This page is for the entirety of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. For YMMV items that only pertain to specific adaptations, please see the subpages below:
- Adaptation Displacement: Most people are familiar with the series as either a five or six book "trilogy", unaware that it was first a radio program. To be absolutely clear:
- 1. It was a radio series...
- 2. That got adapted into a book series...
- 3. And a newly recorded audio series, released as an album...
- 4. Which had a TV show made of it...
- 5. That had a text-based computer game made of it...
- 6. And a comic book version...
- 7. Which, many, many years later, had a movie made of it...
- 8. And we can only assume it will eventually be available in pill form at some point.
- 9. Don't forget, there's already a towel.
- Angst? What Angst?: Trillian barely notices when her home planet is blown up and billions are killed. Dent has the decency to be shocked for a few minutes, though once he realizes that he can't quite wrap his head around the magnitude of the loss he starts going into shock.
- The film version of Trillian doesn't even find out until late in the story thanks to Zaphod. When she finds out, she goes ballistic.Trillian: Love and kisses?!?!
- The film version of Trillian doesn't even find out until late in the story thanks to Zaphod. When she finds out, she goes ballistic.
- Awesome Ego: Zaphod in all versions.
- Can't Un-Hear It: The cast of the radio/television series. This was intentional on the part of Douglas Adams, especially with Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, as Adams specifically wrote the character with Simon in mind.
- Common Knowledge: 42 is not "The Meaning of Life", it's "The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything." The reason it seems so random and nonsensical is because it's only an Answer, and no one actually knows what the Question is.
- Discredited Meme: Like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the jokes in this franchise have been referenced to death.
- Wikipedia is REALLY tired of people changing the entire article for Earth to say "Mostly Harmless".
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Marvin is quite popular among the fans.
- Genius Bonus: "Frood" is slang for "really-together person", and the Old English "frōd" meant "wise" or "experienced". Uncertain if this was intentional or not.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Wikipedia. "While it has many errors and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it is slightly cheaper."
- To say nothing of the fact that anyone could wander in and write a paragraph.
- The Wikimedia project also has a travel guide.
- Wikipedia's article on the series itself even mentions the Guide's similarities to Wikipedia.
- You can probably compare the shoddiness of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's products to your least favorite tech company.
- Speaking of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, their motto for GPP's ("Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!") could just as easily apply to Sphero.
- There's a throwaway line early in the series (books and radio) about Arthur wishing he had a daughter so he could forbid her to marry a Vogon. Towards the end of the series, he ends up getting one, Random. Who he then forbids from marrying a Vogon.
- It's amazing how much the titular guide book resembles the Kindle.
- As this Numberphile video shows, 42 is the only (eligible) number under 100 that hasn't been represented as the sum of three cubes, making it an answer without a question.
- Wikipedia. "While it has many errors and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it is slightly cheaper."
- It Was His Sled: 42 is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.
- Memetic Mutation:
- "42"
- "Zaphod's just this guy, you know?"
- "DON'T PANIC"
- "Ten out of ten for style [or X], but minus several million for good thinking, huh?"
- Mis-blamed: Many people actually cry They Changed It, Now It Sucks! to the various adaptation(s) because they're "not like the book" (which was itself an adaptation of the radio series). Adams wanted the various formats to diverge as much as possible, and succeeded.
- Pop Culture Holiday: May 25th is known as "Towel Day" and celebrates the work of Douglas Adams. Fans carry around a towel due to a passage in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and an earlier reference in the preceding radio series) that praises the versatility of towels for interstellar hitchhikers. May 25th doesn't have any particular meaning in the fandom, the anniversary of the death of Douglas Adams is a few weeks earlier and it took time to set up the first Towel Day.
- Suspiciously Similar Song: To "Tunnel of Love" by Dire Straits, in the radio adaptation of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.
- The Woobie: Arthur's the Cosmic Plaything. Marvin's The Eeyore.
- This pretty much sums it up.
- This
