Put applicable examples in the following tropes instead: Please do not add examples to work pages, this merely defines the term. See Body in a Breadbox and Dead Man's Chest for literally storing a dead body in household furniture/appliances. Also don't confuse with Locked in a Freezer or It Came from the Fridge. Also not related to Fridge Logic, Fridge Horror, or Fridge Brilliance. Not to be confused with being Put on a Bus as a Human Popsicle. The core part is that one character is killed (or at least, has something very bad happen to them) for the sake of causing emotional trauma for the target, with said victim often acting as a plot device more than a real character in the worst-case scenarios. It should be noted that while the term most commonly applies to a male character's female love interest, it can actually be used in numerous different scenarios of all genders and different relations from romantic, platonic and familial.

'Fridging' is often given a very negative connotation as it is all too often a hallmark of supremely lazy writing - quickly hurting or killing an established character as 'cheap anger' for the protagonist, and devaluing the life of that character in the process, instead of giving the villain something actually interesting to do that can involve all three characters and more emotions than simple anger and angst. The term came to be used more broadly, over time, to refer to any character who is targeted by an antagonist who has them killed off, raped and/or otherwise brutalized, incapacitated, depowered, or brainwashed for the sole purpose of affecting another character, motivating them to take action. (It was just a trick with a mannequin that time, though.)

Years later, Major Force repeated the gimmick with Kyle's mother in an oven. It is named for a storyline in Green Lantern: A New Dawn, in which the villain Major Force leaves the corpse of Kyle Rayner's girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, literally stuffed into a refrigerator for him to find. The term (sometimes referred to as 'fridging') was popularized by comic book writer Gail Simone through her website ' Women in Refrigerators.' On that site, Simone compiled a list of instances of female comic book characters who were killed off as a plot device. When a loved one is hurt, killed, maimed, assaulted, or otherwise traumatized in order to motivate another character or move their plot forward.

Batgirl, Volume 1 by Gail Simone