As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- Death's new name? Bill Door. In Eric, Eric and Rincewind decide that the bill is "what you get when there's nothing left and everything's been used up." What do you get when there's nothing left and everything's been used up? Death. A door is a transition. Death is also a transition. So his name here means "Final Transition."
- Death's scythe, the one he uses against the New Death being more effective than the one he purposely sharpened with anything to grindstone to silk to light makes sense. Light is a physical phenomenon; anger is an emotion.
- The fact the most effective scythe in the one that was used for harvesting is also brilliant. It is a symbol of Death's responsibility, not a simple weapon like the specially-made scythe was.
- The snow globes initially appear, of all places, in Dibbler's basement stockroom. They're actually the eggs of a living shopping mall. What other environment would they gravitate towards, if not that of Ankh-Morpork's greatest purveyor of the cheap, the over-hyped and the tacky?
- Realizing that the intruder in the Temple is making it past all the traps, the two priests scream in terror that it's Mrs. Cake. Their terror is actually justified, because her precognition means that Mrs. Cake probably could walk right through all those death traps, unscathed.
- Under the idea that 'someone is (finally) dead when the ripples they've caused in the world die out': Interesting Times has Rincewind find a cave with a plaque — the only text being the name "One Sun Mirror". It then gets pointed out, in narration, that if anyone got this far without knowing the name, then everything based on his works would have to be gone too... One Sun Mirror would be completely dead and forgotten.
- At the end of the story, Death suggests that the Death of Rats ride a dog, rejecting the idea of riding a cat. It’s not a bad idea and Death is fond of cats, but cats are more associated with witches in Discworld.
- Cats also aren't all that effective against full-grown rats, mostly catching juveniles; terriers and ferrets are much better choices for rat eradication.
- The field Death adds to his domain, with the breeze eternally ruffling through it, is the most vibrant and alive part of his domain: as pointed out in Soul Music, Death, being unable to really touch things, has no clue about the texture and consistency of most of the objects he sees on Duty even if he knows they are a part of a "normal" house, but the time he spent in his book was spent mostly as a normal human, meaning he does have first hand tactile experience with what the stalks, ears and the whole field should be like.
- The New Death is much more dramatic and menacing than “Old” Death was, and he openly wants to rule rather than to simply do his duty. This might seem confusing, since The Auditors of Reality got rid of Death because he was becoming too much of an individual. But then you realize that the Auditors explicitly hate life, especially the life on the Discworld, and having a much more cruel and destructive Death on the Disc would likely benefit their desire to get rid of it in the long run.
- The new Death wanting to rule actually makes a lot more sense, because it isn't the New Death of the Disc, it's simply the New Death of People, a snapshot of peoples' feelings about death. Unlike Death, the New Death hasn't had the chance to adapt through the millennia, or care about the Duty, it is just what the cynical people of the Disc feel about death, that it is always coming and rules them, unlike Death who is the Death of ALL things on the Disc. Without all those smaller Deaths and that experience, Death would probably be quite close to the New Death in mindset.
- At one point, a small child sees through "Bill Door's" perception filter, and he thinks that it's due to his intrinsic powers failing him. Thing is, though—it isn't. The reason most people don't notice a seven-foot-tall skeleton walking around is that they don't expect to see one, so they don't. Children, however, believe in the impossible, and so they have no problem seeing things that don't fit into an adult worldview. And naturally, he wouldn't realize this, because he probably doesn't spend lots of time around kids.
