Who Framed Roger Rabbit?/Fridge

Fridge Logic

• Best ignored when viewing this film. (Specifically, the whole idea of who draws the toons and/or how they get created and by whom is never addressed.) Also, why would Doom simply destroy Toontown to make a freeway when he could probably enslave the toons to do his bidding (using the threat of the Dip as a means of controlling them) or bring in millions of tourists from all over the world to view them and charge admission? (One imagines that alone would bring in a lot more money than a simple freeway and a few gas stations.)
  • As Eddie Valiant said, it was a plan so crazy only a toon could come up with it. Doom probably wasn't the most rational toon ever created. And considering the other toons, that's saying something!
  • Why would Doom possibly think enslaving the toons would lead to anything useful? He could barely keep the weasels under his control.
  • About the "where do Toons come from" question: Toons are not created by Humans. Toons come into being when a Toon mommy and a Toon daddy love each other very much. This is explicitly stated in the books (specifically Who Plugged Roger Rabbit?), and cartoon characters being a real ethnic minority instead of doodles flipping quickly through the celluloid is the entire "gimmick" of the film anyway. In any case, leaving the question untouched in the film adds to its aura of "realism".
    • The Marvel comic book "Resurrection of Doom" has Doom (originally named Baron von Rotten) revived via animation cel. To make things more confusing, the weasels who schemed to bring him back first find an old model sheet. Next, they had a Toon named Evil Aurel paint Doom's cel. Finally, they used a multi-plane camera (aided by lightning) to shoot the cel and revive Doom. So Toons have to be animated (or drawn once in this case). However, the idea that some Toons are capable of doing this is a scary one.
  • Since 'patty cake' is the equivalent of a Toon having an affair, it's been suggested that for Toons, kissing really can get you pregnant.
    • Hey if that were true, Eddie and Roger might be having a little bundle of joy soon. They did kiss twice, guys...so...twins?
      • Nah. Eddie's a human. It doesn't work that way.
  • The Roger Rabbit comic book apparently explains in detail where baby toons come from... a stork, of course.
• Regarding Betty Boop and the transition to color; is colorization an outpatient procedure, and do you need to catch a ride down to Tijuana to have it done?
  • My guess is that cameras used to only be able to film in black and white, so it didn't matter the color of Toon. Once they went color, no one wanted to see black and white Toons anymore, so they lost their jobs, because only colorful Toons were filmed.

Fridge Brilliance

• All Toons seem to be crazy drivers - Roger can't drive and the weasels can't drive and we don't see Jessica driving. Think about it - if they're used to Toon cars like Benny (who think of themselves as people anyway) doing their driving for them, no wonder they can't drive.
  • Not that Benny can drive either.
  • They can't drive by human standards: for humans a 45mph frontal collision is a potential tragedy, for toons it's wacky hijinks.
  • Since Toons can't die under normal circumstances, they don't have much incentive to be careful about driving--or about anything else, for that matter.
• Judge Doom's insanity makes perfect sense given the timeframe. The theatric shorts would soon go into decline after the animation union got a 25% pay raise and a few prominent figures in the industry got blacklisted. The end result was studios closing down, and the bulk of their efforts beginning to be marketed towards children rather than adults. Doom's behavior is extreme to people primarily familiar with the aftermath of this, but before? Well, bear in mind that this was the same era in which Donald Duck nearly killed and ate Mickey Mouse and Goofy, and Bugs Bunny's frequent opponents included some of the most offensive racial stereotypes set to film, and that doesn't even cover Betty Boop.
  • He'd perhaps get in an even bigger fit over newer characters like Mok, Kenshiro, the rats of NIMH, Tetsuo, Unicron… Who came out around the time this film did!
• Judge Doom seems to have no degree of subtlety, dressing entirely in black and hamming it up a bit. Consider the fact that a toon wouldn't be expected to have any subtlety at all, then look at his reveal. It all makes a lot of sense and it's horrifying if you work it out.
  • Doom's Large Ham is a bit of Fridge Brilliance when Doom pulls off the Big Twist at the end. Suddenly, his exaggerated and over-the-top behavior throughout the movie makes total sense.
• Also notice that Judge Doom puts on a rubber glove before liquidizing the shoe. Turpentine, acetone, and benzine are all ingredients in paint thinner, which would be harmless to humans...but fatal to a toon.
  • Yes, it looks different in hindsight, but it would be normal for a human to prefer a glove to immersing his arm and clothing in the stuff. You wouldn't want it on your shoes, either.
    • I see what you did there.
  • Note the scene in the bar where a barrel of Dip gets dumped on the floor - everyone backs away from the puddle. Even if you don't know the ingredients, it kills the unkillable - definitely not something you want on your shoes (and probably something that should probably be in a well-ventilated area, at that). Still counts, though, as Doom invented it and thus would know it's not fatal to humans and would have no reason to protect himself otherwise.
  • The big bulky rubber glove, particularly when he starts waving it in Eddie's face after the kill, is as much theatrics as protection, which puts it right up Doom's alley.
• Judge Doom is the sole stockholder of Cloverleaf industries, the logo of which looks suspiciously like a freeway interchange.
  • Cloverleaf interchanges had been around for over a decade, pre-dating the freeway system.
• It could be argued that cartoon characters had always existed as residents of Toontown; they just hadn't started working for animation companies until a few years later.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, for this Troper had one. The infamous 'booby trap' scene. Now this film was always a favorite of mine as a kid, and that scene was always funny anyway. But then I grew up. Watching it again, that scene, hell, that line gained a whole new level of awesome, despite the Incredibly Lame Pun of it. There are others too, but that's just the biggest one for me. --molten_amber
  • Also, one of the 'toons (Yet another reference, just replace the "t" with a "c") asks what kind of a toon Judge Doom was. I figured out that he was "Pistol Packin' Possum." The possum was depicted as having a gun exactly like Doom's in the scene when Maroon gets killed, the same "burnin' red eyes" that Valiant described (see also the Maroon death scene), and rodents of the time - and to date - have been depicted with high squeaky voices. (Think Mickey Mouse or Alvin and the Chipmunks)
    • The trouble is that the Marvel comic "The Resurrection of Doom" has an entirely different explanation, revealing him to be a grey, ape-like toon named Baron von Rotten. What the scriptwriters intended, on the other hand, is anybody's guess.
  • Judge Doom being a Toon also explains most of the bad guy cliches he does throughout the movie (explaining his plan rather than killing Eddie and the Rabbits right away, running Eddie over with a slow deathtrap like a bulldozer rather than stabbing him, going for a giant, evil looking dip truck rather than using other methods to get rid of toons, etc.) As a Toon, presumably he's psychologically forced in some way to act as if he's inside a movie.
• During the crowd scene at the end, we see cartoon characters such as Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, who weren't around in 1947. Is this a case of Anachronism Stew, or have they just not been employed yet?

