The Fifth Element/Fridge

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Fridge Brilliance

  • I got it early on, but a lot of people are surprised and impressed at the hidden depth of The Fifth Element. Everyone thinks "Yay, Waif Fu saves the world, go Leeloo!" until a later re-viewing reveals that the fifth element is not Leeloo. It's love.--Indigo
    • I respectfully disagree. I saw Leeloo as akin to the four stones (physical manifestations of the elements), being the manifestation of the fifth element life. Love is the activation of her, as the stones are activated by what the element does: wind blows, rain falls, fire burns... (paraphrased). Hence: life loves. -Moonshade
    • So the five elements are Earth, Fire, Wind, Water and Heart? Leeloo could teach Ma-Ti a thing or seven. Thousand. - The Deviations
    • Word of God states that the fifth element is sex. Which is brilliant, since in some philosophies whole world (and life) was created by mixing the elements. And taking something from two things, then mixing it together creating something new is all what breeding is about.
    • Strange that Leelo after doing it sometimes over still doesn't seem to know how to activate her power.
  • I was struck by the realization that the first time Earth defeated "Mr. Shadow" was how we got the moon. --starshine
    • The Evil Planet comes every five thousand years. The moon has been there for roughly 4 billion. You fail science. -- Sherick
      • Every five thousand years evil tries; going back through infinity. The moon would only appear the last time EVIL NEARLY WON.
      • The novelization specifically says there is now a second moon. -Circeus
  • While Leelo's reaction to the 'war' page is still way too over-the-top, the climax made me realize why she broke down so hard. Leelo is the element of love. Of course she freaked out at the idea of war.
    • YMMV on its narm levels. Anyone who has truly known and understood the depth and breadth of humanity's wars... it practically takes a heart of stone not to weep openly.
    • Not to mention she just woke up after 5,000 years of being in a stasis. You'd probably lose your shit too if you woke up thousands of years later to discover all of the unbelievable atrocities people have committed in your absence and how you weren't around to prevent any of it. Hell, she probably felt somewhat responsible given that she had saved the Earth thousands of years prior and THIS was the result of a saved planet!?
  • I didn't realize until I read this tropes page that Korben Dallas never meets Zorg or even learns of his existence. When Leeloo and Zorg meet in the Diva's room, it's their first meeting and they don't know who each other are. During the movie, Korben never learns why the aliens are invading the hotel.
    • He can probably figure it out, though. I mean he's on a secret mission to retrieve the stones, and the very same aliens that shot down Leeloo's original ship show up and start shooting the place up? I think he's gonna be able to put two and two together.
    • Actually, they do interact indirectly. Freeze-frame on the notice that Korben got notifying him that his cab company was firing him. The logo was Zorg, following directly after a scene where Zorg said to fire one million employees. So Korben's entire fight was actually an ex-employee taking down his evil boss.
  • The Save the Villain scene seems to simply show us that Vito is good and would help everyone if he has to, even if he hates doing so. But at the same time he also saves earth. As we later see Mr. Shadow stoped only because Zorg was going to get him the stones, but as soon as that fails he starts to accelerate to earth again. If Zorg had died earlier, there would have been not enough time to get to Phloston and get the stones.
  • Early in the movie, Cornelius explains the prophecy and mentions that if an evil being were to stand in the temple with the four stones, it would cause a class X-2 Apocalypse How. Later, Mr. Shadow appears to be Colony Dropping himself on top of the temple...
  • At two instances in the film, we get mention of how "old tricks are the best tricks". The Colonel mentions it to Korben Dallas regarding how the military rigged the Gemini Croquet contest so Korben would win. The other is when Zorg is showing off the ZF-1, regarding everything but the Replay feature as "oldies but goldies". This isn't unintentional. The movie is subtly telling us that Leelo is going to win in the end. She's the oldest trick/weapon that the human race have.
  • At the beginning of the movie, the Mondoshawans enter the temple, at whom a startled professor asks "Are you German?". This is funny and all that, but when you think that the first scene is happening at the dawn of the First World War, the professor could have simply thought the Mondoshawans were German with some kind of armor.

Fridge Logic:

  • All the 'space saving' compartments in Dallas' apartment, once you realize that the only place they could fold out of is other apartments.
    • Not necessarily; they take up the entire wall, along with some shelves, so they're probably within the footprint of the apartment itself. Think of it like pushing all the furniture to the edges of the room so you can play Twister.
  • There's nothing horrific in the encyclopedia that starts with a letter that comes before W, apparently.
    • Maybe she missed a few entries. Even with her accelerated learning and perception, she was scanning that encyclopedia pretty fast, and she only found "War" when she deliberately searched for it, after witnessing actual atrocities first-hand. Maybe her subconscious even made her avoid all of the entries that were negative beforehand, so as to prevent a Heroic BSOD like what happened at the end and would have doomed the whole mission if it hadn't been for Korben.
  • Just HOW did Plava Laguna plan to get the stones out if she hadn't been shot?
    • Surgery. It's a bigger question just how she got them in. They are very big stones, and it looks like their combined volume is more than could possibly fit inside her stomach and ribcage, even assuming that she has no vital organs.
  • What happened to glove she was wearing, her body was literally formed around it and then it's gone.
    • When her body is first formed, she's still wearing it. Presumably, she just took her hand out of it when she got up.
  • It's great that Mr. Shadow was stopped, but at only 60 miles about Earth, it would seriously screw up the Earth's gravity, tidal patterns, etc.
  • You know it just occured to me, while reading entry above. New York is basically a gigantic skyscrapers - right? Not only it would be very difficult for people to breath at such height (i think it's where air planes fly right now no?) it's freezing up there. Sure the latter could be explained by all the vapor that occurs in the city. But what about air? And here is something - the reason for New York to become this way is overpopulation and lack of space. Yet the temple in Egypt is so stand alone, that makes you wonder why didn't humans build their city outwards? I meant sure Egypt is rather far (different continent no less) but does that means that others are not faced with overpouplation?
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Element/Fridge?oldid=713494"