It Came From the Fridge: Difference between revisions
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Something hideous is lurking in the dark, eldritch depths of... your crisper drawer.
Interesting things breed in the depth of the refrigerator. Anyone who has ever had to clean one out can attest to that: foul-smelling, congealed mac 'n' cheese, shrivelled carrots and "furry" meat. The TV fridge, however, is another beast entirely. On TV, when life grows on your food, it is more than just life: it is sentient, multicellular, intelligent life. The back of your average comedy fridge is a breeding ground for all kinds of biological horrors—from oozing green slime to entire sapient races of leftover lasagna people to [[Flying Spaghetti Monster|pasta-tentacled]] [[Eldritch Abominations]]. Creatures bred in the depths of an old Tupperware container make excellent [[Monster of the Week]] fodder. A [[Refrigerator Ambush]] may well be in the offing...
Some shows may extend this trope to other flagrant displays of bad housekeeping, creating life from unwashed underwear and the dust under the bed. We honor them here as well. They obey the spirit of '''It Came From the Fridge''', if not the letter. When the filth has conquered entire rooms or even the house itself, you have [[Trash of the Titans]].
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* Tonjit from ''[[One Piece]]'' is soo happy to have been knocked down from the stilts where he spent the last 10 years that he offers the strawhats some <s> milk</s> cheese that was left in the fridge. He then promptly contracts food poisoning when he's the only one <s> brave</s> dumb enough to eat it.
** Pagaya from the Skypiea saga also has some rather extremly leftovers in his kitchen.
* While it does not produce an actual creature, Riku in ''[[Blood
== [[Fan Works]] ==▼
▲== Fan Works ==
* The series of fan fic about Darth Maul, known as ''[[Sith Academy|The Sith Academy]]''. One of the running jokes/subplots was that use of the Dark Side always results in some visible sign of corruption for the user; for Sidious, it was his appearance, while for Maul it was his surroundings - just living in a room for a day or so could cause it to become a disaster area. There were at least two on-screen mentions (possibly three) where the contents of his fridge not only became alive and developed sentience, but actually developed whole civilizations; it was implied that this ended when he started actually cooking, in an effort to kill Sidious with cholesterol.
* There is a ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' fic ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3362802/1/One_Thing_Leads_to_Another One Thing Leads to Another]'', where Robin is looking through the fridge: "Let's see, tofu, pudding of uncontainable joy, steak, mustard, gelatinous unidentified objects, a sock-Hey! The remote control!-mold... is that... Silkie??" Later, Alfred comes over (with [[Batman]]), and asks "Uh? Master Robin? Do you have any food that hasn't expired two months ago, isn't covered in a strange blue substance, or is an unusually large worm?"
** It's a stock trope in ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' fanfic, one had a passing mention of discovering a bronze age civilization of sentient chickpeas in said fridge.
* In [[Peter Chimaera]]'s ''[[Digimon]]'' fic ''DIGIMON SAVES THE WROLD!!111'', the titular character is ambushed while eating breakfast by the evil digimon, who leaps from the fridge. This is made a bit frightening when you realize that a good few of the things he's eating ought to have come out of the fridge...
* In ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2476535/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_World_That_Went_Bloody_Insane Harry Potter and the World that Went Bloody Insane]'', [[Harry Potter|Harry]] and Ron move into a really crappy apartment. It has a closet which they are afraid to open the door to because they are fairly certain there's something living in there.
* In ''[http://hpfandom.net/eff/viewstory.php?sid=23179 Maybe]''{{Dead link}}, [[Harry Potter|Harry]] and George live together. Their fridge is really disgusting and Hermione makes them promise to do something about it. They end up buying a new fridge and throwing out the old one with all the disgusting things still inside.
* When Lisa "Tattletale" Wilbourn finally can return to her apartment after living for several weeks at the DWU compound, she finds her fridge is now borderline toxic, in the ''[[Worm]]/[[Luna Varga]]'' crossover ''[[Taylor Varga]]''.
== [[Film]] ==
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* The fifth ''[[Nightmare On Elm Street]]'' movie has a pretty gross scene. After one girl has been force-fed to death in her dream, we cut to the movie's heroine going to fetch her father a drink in the fridge. When she opens it, the food rots in front of her eyes (and an eyeball even shows up on them) before her dead friend suddenly bursts out of the fridge, only to be dragged back inside by Freddy Krueger. The fridge closes, is opened again, and everything is back to normal.
* In the 2011 ''[[The Muppets (film)|The Muppets]]'' film the Swedish Chef takes a flamethrower to the mold-encrusted and talking contents of his fridge that hadn't been used in years.
== [[Literature]] ==
* In ''[[Harry Potter and
* Douglas Adams' novel ''[[The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul]]'' is a rare example where it plays into the main plot. {{spoiler|It eats [[The Man Behind the Man]], and is revealed to not exactly be food, but a god born of Gently's guilt.}}
** The entire story maintains a subplot of Gently playing a game of chicken with his maid, both trying to trick each other into opening the fridge first. Gently leaves classic "door left unopened" clues, such as a hair stuck in the door, while his maid messes with those to pretend she ''did'' open it so he would open it and check if anything was moved around.
* In somewhat of a subversion, in a later ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' sequel, Arthur Dent eats the least hairy things in his fridge after returning to Earth after a long expedition in space, thus killing a disease which would have otherwise wiped out half a hemisphere.
