Dead Rising/Fridge

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Fridge Brilliance

  • Why does Frank West have a strange disconcerting limp? He fell out of a helicopter. Note the leg he limps on, compared to the leg he fell on.
    • This was actually supposed to be a plot point, but Capcom never made a new animation, hoping nobody would notice. They did.
    • His 'limp' could also simply be a staggered walk, because that camera is hanging from his neck by a strap. If he ran normally, it'd flail about and might get damaged, or even clock Frank in the face. His walk keeps his center of balance on the camera, so it doesn't swing wildly. His priority is to keep his camera safe at all times, as you'll notice when he jumped from the helicopter, he landed in a painful way because he only used one hand to catch his fall, using the other to protect his camera.
    • Also, Carlito reveals that his entire motivation revolved around the fact that Santa Cabeza was destroyed in a cover up just because of an experiment to make more meat products. The person who captured him late in the game was a butcher.
  • In Dead Rising 2, the in-mall gun store has military grade sniper rifles, body armor, and grenades in stock. How could they possibly ever sell these things, in a very public setting no less, without getting shut down? Because this is a world where not only do zombies exist, they occasionally destroy entire cities. Of course weapon restriction laws are going to be lightened, if not abolished in full.
  • In Off The Record, Chuck Greene replaces Leon as the slicecycle riding psychopath. At first you may be wondering, where'd Leon go? But right before the fight, Chuck tells you that he's been dealing with "nutbars" all day... so it's likely that Chuck killed him.
    • According to the loading screens, Leon was still alive. He was in hospital after an accident, Chuck stole the limelight however.
  • A bizarre, certainly unintentional one... the lyrics to the end credits song of Dead Rising, "Justified", probably meant to talk about Carlito, also fit surprisingly well for the character of Stacey / Agent S in Off the Record, especially if you find a (completely cracked) way to composite the two different versions of the character from both games so that she's both sidekick and villain.
  • In Dead Rising, it's made clear that zombie bites do not cause infection, but zombie wasp stings do. By the second game, everyone is convinced zombie bites are the culprit. Why the change? Zombrex marketing. Those who are bitten but not stung and don't immediately go on Zombrex are probably statistically insignificant. Those who were stung but not bitten probably are assumed to have been concealing a bite. As for the stings themselves, likely they go unnoticed among all the other injuries survivors are likely to suffer.

Fridge Horror

  • If the Credits are any consideration the zombies marching means that they're going on to the rest of the world, all because one guy beat a general and his soldiers.
  • The music in the game often relates to the boss in subtle ways, most obvious in the End Credits, "Justified", if one is to look at it, everyone in the game thought their actions were justified, psychopath or not, even the Complete Monsters think they have some justification for their actions.
  • The opening movie and conversations with several survivors (Cliff and Leah) and psychopaths (Adam) about losing children ultimately mean that the Hide Your Children element isn't because there are no children, but because they're all already dead.
    • You see about 20 zombies trying to get into a schoolbus in the beginning helicopter flyover. What exactly is in that bus that the zombies want so badly?
  • Larry Chiang. It's highly probable that he is or was a resident of Willamette along with the other victims and Psychopaths. He's an Ax Crazy butcher with a penchant for human meat. Considering this, for how long was he providing "fresh meat" to the inhabitants?
  • In Dead Rising, you learn at the end of the game that you're infected, and that no matter what you will do, you will become a zombie eventually. No one knows when. At the beginning of Dead Rising 2, you learn that Las Vegas was destroyed and that Fortune City was the pre-planned remake of it. I wonder how Las Vegas was infected....
    • It's even worse, but not for that reason. Frank West (the infected player character from the first game) is still alive and kicking thanks to a drug called Zombrex. The problem is, to make the drug requires wasp queens that spread the virus initially. But they can't be made without zombies, and with so many infected people in all manner of positions and places, a constant supply is needed. So the Las Vegas and Fortune City outbreak is caused to help keep supplies up by the government, who willingly sacrifice entire cities to help make the drug. However, in Case West, it is revealed the company making Zombrex already have a complete cure. However, the owner of the company is content with keeping people desperate enough to buy Zombrex at bank-breaking prices to increase stock prices. Even worse, thanks to your work at the facility when you investigate the Fortune City outbreak, it hasn't been harvested properly, so not only is another harvest due and every life lost there for nothing, but the two protagonists both need Zombrex. One has a daughter who is infected, the other is Frank...
  • Fortune City itself, it is an adult playground without any children, red light district in plain sight and the mall's newstands sells porn magazines and even Frank West outright says "Who would bring a kid here?". Hint the toy stores are not for children.

Fridge Logic: If Carlito called Frank there to get the truth out about the zombie outbreak why doesn't he just give him a disc with information from his computers instead of trying to kill him multiple times and being all mysterious and secretive?

    • Carlito didn't call Frank there, just Dr. Barnaby.
      • Carlito called a lot of media there, Frank was just the only one to make it through the military barricade. Carlito initially doesn't try to kill Frank directly, only Brad, and won't attack Frank unless he intervenes in those fights.
        • Evidently that includes helping to kill Brad so you can have some sandbox time.
    • Willamette Parkview Mall is built around a small public park, but only has three ports of entry; the Entrance Plaza, maintenance room, and the hidden underground path to the army base next door where experimental tanks are tested out on massive numbers of zombies.
      • How ARE those convicts getting a new jeep into the park every night in the middle of a zombie apocalypse with the mall's architecture being how it is? For that matter, why can't Frank get their resurrection spell and give it to everyone he doesn't choose to disembowel barehanded?