Tear Jerker / Hogfather

• Susan's distancing herself from Death can be painful for fans of the character.
  • Susan says that Hogswatch is a time for people to meet their families, and then cuts that statement short.
  • When she reaches Death's domain and finds the Hogfather' broken lifetimer, she assumes her grandfather did it. She works out the truth eventually, but jumping to such conclusions easily doesn't help her case.
  • Susan's desperate to solve the mystery of the Hogfather's disappearance, partly because her grandfather has taken on his job. In her own words, "if he gets sidetracked, I have to do his job." She's not going back to the family business after her Break the Cutie arc in Soul Music, even if it means forcing Death to keep to his job.
  • When Death decides to screw Narrative Convention and utterly subvert the Little Match Girl story, despite Albert's objections, it causes Susan to briefly take on the role of Death, deep voice and bones and all.
• You know how some people can get depressed about holidays, Christmas in particular? That applies in this book, first to the wizards who start squabbling about how their parties/presents were unsatisfying, and later on Susan, despite defeating the human villains, describes the Hogfather as someone who makes people feel smug at the end of the year.
• The scene where Death confides in Albert that he would like to permanently be the Hogfather, and how sad he is that he's only doing it in the midst of a crisis and probably won't ever do it again.
  Ho. Ho. Ho.
  • And while he's confiding in this he mentions nobody's happy to see him, except in special and unfortunate circumstances.
• When Death comes to a poor house bearing gifts and Albert tells him to provide just one toy and an apple. Albert grimly but realistically points out that people need to hope in things that don't/may never happen, as hope is a big part of belief.
  Albert: If you give people jam, they'll just sit there and eat it. Promise them jam tomorrow, and that'll keep them going forever.
  • Death himself is driven nearly to tears by the unfairness of it all, pointing out that Hogswatch is a time for everyone to be happy, regardless of whether they deserve it or not.
• Death has just demanded to be left alone with Hex, who asks "Big Red Lever Time?" — it wants to know if it is about to die.
  • This, from a Magitek computer that, however brilliant, is emotionally still young enough to cry when its Fluffy Teddy Bear is taken away.
• 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.
  • As a frame of reference, he must be ancient. His final action was mustering enough power to literally frighten two hardened Thieves and a renegade wizard to death. He was intended to subsist on fear, but he managed to last for as long as the Tooth Fairy had been legend.
• When the Hogfather returns, the disappearance of the Cheery Fairy (one of the more personified minor gods, who one of the wizards had been falling in love with) due to the belief vacuum being gone.
• Catseye telling the others about his fear of the dark. Sure, he's a hardened criminal, but there's something really sad about the way he just lays out the facts.
  Catseye: Now shut up talking about it.
• The truck driver Ernie, who gets stabbed by Teatime, is only remembered by two people. One of them is Death, who appears at his death and, being preoccupied with investigations, can only stay briefly. He can't even console Ernie properly on where he's going to go next, even if he could stay longer.
  • The other person is Charlie, his superior, a bossy small-minded bureucrat who assumes Ernie's run off with another woman, and only cares about the burden his absence is going to put on his job. The cynical Susan is absolutely disgusted with him.
• An example from the live-action adaptation: Gawain and Twyla walk in on their dad dressed up like the Hogfather to deliver presents, and lose their belief in the Hogfather. All he was trying to do was keep their faith alive as long as he could and accidentally broke it in the process.
• More so in the adaptation, but the innocent-minded Banjo being made to act on Teatime's command, particular when Teatime considered that Mr. Brown has outlived his usefulness. Brown attempting to plea for his life by reminding Banjo that he used to help care for him when he little, to no avail.