Guardians of the Galaxy's unclosing fridge door joke inspired by Modern Family, creative director says

eurogamer.net:

The pesky fridge door in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy that never, ever, closes was inspired by long-running gags from Modern Family and Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia, its creative director has now revealed.

While many Marvel fans were likely spending their time hanging out with Groot and co while on board the Milano, others decided to take Star Lord even deeper into the inner workings of the ship. Here, they will have come across a broken fridge door, which in itself is fairly unremarkable. This door can be interacted with, and players can try and close it if they wish, but this would ultimately be to no avail. The fridge door will never remain closed, not matter how often one tries.

But this door was not added into the game to simply perplex players. Rather, it was added in as an ongoing gag, much like that of Phil Dunphy from Modern Family always tripping up on the broken stairs that he keeps meaning to fix but never seems to quite get round to doing. Chatting to GamesRadar, Guardians of the Galaxy senior creative director Jean-François Dugas revealed: «My inspiration was based on Phil Dunphy in Modern Family constantly stumbling on the house stairs that he never repaired, and one episode from Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where Charlie passes by a stool in the bar where he works many times during the episode, and each time, he replaces/shakes the stool before going to his next objective.»

It is perhaps the subtlety of this gag that makes it such a good one. Players will never learn how the fridge in Guardians of the Galaxy got broken, and they will never know if it finally gets fixed.

Instead, it will forever toy on the minds of those more curious, house conscious, gamers among us (AKA, me).