Sam & Max: Freelance Police/Fridge

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Fridge Horror

  • Likely unintentional example - In Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, Max sees strange images when looking through First Person Camera that initially start off psychedelic and cheerful in Episode 1 (floating wrenches, Sam's tie being replaced with a fish, a beach ball bouncing along the stools at Stinky's Diner), but become less common and more 'solid', thus more difficult to distinguish from reality, as the story progresses. Word of God is that these images are echoes of Maxes from other universes going on adventures, since they share a sort of Hive Mind. The more you think about it, the worse it gets:
    • Why does the frequency of hallucinations decrease? The logical conclusion is that more and more alternate universe Maxes are dying. Considering the plot of The Devil's Playhouse is partially about a component of Max's psyche trying to destroy Max in order to protect people from his (own) psychosis, this suggests there are increasing numbers of worlds where he succeeded.
    • Certain specific hallucinated images are actually pretty disturbing when you think about their implication. In Episode 4, Max 'sees' Sammun-Mak in Papierwaite's office, surrounded by hovering Lugers pointing at his head. This implies there is another world where Max failed to conquer Sammun-Mak, and the false reality he created still existed - and in that reality, the world was under an oppressive rule where the Moles were ghettoised, and Max was a disembodied brain.
    • If you think about it, the events of the third season very likely could have been avoided had Skun'kape not used the Eyes of Yog Soggoth to make accommodations and prevent himself from being trapped in the Penal Zone again, the fact that in the first part of the game, it shows how the events were supposed to be played out, it shows a scenario where they saved the world again, with Sam and Max getting the key to the city, meaning that the entire conflict with the Devils Toybox could have been avoided if one ape didn't use future vision to stop the whole thing.
    • The Narrator is a representation of Max's superego. The Narrator is trying to destroy both himself and Max in a horrible psychic explosion by goading Max into pushing his powers too far and killing himself. Bottom line - part of Max's mind was Driven to Suicide, suggesting Max is probably even more genuinely messed up than we previously assumed.

Fridge Brilliance

  • Unintentional, but Max's super-ego is tired of being unused and neglected. He is voiced by Andrew Chaikin, who voiced Max back in 101. Seems they both went "unused" for a while.