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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/infi_8.jpg]]
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3Creator/DavidFosterWallace’s relentless {{doorstopper}} of a novel, first published in 1996. ''Infinite Jest'' takes place in [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture the not-too-distant future]], around the Enfield Tennis Academy and the neighboring Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House in suburban UsefulNotes/{{Boston}}. There are roughly four narrative threads through the novel:
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5# The lives of the students training and studying at Enfield, founded by auteur James O. "Himself" Incandenza, mother Avril "Moms" Incandenza and Avril's adopted brother Charles "C.T." Tavis.
6# Various Boston residents such as [[GentleGiant Don Gately]] and [[TheFaceless Joelle Van Dyne]] who hit rock bottom with their drug and alcohol addictions and turn to Ennet House as well as AA and NA meetings in order to stay on the wagon.
7# The [[ExpandedStatesOfAmerica Organization of North American Nations]], or [[FunWithAcronyms O.N.A.N]] and a group of radical Québécois separatists known as Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents' (The Wheelchair Assassins) efforts to seek a film called ''[[TitleDrop Infinite Jest]]'', directed by James O. Incandenza and rumored to be so absorbing that [[LotusEaterMachine anyone who sees loses all other interests and eventually dies]].
8# The history of the [[BigScrewedUpFamily Incandenzas]], with a focus on the youngest son [[TeenGenius Hal]].
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10On top of all that, the novel deals with issues like the nature of the self, family, emptiness and absence, addiction and recovery, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking the minutia of tennis]], there's just no way to adequately summarize this massively complex novel here. With nearly 100 pages of end notes, this may be one of the only novels for which you will need to use two bookmarks simultaneously.
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12----
13!!This book provides examples of:
14* AccidentalAthlete: Orin Incandenza, the older brother in the family, starts out playing tennis, and is really good at it. He goes to Boston University, and finding that college tennis doesn't really suit him, he tries out for the football team, only to find that he isn't big enough. As he is leaving the try-out, he punts a football, and the coach realizes he is a really good kicker...''because'' of the tennis (tennis has a tendency to really work out one's leg muscles and often leaves one side stronger than the other, to boot).
15* AddictionDisplacement: Many characters, but none so horrifyingly as [[spoiler:Randy Lenz's]] evening constitutionals.
16* TheAlcoholic: James O. Incandenza, Jr. (and Sr.), and a few others besides. Junior ''seemed'' to be [[FunctionalAddict functioning]] until shortly before his death, though.
17* AllPsychologyIsFreudian: ETA's counselor Dolores Rusk approaches sessions with students as such, leading to them avoiding her.
18* AllThereInTheManual: The book's extensive end notes. Some of them play with the trope by being so long and complex as to effectively constitute additional book chapters. Given the novel's AnachronicOrder, you could stick them almost anywhere in the narrative proper and it wouldn't change a thing.
19* AlternateHistory: Diverges in the 90s, with such events like the construction of the Superconducting Super Collider[[note]]cancelled in 1993[[/note]], [[NoodleIncident MIT Language Riots]], [[UsefulNotes/{{NATO}} the dissolution of NATO]], and:
20* AlternativeCalendar: In DFW's alternate future, even the names of years have been sold for ad space, leading to such confusing chronological reference points as the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment and the Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken.
21* AnArmAndALeg: Burt Smith loses his hands and feet to frostbite after being savagely beaten and left out in a snowstorm. [[spoiler: [[DramaticIrony He ends up staying in Ennet House with one of the perpetrators.]]]]
22* AnachronicOrder: The book starts sometime after the end of the plot, and then cycles back through the year or so leading up to that point. And then you're ''still'' not quite sure what happened.
23* AndIMustScream: The fate of Hal Incandenza. That's not a spoiler; it's in the first chapter.
24* AsianAndNerdy: ETA student [=LaMont=] Chu aims to be an Asian tennis star.
25* AuthorAppeal: David Foster Wallace was a pretty good tennis player in his youth, reaching the top levels of junior tennis in high school. It makes some sense that he'd set some of the novel around a tennis academy.
26** AuthorAvatar: Hal Incandenza resembles Wallace himself in his youth to some degree. However, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools the trope is not used in any way beyond these resemblances simply existing]]. Indeed, although his empathy for the character is obvious, [[AllThereInTheManual one would have to have read Wallace's biography and probably some of his nonfiction]] to even see the actual similarities.
