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General:- On revolutionaries and footwear:- one of the great leaders of the Mexican revolution was called Zapata[1] by his followers. Zapata is Spanish for "Shoe".

We get the English word sabotage from French civil disturbances and revolutions. The wooden clog worn by workers was called un sabot. Such a sturdy piece of wood could be used, in extremis, to terminally clog up and block industrial machinery if jammed firmly into the gears. Hence sabotage - or vandalism with footwear harnessed to a revolutionary cause. For all his endearing ineptitude, Reg Shoe has pretty much the same effect on the finely balanced ecosystem of the parasitical shopping mall as a wooden clog in the gears of a factory machine.

- [Corgi PB, p185] When Reg Shoe welcomes Windle Poons to the Fresh Start Club, he does it with protest song lyrics (at least they are on Roundworld)

"Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall..." (For The Times They Are A-Changein', by Bob Dylan)

"And fed up with being pushed around, eh?" ("And told just what to do..." from an appropriately titled song called "Children of the Grave", by Black Sabbath)

- (Corgi PB, p249) He set off along another likely-looking corridor, although most corridors he'd been down in the last one hundred and thirty years hadn't pulsated and dripped so much...

This evokes another memorable quest in fantasy fiction, the wizard/warlord Elric's journey through the Pulsating Cavern, in order to find the hellblade Stormbringer for the first time. Other commentators have remarked on the suspiciously Freudian nature of Elric's quest, to locate and make potent again a sword which has been swallowed up inside a womb-like space made of oddly organic material, and which pulsates damply and gently in a suffused pink light, the only way in (and out) being through a wet dripping cavern made of the same warm pulsating organic stuff... It is one hundred per cent probable that Poons HAS travelled through a similar corridor - once, and at the very other end of his long life... It is also possible that once again Michael Moorcock is on the receiving end of a spoofing. (Could you make it a little more obvious, Mike? We haven't quite understood the subtle metaphor you're using here!)

- [{{{1}}}] {{{2}}}

- (Corgi PB, p267) On a lid like a satin cushion it had a picture of a couple of hopelessly cross-eyed kittens looking out of a boot.

WHAT FOR.... CAN IT BE THAT IT IS CAT-FLAVOURED?

Death, selecting a box of chocolates, is evoking the Whizzo Quality Assortment sketch from "Monty Python's Flying Circus", in which a diligent trading standards officer discovers ever-more improbably disgusting and unlikely flavours in Whizzo chocolates. It's even called the Supreme Assortment...

[edit] External

• Reaper Man in the Annotated Pratchett File

[edit] Reverse Annotation

Where a Gothic rock band, whose works are alluded to in the Discworld cycle, and with whom Death has a close connection, may have repeated the favour by incorporating visual images from Reaper Man onto their LP sleeve artwork:- see here