History Headscratchers / GuardsGuards

*** It is a metaphor. A locked door can just as easily keep someone out as it can keep someone in.

*** Many real-life societies used to have (or some perhaps still have) concept of words being considered ''so'' offensive that starting a fight in response to them was taken as completely acceptable. "Suicide/by being bloody stupid" is this concept taken UpToEleven.

** Nowhere does it say that the bolts are actually engaged at any time during Vimes' or Vetinari's stay in the cell. Since Vetinari had had no indication that someone was coming to finally drag him off and execute him, he would have had no indclination to bolt the door.

* In Guards! Guards!, Vimes appears to have no idea that he is related to a noble family. PlotHole or was it not part of his character yet? (I've only read the Watch books, so...)
** I doubt Terry Pratchett had planned the history of Stoneface Vimes etc when he wrote Guards! Guards! Even so, it's not really a PlotHole. The Vimes family haven't been nobles for several hundred years. Remind the [=GG=]-era Vimes that his great-great-great-great-grandfather was a nobleman who lost his rank for killing the king, and he'd just say "Yeah? So what?"

** A very brief reference in ''Discworld/NightWatch'' suggests that Vimes never knew his father, and that his mother told him his dad was run over by a cart when he was small. (It's also implied that [[spoiler: this was a lie, indicating that Vimes Sr. either died a much nastier death or abandoned his family.]]) If Vimes never knew his dad, it's only logical that he wouldn't know much about his father's family, at least until Carrot's remarks spurred him to look into it.

** It definitely seems to be a thing that he hasn't quite come into his ability to handle unexpected situations yet. He gets some CharacterDevelopment throughout the series, and it hasn't happened yet. It's not just the slightly wrongheaded attempts to handle the dragon; "'They were laughing at me,' said the Patrician. 'I could tell!'" is ''amazingly'' petulant and emotional compared with his later behavior. He's clearly pretty clever about running the city when it's not any more wild and crazy than usual, but he hasn't been through enough major crises yet to handle them beyond trying to not get killed or turned into a lizard. It's only around ''Discworld/FeetOfClay'' where he starts coming out ahead from setbacks rather than just trying to do damage control.

* I admit this isn't a plothole, but shouldn't the Head of the Assassin's Guild still be [[spoiler:Dr. Cruces]]? After all, the events of Discworld/MenAtArms haven't happened yet.

** Well, the dragon was new territory for Vetinary, and you're also disregarding other instances of {{Magnificent Bastard}}ry. Don't forget how magnificently he played the Guild of Thieves into keeping crime under control themselves and building a cell he can get out of at his leisure in case he gets thrown in it. Let's not forget how he tormented the BigBad near the end of the book.

* It has always bugged me that Sam "This is how you play Lawful Good" Vimes is willing to accept all the various interesting ways it is possible to commit "suicide" in Ankh-Morpork. Like going into a dwarf bar and ordering a "short beer," etc. etc. While that makes for a clever one-off joke, what it basically means is that Sam Vimes' City Watch deliberately turns a blind eye to MURDER on a regular basis. Calling it "suicide" takes all the blame off of the murderers and all the responsibility off the Watch to do something about it. And that's not the attitude of the LawfulGood, that's the attitude of a DirtyCoward.
** It's probably nothing more sinister than the sort of dark humour that people in jobs such as police work tend to get due to the job they do being pretty grim at times. The series never actually says they dismiss these cases as less than murder, just that these cases are called suicides in a darkly humourous way, plus there are scenes of these and/or similar situations (pub brawls for example) in plenty of the books where the attackers ARE arrested.

** Vimes believes in protecting the innocent, presumably he doesn't extend the definition of innocent to what we would call {{troll}}ing (although if you called it that in Ankh-Morpork then you'd almost certainly just have committed suicide). Remember they have a "Being Bloody Stupid" law, so they are almost certainly breaking that, how fortunate that breaking it is also its own punishment. As long as it is done off the streets then the peace has been kept.

** No 'probably' about it. Remember (in a book I can't remember offhand) where he prevents Detritus firing the Piecemaker because he might hit an innocent person, "Even in Ankh-Morpork."
** There's also the possibility that the city in which the 'Being Bloody Stupid' act is actually enshrined into law also has decided that asking a Troll if he has rocks in his head is legally regarded as suicide.

* The rats are implied to talk, since Vetinari knows at least one rat's name, says they bring him news, and tells Skrp what to tell the kitchen staff, but we never actually see them talk on-page, and Vimes seems to have enough trouble getting his head around the concept of rats ''understanding'' human speech. So I can't help wondering whether these are actual talking rats like in ''The Amazing Maurice'' or whether they're not quite ''that'' advanced but have their own way of communicating which Vetinari can somehow understand. Given the occasional AmbiguouslyHuman jokes about him, it would make a kind of sense if he has a sort of vampire-like affinity with rats...

** I always interpreted that line to mean Sam Vimes was a bastard and his mum didn't want to explain that to her son.#

** HiddenInPlainSight/WeirdnessCensor? After all, guards are not paid for their insights on prison architecture - this is Somebody Else's Problem.

*** Many real-life societies used to have (or perhaps still have) concept of being considered words so offensive that starting a fight in response to them was taken as completely acceptable. "Suicide/by being bloody stupid" is this concept taken UpToEleven.

** It definitely seems to be a thing that he hasn't quite come into his ability to handle unexpected situations yet. He gets some CharacterDevelopment throughout the series, and it hasn't happened yet. It's not just the slightly wrongheaded attempts to handle the dragon; "'They were laughing at me,' said the Patrician. 'I could tell!'" is ''amazingly'' petulant and emotional compared with his later behavior. He's clearly pretty clever about running the city when it's not any more wild and crazy than usual, but he hasn't been through enough major crises yet to handle them beyond trying to not get killed or turned into a lizard.