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Special Ape Services shares the acronym SAS with the crack British troops who are sent to storm embassies, shoot prisoners of war, and execute alleged terrorists before anything has been proven by trial, etc. Not that one wants to get political, mind you.
- [p. 156/141] “Ah. Kings can cure that, you know,’ said another protomonarchist knowingly.”
See the annotation for p. 103/76 of Lords and Ladies.
- [p. 162/147] “[...] and stepped out into the naked city.”
The Naked City was an American TV cop show in the 50s, mostly forgotten today, except for its prologue narration: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This is one of them.”
- [p. 164/149] “There are some songs which are never sung sober. ‘Nellie
Dean’ is one. So is any song beginning ‘As I was a walking...”
‘Nellie Dean’ is an old music hall song:
“There’s an old mill by the stream
Nellie Dean.
Where we used to sit and dream
Nellie Dean.”
For an explanation of songs beginning ‘As I was a walking...’ see the annotation for p. 313/238 of Men at Arms.
- [p. 200/181] “This is love-in-a-canoe coffee if ever I tasted it.”
This refers to the punchline of the old joke (familiar from, for instance, a Monty Python sketch):
Q: What do American beer and making love in a canoe have in common?
A: They’re both fucking close to water.
- [p. 200/182] “He’s called Rex Vivat.”
Rex Vivat, of course, means: “long live the king”. This reminds me a bit of Robert Rankin, who named his lead character in They Came And Ate Us Rex Mundi. Rex’s sister has a role in the book too. Her name is Gloria.
Now you may begin to understand why Rankin is so often discussed on alt.fan.pratchett, and why there is so much overlap between his and Terry’s audiences.
- [p. 236/214] “The Duke of Sto Helit is looking for a guard captain, I’m sure.”
The Duke of Sto Helit, in case anyone had forgotten, is none other than Mort.
- [p. 241/219] “Someone out there was going to find out that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian. With a badge.”
The movie 48 Hrs, starring Nick Nolte and Eddy Murphy, has a scene in which Eddy Murphy is in a bar full of rednecks, shouting “I am your worst nightmare! A nigger with a badge!”
- [p. 260/236] “If that dragon’s got any voonerables, that arrow’ll find ‘em.”
Killing dragons by shooting a magical arrow in a special location is a standard cliché of mythology and fantasy fiction. One of the best-known contemporary examples can be found in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, where Bard kills the dragon Smaug with a special black arrow.
- [p. 278/252] “All for one!’ [...] ‘All for one what?’ said Nobby.”
“All for one and one for all” was of course the motto of the Three Musketeers. A whole new generation has learned about this through the combined efforts of an uninspired Disney flick and a particularly nauseating song by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting.
- [p. 282/256] “Both dragons appeared to realise that the fight was the well-known Klatchian standoff.”
Or Mexican standoff in our world, which is when two people have loaded, cocked guns pointed right at each other. If either shoots, they both die. This leaves them stuck, since if either just turns away, the other will immediately shoot him.
- [p. 284/257] The scene where Errol’s supersonic boom smashes the dragon out of the air is possibly based on another Clint Eastwood movie, the 1982 Firefox.
- [p. 289/262] “In 1135 a hen was arrested for crowing on Soul Cake Thursday.”
There are several historical examples in our world of animals being arrested, excommunicated or killed for various crimes. Articles in the October 1994 issue of Scientific American and in The Book of Lists #3 give several examples: a chimpanzee was convicted in Indiana in 1905 of smoking in public; 75 pigeons were executed in 1963 in Tripoli for ferrying stolen money across the Mediterranean; and in 1916, “five-ton Mary” the elephant killed her trainer and was subsequently sentenced to death by hanging—a sentence that involved a 100-ton derrick and a steam shovel. But the law is fair, and sometimes the animals get the better of it: when in 1713 a Franciscan monastery brought the termites who had been infesting their buildings to trial, a Brazilian court ruled that termites had a valid prior claim to the land, and ordered the monks to give the termites their own plot.
Note that Soul Cake Thursday in later Discworld novels becomes Soul Cake Tuesday, after previously having been Soul Cake Friday in The Dark Side of the Sun.
- [p. 313/284] “Sergeant Colon said he thought we’d get along like a maison en Flambe.”
Maison en Flambe = house on fire.
- [p. 314/285] “Here’s looking at you, kid,’ he said.”
Another quote from Casablanca.
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