The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney film)/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• The opening musical number "The Bells Of Notre Dame" starts with a line sayings its the story of a monster. While it seems to be refering to the mysterious bell ringer, it quickly becomes obvious that Frollo is the real monster in the story.
  • Also, Frollo kills Quasimodo's mother on the steps of the cathedral - the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Virgin Mother of Jesus. While Frollo feels the eyes of all the saints, we see a longer moment of her statue gazing down at him. This is a big chunk of what makes him so afraid.
• As different as the Disney movie is from the original book, you could justify it by saying that the Disney version is the version that Clopin is telling to the kids he's performing for, while the book's version is closer to what really happened.
• During the song "Heaven's Light", which is about Esmeralda, the gargoyles draw their impressions of Esmeralda. Hugo, however, draws Esmeralda's goat. The book had a character who was married to Esmeralda but found himself liking her goat much better. Maybe the Shout-Out wasn't intentional, but it's still pretty amusing.
• Why were gargoyles placed in cathedrals? To protect them from evil. That's exactly what they do during the siege of Notre Dame and Frollo's death scene.
  • Not only that but, sometimes you've got to wounder. Are Quasi's gargoyle friends just figments of his imagination? Or... were they his "Guardian Angels"? Kinda makes you wounder, don't it?
• In the song Hellfire, Frollo seems to beg forgiveness from God in the beginning but reveals his true feelings about Esmeralda by the end of the song. The structure of the song is exactly parallel to Quasimodo's song 'Out there'. In the song, Quasimodo is begging for forgiveness for thinking of the festival in the first half but reveals his true feelings about the festival by the end of the song. Both songs follow the structure of false loyalty followed by their true desires. Either this was used to contrast the two or show that Quasimodo really did inherit some traits from his adoptive father.
  • Another note on Hellfire; Frollo is praying for divine assistance to commit rape from the only female in the Catholic cosmology at the time. Considering that, the fact that the endeavor would end in his downfall isn't that surprising.
• Many people blame Disney for making Esmeralda fall for Phoebus and not for Quasimodo, arguing that it conveys the idea ugly people can never be loved. Except the point of the story is not love: it's how monstruous-looking Quasimodo is really human while human-looking Frollo is really a monster. Having both characters experience an unrequited love / desire and react very differently to it enable to clearly see this divide.
• When the Archdeacon tells Frollo that he can't run or hide from the eyes of Notre Dame, there's a double meaning. It doesn't just refer to the cathedral, "Notre Dame" is French for "Our Lady". This states that Frollo has incurred the wrath of the Virgin Mary.
• When Frollo is up in the bell tower and destroys Quasi's tabletop Paris while interrogating him for helping Esmerelda escape, he grabs the model of Esmerelda and, as he flings it across the table, it topples over the model version of himself. It's almost as if the tabletop itself knows that Esmerelda will lead Frollo to his downfall.
• The color red is actually considered unlucky according to Gypsy culture. And at the Feast of Fools, Frollo actually saw Esmeralda pole dance in a skimpy red dress...
• Esmeralda is actually Spanish for "emerald", and she has Green Eyes.
• Quasimodo, despite actually being a Gypsy himself, has pale skin and red hair (Gypsies normally have dark skin and black hair). This is actually because of a genetic disorder, similar to what contributed to his deformed appearance.
• "A Guy Like You" is full of unintentional Stealth Insults, as the Gargoyles are part of Quasimodo's imagination, it could be that he's reaching for nice things for them to say about himself, but his self-esteem is so low that they just come back as insults.

