Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• The Fizzy Lifting Drinks room wasn't going to kill Charlie and Grandpa Joe. Notice Grandpa Joe's hand as it goes up into the rotating fan blade: it clearly hits a plate of glass, even though he tries to hide it. This must therefore be another one of Wonka's illusions.
  • Slugworth offers riches for a contestant to steal an Everlasting Gobstopper. However, earlier in the film, it was established that no one entered or left the factory for three years. There's no way Slugworth would have even conceived of such a prototype unless he was under the employ of Willy Wonka himself.

Fridge Horror

• Speaking of Willy Wonka, can we take a moment and discuss how absurdly terrifying this man is? What makes Wonka so frightening? It's not his crazy factory or the disturbing surrealist poetry readings on his boat, it's when he says at the end that the children who were shot through tubes, turned into blue berries, dropped down chutes, and microsized will be "back to their old horrid selves in no time." That's right folks, Willy Wonka wasn't trying to impart some bratty kids with a much needed aesop; he knows they're all a lost cause. He's just tormenting them for his own personal amusement, because, well, why not?
  • He also said that the kids will be a "little wiser". Suggesting that the kids will learn something from all this.

Fridge Brilliance

• At first it was odd how pale Wonka/Depp was, especially since his coloring is normal in the flashbacks, then it hit me. He's been living in a factory with no natural light for years!

Fridge Horror

• Veruca being a bad nut and being put down the shoot may seem like a very bad fate, but suppose she had been a good "nut". The squirrels CRACK OPEN good nuts. Remember, the squirrel tapped Veruca's HEAD so would they have opened that up?
  • They couldn’t. Human skulls are just too large and hard.
  • On a different note, what did Mike's face look like at the end?
• Violet Beauregard? Okay, so her being pumped full of juice and squeezed out left her more flexible, but it also left her blue! For the rest of her life!
• Unlike in the 1971 film version, in which it is not made clear that Willy Wonka was aiming to have children find the Golden Tickets until the very end, it is clear from very early on that Willy Wonka intends for five children to find the Tickets and win the tour of his factory, as opposed to five people of any age. Then Charlie wins and Willy Wonka tells him that he wants to make him his heir with a Not His Sled twist offer to leave his family behind and never see them again. This man was planning all along to separate any child from his or her family forever.
• Dr. Wonka somehow moved the entire house from its foundation while his son was away. He must have anticipated his son would rebel and run away.

Fridge Logic

• Applies to both films, really, with a bit of New Media Are Evil thrown in for good measure. Think about it: the Oompa Loompas are singing a morality song about TV rotting your brain... in a movie. Slightly excusable in that they're kind of saying it's an excess of TV that's bad, but it's still a little "Huh?".
  • It gets even funnier when the movie is being aired on TV. (The song in the book pretty much says any TV is bad, period.)
  • Making chocolate bars smaller. Pointed out in a Saturday Night Live parody with Al Gore:

Glen Wonka (Al Gore) to his brother Willy: Wait! I almost forgot! There's that billion dollars you spent on that machine that turns giant candy bars into tiny chocolate bars. Help me wrap my brain around that one 'cause I'm missing the big profit opportunity!

• • • Hang on, he's got a machine that can miniaturise ANYTHING, even living things. It would have innumerable applications in electronics, where years of research has been put into making smaller components. And that doesn't include the fact that he's invented a way to teleport any matter to a network of pre-existing recievers (all the TV sets in the world). Kind of useful...
  • It's actually pointed out in the second movie when they shut down the room once the scene ends, implying that the whole thing served no purpose than to get that brat to shrink himself.
  • The point was presumably to turn giant candy bars into millions of candy bars across the country, which would introduce the Fridge Logic of Reed Richards Is Useless.
    • Thoroughly explained in the book as Willy Wonka trying to reach a new market. Back when Dahl first wrote the book, television for the general public was still a fairly new concept. It's ridiculous, yes, but then so are the Square Sweets That Look Round - Willy Wonka clearly has money to burn on ridiculous concepts like making giant candy bars and shrinking them down one at a time via an awkward giant camera setup.
    • Chocolate doesn't have to make sense