Imagine a world where death has meaning, where God exists and faith is untested. Where people die with the purpose of their lives made clear to them in blissful understanding. Such a world exists, hidden on the far side of the universe where a battered blue police box has just faded into being...
Tropes present in Vanishing Point include:
- Body Horror:
- Cauchemar performed various experiments on himself to extend his lifespan, but subsequent events have damaged his genetic structure so that he now looks somewhat dead himself and his body starts falling apart when put under sufficient strain.
- Cauchemar's planned 'weapon' against the Creator is an infant with fingers sewn into its body.
- Bridal Carry: The Doctor carries Fitz.
- Compliment Fishing: In a scene where a deformed-but-still-attractive Ingenue has a heart-to-heart with Fitz, he accuses her of doing this, but she seems to genuinely mean what she's saying about herself:'No one would wish to. I am deformed. I am ugly.'
'Are you fishing, here, by any chance?'
She laughed at him. 'Fishing?'
'For compliments, I mean,' Fitz said. 'Look, Vettul, if it helps, you're not ugly... I mean, you're...' He felt himself growing flustered. - Fingore: Cauchemar's minions took fingers from their victims as part of Cauchemar's plan.
- Literal Cliffhanger: The final confrontation sees the Doctor being pulled off a cliff by Cauchemar.
- Madwoman in the Attic: This trope is reconstructed with a woman keeping a number of deformed and disabled people away from society. But in a bit of a twist, she's quite nice to them, treating them almost like family, and refers to them affectionately as "mooncalves". The story takes place in a Dystopia where they wouldn't be safe anywhere else.
- Muscles Are Meaningless
- Sex Dressed: Gets Fitz in trouble.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Fitz has a six-and-a-half-foot-tall love interest with a congenitally malformed leg that causes her to hobble along slowly and noisily. But she gets around pretty well anyway, and Fitz notes her "uncanny" ability to "just appear".
- Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Fitz's Girl of the Week is at least 6'6". It's never quite clear how tall he is, and he sometimes seems to feel he's egregiously tall, but in this book he's implied to be shorter than the 5'8" Doctor. They're both skinny, though.