Fridge Horror

• Admit it, when you first saw this movie, you had no idea what Hellfire was really about.
  • This troper distinctly remembers sitting in the theater with my parents, utterly confused during Hellfire. (I was seven at the time.) In the silence after the song I looked over at my dad, who was wearing a look of absolute shock and horror on his face, and heard him whisper "Holy shit." Fridge Horror at its finest, folks.
• The first time we see Frollo hunting for Esmeralda, he locks an innocent family inside a house and tries to burn it with them inside (including the children). Fortunately, Pheobus saves them, but later we see that a good portion of Paris has been burned down. With no one to help people escape, it is heavily implied that Frollo just executed mass murder.
• Also, one wonders if Esmerelda is the first woman Frollo lusted after...
  • Given how horrified he is by both his "weakness" and his belief he's been bewitched, I think it's safe to say that she is. If he'd gone to such insane extremes before, he probably wouldn't have been around to see her in the first place.
• It's implied that Frollo's level of abuse seen in the movie is his normal behavior.
• How many innocent people has Clopin executed thinking they were Frollo's spies?
• A traditional way to scare children in many European countries is that if they disappoint their parents they'll sell them to the Gypsies. Now picture why Quasi does not look like his mother at all.
  • Or he could just take after his father.
• While it likely goes straight over the heads of most young viewers, older viewers may shudder when re-watching the scene in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame in which Frollo sniffs Esmerelda's hair. Dark, dark subtext. Additionally: Boiling lead being poured on soldiers offscreen; and the gargoyle (no, not one of the nice ones) roaring at Frollo before he falls to his doom. Wait — if the gargoyles are sentient, then does that count as a bonus death?
  • Similarly any instance of I Have You Now, My Pretty with the rape subtext.
  • The song "Hellfire" itself' qualifies because of the lyrics, especially if you can translate the Latin, and even more once you know about the history of the Church. That functions on three different levels of horrifying... To clarify, the background Latin in "Hellfire" is a real version of "Confiteor"; the main lyrics are likely Frollo's response.
    • An interesting tidbit about this song is that the lyrical intent actually made the rating board consider giving the movie a PG rating. However, the producers insisted that the movie's audience was not only directed at kids, but at the older folks who were knowledgeable about the original classic novel and that this scene had to be included in the movie regardless.
• Remember that the story is being told by Clopin to a group of children. Imagine how they're reacting when he's recounting how he almost murdered the heroes. While singing a jaunty tune for extra psycho points.
• At the end of the film, Esmeralda is forced to wear a long, white dress to her execution. This implies that all of her other dressed were presumable destroyed by Frollo so that he can have her executed properly. Now try and guess where Esmeralda hid that dress the whole time...
  • Underneath her purple one (the one she normally wears).
    • You mean the one that showed her bare shoulders, while the dress she wore on her pyre clearly had straps?

Fridge Logic

• Frollo burns a house down after locking the family inside. Why would you design a door so it could be barricaded shut from the outside?
  • If you look, it's a handle on the door which conveniently serves as the barricade support. That said, fridge logic might come into play if one questions exactly what that house is made out of given its ignition speed...
    • Grain is extremely combustible and can explode if ignited in an enclosed area. Leather, wood, tar, thatch, and the other materials that would have been used to build the windmill are also dangerously flammable. Throw into that a presumably dry season and you've got yourself a live-in bonfire.
• Victor Hugo's full name was Victor-Marie Hugo. The two male gargoyles are called Victor and Hugo, after him. The third and female gargoyle is called... Laverne. Huh?
  • Quasimodo named a bunch of the bells "Marie." Doesn't explain specifically where Laverne's name comes from, but it does explain why she's not called Marie, at least.
• After Frollo falls into the molten lead, where did all of it go?
  • It should have cooled down relatively quickly with no outside source to heat it, though it does seem to disappear too quickly. Maybe the last scene took place a little while later than we're assuming it does, like maybe midday?

Fridge Horror

• The musical makes the talking gargoyles much more obviously hallucinations/wish fulfillments by Quasimodo's damaged mind. The equivalent of Jason Alexander's Hugo in the film is pretty much the same, but the Victor gargoyle is made into more of a loving father figure, and the female of the trio is changed into a beautiful angel gargoyle named Loni, who seems to be both his source of motherly affection and romantically approachable. This is weird enough, but then you get to the final scene, in which Quasimodo is hesitating throwing Frollo off of the cathedral. Frollo pleads "You don't want to do this!", and Charles leans into Quasimodo's ear and whispers, "Yes, you do."