Heartwarming / Hogfather

• Death going back in time to purchase the toy horse that Albert had wanted as a child.
• Death rescuing the Little Match Girl. Death himself shows what he longs most to do, but cannot in his own role. Watch it here.
  (Death takes out his hourglass and turns back the sands.)
  Albert: You ain't really allowed to do that.
  Death: The Hogfather can. The Hogfather gives presents. There's no better present than a future.
• Death's encounter with Nobby, giving him the best Hogswatchnight of his life with a crossbow that one of Nobby's favorite magazines, "had to break both arms of the reviewer to get it away from him". And you know what? Nobby'd gone up to the Hogfather exhibit in order to give the Hogfather a piece of his mind, because he had never gotten presents when he was a child on Hogswatchnight, due to his family's poverty. The way Nobby lights up when he opens it really just made me go 'd'awwwwwww'.
  • And then later Death hands on the Little Match Girl to, guess who...
    Nobby: (to Visit) Looks like we’ve been chosen to do a bit of charity.
  • Later, Death refusing to accept Albert's point that the poor get poor things while the rich get rich things, and giving people gifts that they've asked for, at least for one day.
• The whole sequence with Hex is oddly moving, when Death asks him to believe in the Hogfather.
  Hex: +++ I am preparing an area of Write-Only Memory +++
  Death: What is that?
  Hex: +++ You would say: To Know In Your Bones +++
  • Hex's response to being told to believe in the Hogfather:
    Hex: +++ Dear Hogfather, for Hogswatch I want+++
    Death: You can't... But you can, can't you.
    Hex: +++ Yes. I am entitled. +++
  • The live-action version, and Ian Richardson's delivery makes it all the sweeter. He murmurs his way through Hex's request, reading it, and then just gives this little, worried, "oh no...", before rallying and realizing that yes, Hex is entitled to a gift.
    Death: Let me see... how old are you? And have you been naughty? Or nice?
  • And then there's the fact Hex is later only willing to work if he is FTB^note Fuzzy Teddy Bear-enabled.
• Death's attempt at a Hogswatch card. He'd been told the card should have a robin in the snow on it, but the snow only melted off, and the robin didn't enter into the spirit of the thing at all.
  • Despite the card's sorry state in the film - it's half-frozen shut and slightly soggy with a mess of feathers on the front - Susan clutches it close as Death leaves.
  • Just, everything that Death does to become the Hogfather. Putting a pillow under his robes, wearing the false beard, practicing the "Ho, ho, ho..." You can tell that, for once, he's absolutely delighted to be in a role where people like and enjoy him.
• Maybe I am a sentimental sop, but I found Violet and Bilious' spur-of-the-moment romance to be oddly sweet. Particularly:
  Violet's lips moved silently. Part of Bilious thought: I'm attracted to a girl who actually has to shut down all other brain functions in order to think about the order of the letters of the alphabet.
  On the other hand, she's attracted to someone who's wearing a toga that looks as though a family of weasels have had a party in it, so maybe I'll stop this thought right here.
• Susan's trick with the fireplace poker is awesome, yes, but it's also heartwarming on behalf of both her and her young charges since, as she points out, it's imbued with the power of their belief, and "they can tell who the real monster is." The roundabout ways that Susan tells her dear old granddad that she really does love him...
• The Susan Sto Helit school of nannying. She doesn't teach the kids not to be afraid of monsters — she teaches them how to beat the crap out of them. It's rather reminiscent of headology.
  Twyla: Susan says, 'Don't get scared, get angry!'
• Banjo turning against Teatime, and protecting Susan from Teatime, after learning that Teatime was trying to kill the Hogfather. In this one scene he establishes that he isn't a Psychopathic Man Child, but just a regular Manchild that was misled.
• The Tooth Fairy, or the first Bogeyman. He was the absolute epitome of everything that goes bump in the night, yet he grew so attached to the children he was created to frighten that he saw all the terrible and real things in the world. His reaction? To protect children. He dedicates everything that he is and ever will be to creating a safeguard against the things that children truly ought to be scared of, but never should be. In his words...
  Tooth Fairy: If you leave all those teeth around, anything could happen... You don't die here. You just get old, listening to the laughter.
• Susan and Death's entire conversation about humanity and belief:
  Susan: All right. I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable.
  Death: Really? As if it was some kind of pink pill? No. Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
  Susan: Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—
  Death: Yes. As practice. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
  Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
  Death: Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty. That sort of thing.
  Susan: They're not the same at all!
  Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet— And yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
  Susan: Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—?
  Death: My point exactly. There is a place where two galaxies have been colliding for a million years. Don't try to tell me that's right.
  Susan: Yes, but people don't think about that. Somewhere there was a bed...
  Death: Correct. Stars explode, worlds collide, there's hardly anywhere in the universe where humans can live without being frozen or fried, and yet you believe that a bed is a... a normal thing. It is the most amazing talent.
  Susan: Talent?
  Death: Oh, yes. A very special kind of stupidity. You think the whole universe is inside your heads.
  Susan: You make us sound mad.
  Death: No. You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?
• Mr. Teatime is an absolute monster, yet there something oddly heartwarming in his interaction with Death at the very end of the movie. Death tells him to stop playing dead, Mr. Teatime. Teatime reacts with more than a little joy at someone finally getting his name right.
• Mustrum Ridcully's growing amazement and horror as he listens to other wizards' vitriolic grousing about all things related to Hogswatch. Subsequently followed by a detailed description of how he has always enjoyed every single aspect of it and very carefully read the messages on Hogswatch cards and found time for a few kind thoughts about the sender. This shows clearly that even though he can occasionally be a jerk to his subordinates, deep down he really has a heart of gold.
• Death's sheer rage at the Auditors. It's nice to know that, no matter how stupid and incomprehensible we humans may be, there's someone in our corner.
• Albert gives Death a lecture about how you're not supposed to get what you wished for on Hogswatch, you're only supposed to have hope that you'll get it. Death decides to kick tradition and give the poor boy everything he wished for. Life may be unfair, but I am not.

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