27*** Also, James' work is described once or twice as deliberately abstruse and unentertaining, seeming in some ways hostile to the audience.
28* ArtisticLicenseHistory: In-universe example by both Mario and James Sr.'s portrayals of ONAN history.
29* ArtisticLicensePhysics: The depiction of annular fusion relies on highly unorthodox notions of nuclear physics.
30* AuthorVocabularyCalendar: A novel this size, one could be forgiven for assuming this out of hand, [[AvertedTrope but nope]]. Aside from some FutureSlang and tennis terminology (which is always explained), conversational English reigns throughout.
31** Admittedly, there are a fair number of oddball ten-dollar words tossed in... but only where it would suit the voice of the viewpoint character, in which case it's seamlessly blended into ordinary conversational English.
32** Played with to go along with the theme of everyone being full of things that are impossible to communicate. Say, early on, when James Incandenza mentions a few hugely important plot points, but before you have the context to know why they're important, and in such dense, obscure words that your eyes slide right off.
33* AxCrazy: "C" insists on murdering everyone he and his junkie friends rob. The unnamed narrator of the chapter he appears in convinces him to settle for severe beatings.
34* BestServedCold: Pemulis' philosophy when it comes to revenge, as Miles Penn can attest.
35* TheBigGuy: Don Gately, Lucien Antitoi, Roy Tony. Teddy Schacht is a teenage version.
36* BigScrewedUpFamily: The Incandenza family. They like to play up their eccentricities in front of onlookers, but Joelle Van Dyne notes that they fail to totally hide the fact that the screwed-upness goes much, much deeper.
37* BrickJoke: The hatted A.D.A. who was the victim of Gately's toothbrush prank returns over 900 pages later.
38* BrownNote: The eponymous "Entertainment" is a short film apparently so captivating that anyone unfortunate enough to see it will become hopelessly and irreversibly addicted to it, wanting to do nothing but continue watching it again and again, even at the cost of physical harm to themselves. [[spoiler:According to a source that may or may not be reliable, it features the WorldsMostBeautifulWoman apologizing to her baby/the viewer, probably for killing them in their previous life.]]
39* ButtMonkey: The aptly-nicknamed "Poor" Tony Krause. If he appears in a chapter, something nasty ''will'' happen to him.
40* {{Calvinball}}: One of the courts at the ETA is intricately painted with a map of the Earth and all its nations. Its only use is for a training game of nuclear geopolitics called "Eschaton", which has become something of an Academy tradition. True to the trope, all that is made explicitly clear is that nuclear strikes are represented by serving tennis balls onto the map; the rest of the rules are stated to be so complex that they can only be understood through total memorization.
41** This part of the book has actually been adapted as a music video, for "The Calamity Song" by Music/TheDecemberists.
42* CanadaEh: Inverted with the A.F.R. They're Canadian, quirky, and ''scary as hell''. The traditional U.S.A.CanadaEh relationship is also PlayedForDrama, with the American administration inflicting grave abuses on Canada.
43* ChildProdigy: Hal Incandenza was one. He retains his prodigious photographic memory and total recall of multiple dictionary, but nowadays the focus is more on him being a ''tennis'' prodigy, having suddenly gone from a good to an incredible player at age 17 - something that almost never happens in tennis. The weight of talent and potential and the effect they have on people (Hal and his dad in particular) is one of the themes of the novel.
44* ChurchMilitant: The nuns in James O. Incandenza's film 'Blood Sister: One Tough Nun'.
45* ColdBloodedTorture: [[spoiler:The gruesome demise of Eugene Fackelmann]].
46* CollegeRadio: Joelle Van Dyne/Madame Psychosis has a program at WYYY called 60 Minutes, More or Less that consists of her reading various things aloud to the audience against a background of dark ambient music.
47* CookedToDeath: Disturbed genius filmmaker James Incadenza [[DrivenToSuicide kills himself]] by rigging a microwave so he can stick his head in while it's running. The results are compared to [[YourHeadAsplode sticking an unsliced potato in]].
48* CooperationGambit: The America First and remediation platform of Gentle's CUSP was supported by both right-wing nationalists and left-wing environmentalists.
49* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Standard procedure for the A.F.R. They seem to be particularly fond of using railroad spikes.
