As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- The sheer incompetency of Mr. Tulip and Mr. Pin is based primarily on them not being well-informed by Lord De Worde and his council about Ankh-Morpork and how lethal its citizens and police force are. This sets up Lord De Worde as a foil to William and the Times, to showcase the importance of a newspaper's purpose: to inform the public of what they want/need to know, so that they can make good enough decisions on the welfare of themselves and of others.
- Pin and Tulip were actually very lucky that Mr. Slant's business partners weren't in when they came back to threaten the zombie in his office. According to Maskerade, both partners (Mr. Morecombe and Mr. Honeyplace) are vampires, and possibly not so reformed as Otto.
- William learns about the nature of truth throughout the novel, which impacts on his previous adherence to the exact objective account:
- Midway around the novel, William and Sacharissa debate about the truth and its value to people: William believes the truth has value to everyone, Sacharissa says not everyone has the liberty to act according to the truth.
- William's next lesson comes from Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, who works for the Times' rival paper feeding stories. While he isn't exactly a moral character, he does point out that he tells truths with just enough leeway for interpretation, which keeps most parties happy. The right to print what you wish/believe, goes hand in hand with the right for the public to believe whatever they want/wish.
- William's final solution to dealing with his father lies between his truth and the above two points: he will get the truth out, but will leave out specific details to protect his family's name, and will leave it to whoever is intrigued by the report to make investigations on their own and sort it out.
Fridge Horror
- The abusive nature of William's childhood is mentioned almost in passing, but the implications are awful.
- The nature of the truth always bothered William. He had been brought up to tell it or, more correctly, to "own up" and some habits are hard to break if they've been beaten in hard enough. And Lord de Worde had inclined to the old proverb that as you bend the twig, so grows the tree. William had not been a particularly flexible twig. Lord de Worde had not, himself, been a violent man. He'd merely employed them. Lord de Worde, as far as William could recall, had no great enthusiasm for anything that involved touching people.
