Book:Feet of Clay/Annotations

Corgi paperback p44: Red Crescent consulted a scroll. "Good, good." he said. "how do you feel about weasels?".... "I know they're not strictly a heraldic animal, but we've got some on the strength and frankly unless we can persuade somebody to adopt them, we're going to have to let them go..."

Partly a reference to standard Zoo practice, where private individuals sponsor ("adopt") animals and help pay for their upkeep. Red Crescent is perhaps summing up the situation on the Disc for heraldic weasels. But on Roundworld, weasels are part of the coat of arms of the German city of Wesel features three weasels couchant, argent on a field gules. (another of those side-splitting heraldic puns; "weasel" in German is "wiesel") There is a Phillips family whose coat of arms features weasels. The Croatian national coat of arms incorporates a weasel. (kuna, in Serbo-Croat: another of those hilarious heralds' puns is that the kuna is also the national unit of currency. Pop goes the weasel?)

And in Roundworld heraldry, a whole category of shield designs are called "furs" and are usually assigned to nobility. This website states these are depicted as an abstract representation of the fur of the weasel, an alternative name for which in heraldry is the ermine. Perhaps in Discworld heraldry, the vermine (that selfish little bastard that will do anything so as not to part with its own fur) occupies this niche?

Corgi paperback p284: Fred Colon is tied up and locked in a cellar. He is desperate to get out, having overheard a discussion about how to dispose of an interfering policeman. "... A wide-open doorway marked Freedom . He'd settle for anything."

Literally anything? A subtle detail here is that in the text, the word Freedom is in the sort of capital letters and type only usually used by Death. This line is also an allusion to the Doorway Dilemma parodied in Lords and Ladies by Ponder Stibbons, Casanunder and Ridcully - two doors, only one of which leads to freedom (the other to death), guarded by two men, one of whom will lie and the other will tell truth...

Corgi paperback p328: "Cheery Littlebottom strode into the Palace kitchen and fired her crossbow into the ceiling. "Don't nobody move!" she yelled.

There is a certain resemblance here to the Police Academy series of movies (also parodied in the opening pages of Men at Arms?), in which an assorted bunch of misfits and no-hopers are trying to become policemen and women. Cheery's attitude here is similar to the shy and self-conscious black woman with the reedy high-pitched voice (Recruit Laverne Hookes), who is shy, rather timid, unsure of herself, and who out of inexperience behaves inappropriately in situations calling for a different sort of response.