50** ''Self-inflicted'' by James Incandenza, who puts his head in a microwave oven, which apparently caused said head to [[LudicrousGibs "pop like an uncut spud"]]. [[spoiler: He may have been trying to destroy the cartridge implanted in his brain.]]
51* CrypticBackgroundReference: Characters' internal narration often references events from their past without explaining what they are. Most of these get an explanation as the book progresses.
52* DeadlyPrank: Pemulis tries to play an electric-buzzer-type prank on Dolores Rusk. He ends up almost killing a cleaning lady.
53* DeadPersonConversation: [[spoiler: The wraith of James Incandenza may be visiting one or more of the other characters]].
54* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House (''[[RunningGag sic]]'').
55* DisappearedDad: Very common for characters in the novel.
56* {{Doorstopper}}: This baby clocks in at a mean 1079 pages, including the (required) appendix. It's so intimidating that [[http://infinitesummer.org/ an on-line support group]] was formed to help those who'd always meant to but never quite managed to finish it, a full ''thirteen years'' after its initial publication.
57* DoubleAgent: Remy Marathe is actually a "quadruple agent"...[[spoiler:possibly becoming a "quintuple agent" later on]].
58* DownerEnding: The first chapter, which chronologically serves as an epilogue to the book, ends with Hal completely incapable of forming coherent sentences or communicating with other people, and as a result losing his chance at a tennis scholarship and being put in an institution.
59* DrivesLikeCrazy: Seemingly every motorist in Boston.
60* DysfunctionJunction: All of the characters in the book seem to have issues growing up, with drugs, etc.
61* {{Dystopia}}: [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] in that it doesn't affect the main characters' lives much, but the O.N.A.N. is in pretty bad shape, what with the toxic waste crisis, Canadian terrorism [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and corporate-sponsored calendar]].
62* TheEeyore: Kate Gompert. Played for laughs and for drama at different points.
63* ElaborateUniversityHigh: Enfield Tennis Academy. It's got ''underground tunnels''.
64* EmptyShell: The fate of those who watch "The Entertainment".
65* EvilCripple: Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, a.k.a. The Wheelchair Assassins of Southern Québec. How there's so many of these guys who need wheelchairs is explained by a game that kids in the area play: trying to jump across train tracks at the last possible second before the train comes.
66* EyeScream: [[spoiler:Again, what happens to Fackelmann]].
67* FantasticDrug: The incredibly potent DMZ. Described as [[ThisIsYourPremiseOnDrugs "acid that has itself dropped acid"]], its hallucinogenic properties are rumored to be so powerful that it may cause the user to permanently lose the ability to communicate with the rest of the world. Hal and Pemulis are still eager to experiment with it.
68* FictionalPoliticalParty: President Gentle's Clean US Party. Yes, as in "[[FunWithAcronyms CUSP]]."
69* FootnoteFever: The story proper ends at page 981, with the remaining 96 pages being taken up by 388 end notes, some of which are several pages long, and a few more which have their '''own''' footnotes and/or end notes. Readers quickly figure out that the only way to [[IThinkYouBrokeHim avoid permanent damage]] is to use two bookmarks: One for your place in the main text, and the other for where you are in the end notes. Wallace said in interviews that he wanted to fracture the text while still leaving it readable.
70* FriendlyEnemy: Steeply and Marathe get along.
71* FunWithAcronyms: In spades. For starters, America, Canada, and Mexico have merged to form the Organization of North American Nations, or O.N.A.N. Rest assured that the term 'O.N.A.Nistic' appears at some point.
72** Also the 'Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed' (UHID), whose members wear a face-concealing veil in public.
73** Let's not forget the Wounded, Hurting, Inadequately Nurtured but Ever-Recovering Survivors (WHINERS).
74* TheFundamentalist: Remy Marathe, judging by his conversations with Steeply on the moral health of the O.N.A.N. For example, he sees the tendency to condemn people as "fundamentalists" as proof that they are aimless and without cause.
75* FunnyForeigner: The Pakistani ETA student Idris Arslanian has a number of quirks like speaking too formally, being a devout Muslim, and smelling of hotdogs.
76* FutureSlang: Inspired by the creation of The Great Concavity/Convexity, the word "map" has come to mean "face," and so to "erase someone's map" has come to mean murder or horrible disfigurement, while "erasing your own map" refers to suicide.
77** There's also local Boston slang, some of which (like "mitt" for "meter") is almost certainly fictional, while some (like "eating cheese" for "ratting someone out") might or might not be.
