As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge examples for Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Fridge Brilliance
- All toons seem to be crazy drivers - Roger can't drive and the weasels can't drive and we don't see Jessica driving. If toons are used to toon cars like Benny doing their driving for them, no wonder they can't drive. Not that Benny can drive either.
- Despite Benny's insistence that he should drive because he is a car, that actually means he's got even less reason to know how to drive than any of the others!
- Also, it's not like we know for sure that driving in Toon Town is safe by human standards. Toons just tend to be incredibly durable for cartoon physics and Rule of Funny reasons. Plus, the Dip is a huge deal because toons are otherwise immortal, and thus mildly inconvenienced by violent traffic accidents in Toon Town.
- There's brilliance in how Judge Doom uses Dip on a cartoon shoe. Given Eddie was close to his brother Teddy, it seems Doom is no stranger to killing one half of a pair.
- There's that moment in the warehouse when he slips on the fake eyeballs and falls over. Even aside from the subtle foreshadowing being pretty clever on its own, he gets up holding his hand over one eye. He just fell on his face, so it seems reasonable before the reveal that he'd just hurt his eye. Then it turns out to be exactly the same kind of fake eyes he uses for his disguise. He didn't hurt his eye when he fell, one of his fake eyeballs fell out of his socket—which went unnoticed by the audience when it popped out since he's standing in a pile of them - and he's hiding his real one.
- The film's audio commentary notes an even more genius bit tied to that; not once do you ever see Doom blink. While the movie itself pulled off the effect via makeup (and some very impressive focus on the part of Christopher Lloyd), in-universe, Doom's unnatural pallor and unblinking stare make sense as something more than just a dramatic aesthetic, once it's revealed what you've been seeing was prosthetic eyes and a rubber mask. Christopher Lloyd came up with the idea on set and they loved it as it shows the eyes are just fake, a clue right in plain sight.
- Even earlier, a strong suggestion that Doom's a toon appears as a plot point, but the dialogue to follow is so rapid that it blazes past without giving audiences time to think about it. When Jessica saves Eddie from getting shot, we see the would-be shooter's shadow flip back out of view, as if knocked down by Jessica's bullet. Yet when Judge Doom, her target, reappears running down the alley and at the warehouse, there's no sign he was ever injured.
- Why does Judge Doom just stand there and stare when the Dip is about to engulf him? Because that's exactly what a toon would do.
- Judge Doom is the sole stockholder of Cloverleaf Industries, the logo of which looks suspiciously like a freeway interchange, one of the most common types being appropriately called cloverleaf interchanges.
- Judge Doom being a toon also explains most of the bad guy cliches he does throughout the movie (explaining his plan rather than killing Eddie and the Rabbits right away, running Eddie over with a slow deathtrap like a bulldozer rather than stabbing him, going for a giant, evil looking dip truck rather than using other methods to get rid of toons, etc.)
- Being forced to operate on Rule of Funny doesn't stop toons from being Genre Savvy when they're "off the set". But Judge Doom also has an excuse for holding the Villain Ball even with that considered. His All There in the Manual backstory is that he was once an innocent toon actor who usually played the villain. But something happened that caused him to think he was actually evil. He subconsciously let Eddie win, because his character always loses.
- For a time, no human was able to figure out how to successfully kill a toon (not that they necessarily wanted to), they're basically invulnerable to any weapon or natural hazard. Of course, it figures that only a toon (like Judge Doom) would know their own vulnerabilities as one and find a way to kill their kind.
- During the crowd scene at the end, we see cartoon characters such as Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, who weren't around in 1947. Is this a case of Anachronism Stew, or have they just not been employed yet?
- When Judge Doom and the weasels die at the end, Roger's quote rings well.'"My philosophy is this: if you don't have a good sense of humor, you're better off dead!"'. And of course they all turn out to be deranged toons with a very twisted sense of bad humor and die because of it. Judge Doom dies by his own Dip because he found too much enjoyment in killing which backfires on him fatally.