Fridge Horror

• Well, more like Fridge Squick, but hey: The pattycake thing becomes instant Squick when you see a cartoon which features small children playing it. (Lisa Simpson has played it with a friend onscreen, among other cases.) One can only assume that either the humourously metaphorical type is just a specific variation on the game and that Toons can tell the difference, or it's just Roger and Jessica sharing a Conveniently-Common Kink.
  • Or such characters are actors and are old enough to be of legal age.
  • Also, it would appear that Acme is more than a friend to toons, if you follow my meaning. Especially since it was his idea to play pattycake. Raising the question if it is only Acme's kink, based on Roger's reaction to the photos.
    • It's possible that pattycake is only Acme's kink, but that Roger knew that it was, so seeing his wife playing along and satisfying Acme's kink was pretty disturbing.
• When the Weasels die, they turn into Toon angels and float away. Except for the one who fell into the vat of dip. Maybe the dip dissolved his.
  • As mentioned by someone in the headscratchers, this also implies that the shoe won't go to heaven either. Poor little bugger.
• Forgetting Rule of Funny, but why did Bugs have a "spare tire" as a spare parachute? It's not like he and and Mickey were planning to run into some poor detective on the way down, falling to his death. Unless, Bugs intended it to be given to Mickey, in case Mickey's parachute didn't open...
  • Sorry, but I think Rule of Funny can't be ignored in this case, because no one can plan something like that beforehand except if you were a Toon who would take every opportunity to be a stinka! Bugs probably materialized that tire at that very second!
  • It's exactly the sort of thing Bugs tends to do, anyway, well before Character Development in later years turned him into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Because Toons just exist as normal people do... that means nobody has to draw them. Which means, no work for animators. *shudders*
  • Perhaps hand-animation in that universe is like CGI today; for example you could have a real toon dragon in your film, with the fire breath drawn in by an animator due to safety concerns or a need for a bigger fire. Heck, in a situation where you don't have living toons, you make fake substitutes, which would explain a LOT of the Dark Age.
• How did Judge Doom know how the Dip worked if he was just a Toon robber before becoming a judge without prior tests, by which I mean victims? Remember how Bambi's mother's corpse was never found and the pheasant was extremely terrified of the hunter, going against the rationality of hiding and trying to fly the hell away from the hunter, only to be shot; meaning she saw something so scary that her first reaction was to flee. Read this scene while comparing Eddie's reaction to when you have time to watch the scenes where the pheasant and Bambi's mother died and why they've never shown up in any of Disney's current spin-offs. Read this until you can understand the meaning behind this.
  • In the logic of this universe, though, Bambi, the hunter, and the pheasant are all actors. It doesn't make much sense that they'd be filming Doom's attempts to get test subjects.
    • Unless Doom tricked them that the bullets (probably loaded with Dip) were harmless. Thus Doom is not framed, and Bambi's mom dies.