History Fridge / ThePhantomTollbooth

** Both the Lethargians and ultimately the Demons have one thing in common, they both can combine into larger forms and lack the individuality of the heroes, which makes sense given their themes. The former is too lazy and actively tries to avoid effort, thus doesn't attempt to make the conscious choice to establish uniqueness as they will literally blend into and split out from each other without care. In the case of the latter, they are a collective of ignorant personifications of evil, who give off the pretense of being individualized with their evils. Still, when truly pushed to a corner, they will blend into mindless beasts to instinctively crush their enemies. While good can make the effort to find commonality between others to make up for their differences evil tends to cave into collective mentality when they're not intentionally loners, joining as one creature because they're all ultimately facets of the same concept on a fundamental level. They lack the creativity to apply their specialized talents and resort to brute force due to their ignorance.

* Film only: There are two easily-missed moments hinting that Azaz and the Mathemagician aren't as irreconcilable as they like to pretend. Azaz says "Things which are just as bad also are equally good," a mathematical idea. And in the Mathemagician's song, he refers to numbers as "Dewey Decimal dearies," referring to the Dewey Decimal System of organizing ''books.''

* The Humbug should have known that he hadn't named the biggest number he could think of (9,999,999,000,999 9/10), even excusing unfamiliarity with infinity -- he completely zeroed out the thousands places, and he didn't fully extend the trillions places.

* Film only: There are two easily-missed moments hinting that Azaz and the Mathemagician aren't as irreconcilable as they like to pretend. Azaz says "Things which are just as bad also are equally good," a mathematical idea. And in the Mathemagician's song, he refers to numbers as "Dewey Decimal dearies," referring to the Dewey Decimal System of organizing ''books.''

* Of ''course'' Canby jumps to Conclusions all the time. The way that he ''gives hints about his name'' ("I'm as stupid as can be", etc) is chock full of them! Because even after he grows to giant-size when he says he's "tall as can be", it'd still be hypothetically possible for him to grow taller still, same as Milo's guess at the [[InsistentTerminology number of greatest possible magnitude]] can still be added to.

* Of ''course'' Canby jumps to Conclusions all the time. The way that he ''explains his own name'' ("I'm as foolish as can be", etc) is chock full of them! Because even when he grows to giant-size when he says he's "tall as can be", it'd still be hypothetically possible for him to grow taller still, same as Milo's guess at that number of greatest possible magnitude could still be added to.

* Of ''course'' Canby jumps to Conclusions all the time. The way that he ''explains his own name'' ("I'm as foolish as can be", etc) is chock full of them!

* Officer Shrift's ridiculous prison sentences and nonchalance about seeing someone out and about well before the several million years are up make perfect sense when you remember he's an authority in Dictionopolis, where numbers don't matter. He has no idea just how big or little any number, be it two or six million, really is.

* I first read ''ThePhantomTollbooth'' when I was about nine. It wasn't until I reread it, six or seven years later, that I actually understood the symbolism and realised it was one of the most awesome books I've ever read. -- Salivanth
* Officer Shrift's ridiculous prison sentences and nonchalance about seeing someone out and about well before the several million years are up make perfect sense when you remember he's an authority in Dictionopolis, where numbers don't matter. He has no idea just how big or little any number, be it two or six million, really is.