As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- When Pastor Oats mentions that he isn't eating meat this month to commemorate the anniversary of Brutha crossing the desert, Agnes asks if there's any meat to eat in a desert to halfheartedly question this practice. But to readers of Small Gods, this tradition is actually justified: Brutha could have easily killed an ailing lion and eaten it while crossing the desert, but refused even though he was starving and Om was telling him to do it.
- Oats ends up carrying an unconscious Granny Weatherwax through the pouring rain, with much difficulty. Though Oats has no way of knowing this, Brutha carried someone else through the desert in much the same way.
- The Countess de Magpyr doesn't argue with her husband much/at all, even when there's some "familial" strife after the family has been "Weatherwaxed". She was turned by her husband, the Count, and vampires are subservient to the ones that turned them.
- Granny Weatherwax has a Heroic BSoD when she thinks she wasn't invited to Magrat's daughter's naming-ceremony (due to magpies stealing the invitation). It took me until just now to realize that this is a complete subversion of what usually happens in fairy-stories when you forget to invite someone with a firm grasp of magic (or at least headology) to an important ceremony.
- It gets even more brilliant/telling when you remember that Granny's biggest fear is that she'll start to ...cackle (turn to the Dark Side), and the role Narrative Causality usually assigns to the powerful magic-user you failed to invite. She thinks she's being forced to ...cackle, and set-up to go on the usual RevengeSVP, so she goes and hides where she can't hurt anyone.
- In Carpe Jugulum, Mightily Oats' fear that Om doesn't really exist ("Was the god silent, or was there no one there to speak?") seems strange in a world where the gods are very much real... but when you remember what nearly happened to Om in Small Gods (that is, fading away into a small god because His followers weren't really worshiping Him), Oats' worries are pretty much justified.
- Also crossed with a Moment Of Heartwarming, when you recall that the old Om would more likely have stepped in to smite Oats and others like him for daring to doubt him, rather than risk fading away again. That he hasn't resorted to the Bolt of Divine Retribution trope, like most Discworld gods would under the circumstances, implies that Om is keeping his promise to Brutha to adhere to their covenant: if Omnianism is to continue, he has to obey its moral commandments himself, too.
- At the end Mightily Oates, sets off into the mountains with his harmonium, singalongs, and cups of tea, to teach the vampires "something else." Suddenly, reformed vampires appear in later Discworld books, and they like to gather round the harmonium, sing songs, and have a nice cup of tea... looks like Mr. Oates missionary work was successful.
- And a lot of people, both humans and vampires saw that they can displace the craving for blood with the craving for tea. Even though it was Granny Weatherwax infecting them with her, we see vampires are quite mutable, so it's no surprise that that became a big inspiration. It might have been a story that Oates told, which got lost in the retelling.
- Also, in Unseen Academicals, we learn that "Pastor Oates" walks Far Uberwald, with Forgiveness (his double headed battle axe) at his side... it was Forgiveness that cut through Nutt's chains and set him free. - rarefiednight
- I realized that there was never a more appropriate weapon name than Forgiveness—after all, it's double-edged In Real Life in a lot of ways, starting with how a little can be good but a lot is really really bad for you.
- The Old Count has a moment where he confuses Esme Weatherwax for Allison Weatherwax (saying he has a good memory for necks). What's his type? Adventurous women. What does Granny Weatherwax do? Get into adventures doing the right thing. No wonder he though they looked so similar, apart from being family.
- Oats and Granny travelling through the wilderness is an alternate version of the journey undertaken by Brutha and Vorbis in Small Gods: two different characters, a believer and an unbeliever, wandering around the world trying to make sense of their existence.
- Granny tells Oats that it's "There are no shades of gray, just white that's gotten grubby." Coming from a person with a strict Black-and-White Morality, this sounds a highly irregular statement to make. But consider the tropes of White-and-Grey Morality and A Lighter Shade of Grey and it makes sense: Granny is trying to provide Oats with a sense of positive strength in the world, to show that there is good worth fighting for, something that as a priest he should be more aware of. It culminates in Oats finally "seeing something holy wherever he looks."
- It's also a Call-Back to her time abroad in Genua, where she had to face off with her sister Lilith, who'd gone mad while trying to do good. Based on this past experience, Granny is asking Oats to consider the Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil tropes.
- Nanny Ogg likes the word "cordially", saying it has an alcoholic ring to it. The pun is that "cordial" is also the name of a liqueur drink as well as a medicinal stimulant.
- Magrat's daughter has everything in place to become a magical (Disney) princess. Kings on Disc are always a little bit magical, Lancre witches are the most powerful witches on Disc. She is a daughter of a king and a Lancre witch, who has two most powerful Lancre witches as godmothers (both Nanny, as backup who was there and Granny, as intended godmother). And Nanny says that "other kids will call her Spelly" as if she is going to personally make sure that will be the girl's nickname, a great nickname for a witch and magical princess. Then there is symbolism of having Note in the name, which adds to almost traditional "magical singing that controls animals" princess theme.
Fridge Horror
- Greebo's ferocity and capacity for destruction have always been played for laughs. He's taken down bears, elks, and (once, by accident) ate a vampire because it was in bat form. However, under normal circumstances, Vampires are extremely hard to kill. Everyone who knows anything about vampires knows that. In this book alone, it takes complete incineration (normal fire, holy water, phoenix flame), otherwise nothing less than decapitation followed by other traditional methods (such as the classic stake through the heart). However, Greebo was able to kill a vampire with simple, offscreen savagery. What did Greebo do to him? And if he could do that to a vampire, what could he do to a human that pissed him off?
- Greebo already killed a vampire once in Witches Abroad, though that was played for laughs.
- Perhaps Greebo doesn't, in fact, "know anything about vampires". Being unaware that he can't kill the vampire, he just goes and does it, and the universe can't catch up in time to tell him that it is impossible.
- It was a different kind of vampire, in bat-form, that he killed in Witches Abroad. Can't explain the case here though.
- Greebo startled the vampire, Who then instinctively turned into the one form of Vampire Greebo can canonically destroy… a vampire bat.
- Why is it so hard to believe Greebo simply ate the bat entirely, and left no remains to return? (Aside from some well-digested fertilizer the next day?)
- Being torn to pieces is apparently fatal for werewolves, despite their alleged invulnerability to anything but fire or silver. Angua admits she was in real mortal danger from wolves in The Fifth Elephant, and knew she'd have no chance against the Dog Guild in Men At Arms. It's possible that vampires have a similar weakness to being ripped apart: it's just not a tactic that human monster-hunters are equipped to utilize as easily as stakes or beheading, so they don't know about it.
- There's no confirmation that the vampire in question stayed dead.
- "Narrative Causality" — the narrative itself comments on the chances of 'rising from the cat'.
- Nanny's uncharacteristic freak-out when Agnes tells her an Omnian priest will be conducting the naming ceremony gets a lot more alarming if you've read I Shall Wear Midnight. Gytha Ogg would've been around to witness what happened when Esme took on the Cunning Man, back in the day, and has that nightmare as a basis for her first impression of Omnianism.
