mate because assuming you do a good enough job of protecting each other, you have to kill them. As hard as it must be for (non-career Victors, at least) them to go home knowing they killed and to see the families of those they killed on the Victory Tour, imagine having to kill a child you knew and then to go home to their family still living near to yours and your parents still working together and your siblings still going to school with theirs...
• While stuck in the cave, Peeta and Katniss talk about living in the district's Victor’s Village after the games. When Katniss humorously brings up the fact that Haymitch will be their neighbor, Peeta jokes that all three of them will be very cozy, spending “picnics, birthdays, and long winter nights around the fire retelling old Hunger Games tales.” By the end of Mockingjay, it’s implied that that’s just what happens.
• In the films, the start of the 74th and 75th Hunger Games begin differently. In The 74th Hunger Games, there's a full one-minute countdown; in the 3rd Quarter Quell, there's a mere 10-second countdown. Obviously, President Snow doesn't want Katniss to have any time to recuperate or gather her thoughts before thrusting her into the arena.
  • The usual method for stopping Tributes leaving their podiums, the mines that are deactivated upon the 60th second, are impractical in this Arena because each podium is surrounded by water. This might also be because, in the 74th games, the Careers used those very mines to defend their supplies. The Gamemakers were probably told to make sure that such abuse of the Arena (akin to Haymitch's use of the force-field) wasn't possible this year. A shorter countdown would give people less time to think 'I can get a head start'
• Yet another way that President Coin's name is a Meaningful Name: Coins are a form of money, and another word for money is capital.
• You probably wondered why Mockingjay ended in such a way (Katniss being sent home on the basis of Insanity Defense, instead of revealing the true side of Alma Coin to the public), didn't ya? Well, those from District 13, including Plutarch, wanted Coin to be seen as a hero so that the country wouldn't break into another civil war and reign of chaos. So they preferred to keep the Awful Truth about Coin from the public.
  • Reminded anyone of Harvey Dent, the "White Knight of Gotham"? So... "[The Mockingjay] is the hero Panem deserves, but not the one it needs right now, so we'll hunt her. Because she can take it. Because she's not our hero. She is a silent guardian, a watchful protector... a Dark Knight."
• Forgive me for being oblivious because I think this was stated in the books, but it recently dawned on me: "The Hanging Tree" song. It's a euphemism for the gallows. "A necklace of rope" is a noose. Gallows are traditionally made out of wood. Where does the wood come from? Trees. Can you say symbolism? It's like one of those old rhymes based on horrible tragedies, like "Lizzie Borden" or "Ring Around the Rosies".
  • In many cases, it's not a euphemism. In lots of places, executions were performed on a literal hanging tree, where a large tree was used as the gallows. The song refers to such a tree.
• The emblem of Panem as seen in the movie is basically a corrupted version of the Great Seal of the United States: it features an eagle with a shield on its chest holding things. However, there are no stars, which stand for states (the power in Panem is vested solely in the President, rather than spread amongst states) and only two stripes (the Capitol and its districts: the only two divisions in the country). More importantly, the American eagle holds an olive branch, a symbol of peace, and a bundle of arrows, a symbol of war. The Panem eagle just holds two bundles of arrows - its power stems solely from force.
• Katniss in the first book, when thinking about Peeta and Gale, mentally chooses Gale, whom she trusts completely, while she initially has no idea what Peeta's motives are. By the third book, this opinion is completely reversed. She trusts Peeta, and her uncertainty about Gale destroys their relationship.
• The name "Avox" could be seen to have a Meaningful Name quality - the prefix "a-" or "an-" tends to mean "without", and the word "vox" is Latin for "voice." So the word Avox could actually be taken to mean "without a voice!"
  • Wasn't that actually pretty obvious?
• The first book never explains how Peeta came to be allied with the career pack. After all, Katniss and he are side-by-side during training so he never really gets a chance to talk to them alone. But the clues are actually there if you read between the lines. The careers mention that Peeta is handy with a knife, implying that they've seen him kill someone with it. Katniss mentions that it's unusual that the district 4 male died in the opening battle since he was a career. It seems likely that Peeta killed the district 4 boy and used it as leverage to take his place in the career pack.
