Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against character deaths. It just gets old when seemingly the only way to motivate a male protagonist is to harm his wife.
The most recent one I saw, without giving spoilers, had a perfect wife character that absolutely everyone in town loved. She was opposed to the tyrannical government and its systems, and she brought up real good points that main character husband guy should have resonated with. Instead he only thought about how pretty and how good at dancing she was. Boom, she’s dead and he’s immediately inducted into the underground resistance.
Edit: This is a complaint about the women in refrigerators trope btw.
My favorite bit about fridging is that the term initially got coined due to Alexandra DeWitt being killed to get at the Green Lantern. She was later resurrected as a zombie during part of the Black Lantern story arc, and was always shown inside of a fridge even as a zombie. She was only shown a few times, so it was a subtle nod to the criticism the writers had received for fridging her in the first place.