- Eddie's dance number at the climax that offed the Weasels seems out of place and too well done for this guy, until you remember the tearjerking sweep of Teddy's desk. Pictures show Eddie, his brother and father as touring clowns.
- Everyone considers it is Jessica who married up to Roger because of Rule of Funny.
- Building on from the Deliberate Values Dissonance of Jessica's sex appeal to humans vs. that of toons, that's also why Betty Boop flirts with Eddie and remarks on how lucky Jessica is. It's not just because Jessica married up to Roger, it's because Betty, as a fellow cartoon sex symbol designed to be attractive to human men, probably has the same trouble finding a toon love interest as Jessica did before she met Roger. And that is why they both work at the Ink & Paint Club.
- Toons are generally driven by whatever is the funniest thing to do in the context of the scene, so to a large extent they don't have much control over how a scene will unfold. For example, Roger usually waits until something is very funny, building up the suspense and humor. Similarly, as soon as there is a timeline placed on Acme's will appearing, the toons unwittingly do everything in their power to stretch it out right to the last minute because it's so much funnier to do so. It must have been frustrating for Eddie, but at the back of his mind he probably knew that everything was going to work out alright as soon as he walked into the final showdown. All he had to do was bide his time and keep the toons busy. This is also the reason that Roger failed so spectacularly in the final scene. It just wouldn't have been funny to win so easily with 15 minutes to spare, so he unwittingly stood under the bricks and delivered a lame pun.
- Doom says that it is impossible for a toon to resist the old "Shave And A Haircut" bit, yet he shows no compulsion to finish it when tapping it out on the wall. He doesn't need to finish it. Roger showed that a toon can break the rules when it is funny to do so, and it's funnier for Roger to blast out of the wall and interrupt the bit than for Doom to start singing. Furthrmore, Doom himself couldn't resist the song. He was the one that started it in the first place. By the time Roger cracks, Doom has started singing the words himself, if quietly.
- When you first see the movie, Doom's line "I bought the Red Car so I could dismantle it!" seemed like the ridiculous Toon villain scheming Doom is known for. But it sounds remarkably similar to the General Motors streetcar conspiracy
— they bought the Red Car (through a front company) so they could dismantle it. Which makes Valiant's line that the freeway idea could only have been thought up by a toon even funnier somehow. - Roger's improvised lyrics for "Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" is foreshadowing Eddie's antics during his confrontation with Doom at the end of the film:My buddy's Eddie V.
A sourpuss, you see
But when I'm done he'll need no gun
What a joker he will be! - Why Marvin confided to Jessica Rabbit in regards to Judge Doom's plan aside from obvious reasons? Because she was the only sane toon of the bunch that could take the news seriously.
- Acme squirted Eddie at the Ink and Paint Club as a subtle means of conveying what he used to write his will.
- Jessica knocking Roger unconscious to "keep him from getting hurt". Eddie makes a sarcastic remark about how that "makes perfect sense", and it seems to be intended to show the audience that the humanoid Jessica actually has some toonier/illogical tendencies. But conking Roger on the head to keep him from harm actually does make perfect sense. Physical violence can't hurt toons, and Jessica was trying to protect Roger from someone carrying Dip, the one thing that can hurt a toon.
- Why are the toon weasels working for Doom if he wants to wipe out Toontown and all the toons in it? Because toons make people laugh, and since too much laughter is fatal to the weasels they want to make the world a less funny place.
- Lt. Santino tells Eddie that Judge Doom got his position by buying votes in the last election. And just how did he get the money to do that and start Cloverleaf? Through the money he got in the robbery where he killed Eddie's brother.
- Some more foreshadowing concerning who Doom really is. During the Duck Season, Rabbit Season routine in the bar, Eddie insists that Roger "drink the drink," Roger declines with "But I don't want the drink!" and Doom interjects, "He doesn't want the drink!" Which is exactly what another toon would do in that situation.
