Teen Titans (animation)/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

 * "Things Change". Season 5's big idea is that Beast Boy has to learn to grow up. We all thought the Brotherhood of Evil, his old nemeses, would do it. We thought his early days with the Doom Patrol would handle it. Nope, by the end of the Doom Patrol cameo, we learned his first name. By the time the Brotherhood was beaten, he made a brain freeze joke (all the Titans groaned at that one). No, the point of the last episode wasn't to sink ships. It wasn't a desperate attempt to write off Terra. It was there to remind you there are more things than heroes and villains out there. Terra lost her powers and she was glad for it; she couldn't handle being a hero or villain. In the last scene, Beast Boy finally gets it through his head that there is more than Black or White morals out there and is finally ready to move onto the next stage of his life. The ep is quite a bit of Cerebus Syndrome from normal (and I expected a Batman cameo based on the title), but here we are. - User:Chadius
 * Another example for me is the much-maligned episode "Troq", usually accused of being Anvilicious about how racism is bad. And it really is, but there are two subtler, much braver aesops hidden within it. One is that racism isn't always confined to Card Carrying Villains and Complete Monsters. Val-Yor's presented as a genuine hero who really is (all Alternate Character Interpretations about the Locrix being innocent victims aside) trying to save the galaxy. At one point, he even orders Starfire to leave him behind and save herself - and yet he's also a racist bastard toward Starfire. Now usually, in a television show where an otherwise sympathetic character is a racist, he'll learn his lesson by the end of the episode, which leads to the Broken Aesop that it's somehow up to the victim to win over racists. But Val-Yor doesn't change, and the Titans instead accept that there will always be people like him, and simply refuse to tolerate his behavior and tell him he has to leave. This is actually a much more subdued and realistic aesop than the usual message that either only complete monsters can be racists, or that any racist who's not a complete monster can always be redeemed by the victim working hard enough to prove herself. - BritBllt
 * Speaking of "Troq," I knew many people who thought of, when asked if he faced prejudice, Cyborg saying that he was "Half Robot" as a cop-out from saying that he was black. However, when thinking about it, race isn't the only source of discrimination as what Cyborg could've been referencing is that the handicapped (cripples, amputees), which he's technically a part of, are often discriminated as well. So it wasn't Cyborg copping out of referencing himself as part of the more-expected minority group rather than referencing a more-overlooked one. - LL Smooth J
 * When you stop to think about it, the episode "Stranded", despite being a (very fun and cute) filler episode, has this incredibly well done subtle theme of miscommunication and breakdown in communication running all throughout it. The Titans are in space because a satellite space station stopped broadcasting. The Monster of the Week's power is a sonically disruptive scream that breaks up radio waves (among other things), directly leading to the Titans mistakenly separating and being scattered on the alien planet, out of contact from each other. All three conflicts of the episode involve mixed signals regarding communication - Starfire and Robin's misunderstanding of their feelings and the nature of their relationship, Cyborg's feeble attempts to instruct the mechanically inept Beast Boy on how to fix the T-ship, Raven's inability to convey her annoyance to the miniature egg-people following her. The symbolism is particularly noticeable when Robin and Starfire are discussing the definition of 'girlfriend'; not only does obscuring fog spring up concealing the two from each other, but then they discover a wide chasm has appeared between them. It's pretty freaking brilliant.
 * Woah. At the start of Trouble In Tokyo, when Saikotech kicks open the sprinkler systems and just vanishes right in front of Robin, Beast Boy's joking and immediately dismissed possibility for his disappearance is that Saikotech "just wasn't waterproof". As we learn later,, so he really wasn't! BB was right!
 * Think about it further. Saikotech is technically Japanese. Turning on the sprinkler system while being an ink drawing is like suicide. What did samurai do when they get captured by the enemy/fail their master? They commit seppuku, a form of suicide special only in Japan. Saikotech failed Brushogun. Yeah.
 * In "Snowblind", the team meets the radioactive hero Red Star. The character who spends the most time with Red Star and forms the greatest bond with Red Star is Starfire. Random choice? Probably not. See, Red Star is the hero's second identity. His original hero name in the comics, from his first stint in the Teen Titans comic was Starfire.
