Stranger Than Fiction/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• During the movie, Harold tries to figure out what kind of story he's in, a comedy or a tragedy, based on his interactions with the rebellious baker, and concludes it's a tragedy because of all the bad things happening to him. You realize later that while it's arguable he was being a victim of Comedic Sociopathy, and is in fact in a comedy, another solution is he's in a Romance instead, if you go by the classical definition (think (The Tempest), with his meeting of his own author making for his own Genre Shift.
  • For myself, all it took was this quote: "I brought you flours." Say this out loud, "I brought you flowers."
  • Somebody did die at the end, but it wasn't Harold. The story was as also about the wristwatch, which was introduced as a character in the beginning. It was "killed" by the bus.
  • As pointed out in Fridge Logic, Eiffel seems to write several scenes in which a knowledge of the fact that Harold can hear her would be necessary in order for the scene to turn out the way it did (notably his phone call to her). This makes a sort of multi-layered, uber-meta sense when one considers the idea that the movie we are watching is the rewrite of the book Doctor Hilbert discusses at the film's end, edited to include Eiffel's shocking discovery that Harold can hear her.
  • Furthermore, the fact that she does not know where her story is going is characteristic of many writing processes, especially those who do not know how they want their story to end.

Fridge Horror

• Invoked. So Po Mo that this even happens In-Universe: Karen Eiffel was a well known author whose Signature Style was the tragic death of each of her protagonists. Harold Crick was the only one who figured it out, and she prevented his death from happening. So how many people did Karen kill before she realized she was controlling real people? When Karen realizes this possibility, it hits her like a freight train.
  • It should be noted that this is not an uncommon worry for writers, of contemporary fiction or otherwise, to have lurking somewhere in the back of their mind. If you've ever wondered why so many authors seem to have a love affair with impossible or incongruous names, part of the reason is to dodge this particular bullet since the probability of an actual person having that name, and thus being effected, is ridiculously low.

Fridge Logic

• You won't make it to the fridge before you think of several things Harold could have tried that are never brought up.
  • Several of the narrated actions of Harold Crick are actually caused by Harold's reactions to the narration, such as his Rage Against the Heavens, and his decision to make a phone call which ended up being to Eiffel leaving the viewer to wonder what Eiffel thought was the reason for Harold doing these things since she's not aware that he can hear her.