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• The book "Bad Prince Charlie" by John Moore has a footnote where the author says that it's a good idea to use footnotes because Terry Pratchett uses them and people like his books, after all.

• In the anime "Pani Poni Dash", episode 15, a class is stuck on a bus dangling off the edge of a cliff. Himeko, a rather hyperactive girl, deludes herself into thinking that her "aura" is what's keeping the bus from falling, hence she's supporting the whole shebang. To illustrate this, she hallucinates a brief vision of the Discworld with her head superimposed on Great A'Tuin.

• In Moving Pictures, during the fight scene with the Ginger-monster, Victor Tugelbend resorts to a mean trick to get the dogs Gaspode and Laddie to leave the wrecked cinema. (Corgi paperback edition, p288)

He throws a stick and calls "Fetch!" (Gaspode has enough self-control to shout "You bastard!" as his doggie instinct overtakes his rational mind and he chases the stick)

In the TV animated series "Family Guy", by far the most capable, intelligent, and mature member of the Griffin family is the family dog Brian, an anthropomorphic canine who is clearly an American Roundworld cousin of Gaspode, (but cleaner)

In an episode where Brian ends up improbably married to Lois Griffin after the (presumed) death of ignoramus paterfamilias Peter, Brian becomes suspicious of her absences and suspects she is having an affair.

Uncomfortably aware his probing questions are getting too close to the truth, Lois resorts to throwing a ball. Brian, unable to help his fundamental doggy instinct, chases it, but pauses to call her a bitch...

Interestingly enough, a recurring character in Family Guy is Death, who is a skeletal figure in a black robe toting a scythe, but who lacks the essential gravitas of Discworld's Death... well, all lesser Deaths are subjects of Azrael...

(Moving Pictures - published 1990; Family Guy first aired on TV in 1999)

• Night Watch - centres on a honest copper thrown back thirty years in time to right a wrong and enable him to return to his present, exactly as he left it. The honest copper is confronted with the slightly primitive policing techniques of the past, and introduces elements of sensitive modern policing on a force not quite mentally equipped to accept it.

The BBC TV series Life On Mars, by stunning coincidence, centres on a honest copper thrown back thirty years in time to right a wrong and enable him to return to his present, exactly as he left it. The honest copper is confronted with the slightly primitive policing techniques of the past, and introduces elements of sensitive modern policing on a force not quite mentally equipped to accept it.

It would appear that the book was released slightly before the TV series was conceived, but there may not be much in it...

• The Roman detective novel Saturnalia, by self-confessed Pratchett-admirer Lindsey Davis, includes in its 26th chapter three witches who would have been at home in Lancre: they dress up to ensure they look like witches, don't suffer fools gladly and complain about the problems of modern witchcraft; the third witch, Daphne, is in fact absent because - Nanny Ogg-like - she has to look after her grandchildren.

Saturnalia feels like a rich seam of Pratchett references! For instance, the character of Zosmio, who flaps around the cemetery in a white sheet pretending to be dead, and "haunting" the place - who else is this but Duke Leonal Felmet in his final insanity?

And the Vigiles of the fourth precinct have a lot in common with the Night Watch of the early Samuel Vimes era. At their Saturnalia party, one watchman dresses up as "a six-foot tall carrot", for instance.

The policing set-up in Vespasian's Rome places the Royal Palace under the control of the Praetorian Guard, a bunch of haughty bullies puffed up with their own self-importance who enjoy throwing their weight around, especially against ethnic minorities and a despised lowly group such as the Vigiles (Night Watch). Compare this to the Palace Guard, two of whose finest want to beat up Vimes just for annoying them (in Guards! Guards!), and Mayonnaise Quirke's Day Watch with its speciesist attitude to trolls and dwarfs.

The Vigile (Watchman) Fusculus is described in terms reiniscent of a rather more intelligent, slightly quirkier, version of Fred Colon. ("Fusculus" may come from a Latin root meaning "to confuse, to bamboozle" - confirmation anyone?) No sighting of an Ancient Roman Nobby Nobbs yet, but I haven't finished reading the book!

"Fishing from the same stream", as Terry phrases it, Lindsey Davis also has the Lord of Misrule at Saturnalia be "randomly" selected by getting the fateful bean in their lunch. Compare this to those earthly avatars of the Hogfather, who were "randomly" selected for sacrifice by getting the bean. And the Roman Saturnalia and Discworld's Hogswatch are, of course, aspects of the same universal midwinter festival.

At this point in Roman history, it should be noted, as L.D. explicitly does, that the lowly-born Emperor Vespasian (the first of the Flavian line) is very explicitly not a Patrician. As viewed through the eyes of central character, plebian-born Marcus Didius Falco (who is suspiciously Vimes-like in terms of cynicism), it was the patrician (ie, most illustrious, well-bred, and noble) Claudian line of Caesars who got Rome into the mess it is in today. Such Divine Caesars as Caligula and Nero were, in Falco's eyes, so well-bred as to be inbred. Note L.D.'s use of the word "patrician" in its correct Roman context, as well as the reminder about the extremely insane Caesars who did things such as make a favourite horse into a Senator. (And the Ankh-Morpork parellel is Lord Snapcase, possibly?)

And L.D., in her author's notes, also talks about the concept of tribute plagiarism, of assimilating and paying homage to the best ideas of another author by recycling them in your own work, putting your own mark on them, and seeing if anyone notices.