Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy's fridge gag was inspired by Modern Family and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

(Image credit: Square Enix)

There's a subtle running gag in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy that was inspired by similar jokes from Modern Family and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

If you ran through Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy without really poking around the Milano ship, there's a good chance you missed its perpetually broken fridge. You can interact with the fridge to close its door, but it won't stay shut for long. As it is so often in real life, there is no resolution to this situation; you never find out what's wrong with the fridge and it never fixes itself. You just sort of deal with it, popping in now and again to fruitlessly slam the thing shut against the overpowering will of its worn-out hinges.

The fridge gag is just one detail that makes the Milano feel like a lived-in space, and GamesRadar's Heather Wald enjoyed it so much that she asked the developers for a sit-down to dig in deeper. And as it turns out, the gag has origins in two popular American sitcoms.

"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," explains senior creative director Jean-François Dugas. "In that one, 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."

This reasoning behind it never gets justified, but it is just so funny. So, based on that, I started to see how the fridge door would be an endless joke that would never get resolved."

If you haven't noticed this little detail yet, go take a little tour around the Milano - you'll probably find a few new details you haven't noticed that collectively help to ground the world in some reality. And hopefully, even though you know now that the fridge door will never stay shut, you continue the good fight. It's what Phil Dunphy would do.