http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge

"Well, there goes my appetite."

Batman, Justice League "...If my enemies knew I had someone special, they wouldn't rest until they had gotten to me through her."

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A character is killed off in a particularly gruesome manner and left to be found just to offend or insult someone, or to cause someone serious anguish. The usual victims are those who matter to the hero, specifically best buddies, love interests, and sidekicks. In some cases, the doomed character may be killed by natural forces or by a character who doesn't have the intent to cause someone else angst — in this case, the intent comes solely from the writer, who wants to rouse strong emotions in another character. If the said character was killed by a villain, this guarantees to become a motivation for a Revenge plot or an immediate Roaring Rampage of Revenge.

The name of the trope comes from a storyline in Green Lantern, in which the villain Major Force leaves the corpse of Kyle Rayner's girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, literally stuffed into a refrigerator for him to find. Years later, Major Force repeated the gimmick with Kyle's mother in an oven. It was just a trick with a mannequin that time, though.

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The term (sometimes formed as "fridging") was popularized by comic book writer Gail Simone through her website "Women in Refrigerators." On that site, Simone compiled a list of instances of female comic book characters who were killed off as a plot device. The term came to be used more broadly, over time, to refer to any character who is targeted by an antagonist who has them killed off, abused, raped, incapacitated, de-powered, or brainwashed for the sole purpose of affecting another character, motivating them to take action.

While it is strictly true that Tropes Are Not Bad, this one, especially as a catchphrase, is often given a very negative connotation as it is all too often a hallmark of supremely lazy writing — using the death of a character as "cheap anger" for the protagonist, and devaluing the life of that character in the process, instead of giving the villain something actually interesting to do that can involve all three characters and more emotions than simple anger and angst.

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This trope appears in many media. The Throw-Away Country is an extreme example, and the Doomed Hometown is in many ways the RPG Video Game equivalent. See also Disposable Woman, I Let Gwen Stacy Die, and Finger in the Mail. Compare What Measure Is a Mook? If it happens to multiple love interests of the same character, said character likely suffers from the Cartwright Curse. The intended effect is very much akin to Cheap Heat.

Compare Collateral Angst, a more general case where bad things happening to Character A are primarily important for their effect on Character B. Also compare Death by Origin Story. Depending on how useful/interesting the character is, and whether their death was pointless or not, can overlap with Dropped a Bridge on Him. Not to be confused with being Put on a Bus as a Human Popsicle. Also not related to Fridge Logic, Fridge Horror, or Fridge Brilliance. Also don't confuse with Locked in a Freezer or It Came from the Fridge. See Body in a Breadbox and Dead Man's Chest for other types of storing a dead body. Also compare The Murder After, when the corpse is discovered in bed.

If the love interest who gets Stuffed Into the Fridge remains relevant to the ongoing story, continuing to be loved and missed by living characters, sometimes to the point of appearing in flashbacks and dream sequences, and is the standard by which any subsequent love interests are measured by, she "graduates" to being a Lost Lenore — in quotation marks as the trope still needs to be handled with care to avoid being tasteless. The aforementioned scenario also guarantees to have the survivor becoming a Crusading Widower. Related to Men Are the Expendable Gender as that trope is part of the reason this trope applies more to women.

It should be noted that while the term most commonly applies to a male character's female love interest, it can actually be used in numerous different scenarios of both sexes and different relations from romantic, platonic and familial. The core part is that one character is killed (or at least, has something very bad happen to them) for the sake of causing emotional trauma for the target, with said victim often acting as a plot device more than a real character in the worst-case scenarios. As such, while this trope is usually Always Female as some would think, male examples do exist.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Audio Plays

Samantha from We're Alive is killed on the floor of the Arena by a sadistic zombie who "likes to play with his food." We never actually hear her dying but can only imagine how gruesome it was and it leaves Datu scarred from then on.

Fan Works

Literature

Music

Music writer Tom Ewing accused Kenny Rogers's "Coward of the County" of this.

The traditional folk song and child ballad "Lamkin" or Long Lankin".

Mythology and Religion

In the Book of Job, this happened to Job's first family, who were killed off as part of Job's suffering.

Enkidu was killed by the gods in The Epic of Gilgamesh in order to punish Gilgamesh, making this trope Older Than Dirt.

Professional Wrestling

Literalized at CHIKARA Hour of Power 7, April 23, 2017. Merlok, a big piranha character, abandoned his match with Ashley Vox to brutalize her sidekick Jawsolyn, throwing her around garbage cans and finally throwing her into a refrigerator. Director of Fun Mike Quackenbush announced he was cutting the feed, with the match being ruled a no-contest. (Jawsolyn never returned to CHIKARA.) This led to Ashley's Roaring Rampage of Revenge, culminating in her following Obariyon (formerly of The Batiri)'s advice and channeling the darkness within her to become Oceanea, and finally defeating Merlok at the Season Finale Closing Time on December 2nd.

Roleplay

This occurs in Survival of the Fittest with the death of Adam Dodd's girlfriend, Amanda Jones, at the hands of Cody Jenson. It was overshadowed by the simultaneous death (and rape) of Madelaine Shirohara .

Tabletop Games

Aleena the Cleric's fate note Aleena appeared in a solo get-acquainted adventure in the player's guide and was murdered with a magic missile by Bargle the wizard, giving the player a reason to seek revenge. in the "red box" version of Dungeons & Dragons was some 1980s gamers' first introduction to fridge-stuffing.

in the "red box" version of Dungeons & Dragons was some 1980s gamers' first introduction to fridge-stuffing. A character with the Signature Move "Sacrificial Buddy" from Hong Kong Action Theatre has an Extra in every one of their movies who is a friend or relative of the role they play, whose main purpose is to get killed by the bad guys (usually in this fashion) and give the role some serious motivation for revenge.

Omi Kurita, the daughter of the ruler of the Draconis Combine in BattleTech was assassinated by Kathrine Steiner-Davion, leader of the Federated Commonwealth, specifically because she was the lover of Kathrine's brother Victor and Victor had thwarted one of her political schemes. The revelation that she was dead sent Victor into a deep depression right as he and Kathrine were in the middle of a civil war and nearly cost him the war.

Visual Novels

Web Animation

In Broken Saints, Shandala's mother, then later, pet cat are fridged by Lear as part of his plan to drive her across the Despair Event Horizon so she can become a living component of his Kill Sat weapon system. insanity.

are fridged by Lear as part of his plan to drive her across the Despair Event Horizon so she can insanity. Subverted in RWBY. Cinder attempts to spite Jaune when he gets a lucky hit on her by impaling Weiss in a similar manner to how she had previously killed Pyrrha. However, doing so gave Jaune the necessary trauma to unlock his Semblance , which allowed him to heal Weiss' injuries.

Web Comics

Web Original

Web Videos

Western Animation