  • Peeta made it into the career pack by showing off his strength and receiving an 8 rating which is the lower boundary for careers. His only kill was mercy-killing the girl who got stabbed by the careers because she made fire during the night. Peeta immediately ran into the forest when the Games began.
• During their visit to District 11 in Catching Fire, Katniss is surprised by how familiar Haymitch is with 11's justice building. After all, the last time Haymitch would have been allowed into District 11 was during his own Victory Tour, which was a full 24 years earlier. How is it that he retained the memory of the building's layout for more than 2 decades? Easy: he didn’t have to. This is actually an early clue that Haymitch is involved in a large multi-district rebellion. It's very likely that Haymitch has had multiple Offscreen Moments Of Awesome in which he escaped District 12 without the Capitol’s knowledge in order to meet with other rebels in person.
• Really, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is one huge book filled with Fridge Brilliance. Things that seem to be minuscule details or throwaway lines throughout the main series are fleshed out here. Some points in particular:
  • The reason why Snow likes/wears roses so much? They're a family sigil of sorts, having been grown by his grandmother for years throughout his youth. Same reason why he's never seen without a handkerchief, as Snow never leaves the house without new ones every day, according to his grandmother.
  • Why Snow isn't a fan of underdogs in the Games? Having mentored one in his youth, following after her caused a great deal of turmoil in his life and nearly cost him his life. Underdogs also likely remind him of Lucy Gray, who he wants to forget.
    • They might also remind him of someone else he'd like to forget: Sejanus.
  • Nearly every song sung by Katniss throughout the main series came from Lucy Gray and the Coveys. We get to see events that led to "The Hanging Tree"'s conception, as well as the song Katniss sings to Rue as she's dying. It's likely that instead of dying and disappearing like Snow hoped she would, Lucy Gray married somebody in the Everdeen family and passed the songs down until they got to her.
  • Why Snow has a fondness for poison? It's what helped Lucy Gray win the Games.
  • The Hunger Games in the series proper emphasize showmanship and entertainment to excite the viewers. Back at the 10th Hunger Games, which was far away from the Hunger Games the viewers/reader know, Lucy Gray's career as a musician enables her to dazzle the viewers with her charm, music and clever wit, thus the births of the sponsorship system, the escorts, and the prep team at the tribute's disposal in the present times. It is one thing to be a capable fighter, to appease the crowd to support them, it is an entire different issue. Furthermore, this also makes the Capitol, who were disinterested about the Games back at Lucy Gray's time, look forward to the future games annually once the entertainment value of the battle royale is set.
  • Snow's tendency to harm and outright kill the Victors' families to keep them in line comes from Lucy Gray discouraging the Tributes' plan to kill Snow and other mentors by telling them that even if they managed to kill all of them, the Capitol would demand blood back by killing their families. Lucy Gray did it to protect Snow since he was her mentor at that time and it would be her best interest to keep him alive during the Games, which he eventually use this particular strategy to protect his power base when he becomes the president.
• Snow's complete overreaction to the non-venomous snake that bites him at the end of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a metaphor for his relationship with Lucy Gray. Lucy likely poses no more serious danger to Snow than the snake did, but he is so lost to Dr. Gaul's grooming and his own obsessive nature that he can only view her as a potentially deadly threat that needs to be either controlled or destroyed.
• Snow consistently shows disgust and fear towards nature throughout Ballad, especially when it comes to the woods that surround District 12 and the Mockingjays that live there. This is the prequel retroactively fleshing out why Snow is such a good Foil for Katniss. Katniss adores those woods because they represent an escape from human society. Snow despises them for that same reason. Where Katniss sees freedom, Snow only sees chaos and danger.
