As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Logic:
- Reg Shoe not being seen as a credible threat by the government. Oh, he certainly isn't a credible threat, but this is a time when there's a secret police watching everyone for the slightest sign of disloyalty to the paranoid ruler. It seems out of character for them to tolerate the guy going around shouting about how the revolution is coming just because he's a harmless fool, and in fact it even seems out of character for them to be able to tell a harmless fool from a dangerous revolutionary in the first place.
- The underlings in the Unmentionables are implied to be using arrests as an excuse to round up people with money and then let them bribe their way out of it. They probably know Reg doesn't have enough money to bother with, so they leave him alone. Swing probably has no clue Reg exists.
- Reg Shoe isn't particularly subtle. The Cable Street Particulars may be watching him to see who starts listening to him, then arresting them.
- Reg Shoe is at one point described by Vimes as basically an idiot who other people would Dope Slap over the head if they knew he existed and what he did (graffiti on walls, putting pamphlets into their mailboxes), revolutionary cell of one and a person that really ought not be outdoors. Unmentionables probably consider him either a raving lunatic, Too Stupid To Live or Schmuck Bait for the real revolutionaries.
Fridge Brilliance:
- In an earlier book Vetinari posits that he rather thinks he invented Vimes. In this book we see what he might mean: we see young Vetinari increasingly intrigued and impressed by Keel!Vimes, to the point he saves his life on several occasions and eventually fights in his name. He may notice the special attention Keel!Vimes pays to young lance-constable Vimes. He remembers Vimes' name, keeps an eye on him. So years later, when Vetinari's the Patrician and has to choose a new Captain of the Night Watch, he takes a punt on Vimes. We know, after all, that Vimes' promotion was Vetinari's personal decision (Vimes interprets it as a sick joke). By this time Vetinari may even have some idea of the time-travel hijinks. He’s VERY clever, and he's certainly worked it out by the end of Night Watch. Regardless of whether he thinks of the late John Keel as Vimes' mentor or future self, he recognises when Vimes begins to live up to Keel, and is pleased with how he, Vetinari, has manipulated events.
- There’s lot of play around visibility and invisibility in Vetinari's storyline (and in the novel in general, actually). Vetinari 'gets' invisibility more than the other assassins. He realises that wearing black-only clothes, as is the Guild policy, makes one MORE visible, and that animal-inspired colour and pattern are more effective at creating camouflage. Black actually makes his fellow assassins stand out like a sore thumb. (Although, to be fair, a different book points out that the 'all black' is intended to be more of a trademark uniform, so that normal people aren't hiding at home afraid of any random person coming after them.) Fast-forward to his Patricianship, and he’s noted for ONLY wearing black clothes, his personal carriage is black, and his personal coat of arms is black on black. As an assassin he wanted invisibility. As the Patrician he wants to be highly visible. Genius. Plus, it justifies how he was able to observe the final events of Vimes' sojourn in the past without Vimes noticing he was there.
- By the end of the book, Young Sam Vimes had become a surrogate son to Sam Vimes and the audience was dreading the moment that we would have to part with him. So it is a particularly brilliant and symbolic move to have Sam Vimes knock down his younger and idealistic self in order to ensure his future. And then you realize that young Sam Vimes woke up to see his mates and mentor dead, that the revolution is rotten to the core, that low grade evil officers like Knock and Quirke emerged to become his bosses and it hits you that the Young and Idealistic Sam Vimes was gone forever. So it's especially brilliant that when Sam Vimes returns to the present, back to the wife and child that represent his future, that his newborn son is named Sam.
- In a rare case of Fridge Heartwarming, consider that Vimes and his Treacle Mine Road allies have spent the last thirty years feeling somber every 25th of May. But from now on, those who know Vimes well won't see it solely as a day to be mourned, because it's also Young Sam's birthday.
- Why does Nobby get to be Gavroche, aside from his age? We know from Jingo of Nobby's questionable battlefield experience, which is somewhat akin to what we know Thénardier did in Les Misérables. However, Nobby's too young (and, to be fair, nowhere near villainous enough) to stand in for Thénardier Sr. in this story, so he’s Thénardier Jr. - that is, Gavroche! Which would then make Sconner - career criminal, violent and abusive to his children - Thenardier Sr.
- Young Sam Vimes refers to his mum as "our mum" for idiomatic/colloquial reasons, but when he's talking to Older Vimes (which he always is when he's talking about her), it makes non-colloquial sense too: she's the mum of both of them.
- As mentioned on the main page, they do, in fact, take Reg Shoe's life, but they never take his freedom.
- Sandra Battye the needlewoman makes so much money because few men know how to sew. So how does Reg Shoe the zombie know how to sew himself up in the present? Sandra probably taught him; she might be the only person he knows who can sew, so he might have gone to her to get his wounds closed, and she taught him how to do it himself.
- Previous Watch books left open the Fridge Logic question of why a newly appointed Vetinari, who saw Vimes as useful and principled even in the depths of alcoholism, instead delegated primary law enforcement responsibility to the Guilds. This installment gives the first real insight into what the pre-Vetinari Watch was really like: not just ineffectual at protecting the citizenry from crime but actively terrorizing them at the Patrician's behest. After two decades of such corruption and brutality, no sane citizen would trust even an overhauled Watch to actually help them.
Fridge Horror:
- Just take a second to imagine what must have had to happen to the sweet, optimistic, puppy dog young Vimes to turn him into the bitter, self-loathing, apathetic alcoholic that we remember from Guards! Guards!. At least we know he eventually gets better.