78* GentleGiant: Downplayed with Don Gately, played straight with Lucien Antitoi.
79* {{Gorn}}: The deaths of [[spoiler: Lucien Antitoi and Eugene Fackelmann]]. James Incandenza gets a GoryDiscretionShot. Mostly.
80* GrammarNazi: Avril Incandenza, in both the best and worst possible ways. Case in point, her crusade to change "10 Items or Less" to "10 Items or Fewer" is repeatedly brought up when discussing her.
81** Hal reads the Oxford English Dictionary for fun, and it shows.
82* GreenThumb: A side-effect of the annular fusion reaction, causing rapid detofixication of pollutants and subsequent uncontrolled plant growth.
83* GroinAttack: Played to a sickening degree in Gately's [[spoiler: fight against the Canadians]].
84* [[GrossoutShow Grossout Novel]]: There's really quite a lot of disgusting (and [[GrossUpCloseUp meticulously described]]) bodily stuff going on in this book. Some of it is played for drama, some of it for laughs. Sometimes both at the same time, like [[spoiler: Gately and Fackelmann lying around in their own urine]].
85* TheGrotesque: Mario, the middle Incandenza child, is bradykinetic, leptosomatic, macrocephalic, homodontic, and suffers from familial dysautonomia, among other ailments. He's also one of the kindest and most sympathetic characters in the book.
86* HeavyMetalUmlaut: "Brocken" is no "Bröcken" (more examples available). So Wälläce didn't do his hömewörk or, since it sounds unbelievable, did it on (whatever) pürpöse.
87* TheHedonist: Humans in general, judging from the anecdote about brain pleasure circuit stimulation getting tons of volunteers and the overall theme of people getting pleasure from drugs, etc.
88* HellIsThatNoise: One of the creepiest things about the AFR is a sound identified as "The Squeak", coming from their wheels. Naturally, if you hear "The Squeak", you're royally screwed.
89* HermitGuru: Played with by ETA guru Lyle, who spends his time in the ETA weight room alone at night and dispenses words of wisdom to those who [[BizarreTasteInFood offer their sweat]].
90* HowWeGotHere: {{Subverted}}, since the reader is never told the exact nature of "here".
91* HurricaneOfEuphemisms: A signature of Troeltsch, ETA's aspiring newscaster, who commentates matches with many synonyms for "beating" someone at a tennis game.
92* {{Hypocrite}}: Randy Lenz blames his continuing cocaine use on how insufferable everyone around him is.
93* InexplicablyAwesome: We never do find out who the hell [[spoiler: E.T.A. "guru" Lyle]] really is.
94* InspirationallyDisadvantaged: Mario Incandenza's optimism in the face of a long list of disabilities is nearly this, but his character gets enough depth to avert it. Also averted by [[spoiler: Marathe's wife]], who is clearly a grotesque and pathetic mess.
95* IntoxicationEnsues: One of Pemulis' preferred methods for exacting revenge is spiking your food or drink with something mind-altering. The guys also consider spiking the cooler at a big event with the DMZ, but think better of it.
96* JerkAss: Orin Incandenza.
97* JigsawPuzzlePlot: There's no picture on the box, and at least half of the pieces ''seem'' to be missing, but since nobody actually knows how many pieces there are ''supposed'' to be...[[WMG/InfiniteJest well, good luck, kid.]]
98* LadyDrunk: Gately's mother. Pat Montesian also used to be one.
99* LadyLooksLikeADude: Ann Kittenplan is a younger ETA student with a muscular build and mustache, implied to be due to steroid abuse.
100* LeFilmArtistique: Much of James Incandenza's filmography.
101* LeaveTheCameraRunning: James' film Cage III, which consisted of the movie audience being filmed until they got fed up and left.
102* LiteraryAllusionTitle: [[Theatre/{{Hamlet}} Alas, poor Yorick...]].
103* LoonyLaws: Legal parking in Boston switching sides every midnight, causing a dash to move one's car to the other side of the road before traffic enforcement slaps a fine.
104* ManChild: Literally, with a group where grown men act like children in a strange form of therapy.
105* MeaningfulName: "Incandenza" sounds rather like "incandescent", which means "emitting visible light as a result of being heated". This relates to James's work as a light physicist and hints at how [[StealthPun "bright"]] many of the Incandenzas are.
