Welcome to the Discworld & Pratchett Wiki. Have fun, contribute and be warned articles may contain nuts and spoilers to the plots of the books.

From Discworld & Pratchett Wiki

By page number

Page numbers refer to the UK edition. Those in italics refer to the US edition.

(155/167) "Bent stood up in one unfolding moment, like a jack-in-the-box." — This foreshadowing will later prove as subtle as a pie in the face.

(190-200/208-218) The Cabinet of Curiosity may be the Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, a natural history by Albertus Seba. The back cover of the book has a plate of a giant squid.

(214/236) The unusual font indicates the archaic language of Formal Golem. Appropriate to a near-contemporary of Umnian's multi-meaninged tongue, the characters for r/m, i/y, c/k, and u/v/w are effectively indistinguishable, and the s and e are quite similar. Here, Adora Belle says "I can speak formal golem."

(221/244) In Formal Golem, Flead first says, "You make eternity bearable!" and then asks "Why do you care about golems? They have no passionate parts!"

(262/293) Moist initially makes the same mistake as William de Worde, and assumes that just because Nobby Nobbs requires proof of species, he's the "Watch Werewolf".

(268/299-300) Mr Fusspot's courtship of Angua von Überwald is reminiscent of the battery-powered dog toys beloved of British shopping centres, which yap, somersault and repeat, although none of them come with the "new toy" delicately described by Captain Carrot as "a wind-up clockwork item of an intimate nature".

In The Truth, Mr. Tuttle Scrope is put up as the replacement Patrician for Vetinari. He runs a shop that sells Leatherwork, "... and rubber work... and feathers... and whips... and... little jiggly things" and was, presumably, the supplier for Sir Joshua Lavish in Making Money, who had the cabinet full of such supplies.

Need linking to page

The Lavishes are distinctly reminiscent of the Borgias. The same extended family, devious infighting, and desire for political power. The most famous Borgia dynasty includes Cosimo and Lucrezia "Lucci" Borgia, mirrored here as Cosmo Lavish and Pucci Lavish.

Moist's plan to sell the gold of the bank mirrors the actions of Gordon Brown, who sold 400 tons of Gold Bullion between 1999 and 2002. His comments on gold have been a recurring theme in the Discworld books, ever since the Colour of Magic.

The cartoons in the Times are a common identifying feature of Punch, a magazine popular in the late 19th/early 20th Century.

A motif recurring throughout the book

All the sly references to the Roundworld game of Monopoly, which involves a bank, financial speculation, capital investment in a city, and striving to reduce your opponents to absolute penury and degradation. This is dealt with in more detail here.