• A likely reason as to why the 10th Hunger Games were the focus of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: this is the beginning of the Games as we know it. A few classroom discussions at Snow's school reveals that while the Districts are forced to watch the Games, the people in the Capitol generally aren't too interested. He and his classmates eventually end up suggesting betting on the Games and sending gifts to the tributes, things that are incredibly commonplace by the time we get to the 74th Hunger Games. Many of Snow's teachers also remark how this is a new era for the Hunger Games, alluding to the fact that the earlier Games were likely unstable and unpredictable.
• Sejanus' story in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes on a new meaning if you look up the history of his counterpart in the Roman Empire. Sejanus was close friends with Tiberius, who later went on to become second Roman Emperor Tiberius. After Drusus, Tiberius' son, died, Sejanus became de facto ruler of Rome after Tiberius left and moved to the Isle of Capri. Antonia, the mother of Livilla and the daughter of Drusus, eventually alerted Tiberius as to how powerful Sejanus was becoming. Now seen as a rebel, Tiberius set into motion plans to take away Sejanus' power. Eventually, Tiberius has him arrested and later executed. Anybody that was related to him or supported his cause was executed as well. Snow and Sejanus were considered close friends by nearly everybody in the book. The part of Antonia warning Tiberius is reminiscent of Snow recording Sejanus' plot to overthrow the guards and escape into the woods with the Jabberjay. Once the bird is sent back to the Capitol, Sejanus is ultimately hanged for trying to plot against the Capitol and run away, while Snow eventually goes on to become President Snow. Knowing the relationship between Sejanus and Tiberius from the Roman Empire really puts into perspective both his and Snow's entire relationship in the book.
• In the first film, Effie dismisses the complaints about the career tributes having an unfair advantage by saying, "I don't think they let them have dessert. And you can!". This may sound like a blatant lie designed to placate Katniss and Peeta, but there's a chance that Effie might actually be telling the truth about the dessert rule. While tributes from District 12 are usually poor and starving, the career tributes are fit and well-fed. They have no need to gorge themselves and gain weight the way District 12 does. It would make far more sense for their mentors to forbid them from having junk food and instead force them onto a specialized diet befitting a pro-athlete.
• Lucy Gray's song "Nothing You Can Take From Me" contains the following lyrics: "Thinking you're so fine // Thinking you can have mine // Thinking you're in control // Thinking you'll change me, maybe rearrange me // Think again, if that's your goal". This could be foreshadowing to what will happen to Peeta, with his fears that the Games would change him, and the way that the Capitol "rearranges" his mind, in a sense, with the hijacking. And, like the last line implies, he does end up overcoming it.
• Dr. Gaul claims the brutality demonstrated in the Games is a reflection of humanity's true nature, but actually, everything that happens in the Games is a reflection of how artificial that violence. The most obvious example is how often the Gamemakers need to introduce new hazards or screw around with basic resources to induce fighting—the first reaction of many of the kids is to do what Katniss initially does, get some food and water and then hunker down. Additionally, when given the chance many of the Tributes do their best to be kind to each other, even if they can't really help (Katniss and Rue, Mags, Reaper, etc). Most Tributes who resort eagerly and quickly to violence are Careers...who are only like that because they're trained from a young age specifically for the Games, essentially as child soldiers/gladiators, so they never had a chance to be normal kids.
• Early in The Hunger Games, Katniss comments that she doesn't think District 12 ever cared about her. This is at odds with the information we start to get, such as Peeta's comment that the boys at school love her, and the fact that she's supplying everyone from the mayor to the peacekeepers with game and produce. Katniss has a good friend in Madge, is treated kindly by students such as Delly Cartwright, and, of course, is given the 3-finger salute in lieu of applause. All of this paints a picture that District 12 actually really admires Katniss — she was always just too insecure and traumatized to realize it. Hence why she's so confused and offended when Peeta discusses "the effect she can have". It's never crossed her mind that anyone may see her as someone worthy of respect and love, so she goes out of her way to deny that the people of District 12 care about her.
