History Literature / TheRestaurantAtTheEndOfTheUniverse

** [[spoiler:This entire incident was inspired by a chimp spelling out "FOURTY TWO"]].

** Ford realizes that even if Arthur does have (some variant of) the Ultimate Question written into his brainwave patterns, the fact of [[spoiler:the extinction of the native cavemen by the Golgafrinchans means that the program Earth is running will give a hopelessly corrupted Question as its output.]]

* HoistByTheirOwnPetard: All the ''useful'' citizens of Golgafrincham relieve their planet of excess population by tricking all their planet's [[AcceptableTarget middle-managers, telephone sanitizers, advertising executives]] and so forth into believing that a nasty (if ill-defined) apocalypse is threatening their world, packing them all onto an enormous ark, and shooting them off to crash-land on some InsignificantLittleBluePlanet. After which they get on with rich, fulfilling lives until they are all killed by a nasty disease contracted from a dirty telephone.

''The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'' (published in 1980) is the second book in the [[TrilogyCreep increasingly inaccurately-named]] ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' trilogy. It constitutes the second half of author Creator/DouglasAdams' original radio story; due taking a legendarily long time to finish his manuscripts, he couldn't fit the whole thing into one book and his publishers told him to just give them what he had and that they'd publish the rest separately later. Those familiar with the [[Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy radio series]] knew what to expect here before ''Literature/LifeTheUniverseAndEverything'' took them to wholly new pastures.

* BioData: Earth is the computer that Deep Thought created to discover the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Because he was a part of Earth's organic matrix, the Question (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) is stored in Arthur Dent's brain wave patterns. Near the end of the book he and Ford Prefect try to discover the Question by introducing a random element that can be shaped by that pattern - drawing Scrabble tiles from a bag without looking.
* BogglesTheMind: {{Invoked|Trope}} by Arthur, when he pulls out Scrabble tiles while blindfolded in an attempt to reveal the Ultimate Question from his subconscious, and reveals "[[spoiler:WHATDOYOUGETIFYOUMULTIPLYSIXBYNINE]]".

* AwesomeMcCoolname: Hotblack Desiato, which amazingly enough is taken from [[http://www.hotblackdesiato.co.uk/ real life]].

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: The temporal end of the universe is depicted as a spectacular ApocalypseWow, in which entire star systems can be seen "boiling away into the ultraviolet", forming the backdrop to a fine-dining experience. Actually, insofar as there can be said to be a "temporal end of the universe", the stars and everything else will have long since burned out, and there won't be any information of any kind whatsoever.

* AndIMustScream: Zaphod finds a passenger ship filled with passengers all being kept alive and prisoner by stasis fields. Every few centuries they are released from stasis so that the robot stewards can serve coffee and cookies. After which they are returned to stasis, despite their complaints (which have, over the millenia, become both strident and desperate).

** After the talking insect receptionist at the Guide offices asks Zaphod in astonishment if he's ''the'' Zaphod Beeblebrox, Zaphod snaps, "No, just ''a'' Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn't you hear I come in six-packs?" [[labelnote:*]] Despite the fact that he comes from a planet that never invented sarcasm. Maybe he picked it up fron Trillian.[[/labelnote]]

* AskAStupidQuestion: On asking what Marvin was doing in a car park, Trillian is informed he was parking cars. What else does one do in a car park?

* SpotOfTea: Most of the trouble in the story starts when Arthur's attempts to get the drink machine on the ''Heart of Gold'' to make him a cup of real tea end up confusing the shipboard computer to the point of non-fuctioning.

** Ford realizes that even if Arthur does have (some variant of) the Ultimate Question written into his brainwave patterns, the fact of [[spoiler:the inadvertent extinction of the native cavemen by the Golgafrinchans means that the program Earth is running will give a hopelessly corrupted Question as its output.]]

* TheSlowPath: Marvin, who parks cars on Frogstar B for 567,000,000,000 years.

* EpicFail: Arthur's attempt to get the drink replicator to make a decent cup of tea causes the ship to shut itself down just to figure it out, nearly getting the crew killed.