Hercules (1997 film)/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• Genius Bonus: In Ancient Greece, bards would typically recite epic poems orally. At the beginning of epic poems, the bard would usually request that a muse sing for him in order to tell a more "accurate" story. Examples of such a request is seen at the beginnings of The Iliad and The Odyssey; muses were considered the true speakers of the tale and the bard just the mouthpiece. At the beginning of Hercules the narrator is interrupted by the muses who proceed to sing the tale in his place.
  • The changing of the Titans' beings doesn't make much sense at first; until you look at them as the stages that the Earth went through before civilization popped up.
  • The thunderstorm during Hercules' battle with the Hydra seems really random and conveniently thematic; then you remember that Zeus controls thunder and lightning, which means he must be watching from 'upstairs' and is worried for Herc's safety.
  • "That's the gospel truth!" It certainly is.
  • The prophecy told by the Fates was that, "should Hercules fight," Hades would fail. When Pain and Panic are interrupted while they're poisoning Hercules as a baby, Hercules fights them off and survives - Hades' fate had already been decided in the first few minutes of the movie!
• The Muses are likely Unreliable Narrators.
• For some kids who don't know their greek mythology, Zeus may look a bit familiar. While not exactly the same, he's that guy from Fantasia who threw lightning at the ceremony in Fantasia.

Fridge Horror

• Besides Nessus' assault on Meg, she's probably been forced into similar situations to help Hades make deals before...
• When watching Disney's |Hercules as a child, it looks like that centaur-monster was just hassling Meg, right? But try watching the same scene with a better knowledge of the mythology, listen closely to the dialogue, and... squick. Yeah, he's trying to rape her. And just to add more horror on top of that... he's not only half horse, he's half giant horse.
  • Oh, and if you also know the mythology, you know that in the end, when Hercules is married (though not to Megaera), that same centaur (Nessus) winds up killing Hercules with a poison shirt in revenge for an incident like this one.
    • For that matter, the reason Hercules isn't married to Megaera when he is killed with the poison shirt is because he went mad and killed her and their children (it's why he had to do the twelve labors).
    • You'll probably get a lot of this type of "dirty secret" stuff from any kind of mature subject matter adapted into a children's movie. From my own limited knowledge on Greek mythology, I'm willing to bet damn near all the characters in Hercules have been involved in some awful stuff one way or another. Like, for example, Zeus and Hera happen to be siblings. And Zeus apparently raped Hera into marrying him, and then goes on to cheat on her numerous times.
    • And in the original mythology, Hera hated Hercules because he was not her biological child and was responsible for much of the hardships of his life.
      • Actually, it was more that; he was named after her - his Greek name was really Heracles, and Hercules was his name in Roman. But Hera was later grateful to Heracles when he saved her from being raped by a giant.

• Fridge Logic: Shouldn't Hades have already known Hercules didn't die since he's the Lord of the Underworld? Admittedly, a lot of people die every day, but you'd think he could have checked. In fact, you'd think a son of Zeus would be the jewel of his collection...
  • Hades did know Hercules was going to die in the attempt. That's why he said "You'll be dead before you can get to her." However, he could not have foreseen that by sacrificing his life for Meg's he fulfilled the requirement to regain his god status by becoming a "True Hero". Further, if you want to get technical about it, Hercules' mortal life did end the exact moment his Godhood was restored. Ergo his mortality "died".
    • I don't think it was that point the original post was talking about. Right at the start, Pain and Panic were supposed to make Hercules mortal and kill him. The question is, why didn't Hades notice that the dead baby Herc never showed up in the underworld?
  • The deal made between Hercules and Hades was, and I quote, "Fine, fine! You get her out, she goes. You stay." That means that regardless of whether or not Hercules succeeded in getting Meg out of the river of death, Hercules agreed to remain in the underworld. His becoming a God has absolutely no bearing on that deal. So by the terms of the deal he should not have been able to leave the underworld at all...
    • You are missing the point. The deal was that Hercules would take Meg's place. Taking her place = dying, with Hercules' soul trapped in the river of death. Hercules did not die, which subverted the deal.
    • Hades had broken the deal first by not recovering the soul himself: if Herc tried but died in the attempt, both of them stayed. Thus Herc being free to return to Earth.
  • Why exactly did Hades even bother trying to use the Titans in the first place? If the muses are to be believed, Zeus beat them all single handed long before the movie.
    • I watched the film last night and wondered the same thing. Then it hit me: The titans were prophesied by the Fates to defeat the gods "unless Hercules fights." As anyone who knows Greek myth can tell you, you can't fight the Fates.
  • Why did Hercules have to choose between being a god in Olympus and Meg? Zeus could have easily made her a god, too - it's not like she didn't do something incredibly heroic. In classical Greek mythology, they make people gods all the time for silly reasons!
    • Actually, Hercules was the first real apotheosis in Greek mythology, and that required him to already be a demigod, who then split at the moment of his death into his heroic mortal soul (which is in Hades), and the god Hercules. Of course, as the mythology grew and power creep set in (Greek mythology is really more of a unified story from dozens of religions that changed and evolved over hundreds of years), becoming a god got easier and easier, but Meg being physically incapable of becoming a goddess actually fits with the mood of the original story. Despite how much they changed the story, a LOT of it remains true to the spirit of the myth, if not the details.
      • Not to mention it makes the scene more heartwarming, as it leads to Hercules choosing love over godhood.
  • Why does returning Meg's soul to her body bring her back to full health? Even if she were alive again, she's still got (as implied) a broken back and various other internal injuries from crushing.
    • The gods did it?
    • Medea Did It. According to the original myths she was Herakles friend, had been his guest in Thebes and was an healer so good to actually raise the deads with her potions (at least, she could bring back to life a chicken that had been cut into pieces). It's not too farfetched that, in the movie, either Herc or Phil had her bring back her body to full health off-screen but she was still unable to bring back the soul (or unwilling: maybe she knew what would have made Herc a True Hero, and thus recover his godhood, and didn't want to spoil the chanche).