 * Also, this is probably a coincidence, but 5 in Japanese is "Go". The theme song says One, Two, Three, Four, Go! Teen Titans!
 * And who sings the theme song? A pair of Japanese pop stars.
 * In the episode "Overdrive", this troper initially considered the ending where Cyborg and the rest of the Titans to use a series of incredibly realistic holograms to beat the villain Billy Numerous a bit of a Big Lipped Alligator Moment that came out of freakin' nowhere. Then he realized two things: first off, Robin had used a hologram in "Masks", so that technology is not beyond the Titans. Secondly, the way the Titans beat Billy Numerous is the same way Billy had managed to keep the upper hand on a supercharged Cyborg throughout the episode: by tricking him into overtaxing his abilities. After Cyborg spent most of an episode convinced that he was a One-Man Army and nearly killing himself in the process, this final battle was about him stepping back and letting Billy exhaust himself. It fits nicely with the episode's theme of realizing you're an individual and can only do so much in a day. Teen Titans has some pretty damn good writing. -User:Romanticist Caveman
 * At the start of Season 5, the Brotherhood of Evil inducts into their ranks most of the villains the Teen Titans had fought up to that point in time, including a couple who had actually died in their earlier appearances. This seems like a Plot Hole until you remember: at the end of Season 4, Slade broke open the gates to Hell. When that happened, we saw several beams of light shoot out of the gateway; one of these went into Slade's body, restoring the flesh that he lost when he became undead, but we never saw where the other beams went. If we assume those were the souls of dead villains escaping from Hell, it all makes a lot more sense. -User:Raven Wilder
 * Speaking of Slade and The Brotherhood of Evil, some fans were complaining how the newly resurrected Slade wasn’t in the Brotherhood, but his butler Wintergreen was. This could’ve been done for the sake of a cameo and cramming as many villains as they could into the Brotherhood, but there’s also that Jericho, one of the Titans being hunted down, is Slade’s son in the comics. Perhaps Slade sent Wintergreen to save his son from the Brotherhood when he couldn’t for whatever reasons; also in his very, very few appearances, Wintergreen's solely been Slade's assistant and never directly fought the Titans until Season 5. -Glass Owl
 * Wouldn't that be more at home on the Wild Mass Guessing page for Teen Titans? I figured that the reason Slade wasn't in the Brotherhood was because he's just too arrogant. He probably considers himself above them, and wouldn't want to take orders from the Brain (orders from Trigon were acceptable...because, c'mon, he's a frickin' demon). Wintergreen was in the Brotherhood because he'd broken away from Slade's service (we hadn't seen him with Slade since his first appearance as his butler). - Gracie Geek
 * Speaking of characters coming back to life possibly from Trigon's defeat, this led me to an interesting theory. Remember that everyone on Earth save for the Titans were turned to stone, and were changed back with Trigon's defeat. Well, I think that's how Terra was restored to life. Somehow, her petrification was undone by a completely unrelated spell being broken (probably Slade getting his flesh and blood back and releasing other people's as well). Of course, I never read the comic series that tied in, so I wouldn't know if there was a more clear explanation. -User:Orpheum Zero
 * Depends on what, exactly, Raven did after defeating Trigon. If it was a mass stone-to-flesh spell (alongside other spells to fix the damage Trigon did) then it could have easily restored Terra. If, on the other hand, Raven merely counterspelled Trigon's magic then Terra should have been unaffected, as she was turned to stone by her own powers, not by Trigon.
 * During the theme song, when the lyrics say "when the world needs heroes on patrol," it shows Beast Boy on screen, an ex-member of the Doom Patrol.
 * Also, when the lyrics say "With their superpowers they unite," it shows Starfire on screen, who is the reason the Teen Titans formed.
 * And when it says "Never met a villain that they liked," it shows Cyborg, who had a crush on Jinx in Season Three, Foreshadowing her Heel Face Turn in Season Five.
 * When Raven shows up, the lyrics say "When there's evil on the attack, you can rest knowing they got your back". This foreshadows Trigon's coming to Earth, and how she gives her friends some of her powers, to protect them from his spell.
