Fridge Brilliance
- The Djinn, in the form of Wendy Derleth, smugly boasts to Alex that she can't outwit him with rationality, and only the superstitiously-minded could beat him. And yet she proves him wrong at the end. Unlike the following entries, where magic alone was used to defeat (or kill, in the latter two entries) him, she manages to stop, think, and use the most logical decision to not only seal him away again, but to undo all the carnage he left in his wake over the past couple days.
- The true power of the gem is not that it imprisons the Djinn. The first time we see him in Persia, he does not even need to collect souls: three wishes will be just fine. After the imprisonment, he needs several souls to power up his magic before he's ready for the third wish and the end of the world (as well as more intricate curses that affect multiple people at once). In the second film, starved of souls and power, he needs more than a thousand more souls for the Prophecy to take effect. The gem is not just a prison: it makes the Djinn's task harder with each iteration.
- Also note how the Djinn is initially weak and definitely not omniscient: even finding Alex is enough of trouble for him to go out of his way and bribe/torture/trick people into providing him information. After he collects souls, however, he's now able to go wild with anything even remotely resembling a wish, and can find Alex anywhere she goes, no matter how fast or far she tries to run.
- For someone having been locked up in a statue for 870 years, Demerest is remarkably well informed of how the modern world works: cash paper money, firearms, police hierarchy, Harry Houdini and even health insurance. Notice how the Djinn always makes the initial request generic or even a question, then lets the wisher explain to him what they mean and imagine it in their head; he does not have this knowledge beforehand, but he gains it as they start visualizing what they want. He catches up so quickly because people themselves are providing him clues.
- I always assumed that every time the Djinn takes someone's soul, he also takes some of that person's knowledge as well, so every time he grants someone's wish, what he knows of the modern world multiplies.
- On a side note, the death of the pharmacist illustrates it. The vagrant wishes for sarcoma on him; neither he nor the Djinn have much of an idea how exactly cancer works, but the imagination of the wisher provides all the (medically incorrect) details on what he thinks it should look like. The Djinn simply follows the instructions.
- The vagrant wishes that the pharmacist would get cancer (he never specifies sarcoma) and die. The Djinn did indeed give the pharmacist cancer and insured that he would die from it. It was just a form of cancer that was unknown and infinitely more virulent than anything current medical science had ever encountered or even a form of it that was created by the Djinn specifically for that occasion. If the vagrant had said "I wish he got the common cold and died," the result would have been something very similar i.e the pharmacist die horrifically when all the water in his body turns to mucus and it all shoots out his nose. It's not the Djinn doesn't know what cancer is, he in fact probably knows more about it than mortals could possibly know. He's as old as the universe after all, and he can manipulate virtually any aspect of it if it's in the form of a wish.
- This borders on Fridge Horror here: that basically would mean all these people actually imagined their wishes going this way ("hey, it would be cool to have a million dollars, the only way I'd get them otherwise would be if Mom died and I had to collect the insurance, but hopefully that won't happen..."). The Djinn may think of creative ways with Body Horror and loose words, but for the "modern" wishes, he just lets their subconsciousness take the lead.
Fridge Logic
- Djinn could have won due to the phrasing of the last wish. After all, how many people named Mickey Torelli exist, and how many of them might have been also drinking on that specific day. "Done. Mickey Torelli in Western Alberta (or where ever) goes to work clean instead of drinking two days ago. The Mickey Torelli you're probably thinking of still dropped the statue, and I was still released." What did prevent him from doing so? Judging by Demerest's face, he was already prepared to screw Alex over in this way or with a similar trick, but the gem forced him to abide to her vision of the wish.
- Demerest has a very carefully planned strategy for his wishes. He always grants the first wish generously to trick the wisher into wishing more, then screws up the second wish to make the wisher try and undo it with the third. He does the same thing to Alex as well, except that he tricks her with the zero (free) wish and nearly has her killed on the first wish (second for her). She then wishes out of the demon realm, and spends the rest of the film trying not to get caught into the same trap again. Ironically, in order to win, she has to do exactly that: try to undo all the carnage with her final wish. She basically turned the Djinn's signature tactic against him.
- As the Earth still stands in this universe despite the Djinn being around for centuries, apparently no one has succeeded with the third wish so far. The third and fourth film explain it with angels coming to the rescue (if you can call killing off the wisher before they make the final wish a rescue, but still), but in the first two films, their aid is not necessary, as mortals are doing just fine. It's when someone without magic/mental fortitude to wield the gem is involved do the angels come down and fix the mess.
Fridge Horror
- Zoroaster in the intro. Apparently he's the Only Sane Man in this universe, and a Crazy-Prepared one to boot, magical gem and all. Given that the film begins in 1127 and Zoroaster lived at least six centures B.C., he's 1700+ years old at this point. Makes you wonder if he spent all this time preventing the Djinn catastrophe over and over again; truly God's work is never done.
- Ironically, whether he's even human or not, he did give the Djinn his iconic gem: the tool for collecting souls and ability to recover. Was it a necessary evil, or was it a poorly thought through temporary solution that, in the end, will only make the Djinn stronger?
- Of all the souls we see in the demon realm when Alex visits it, poor Josh (the fella who was the first victim of the Djinn in the lab) is stricken with the worst Body Horror mutilation compared to others. Instead of just suffering from constant pain, his soul is so warped and twisted he's barely even recognizable. His soul was not just sucked into the gem; the Djinn partially consumed it to restore his powers.
- The second film also shows that souls can be freed from the gem and return to their original bodies, provided they are still alive. In the second film, they haven't been trapped in there long enough to go mad from torment; however, if Alex had dealt with the Djinn in a way that did not involve Story Reset, these poor guys would've been brought back with all the memories of their suffering in Demerest's playroom. And that's not to mention the morgue guy and the clerk, who were unlucky enough to be mutilated and live through that before being consumed; the living victims would envy the dead.
- The impossibility to mess up the prophecy makes the Djinni takeover and eternal Hell on Earth inevitability in the long run. Apparently this universe has been created by Jerkass God.