- Despite having a huge prejudice against toons, Eddie greets Betty Boop with genuine kindness and respect. He's genuinely happy to see her. There's a doll of Betty on Teddy's side of the desk◊. It's possible that Teddy and Betty were actually friends, dating or that Betty was his client.
- The Humans Are Flawed trope is in full effect here, displaying that people are complex but not truly evil. Eddie Valiant doesn't like toons due to what happened to his brother, but he's willing to risk his neck for Roger. Acme wants to have an affair with Jessica, even though she's a married woman, but he also intends on turning his ownership of Toontown to the toons. Eddie is certain that Angelo the barfly would turn Roger over to Judge Doom in a heartbeat but, when exactly that scenario arises, he covers for Roger and mocks the Judge for good measure. R.K. Maroon is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who had sleazy pictures of said affair taken to sabotage Roger's relationship and blackmail Acme, but his love for toons overrides his greed when he finds out his actions could result in the destruction of Toontown. It makes Judge Doom, who has no such redeeming qualities, stand out even more and is a hint that he isn't human at all.
- Going off on the above, Roger and Jessica Rabbit also demonstrate why you should never judge a book by their cover: Roger and Jessica are more than just a goofball and a sexpot respectively: Roger does take his marriage seriously and get angry and sad, while Jessica is a genuinely loving woman with moments of toony wackiness.
- The whole sub-plot of Roger and Jessica's on-the-rocks marriage seems to be completely forgotten outside of moments like how Roger has wrote Jessica a 'love letter'. The Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize that, if Roger hadn't gone to apologize to Jessica, and hadn't written his terrible love letter on the first piece of paper he found, the Will would have still been in Marvin Acme's office where Judge Doom could have easily found it, destroying it or otherwise making it null and void, and his insane plan to erase all toons would have gone unopposed, due to the fact there would be no will to find!
- Every glass in the bar is shattered by Roger drinking the bourbon - except the ones Doom is wearing.
- The fact that Acme wrote his will in invisible ink doesn't make much sense at first; after all, if your property was in danger of falling into the wrong hands, you'd want to make an intended beneficiary known as soon as possible. But when you take into account the fact that the will named Acme's beneficiary as the toons, added onto the fact that Judge Doom is a toon, it makes sense that Acme wrote his will with Disappearing Reappearing ink. It was all in the name of defying the trope of Loophole Abuse; ensuring that Judge Doom was disposed of before the will was revealed so he couldn't claim himself as a beneficiary by being a toon.
- Adding on top of that, it sure seems convenient that the Disappearing/Reappearing Ink turned invisible before Roger found the will and then reappeared after Doom was defeated. But remember when Roger said that he couldn't just take his hand out of the cuff at any time - "only when it was funny." The ink, being a toon product, must follow the same rules of plot-convenient timing, just played more for drama.
- When that box full of shoes was knocked over, one of the pairs of shoes was what appeared to be a pair of Goose Stepping Jackboots. considering that the film takes place not long after WW2, it is possible these were used for Propaganda cartoons. But this could delve into fridge horror when you think about the toons who played the Japanese in those Looney Toons cartoons and other characters in WW2 Propaganda.
- The Toontown scene contains at least two references to Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951) with the doorknobs on Lena's floor resembling the Doorknob in the film and the "Allyson Wonderland" Bathroom Stall Graffiti. At first they seem rather random, however those references might be Alice Allusions to how Eddie, like Alice, has also entered a fantastic world completely devoid of logic and reasoning after following a rabbit down a tunnel (though not an actual rabbit in this case, but a cartoon human with the last name Rabbit).
- Right above the Toontown tunnel entrance is a keystone plaque of two heads that resemble Felix the Cat, one looking happy, and the other, sad. They may be a reference to Thalia and Melpomene, the respective Greek muses of comedy and tragedy, AKA "Sock and Buskin"note , commonly known as the "comedy/tragedy faces" in theatre. This indicates toons are inherently theatrical or showy by nature and that the very essence of their existence is to entertain, be it to humans or each other. The way they go about their lives is, at least in some ways, "All Part of the Show", so to speak.
