There is a reason the work is named The Divine Comedy.note
- In Canto 21 of Inferno, Dante and Virgil are escorted by a pack of ten demons, one of whom signals it's time to leave by making "a bugle of his breech". In addition, Dorothy L. Sayers translates the demons' names as "Hacklespur", "Hellkin", "Harrowhound", "Barbiger", "Libbicock", "Dragonel", "Guttlehog", "Grabbersnitch", "Rubicant", and "Farfarel", causing a reader to potentially call to mind The Screwtape Letters. In the next Canto, Dante and Virgil, having enough of their company, escapes from them, all as the demons fight amongst themselves, with two of them falling into pitch.
- For a modern audience, the whole thing reads like a phenomenal Self-Insert Fic. He meets his idol Virgil, has a guided trip of the afterlife, and sees all his opponents and most hated figures burning in hell.
- In a Kafka Komedy sense, Virgil naively trusts the demons to hold up their end of the bargain on at least two occasions. Canto VIII of Inferno has Virgil signing that he wants to parley with the demons standing by the gates to the City of Dis. They initially promise to let him alone in, but they eventually slam the gate in his face after listening to his terms. Once more, Canto XXI has Virgil trusting the Hellrakers as they give him and Dante directions to a supposedly unbroken bridge when Dante immediately gets the sense that they are bad company. It is not until the poets escape into the sixth bolgia, where one of the hypocrites, a Jovial Friar named Fra Catalano, advises them to climb out of the bolgia using a rock that used to be a bridge, that Virgil realizes that he has been duped. Fra Catalano takes the opportunity to mock Virgil's naivete by saying that the devil is a liar and the father of lies, which serves as the last straw, and Virgil silently storms off.
- In Canto XXXI of Purgatorio, Beatrice says "Vendetta di Dio non teme suppe". This can be taken to mean 'Petty rituals will not assuage divine wrath', 'Food sacrifices will not prevent your judgement', or something similar. The John Ciardi translation says "God's wrath will not be calmed by soup". It Makes Sense in Context.
- In the bolgia of the Simoniacs, there is no bridge, resulting in the following situation: Virgil carries Dante down the cliff. Dante yells at a former pope. Virgil carries Dante back up the cliff.
- On two or three occasions in Inferno, the poets encounter a character who recognizes Virgil from his previous trip through the circles. Their reactions? "Ugh, you again, Virgil? Are you here to stay this time?"
- The punishment for flatterers is based on a Stealth Pun (they are trapped in a ditch that's full of shit, just like them) and is pretty obviously meant as a joke.
- Master Adam, along with every other sinner in the Tenth Bolgia, is inflicted with a terrible disease for all of eternity. Because of the fact that Master Adam is suffering from severe dropsy (to the point where his body is compared to a lute), he can only move one inch each century. Despite this, he still wants to crawl across an eleven-diameter circle just to beat up a political rival.