106* TheMetricSystemIsHereToStay: Wallace had a definite preference for metric units, and in his universe, they've become standard in the U.S. (probably as a result of [=ONANite=] integration).
107* MushroomSamba: [[spoiler:John 'No Relation' Wayne]] gets dosed without his knowledge, and this is hinted as one possible cause for [[spoiler:Hal's final condition]] as well.
108* MySecretPregnancy: Avril Incandenza was not aware she was pregnant with Mario until his premature and surgically assisted birth.
109* {{Neologism}}: David Foster Wallace has a few such as ascapartic[[note]]Based on the mythical English giant [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascapart Ascapart]][[/note]], used to refer to characters with a large build.
110* NoEnding: There is something of a gap between the ending of the story and the prologue, which chronologically is also the epilogue, so most of the plot lines are left dangling.
111* OnlyAFleshWound: Subverted when [[spoiler:Don Gately]] is shot in the shoulder.
112* OverlyLongGag: A meta version with the extremely lengthy footnotes, some of which are so long they contain their ''own'' footnotes (although there often is at least a little plot-relevant information buried in there somewhere). Examples include the footnote that lists James Orin Incandenza's entire filmography and the long phone conversation between Hal and Orin.
113* OurPresidentsAreDifferent: President Johnny Gentle, former lounge singer and rabid germaphobe, but also responsible for turning a vast swath of Northeastern US and Southeastern Canada into a hazardous waste dump, falls somewhere between President Buffoon and President Lunatic.
114* ParentalIncest: Pemulis' older brother was raped by his father as a child. So was the comatose sister of one unnamed Boston AA speaker. [[spoiler: Avril Incandenza seemingly has John Wayne role-play as Orin while they have sex. Joelle's dad is in love with her, though we don't know if he ever tried to act on his feelings.]]
115* PsychoForHire: Bobby C for Whitey Sorkin.
116* TheQuietOne: John Wayne doesn't talk much. Hal's narration frequently notes the grim, machine-like quality he has about him.
117* PaintingTheMedium: Word choice, diction, and other text characteristics are affected by the viewpoint of the particular character in that part, with deviations addressed in footnotes.
118* PetTheDog: James Incandenza has some moments, namely building a complex custom camera for Mario, his conversation with Orin about pornography, and arguably [[spoiler: his conversation with Gately]].
119* PosthumousCharacter: James Incandenza is the most prominent example, but there are others, such as [[spoiler: Eugene Fackelmann]].
120* {{Postmodernism}}
121* ReallyGetsAround: By most reports, Avril Incandenza would sleep with anything male, except for her husband.
122** Orin seems to have inherited this particular trait.
123* RedBaron: E.T.A.'s Keith Freer attempts to invoke the trope by calling himself "The Viking", but most of his peers don't go along with it.
124* [[RewatchBonus Reread Bonus]]: Early references often don't have the context revealed until later in the book.
125* [[SawStarWarsTwentySevenTimes Saw M*A*S*H Twenty Seven Times]]: PlayedForDrama when Steeply recounts how his late father would obsessively watch reruns of the show.
126* SeriousBusiness: Tennis. While it's mostly justified by Enfield being a tennis academy, Schtitt's pseudo-Fichtian speeches kind of push it.
127* ScaryBlackMan: Roy Tony, as Erdedy finds out when his hugs are refused.
128* ShoutOut: Don W. Gately shares his initials with famous film director D. W. Griffith. Likely intentional, given the prominent role film art plays in the book.
129** The chapter concerning yrstruly, and his dealing with "C", is written in the style of Creator/WilliamSBurroughs, particularly ''Literature/NakedLunch''.
130* ShoutOutToShakespeare: Hamlet references abound. The title is pinched from a monologue by the perplexed prince himself. Himself's film company is named Poor Yorick Entertainment. Both stories prominently feature usurped father figures. Hamlet begins with a question: "Who's there?" IJ begins by answering "I am." There's also a pair of janitors who bear a striking resemblance to Hamlet's gravedigger.
131* ShownTheirWork: Contains more than the average human will ever want to know about tennis, pharmaceuticals, and 12-step programs.
132* ShowWithinAShow: Mario's puppet show, several excerpts from James O. Incandenza's filmography.
133** The aforementioned puppet show, which is intended as a political satire, also serves as a framing device for most of what we know of the Gentle administration.
