Fair enough. I put it there because it was listed on the main trope page of Inferred Holocaust. If you wish, I will remove it from both that page and this one.
Much as I like taking a shit on Cracked, I think it's likely still deserving of an entry. "Well, maybe he wasn't supposed to come to Earth" is rampant speculation and even if the case, doesn't address "there is some kind of intelligence out there sending killer robots to destroy planets." Even if Earth isn't on the chopping block, they're still out there and wholly unaddressed.
I do think "what if the nuke made him evil" can be cut since that's also just speculation, but "one of their killer robots came to Earth, who's to say more won't come" seems perfectly reasonable.
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I see your point Larkmarn and I think the idea has merit, I just don't think it belongs under the Inferred Holocaust trope. c To use the infamous "Endor holocaust" as the archetype. ROTJ clearlys show an object the size of a moon, blowing up, and (in the special edition) even raining metallic hail down on the planet. From those facts the clear Fridge Logic is that Endor should be doomed even though the filmmakers chose to ignore those facts in favor of a happy ending.
With Iron Giant, the lack of any real facts about why/how the Giant crashed on Earth means any conclusions derived from that event are mostly speculative. It does leave some unpleasant possibilities about the Alien Destroyer species noticing Earth but there's nothing guaranteed by the facts of the story.
As such I'd have to call it a "Fridge Terror thought experiment" rather than an actual narrative trope in play.
There is already a significant entry on the Fridge tab under the Fridge Horror section addressing this issue.
Edited by rva98014
Yeah, now that you mention it, it does seem a better fit for Fridge Horror. If it's already there, then I have no issue with it going.
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ElSquibbonator added this example to Inferred Holocaust:
While the restored "Giant's Dream" establishes the Giant to be a part of a "planet-killer" army, the circumstances behind his arrival to Earth are still largely unknown.
We don't know if he was an advance scout to Earth or on some other mission and was "struck by an asteroid, thrown off course and crashed on Earth". We also don't know if the bump on his head occurred during planet-fall or was received earlier that contributed to his planet-fall.
After Hogarth's "death", the Giant's bump is shown fixing itself and the movie implies that the Giant is restored to some degree of "factory settings" as that's when he's now able to manifest his "battle mode" form as well as form sentences in rudimentary English and voluntarily control his foot rockets.
It's in this "battle mode" form that the Giant decides to stand-down at Hogarth's telling him to choose what to be. This scene, along with the one where the giant targets the fighter jet yet decides not to fire on it, shows that the Giant is in the process of altering his programming.
As a reader of Cracked articles, I find that they are amusing and satirical but are not above cherry-picking facts and/or plot details as needed to make their articles funny and ignoring things that don't support their article's focus. Their take on an Inferred Holocaust regarding the Giant's fate is built on a lot of speculation regarding the flow of events.
Their interpretation, in my opinion, runs counter to some facts presented in the movie and does not sufficiently justify a post-movie Inferred Holocaust situation.
I recommend removing the example as too speculative.
Edited by rva98014 Hide / Show Replies