A unique feature of Fringe is its use of glyph codes. These are brief images of everyday objects with subtle, strange variations—like an apple with human embryos for seeds or a butterfly with skeletal wings—shown before commercial breaks.
Season 1 of Fringe serves as a bridge between a traditional "monster-of-the-week" procedural and a complex, serialised mythology. The season introduces a series of seemingly unrelated, bizarre scientific phenomena—such as rapid aging or flesh-dissolving toxins—that occur globally.