As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- When Moist uses the golems of Um to create the illusion that Iron Girder is flying, Vimes decides to stand on the supposedly solid mist, to test it. He remarks that it's like "standing on pavement". Except anyone who knows Vimes, will know that he is very sensitive to the feel of pavement on his feet, and therefore almost certainly realized that he was in fact standing on a golem.
- Dick Simnel reminisces about how his father set up a number of booby-traps to protect his workshop, and Dick continued this practice to guard his own inventions. Of course Ned Simnel would've taken pains to prevent anyone from tampering with his equipment: that's exactly how Death incapacitated the Combine Harvester/New Death in Reaper Man!
- In Making Money when Moist was making his big speech about putting Ankh-Morpork on the golem standard from atop one of the golem horses, it's mentioned that "with an astonishing grasp of public relations" the horse reared at exactly the right dramatic moment. Of course it did: it understood every word he was saying. It may not have had context for why Moist selling his plan was important, but that part of the speech was about how valuable golems are.
- If the speed of light on the Disc is (relatively speaking) considerably lower than in real life, then a train can go fast enough to create measurable time dilation so that slightly less time passes within the train than without. This might explain why it's mentioned that everyone feels like train journeys fly by. Of course, another possibility is that this happens all the time with natural phenomena (storm winds, falcons, and falling objects could easily reach relativistic speeds) which is why the time monks are needed and exist - they constantly adjust the time flow to eliminate relativistic effects.
- Strictly, technically, relativity doesn't actually care about how fast light is moving right where you are. It cares about how fast all things move relative to c, a fixed speed which equals "speed of light in a vacuum." For example, nuclear reactors emit a blue glow because they're constantly shedding particles that move slower than c, but faster than light can travel through water (which slows it down). This creates a sort of drag effect that causes the particle to lose energy that is converted into blue light, called Cherenkov radiation. If there are effects of time dilation and length contraction when approaching the speed of Discworld light (several hundred miles an hour, I gather) then that's caused by something other than relativity.
- Fridge Heartwarming in a sense, but the persona of Stoker Blake means that Vetinari can get down to doing some decent blue-collar work that enables him to meet/work with decent people. And while there will always be a need for a master-class politician like Havelock Vetinari to ensure all goes well for Ankh-Morpork, now that Ankh-Morpork has been fairly straightened and stabilized and moreover has people like Vimes and Lipwig to defend it (he’s not alone, so to speak) means he can stop politicking about and get to be a decent person. If he cares for that sort of thing, which is hinted at.