- Most of the toons act similarly in real life to how they act in their cartoons, but Roger in particular takes it further; his Baby Herman cartoons are all about him going through extreme physical and emotional stress while attempting to reclaim a loved one, which is just what he goes through- in a more serious form- in the movie itself.
- Roger seems to be the only one who doesn't know about the death of Eddie's brother, still believes that Eddie is a "friend to toons", and is shocked by those revelations. Not a minute after learning the truth, he gets distracted by the movie screen... and then immediately checks out when he realizes it's "just the news". If he wasn't paying attention then, why would he pay attention to the news before?
- Tinker Bell's appearance at the very end may seem anachronistic at first. However, it actually makes sense. Peter Pan was actually in development as far back as 1941, as seen in The Reluctant Dragon, where maquettes of her and Captain Hook are visible, along with maquettes of Lady and the Tramp characters. Both films were ultimately delayed to the 1950s due to the outbreak of World War II, so perhaps Tink was actually just trying to get work while waiting for her film to exit Development Hell.
- During Daffy and Donald's piano play-off, Eddie is the only person in the club not in hysterics, and then flinches when Donald is about to blast Daffy apart with a cannon. Naturally, both toons survive the act, but Eddie watches in uncomfortable awkwardness. Why? Because he is reacting to his brother's death when a piano was dropped on them by a toon. A human wouldn't be able to get up and walk away from having a heavy piano dropped on their head, while a toon could. The violent slapstick is a lot less funny when you've directly witnessed someone dying in front of you, let alone a murder.
- At the Darkest Hour, Eddie is unarmed, outnumbered by many sociopaths with guns, and Roger and Jessica are strung in front of the Dipmobile with Toontown soon to follow — and then Doom screams out the Toon Patrol that they're going to "laugh themselves to death just like your idiot hyena cousins!" Eddie has an "Eureka!" Moment; just like Roger said the day before, "A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have." So he engages Doom and the Toon Patrol in an extended comedy skit. Eddie's resulting demonstration of Toon Physics awareness (and his rapid improv when he discovers that Doom is a toon using Black Humor instead of slapstick) demonstrates just how spectacular Eddie used to be as a detective operating in Toontown.
- It's possible that Doom warning them against laughing is the very reason the laughing ends up killing them. As Roger explains earlier in the film, toons are bound by the Rule of Funny. And a "punchline" (them laughing to death) only lands if there's a "setup" (Doom's warning).
- Related to the above: if Doom was the first toon to use Black Humor to kill a human being, then wiping out Toontown makes perfect sense; As far as he knew, if he was the last toon, then as they passed from living memory it would become increasingly unlikely that anyone would discover an unkillable monster walked among humanity, let alone the tropes necessary to counter him. He came very close to becoming an evil god, tormenting humanity for fun and profit forever. Of course, Doom failed to realize a human comedian could do the same thing; QED Eddie Valiant disposing him via the comedy that in fact preceded Toontown.
- The toons' ability to withstand injury and their obsession with humor is why toon/human race relations are relatively relaxed compared to the vicious racial divide of 1940's America. They may not interact as equals, but as far as anyone was aware, neither side could actually hurt each other; humans couldn't hurt or kill toons, and toons had no inclination to do the same to humans since it wouldn't be funny. Until Roger heard about the death of Eddie's brother, he didn't even think it was possible for a toon to inflict lasting damage on a human, let alone deliberately causing a human's death. It makes a weird kind of sense that Judge Doom, the inventor of Dip, was also the first toon to realize he could kill a human — via Black Comedy.
- The Toon Patrol, which is comprised of weasels, is assigned to hunt down Roger Rabbit. Weasels in real life do kill and eat rabbits, so the Animal Jingoism makes sense.
