Alex Rider/Fridge

• In Scorpia Rising, Mrs Jones says at the end that two of the things that alerted her to the fact that it was Blunt, not Scorpia, who arranged for the sniper at Brookland were that the sniper didn't hit Alex, but said "mission accomplished", and secondly that the sniper seemed to deliberately miss. Given that Scorpia's plan was not to kill Alex, and indeed their plan hinged on getting Alex to Cairo, which the sniper attempt proved the catalyst for, why should this indicate that it was not Scorpia who was responsible?
  • None of the interrogated Scopria members knew about the sniper. Which would be kind of strange if it were an integral part of their plan.
  • True, but the way Mrs Jones phrases it makes it sound like the assassination attempt should have been successful, which is confusing as nobody wanted Alex dead at that point.
• In Stormbreaker, Sayle holds a contest for a kid to try out the new computer. What was the point of this is the whole point of the Stormbreaker was to kill people?
  • Publicity stunt.
  • The Stormbreaker at Sayle's base didn't unleash the deadly smallpox gas anyway.
• In-Universe with Alex rightfully pointing out that while MI-6 doesn't want to give a kid a gun they're completely fine with sending him to his death.
  • Alex himself exercises this on occasion, seeming to think that unless he does it with a gun or some other obvious implement of murder, none of the people killed as a result of his actions, occasionally deliberately (see Dr. Grief) and often directly, seem to count as far as he is concerned. This has the rather dubious result of Alex racking up an impressive body count over the course of the series and yet still seeming to think that he's not a killer.
  • This is in all probability the only thing keeping the kid sane by this point, so you can't really blame the poor sod.
  • Mrs. Rothman points this out in Scorpia, while trying to convince Alex to work for her organisation.