134* SignatureHeadgear: Pemulis is almost never without his yachting cap, the lining of which can be detached to store drugs.
135* SirSwearsalot: Eugenio Martinez, a Filipino staff member at Ennet House, accentuates his strange analogies with strong words.
136* SoBeautifulItsACurse: Joelle van Dyne is so beautiful people have serious trouble interacting with her face-to-face. [[spoiler: It may or may not be the ''real'' reason she wears the veil.]]
137* TheShrink: Dolores Rusk and the unnamed grief counselor Hal is sent to after his dad's suicide are the well-meaning-but-useless kind. The narrative makes it somewhat murky whether they're genuinely incompetent or their patients are just refusing help, especially in the latter's case.
138* StacysMom: Avril Incandenza is over 50 years of age, but this doesn't stop sundry young men from finding her "endocrinologically compelling".
139* StepfordSmiler: One aspect of Avril Incandenza. Someone tells a story about how when Orin accidentally (and horrifically) killed her dog, she went on calmly acting as though nothing had happened in order not to upset him.
140* StopOrIShootMyself: The tale of one ETA student, Eric Clipperton, who threatened to shoot himself if he lost a match. [[spoiler: He eventually does, but not on the court.]]
141* StylisticSuck:
142** Both of the segments narrated by illiterate characters (Clenette Henderson and Emil "yrstruly" Minty).
143** The J.O. Incandenza filmography, to a certain degree.
144* SwitchingPOV: Occurs frequently, including once mid-paragraph (from Gately to Erdedy during [[spoiler:the fight with the Canadians outside Ennet House]]).
145* ThoseTwoGuys: The Enfield Academy custodians Kenkle and Brandt serve as this.
146* TinyGuyHugeGirl: James Incandenza states that his mother was taller than his father. Additionally, the statuesque Avril is having an affair with her diminutive stepbrother, Charles Tavis.
147** Repeated again in ''Literature/ThePaleKing'', where a character's father is shorter than his mother.
148* TitleDrop: ZigZagged. "Infinite Jest" is the title of James Incandenza's brain-destroying cartridge, but said title only appears in endnote 24, his filmography. In the narration, it's only ever called "the Entertainment" or "the ''samizdat''".
149* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: It's never specified, but from some references to characters' ages and the approximate beginning of "Subsidized Time," you can extrapolate that the plot takes place sometime in the [[TurnOfTheMillennium first decade]] [[TheNewTens or so]] of the 21st Century, 10-15 years after the book was published. There is a reference to "the [[Radio/RushLimbaugh Limbaugh]] administration."
150** And later a reference to a poster of Limbaugh "from before the assassination" (929).
151** Judging by some of the dates we’re given, it seems likely that the first year of Subsidized Time would have been 2002. The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, when the majority of the story takes place, is probably 2009, 13 years after the book was published.
152* UnreliableNarrator: Besides the usual kind, there's also a lot of information given obliquely or secondhand, or subtly contracting other things we've been told.
153* UnusualEuphemism: "Technical interviews" for interrogations (usually [[ColdBloodedTorture enhanced]]) and "kertwangs" referring to undesirable things happening to oneself.
154* VideoPhone: Mockingly {{discussed}} in a passage which describes how widespread videophone use made people increasingly concerned about their physical appearance, leading to most people wearing elaborate masks whenever they used the phone (and, later, just switching back to normal phones).
155* WallOfText: 90% of the book barely have paragraph breaks.
156* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Orin is terrified of roaches. [[spoiler: The A.F.R. uses this against him]].
157* WholeEpisodeFlashback
158* WhoWouldBeStupidEnough: No one seems willing to believe that the death of Guillaume [=DuPlessis=] was just a bungled robbery. Which it was.
159* WorldsMostBeautifulWoman: Or rather the [[FunWithAcronyms Prettiest Girl Of All Time]].
160* {{Zeerust}}: Although the popularity of cartridge rental anticipates Netflix, Wallace didn't seem to predict that people would rather do away with physical media altogether and just stream their entertainment.
161** More likely a case of CrapsackWorld with regard to DRM. [=InterLace=] spontaneous dissemination and pulse (streaming) is mentioned as a capability on the more top-of-the-line devices, but the paperwork and verification needed to receive even a one-time pulse is noted to be so draconian and complex that most people just opt to rent cartridges.

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