 * For Robin, "They've got the bad guys on the run, they never stop until the job is done" is sung. The latter part hints at the lengths to which Robin will go, particularly against Slade.
 * In Season 2 Slade emotionally manipulates, uses, abuses, and betrays Terra. Come Season 4, what does Trigon do? The exact same to him. It's karma!
 * Oh how Terra would laugh her ass off if she knew...
 * A lot of people complain about Cyborg adding the "I'm part robot" when Starfire asks him if he's ever faced prejudice. Though when you consider that Starfire probably hasn't been on Earth long enough to know about its history concerning racism. Cyborg might have added that last bit about being part robot since it's easier to explain.
 * Considering how down on himself Cyborg often is for being part machine, I always figured he gets double prejudice for being black and for being a cyborg. He just uses the latter for explanation when talking to Star because he'd really rather not get into the whole sordid history of race-relations among humans with someone who'd be almost totally ignorant on the subject. Better to focus on what's more obvious.
 * Raven's fate in "How Long Is Forever?", becoming withdrawn and mentally disturbed, makes a lot more sense when you consider what happened in "The End". Based on the fact that Starfire's broken necklace is still on the floor twenty years later, the team presumably broke up very soon after Starfire disappeared. Consequently, Raven would have lost the only friends she ever had, and become isolated from the rest of the world. Thus, when Trigon came to Earth, Raven would not have been able to draw on The Power of Friendship to destroy Trigon, and so in order to defeat him, she would have had to use all of her mental and physical energy, which would have saved Earth but left her emotionally dead afterwards, hence why she's so isolated in the future!
 * Raven's frostiness toward Terra is extremely saddening when you realize that the reason for it is that at least partially because Raven, The Empath senses all of Terra's issues and sees a part of herself in Terra. Terra's out of control powers kind of demonstrate the danger Raven could be if she doesn't meditate and it scares her. This is made worse by the fact that with dangerous powers that are really hard to control, Raven could have been exactly what Terra needed to mature into a real hero and the best possible one to teach her to control her abilities.
 * To throw in a bit of Fridge Horror, it's likely that if Raven hadn't been raised by monks who were able to teach her to control her power, she'd have ended up just like Terra- lost, confused, unable to control powerfully destructive abilities at all, and easy prey for serious temptation the first time it presents itself.
 * In season two, when the Titans first meet Terra, they're quick to offer her a place on their team, but in later seasons they never do anything more than make allies honorary Titans by giving them communicators (Titans East don't count as new members- they're an allied team, not a branch of the same team). Why aren't they recruiting new core members? After what went down with Terra, they don't want to get burned again.
 * Slade made Robin steal from Wayne Industries. Question is, was it a coincidence? Did he know about Robin's secret identity and use it to twist the knife? Was his plan to get Robin as his apprentice part of a longer game to beat Batman with his own son, which would give him a serious morale advantage?

Fridge Horror

 * WHERE THE HELL ARE THE ADULTS!??! These kids are facing Trigon, Death Stroke the Terminator, and the Brotherhood of Evil, and regularly getting destroyed by them - no-one on the Justice League thought it might have been a good idea to step in at any point?
 * For the animated series, the Mind Rape-drug that Slade used on Robin to trigger the events of "Haunted" is bad enough on its lonesome, but if you stop to think about where it came from, you'll realize that Robin only ever captured one intact Slade mask (in "Masks", appropriately enough- Slade lost masks in "Apprentice" and "Aftershock" as well, but the former was completely shattered and the latter was melted in lava). Now that was back when the Slade/Robin enmity was just starting to get personal, so Slade had prepped that trap for someone he barely knew. Now, he probably intended to use it much later, since it had to be remotely activated, but still- it really hits home just how cold blooded and cruel this guy is.
 * In Teen Titans, Plasmus, Overload, and Cinderblock combining into a Biological Mashup is far more horrifying when you remember that this version of Plasmus is a person who unwillingly becomes a Blob Monster whenever he's awake.