• Many parallels have been drawn between Lucy Gray and Katniss, but there are also several between Coriolanus Snow and Peeta Mellark. Both are blond, blue-eyed male counterparts to the brunette female leads; both are from families with slightly better positions than Lucy Gray/Katniss but are actually struggling financially more than they let on; both are highly intelligent and, as a result, are very good at working a crowd and charming people. However, while Snow is a Manipulative Bastard constantly trying to advance his own status, Peeta is a kind-hearted hero whose manipulations never go beyond trying to appeal to the Capitol audience to help himself and Katniss survive. Their approaches to their love interests make them Foils as well, as Snow becomes very possessive of Lucy Gray and jealous of her past with Billy Taupe, while Peeta is firmly in I Want My Beloved to Be Happy territory. They both also have breakdowns at the end of their respective stories and attack their love interests, but Snow's is a result of his own Sanity Slippage, whereas Peeta's is manufactured by Snow himself.
  • Katniss can also form a foil with Snow, of all people, as well. Both are the protagonists (Katniss in the original series while Snow in the prequel), both have younger sisters who died young, assume the worst on other people and, vindictive to those who deeply offend them, their goal throughout their respective series is to survive after suffering during their childhood, will not hesitate to contemplate eliminating people that they deem as a threat, their Morality Pet happens to be a young girl (Katniss with Prim, while Snow with his granddaughter), both appreciate the truth and honesty to others and detest being something that they are not, both being hated by someone older than them without knowing the full reason why back during their teens (Katniss is hated by Snow, while Snow is hated by Highbottom), and believes that sentimentality is a weakness. However, Snow is an elder, charismatic, is associated with water (snow) motifs, hailed from prestigious family, is uncomfortable in the woods, despises underdogs due to his paranoia and bitterness towards Lucy Gray, and would not hesitate to step on others on his way to power, while Katniss is a teenager, socially awkward, is associated with fire motifs, hailed from poorest parts of District 12, finds peace in the woods, appreciates underdogs like Rue or Mags, and pretty much prefers to have enough food for her and for her family to survive, nothing more. And while both believe in Love Is a Weakness enough to get Sanity Slippage over it, Katniss eventually steps into Love Redeems territory as her love for Peeta help her cope up with the traumas she endured throughout the series and is appreciative of his presence and influence in her life, while Snow still remains of that belief the very moment Lucy Gray left him with no fault but his own and his memories of her forever haunt him for the worse which lead him to resent her by making him "weak". Long story short, Katniss is what Snow would be if he lets go of his ambition and live with content with his loved ones, while Snow is what Katniss would be if she lets her cynicism and feelings of helplessness destroy her innate compassion. In hindsight, his constant antagonism (and eventually respect) towards Katniss throughout the original series makes more sense because he sees himself in her, if he chose Lucy Gray over his own personal ambitions.
  • Peeta and Lucy Gray are both deuteragonists, artists (Peeta is a painter and a baker, while Lucy Gray is a musician), know how to charm the crowd enough to gain the people's support and sympathy, both are known by their kindheartedness and compassion, both expressing their desire not to let the Games change them, and both are in love with the protagonists of their respective series. However, while Peeta's love eventually turns Katniss away from dangerous path of suicidal cynicism and eventually gets together with her after surviving the rebellion, Lucy Gray's love towards Snow becomes an instrument to his own near and eventual downfall six decades later due of choosing ambition more than his love for her that lead him to his death at the end of original series.
• There's a mention that Peeta was in District 12's school's wrestling team. At first, it seemed strange that the school in the poorest region of a dystopian society would have something as frivolous as a wrestling team but it makes perfect sense. It's a way of making sure that tributes have at least some fighting skills when they reach the arena and thus make the games more interesting.
• The Hunger Games mechanic of playing a sound to mark a tribute's death has two purposes—firstly, it lets tributes know where they stand in the running, but it also prevents tributes from faking their deaths to escape a confrontation—if there's no sound, then everypne knows they're still on the table for pursuit. The Games are engineered to keep conflict active rather than quiet (nobody likes "dead air", and the Games are meant to prove the barbarity of society) and as such, the only way a tribute can survive an encounter is to get out of reach or sight, requiring their action, have an ally step in, or to be in such grievous condition that they're likely to die without intervention, causing them to be left alone, but at a high cost.