Funny / Good Omens

Just because it's the End of Days, doesn't mean you can't have some laughs along the way.

Being a book that was co-written by legendary humorist Terry Pratchett, you can expect there will be witty jokes moving at a rapid fire rate.

Examples

• In real life: Gaiman and Pratchett did a radio interview when the book came out, and slowly realized that the interviewer wasn't aware that the book was fictional, and thought they were a couple of religious kooks writing about what they thought would be the real apocalypse. They spent the rest of it viciously trolling him.
• The caveat page, usually reserved for copyrights and book information, has this small line of text:
  Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt this in your own home.
• The dramatis personae, lumping Americans in with aliens, Atlanteans, and other strange and wondrous creatures of the End Times.
• Are we forgetting the beginning? Namely? "We shall call them Baby A, Baby C, and The Adversary..." What follows is a list of names at least a paragraph long...repeated every time they speak of the Antichrist until he is named.
  The Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness
• The fake member list for the witchfinder army.
  • The really funny part? The member list was, by the end, named after inanimate objects. Shadwell could have easily filled in names with actual names by cracking open an ordinary phone book.
• The part with Crowley, Aziraphale and Anathema's bike ("'Lord, heal this bike!'" / "'Get in, angel!' (...) Ah. She'd been perfectly safe after all.")
• The scene where Crowley stops the town busybody to ask him for directions. While his car is on fire.
  • "Excuse me, young man, but your car is on fire."
• The entire sequence detailing why Crowley's flat has the lushest—and most terrified—house plants in all of London.
• The description of Newton's absolutely terrible Japanese car, including pre-recorded messages like "Prease to frarsten sleat-bert?" which plays whether or not your seat belt is fastened, and an airbag that deploys on dangerous occasions, like when a faulty airbag has unexpectedly deployed and is blocking your view of the road. Later, his car starts spouting elegant haikus instead, after Adam puts everything back except with a sense of humor.
• If you're a fan of The Golden Girls (as Crowley is), you'll probably get a kick out of the scene where a demon possesses Rose and uses her to deliver what should have been a brief message to Crowley, but seeing as how it chose Rose as host, it ends up rambling for ten minutes (after which Crowley realizes he has quite lost the thread of the plot).
• When we're witness to exactly what a drunk Crowley (demon) and a drunk Aziraphale (angel) are like.
  • "The point is... the point is... DOLPHINS."
  • "...so every hundred years this bird flies-" "-limps-" "-flies..."
    • "...And you still won't be done watching The Sound of Music. And you will enjoy it. Every time."
  • "Big brains. That's my point. Size of. Size of. Size of big damn brains. Whole damn sea full of brains."
    "Kraken."
    Crowley gave Aziraphale the long cool look of one who has had a girder dropped in front of his train of thought.
• The bit about a certain sea monster:
  The Kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.
• "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me... for me..." - I always end up grinning when I listen to Bohemian Rhapsody...
  • The level of amusement varies, depending on how funny you find Crowley's panic.
    ... Bee-elzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me...
    "For me," murmured Crowley. His expression went blank for a moment. Then he gave a strangled scream and wrenched the on-off knob.
• Famine's plans for his starvation-inducing restaurant chain are prevented from reaching the Continent when his agents are shot less than half an hour after setting foot in France.
• "Upon meeting Aziraphale for the first time, most people formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide."
• The Them conduct their own Spanish Inquisition using Brian's bullfighting poster, Pepper's little sister, and the village pond. "Art thou a witch, Oh lay?"
  • Or how they made a ducking stool, but messed up a few points and ended up just using it as a see-saw into the lake.
  • Wensleydale, being The Smart Guy, knows that since the Spanish Inquisition was Catholic you have to speak Latin. But since he's still a kid, this results in him saying things like "Benedictine inna decanter".
• Crowley's car turning tapes and CDs left in it for more than about two weeks into "Best of Queen" albums.
  • And how using this to turn Hastur into Freddie Mercury would be a Fate Worse than Death.
