Spotlight-Stealing Squad: - According to Word of God, any book set in Ankh-Morpork will eventually morph into a City Watch novel, no matter what the original plan — which is presumably why so many of the later Wizards books involve them travelling away from the city. There's even a case of "self-trans panic" in the books, wherein the villain of The Fifth Elephant turns out to be a closeted "female dwarf" who had a mental breakdown due to a combination of stress and cognitive dissonance—she was a prim and proper dwarf, but prim and proper dwarfs don't have dreams of wearing leather skirts and flowing chainmail dresses—brought on by the growing dwarf femininity movement. It's merely that he's realized that all those little rules that keep society ticking over nicely only apply to you if you let them, and therefore the only thing between him and murdering a coach full of accordion players for shits and giggles is his own inhibitions. Giver of Lame Names: Leonard da Quirm. Some clearly identifiable inspirations that stay prominent in multiple books include 18th to 19th century London and New York City for the economy and culture, Renaissance-era Venice for the system of government, Seattle of all places for the geography and occasionally Paris for a bit of variety. Temporarily banished from a dorm room say crosswords. And she's a duchess.
Psmith Psyndrome: The Igors are all names Igor (or Igorina), but always know which one is being referred to. Cats Are Magic: Death is very fond of cats and gives them all nine lives. Vimes is the best policeman on the Disc, which means if there is a crime, even outside his jurisdiction, or while he's on vacations, if he hears about it he must investigate. His works are present throughout the series, but Johnson himself has never made an appearance. In Interesting Times, the almost-hero Rincewind spends a lot of time evading warriors, guards and generally annoyed people who combine aspects of samurai, ninja, regular footsoldier and even sumo wrestler. In the second Science of Discworld, Ridcully demonstrates that magic is ineffective on Roundworld by saying "Eight! Temporarily banished from a dorm room say crossword puzzle. " Even partly-trained but powerful casters can be dangerous to themselves; for example, "borrowing" an animal's mind can lead to a witch becoming lost in the animal's senses. Our Better Is Different: The dwarfs use "lower" as a synonym for "better" where humans & co would use "higher". After this happened, the laws governing formation of guilds was amended to prevent one-person guilds.
Eyes Are Mental: One of the laws of magic is that transformations can never change a creature's eyes. Amusing Alien: The Luggage. Mort and Ysabell, despite their death in a carriage accident. Butlerspace: Igors from Discworld are explicitly able to instantly appear right behind their masters when called. Extremophile Lifeforms: - Trolls are living rocks whose brains are impure silicon, meaning they're slow and stupid under the snowline and extremely intelligent in the cold. This makes sense, given its implied origin. Whenever there needs to be a reason why the large number of highly skilled wizards of Unseen University cannot counter a problem with magic, one of the standard limitations is that it takes precisely the same amount of work (in the physics sense) to do something by magic as by any other means, and all the other mundane limitations (like action-reaction) as well. He is also once taken to the Klatchian desert and can barely move during the day. The Thieves' Guild Yearbook and Diary introduces a self-invoked example: Mr. Temporarily banished from a dorm room say crossword. Echinoid Blacksly, founder and sole member of the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Victims. His sheer stupidity actually warped reality. They may have been handed down through the generations (a good pair of hands are worth hanging onto as well). Known flavours of the thaum are: up, down, sideways, sex appeal and peppermint. "Do not let me detain you. The City Narrows: The Shades within Ankh-Morpork, where the cops (and criminals) never go for fear of not coming out alive.
The Ankh-Morpork Archive Vol 2 (2020): As above, but from the Watch, Fools, Reformed Vampires, and History Monks. Early-Installment Weirdness: The earliest books are quite different in tone, the characterization is different, things like troll biology are wildly different, all sorts of things. Chronoscope: - The Omni-scopes have the power to do this, although true to form the wizards spend a great deal of time and effort trying to eliminate that capacity, treating it as a bug instead of a feature. In Interesting Times, the five ruling families of the Agatean empire are the Hongs, the Sungs, the Tangs, the Fangs, and the McSweenys. Sparse List of Rules: We only ever find out the sections of the Assassins' Guild's school rulebook dealing with "no keeping a crocodile in your dorm room" and "no boys in the girls' dorm and vice versa". The Things From The Dungeon Dimensions would eradicate humans without noticing.
Our Banshees Are Different: The Disc has two different varieties of Banshee. "Arabian Nights" Days: Klatch is Arabian Nights Days in Sourcery, the first book Klatchians play a major part in, but by the time Jingo rolls around it's more of a late-19th/early-20th-century Lawrence of Arabia style Middle East, with a few Arabian Nights elements left in. Crystal Dragon Jesus: - The religion of Omnianism, which we get to see develop over centuries, clearly parallels Christianity. Our Nymphs Are Different: Dryads appear in The Colour of Magic, where they live in pocket dimensions within trees and are extremely protective of their homes. This is the Discworld. Nanny Ogg, a very down-to-earth witch, personally considers the best banishing ritual of all the words "BUGGER OFF! " The trouble was, people remembered the pain.
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