 * Hell, Plasmus in general. He is in stasis the majority of his time. Occasionally, a Big Bad will bust him out of stasis, point him in the direction of the Titans, and get out of the way. And he's only himself during the three or so seconds before he transforms into a half-liquid acid-spewing monstrosity and tries to kill everything in sight, with just enough intelligence to try and do it cleverly. This is his life. All there is to it. Ever. Whoever he was before whatever happened to him, that person only exists for a few seconds of panic at the fact that he's awake and so destruction is about to ensue. No, he doesn't get cured.
 * Let's not forget the confrontation between Slade and Raven in the episode "Birthmark" when Slade first returns. He had a penchant for suddenly grabbing her throughout the episode, and each time he touched her, some of her clothes would disappear (by the end of the episode, her leotard is reduced to a ragged looking bikini). Not to mention the one scene where he suddenly disappears, causing Raven to look around herself in fear, and back up, only for Slade to appear behind her and grab her roughly in his arms, which noticeably causes her pain. She falls to the ground and Slade reaches out in a threatening manner to touch her again, only for Raven to use her powers to trap him momentarily in some rock slabs. He later tackles her, rips her cloak, and holds her immobilized as her hair grows and her face contorts in pain, later showing her a vision of The End of the World as We Know It at her own hands before tossing her unconscious from a roof. Sure, it was essentially Mind Rape, but it damn near looked like Slade was trying to rape her in the physical sense as well. This gets worse when you consider that someone was capable of creating a Hentai Flash animation of this, which essentially had Slade actually raping Raven, without changing the dialogue.
 * Not to mention all the analogies for the aftermath of rape, such as becoming an adult (forcefully losing her innocence), cutting her hair, and the markings (despite it being Trigon's, it could be seen as Slade "leaving his mark").
 * The same can be said between Slade and Terra during "Aftershock".
 * Note that, in all the time Slade's mentally and almost physically raping Raven, he's doing so as a proxy of Trigon. Her biological father put him up to that, and might even have been mystically tapping into Slade's psyche while he's doing it.
 * Speaking about Terra, Slade had a sexual relationship with her in the comics. Knowing how parallel (or even accurate) the cartoon adaptation is to the original, the same could be so for this Terra. However due to the differences between the two, it makes you wonder whether or not it was a consensual one.
 * Raven sucking Doctor Light under her cloak using magic shadows; when he's pulled out at the last second, his face is ash white and all he can do is curl in a ball and say, "So dark. Make it stop. Please, make it stop." The fact that in a later episode, all she had to do was snarl at him and he immediately went into Terrified Surrender Mode doesn't ease the imagination of what might have happened under that cloak.
 * And don't forget, any appearance of Doctor Light is now incredibly creepy after he was revealed in comics to be a psychotic rapist who was mind-whammied into the dopey, harmless Light we're more familiar with. And remember that he recovered from the mind-whammy in the comics...
 * In "Birthmark", pretty much the entire city, frozen in time mind you, becomes Raven's weapon. She used two buildings and numerous cars to try to crush Slade, who had superpowers at the time and survived unscathed. All the cars came from the middle of the street and presumably had people inside them.
 * The amount of collateral property damage (if not the number of actual people hurt) is quite staggering for a children's show. At the episode "The End - Part1", Cyborg uses huge building to hit Plasmus through more buildings, knocking him out... for a few seconds.
 * And then there's the episode where spores from Slade's mask causes Robin to have night terrors that actually harm him as if it were real. Can you imagine what would have happened if no one had been around to help him? Nightmare Fuel indeed.
 * Slade laser-injects nanobots into the Titans in season one. Think about it. Thousands of nigh invisible robots floating around in your body, possibly for decades. And what Slade wanted to use them for is a whole other can of Nightmare Fuel.
 * Did anyone mention that Raven is actually reincarnated several times, and she isn't a teenager but a grown woman who just so happens to look like a teenaged girl? According to that other wiki, but still...
 * Pretty sure that's comics-only (where all the Titans are at least somewhat older). I don't think there's any indication that Raven in the show is anything but the teenager she appears to be (or whatever the teen-equivalent for quasi-divine half-demons is).