Fridge Horror
- What happened to the studio crew member that was launched high into the air after the bench he was on collapsed under Hyacinth Hippo (from Fantasia)? We don't know if he came back down and a fall from that height is almost not worth the thought. The freezing high altitudes alone could've killed him. He may have ended up falling to Toontown, but that could have ended poorly.
- When the Weasels die, they turn into toon angels and float away. Except for the one who fell into the vat of dip. Maybe the dip dissolved his soul. When Doom said that the Dip killed toons, he meant that in every meaning of the word.
- Just look for one second at the colossal damage these nearly-omnipotent toons can cause without even trying. In a cartoon watching Donald Duck pull a cannon out of nowhere is hilarious... in real life, in a real packed-out nightclub surrounded by real flesh and blood people? Oh my God. How much do you want to bet the government is probably secretly working on its own version of Dip in order to try and protect us against a race of people that have no other weaknesses?
- When Eddie attempted to duel Judge Doom, he took out a singing sword by mistake and then tossed it aside, shortly after he flooded the whole room with dip which may lead you to thinking what happened to that that sword, (if it did or didn't end up like the shoe, Smarty and Doom.)
- One that struck as a very young child first watching this movie. They had never heard of Toontown before, but had seen plenty of freeways.
- Trail Mix-Up was the last of the three Roger Rabbit Shorts to be made. That's the one that ends with Roger popping a hole in the planet. What if the reason there aren't any more shorts or movies is that Roger actually destroyed the world?!
- Toons are immortal, but humans are not. Imagine living forever and watching your human friends grow old and die.
- If we assume the backstory about Judge Doom's Start of Darkness being caused by amnesia is canonically true, that means it could presumably happen to any toon. No denying that Doom was despicable and terrifying, but the full extent of his ambition was just to destroy Toontown and replace it with a freeway. Consider for a moment, however, that there are many cartoon villains out there even worse than Doom, all the way up to outright Eldritch Abominations, malevolent Reality Warpers, Apokoliptian New Gods and Omnicidal Maniacs who would happily destroy everything in existence. Suppose one of them got conked on the head and forgot they were just playing a character...
- It's awfully lucky Eddie caught that news report on Maroon selling his studio before leaving the theater, otherwise he would have fled Los Angeles along with Roger with nothing standing between Doom and the destruction of Toontown.
- While The Resurrection of Doom gives us a potential concept of Judge Doom's former toon identity as Baron Von Rotten- who looks like an exaggerated version of his red-eyed self with the human mask still on- as well as a fan theory of Judge Doom being Pistol Packin Possum- a Toon possum gangster who uses a similar gun to Doom when he kills R.K. Maroon in addition to having reddish eyes on a closer viewing- within the film itself, there is no clue of what Judge Doom actually is beneath his assumed appearance. The only clue is his ever-changing eyes and his golden exposed hand that can change into weapons; leaving everything else an enigma. Given how varied Toons look - from exaggerated people to anthropomorphic animals to sentient objects- Judge Doom could be potentially anything and potentially be anything-given his limbs and especially his eyes could change into anything.
- The Reveal that Judge Doom was a toon after springing to life from a seemingly fatal death to inflate himself to show his creepy eyes and high-pitch voice is scary enough. But, Doom's last coherent speech is how he actually talks, which is a little strange unless you take the theater scene in which Eddie gives his backstory into context. The implication being that Doom specifically turned around to show his "burnin' red eyes" and then spoke in a "high, squeaky voice" to show that he was potentially also there in the theater to hear it in order to throw it in his face that he could follow him anyway without being noticed and not necessarily in disguise. Which is already disturbing as as only his eyes and limbs are the only things revealed about him.
- A Fridge Horror for me was realizing that Dip did not just kill Toons, but annihilated them. Even the most saintly toon could get annihilated. Smartass wasn't any worse than the other weasels, yet he is annihilated and the others not just have an afterlife, but one in heaven...even though they didn't repent.
