Book:Feet of Clay/Annotations

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.