 * In the episode "Employee of the Month", the Titans face an evil alien tofu overlord. Beast Boy threatens to eat the tofu creature as part of an interrogation, then saunters off to save the day. At the end of the episode Robin asks Beast Boy where he left the alien, and he says "in the fridge". This is right after Cyborg had announced that he was going to get something to eat. The team then has a moment of literal Fridge Horror.
 * In the last episode, Slade talks to Beast Boy through a robot about the girl that resembles/is Terra. Based on information that's established, Slade is never far behind from Terra.
 * Mother Mae-Eye, straight out. She plans on baking the Teen Titans into a pie. But they've been eating pies the whole episode, so does that mean they've been eating people? It would explain how she got them, but it also means that no one's figured out she's the one killing the people she bakes! I'm seeing Hansel and Gretel parallels, here.
 * I think she had different kinds of pies- there was the one she was trapped in at the beginning, the ones she fed to the Titans which were laced with the magical equivalent of will-supressing drugs, and finally the big pie she wanted to bake the Titans into and presumably eat herself. I got the impression that the pies the Titans ate were fairly normal, apart from the evil magic.
 * At the end of the episode, the Titans just hand the pie over to H.I.V.E. The Titans only survived because Starfire was lucky enough to get hit on the head. Doesn't it seem odd that the heroes are perfectly willing to feed their enemies to the Monster of the Week?
 * Wait until they're docile, then save them and give the HIVE pie to the cops. There.

Fridge Logic

 * Ok, one of your team-mates is a key to gate of a hell-dimension prison. Her own father is an inter-dimensional space demon whose release from aforementioned prison would cause The End of the World as We Know It on a universal scale. You have a few months to prepare. The whole team comes with a perfectly safe room, into which Father cannot get. You are well aware that the demon has an army of lesser demons on his disposal. The team is consisting of former member of Doom Patrol and a Flying Brick princess of the whole planet of flying bricks. What do you do? If your answer is: face the army of demons alone, then congratulations, because you are a Teen Titan.
 * Counterpoint: Raven is a one-woman Dysfunction Junction. The room is theoretically perfectly safe.
 * Not to mention that end of the world would destroy both heroes and villains alike, so there is absolutely no way for there ever to be a better Enemy Mine situation. Is there actually a trope for not bothering your much more powerful ally when the whole world is at stake?
 * Trigon's entire plan for resurrection is completely dependent on Raven not dying. Had she, there was no back-up plan, and he would be permanently stuck under the Earth.
 * Raven's destiny was to become the portal for Trigon. He either looked into the future and saw that, or maybe even set that part of the future himself - he didn't need to worry about her dying before doing something she was fated to do. Really, he should have paid more attention to what happened to her after she became the potal...
 * However, Trigon is, as far as we know a immortal demon. If he could create Raven to be a portal,(as far as I'm aware, it's never explained how he managed to create Raven, especially if he can't even enter the TT dimension without someone like her) presumably he could do so as many times as it requires for it to stick. In fact, why Trigon even bothers to use an obviously heroic and not willing teenager as this portal instead of starting over until he gets a willing spawn is a bigger question.
 * One thing I, and after bringing it up and being told that it was obvious by others, noticed was that, surprisingly, Trigon actually did care about his daughter. Hell, judging by the fact Arella survived whatever he did to Azarath according to the tie in comics, he probably cared about her in some fashion as well, but then, in the comics, they did actually get married... And I don't think they ever actually got divorced, Arella just ran away screaming when she found out which demon specifically she was married to. Trigon seems to just be the Demon version of the bumbling dad who has no idea what the hell he's doing with his kid. Hell, he's a Reality Warper and demonstrated that he could pierce the defensive spell Raven put on her friends effortlessly, so the only possible reason for them not being turned to stone is him just not turning them to stone. Also note, it was pretty clear Raven was supposed to die making the portal, Trigon essentially admitted that he had saved her. Also note Trigon's method, and compare to what Raven wanted specifically, she wanted her friends not hurt (they weren't, and Trigon could have easily done so in countless ways), she didn't want anyone to die or get hurt, (Trigon turning everyone to stone neatly accomplished both, as statues don't feel pain.) and she probably wanted to live, which she did, because Trigon made it so.
 * Of course, this might just be Tiny Titans Trigon coloring my perceptions...