* As with [[Trope Overdosed|so many other tropes]], this one is represented multiple times in ''[[Discworld]]''.
** In ''[[
** In ''Witches Abroad'', Granny Weatherwax visits a neglected old granny (not a witch) and finds some milk in her kitchen that "ought to be allowed to vote". Om makes a similar comment about milk served in a Philosopher's bar.
== [[Live
* The first episode of the 1983 British sketch show ''[[Alfresco]]'' has a song about a couple who are so lazy they haven't cleaned the house for decades and there are alien lifeforms in possession of the fridge and kitchen. Never mind - the house is on fire so all they have to do is wait and their problems will all be over.
* Several points in ''[[The Young Ones]]'' reference dirty laundry or unwashed dishes acting sentient. The line that sums it up best is "Guys! Guys! One of Vyvyan's socks has escaped!"
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** And again, when Francis tricks Dewey into drinking the filthy liquid that has accumulated in the drip tray.
* ''[[Black Books]]'' has more than one example. When they call a cleaner (after a scene of Bernard: "I was gonna warm it [a frozen pizza] and eat it later. Everybody does that, that's normal! You are looking for things to complain about!" Manny: "What do you call these?" Bernard: "Wasps!"), he does the trick of putting on a white glove, streaking it across something, and the fingertip comes away black. The thing he chooses to sweep across? The air.
* There was a brilliant running gag in one episode of the original ''[[Roseanne]]'' involving a carton of milk that's been left in the fridge too long.
== [[Music]] ==
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* A more hygienic variant is the Barry Louis Polisar song, "When The House Is Dark And Quiet", in which two bratty kids play tricks on their babysitter. One involves stuffing a (live) cat in the fridge when they know the sitter is about to get a snack, so it can [[Cat Scare|jump out at her]].
* [http://www.thefump.com/fump.php?id=94 "Why I Won't Get You a Beer"] by Tom Smith. Very vivid description of the fridge's contents, the end reveals that {{spoiler|the owner ''has'' cleaned out the fridge, but it still smells really, really bad.}}
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
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* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' featured many food based battles. Including the food trying to kill him first and him chasing the food attempting to kill it. (one can only imagine what it was before the horrible cooking attempt)
== [[Recorded and Stand Up Comedy]] ==▼
* [[George Carlin]]'s bit on "meatcake".▼
▲== [[Stand Up Comedy]] ==
▲* [[George Carlin]]'s bit on "meatcake"
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* One of the sample monsters in the [[Mon]] sourcebook for ''[[Big Eyes, Small Mouth]]'' is an ancient jar of mayonnaise that mutated into a sentient, poisonous ooze-monster. Its trainer found it while cleaning out the fridge in his uncle's auto shop.
* One of the cards in ''[[Munchkin (game)|Star Munchkin]]'' is "Discover a New Lifeform: Go Up a Level". The picture is something alive in a filthy fridge.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* ''[[Fun Orb]]'''s "Bachelor Fridge" allows players to grow and mutate little food-monsters and make them fight each other.
* One of the computers you can hack in ''[[Deus Ex: Human Revolution|Deus Ex Human Revolution]]'' has an angry email from an employee to his coworkers regarding "the experiment in the fridge". He kindly lets them know that it has acheived sentience and has a desire to destroy all life.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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* ''[[Sequential Art (webcomic)|Sequential Art]]'' [http://www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.php?s=606 here].
* ''[[xkcd]]'' [http://xkcd.com/737/ says], if there's no year on the expiration date, it's good again the next year. And if the date does include a year, but it's only two digits, it is good again next century.
* ''[[Devil Bear]]'' had [http://www.thedevilbear.com/comics.php?p=577 this] happen. Though
* ''[[Angel Moxie]]'' has forgotten lunch in [http://www.venisproductions.com/angelmoxie/archives/0/9/097.html Sampson's drawer].
== [[Web Original]] ==
* In the ''[[Hitherby Dragons]]'' story [http://imago.hitherby.com/?p=404 Jeremiah Clean], leftover tuna turns into a beast inside a refrigerator.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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* One episode of ''[[The Critic]]'' has Jay looking for something to eat in the fridge and exclaiming, "What's that sulfur smell coming from the egg bin? Ah it must mean the eggs have ripened. Wait a minute! Eggs don't ripen! ''eggs don't ripen''!" At which point some vicious little lizards/velociraptors burst out and try to break through the door as he slams it shut. He goes to eat at his parents house.
* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' has two examples. One is in ''Welcome to the Chum bucket''. When Spongebob is trying to cook a patty in an unfamiliar stove, the burger grows a hand and starts crawling towards him. A later episode had "The Appetizer" from ''Squilliam Returns'', which Mr. Krabs had to fight off with a chair.
* Ed from ''[[Ed, Edd
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
▲== Real Life ==
* [http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/weird/Pee-Yew-Get-Out-of-the-Building.html This office fridge] sat for a few months unplugged and stuffed full of leftovers; when someone finally opened it and started cleaning it out, the food reacted with cleaning agents creating poisonous fumes and sent twenty eight people to the hospital. They had to call in a ''hazmat team'' to finish the job.
* Danish stand-up comedian Thomas Wivel once joked that when he was a bachelor he only opened the fridge to feed the cheese.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]
[[Category:Food Tropes]]
[[Category:Creating Life]]
[[Category:Furniture Tropes]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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