History Literature / Hogfather

* RunningGag: Albert never getting to smoke a cigarette.[[note]]He finally gets to light up in his final scene, at which point he decides it tastes terrible and tosses it away[[/note]].

* ChariotPulledByCats: Hogfather goes around bringing gifts to good children in an elegant sleigh drawn by cute little pink pigs. Or at least the sanitized modern version does, when Death covers the Hogfather's shift, he does it with a massive crude sled built out of logs and drawn by equally huge, hairy and non-housebroken boars.

* CueTheSun

* DissonantSerenity: Teatime is especially eerie because he is almost perpetually gleeful, even in the face of what the other characters consider utterly horrifying. [[spoiler:Even upon actually dying, his ghost just laughs and says "you got it right!"]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Susan frequently notes childish drawings like the ones found in Twyla's nursery and Banjo's book are indicated by a simplisticly blue sky that only covers up a part of the drawing, crude houses, and trees and rivers with no details. [[spoiler:The Tooth Fairy's Realm has all of those attributes, which freak out Teatime's hired goons, but they nor the audience is meant to realize why until Susan pieces together that place uses the logic of children's perception of the world so the horizon has no actual sky in it, only a blank void like how a kid would draw it]].

* KidsAreCruel: A major theme of the book as it's repeatedly noted that kids actually relish a bit of violence and blood. The shoppers at the Maul cheer on the messed up Hogswatch display of figurines to be about fighting each other. Susan lets Gawain and Twyla play with other kids but keeps herself out of earshot of what they're saying to each other because their playtime will only seem pleasant at first glance. Notably, Pratchett does not portray this as wholly negative and treats the matter with some ambivalence as something that happens while growing up. Only Teatime takes it to excess as a manchild by solely indulging in violence.

* NoKillLikeOverkill: Teatime's AxCrazy nature is revealed from the description of him doing this in the course of an assassination. He did everything by the book, including using a mirror to check the whether the inhumed was breathing. That the victim's head was, at this time, several feet away from his body apparently did not enter into Teatime's mind as relevant. Or excessive.

* NoOneCouldSurviveThat: [[spoiler:Mr Teatime's [[DisneyVillainDeath fall from the top of the tower]]. He even disappeared afterward, like the other corpses. Because he was dead, and foolishly resuscitated by the wizards.]]

* PseudoSanta: The Hogfather, the hog-themed Discworld equivalent of Santa who went through considerable in-universe {{Disneyfication}} over the ages. Initially starting off in the distant past as a winter death-and-renewal deity placated by bonfires and ritual sacrifices, he later changed into a gift giver who brought people pork products (or bags of bloody bones to naught children) and eventually toys and treats in the modern day. His sleigh was originally pulled by wild boars but is now pulled by cute domestic pigs.

** Also thoroughly deconstructs the story of Good King Wenceslas. Admittedly, the King was more of jerkass than actually evil, but the point still stands; spontaneous charity on one day does not make up for neglect in the rest of the year, and also that forcing (inappropriate) charity on people who don't want it just to make ''yourself'' feel better is just as bad.