The Venture Bros./Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• The Venture Brothers:
  • I rewatched season 2 of The Venture Brothers recently in preparation for buying season 3, and during the episode where Rusty gets Dean a speed suit, I realised that Hank was Rusty's Unfavorite, backed up by a later scene in the car where Rusty praised Dean and chastised Hank in the same breath. Later, it struck me that this explains everything about Hank's character - his headstrong and assertive nature is him trying to impress his Dad. He latches onto Brock and everything Brock does because Brock pays attention to him like a real dad. He teases and belittles his brother because he's secretly jealous of him. It's present without being Anvilicious, it adds some Hidden Depths without seeming out of character at all, it makes a character I formally viewed as the most cartoony of all the characters (even more so than Dean) into a real person, and it ties in perfectly with the overall theme of failure. God, I love this show.
  • Watch the episode where Killinger becomes a consultant for Dr. Venture, and flashes back to the first time Doc ever felt inferior to his father. The cereal he's eating is "Alpha Dog"!
  • In the finale of Season 3, Brock fools one of the assassins by shaving his head and placing his hair on a shark. He then decides that he's lost his touch and quits as the Ventures' bodyguard. Brock... Samson.
  • Phantom Limb manages to be a) a tribute to the superhero The Phantom, b) a direct descendant of pulp criminal antihero Fantomas, and c) a joke on "Phantom Limb Syndrome" at the same time.
  • When I watched "Pomp and Circuitry", I was confused as to why the Guild didn't do anything to the Revenge Society, even after the neutral meeting. They were already trying to get Phantom Limb. And then it hit me: the Guild doesn't mess with other sanctioned villain teams. They can discourage against them and what not, but they can't fight them. And with the OSI recognizing the Revenge Society, the Guild can't touch them; Phantom Limb knows this and thus can remain safe in Impossible Plaza until he decides to take out the Guild. Genius. -Mogo
  • It just dawned on me. Captain Sunshine is an obvious expy of Batman/Superman who horribly mourns the loss of WonderBoy after the Monarch kills him. In "Self Medication", it's shown that the supposedly dead WonderBoy wasn't the original (or first) one. Additionally, Captain Sunshine believes the Monarch to be "invulnerable" due to a mishap discussed in the Season 3 Premiere and confirmed in Season 4. Captain Sunshine is Batman, The Monarch is the Joker (another supposedly death-proof villain), dead WonderBoy is Jason Todd (2nd Robin), and if you go re-watch the scene in "Handsome Ransom" between the Monarch and Sunshine, it suddenly works on all kinds of new levels.
• It occurs to me that now with Col. Gathers in charge of both O.S.I. and SPHINX and The Sovereign, who is in actuality David Bowie, having officially been deemed by Dean as the true Sovereign of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, we've been giving probably the greatest Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny in cartoon fiction!! Hunter S. Thompson vs. David Bowie!!! Place your bets!!
• Okay, spoilers ahead, but they're season 1 spoilers so I'm not going to mark them (also because it ruins the joke.) Okay, so, it turns out the Strangers in "Trial of the Monarch" are working for the Phantom Limb. What does that make them? The Phantom's Strangers.

Fridge Horror

• In The Venture Brothers season 3 ep where Hank and Dean are alone in the compound while Monarch and crew wreck it up, Monarch says he gave a robot with Rusty's face chlamydia. Now consider that his marriage was described by him as an "open marriage" in season four's finale. Did he or Dr.Mrs.The Monarch give the other an STD?
  • In the episode "Past Tense", Brock throws Colonel Gentleman over the head of the Action Man (as they are both disguised as the bad guy's Fem Bots at the time), and the Action Man tilts his head a second later. Bringing one of his sharp antennae/ear-pieces pointing straight up. If he'd tilted his head while Gentleman was in the air above him... it wouldn't have been pretty.
• In "Any which way but Zeus" its revealed that Captain Sunshine's butler was the original Captain Sunshine with the second being his Wonderboy. Its always been stated in statistics that kids who have been molested have a high chance of being child molesters themselves, a possible Freudian Excuse for the good captain?
• In "The Invisible Hand of Fate" Pete, after weeks of Billy leaving him for the OSI, is heavily sun burnt and depressed. Put two and two together.
  • To be precise, Pete White is an albino, people who should be in the sun unprotected as little as possible.