  • AND the insistence on Hell using whatever their target is watching or listening to as a way of communicating. Which means that Freddie Mercury suddenly starts singing messages at Crowley.
  • This becomes a bit of a Brick Joke near the end of the book when Crowley hijacks a U.S. Army jeep that, thanks to Crowley's diabolic intervention, has suddenly always had a cassette player.
    Crowley inserted a cassette labled "Handel's Water Music", and it stayed "Handel's Water Music" all the way home.
• Newt showing his Witchfinder ID to the American soldier.
  "What's this here", he said suspiciously, "about us got to give you faggots?"
  "Oh, we have to have them," said Newt. "We burn them."
  The guard's face broadened into a grin. And they'd told him England was soft. "Right on!" he said.
• While we're on witchfinders, the line that Shadwell's knowledge of The Bible begins and ends with Exodus 22:18, which concerns witches, the suffering to live of, and why you shouldn't.
• Aziraphale doing magic tricks. Which is to say, using plain old-fashioned illusions and sleight of hand, while refusing on principle to use his Reality Warper powers.
• "'We want a word with you,' said Ligur (in a tone of voice intended to imply that 'word' was synonymous with 'horrifically painful eternity.')"
• While playing a video trivia game at a pub, Death outs himself to his fellow Horsepersons when he objects to a question asking when Elvis Presley died.
  I do not care what it says. I never laid a finger on him.
• The four other Bikers of the Apocalypse picking their names. "You can't be answer phones!"
• Newt discovering that not only did Agnes predict him and Anathema having sex, but many of the Devices down the centuries have written in advice.
• Crowley trying to conceptualise good luck: "a blessi- a godse- a windfall." What's even funnier is that after six thousand years, they're still almost invoking the names of their enemies.
• Shadwell talking to Madame Tracy. Everything about Madame Tracy. And everything about Shadwell.
• Madame Tracy (and Aziraphale) on her scooter: 'Gerrronnnimooooo!'.
• The Buggre Alle This Bible. What really pushes this one from amusing into laugh-out-loud hilarious isn't so much the text of what was inserted, but where it was inserted. To wit:
  2. And bye the border of Dan, fromme the east side to the west side, a portion for Aſher.
  3. And bye the border of Aſher, fromme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali.
  4. And bye the border of Naphtali, from the east side untoe the west side, a portion for Manaſſeh.
  5. Buggre Alle this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typeſettinge. Master Biltonn iſ no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbeſticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thiſ Ennywone with half an oz. of Sense should bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thiſ mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workeſhoppe. @ *"Æ@;!*
  6. And bye the border of Ephraim, from the east ſide even untoe the west ſide, a portion for Reuben.
  • What makes it funnier if you're listening to the audiobook is the narrator getting increasingly more and more angry as she reads the line.
    • It gains even more if you know that at the time of the purported printing, Southwark was London's Red Light District.
    • The novel's deadpan description of the "amended" verse as "the lengthy compositor's error, if such it may be called" definitely adds to the humour as well.
  • Not to mention the three extra lines in Genesis:
    25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given to thee?
    26 And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.
    27 And the Lord did not ask him again.
• The commando who charges into the hotel with a dagger between his teeth:
  "I glaim gis oteg in der gaing og der—" he paused. He took the knife out of his teeth and began again.
• The EULA for the (presumably Apple) computer Crowley bought, and what he does with them: he sends them Below to the department that draws up Faustian contracts with a sticky note attached saying only "Learn, guys."
• Newt once tried to assemble a joke electrical non-working thingy designed for the most hamhanded tech-deficient beginner; if hitting the on-switch does absolutely nothing, that means it's "working". When Newt finished it and turned it on, it picked up Radio Moscow.
• Aziraphale possessing a televangelist mid-speech about the Rapture and proceeding to give the audience a blunt "Reason You Suck" Speech, saying that Heaven honestly didn't care about humans and didn't have a 100% chance of winning, and inevitably humans would be demolished in the upcoming war between Heaven and Hell. Then he notices exactly where he is:
  Aziraphale: Gosh, am I on television?
  • Most of the sequence of Aziraphale possessing people, actually.
• Aziraphale's one-sided conversation with Crowley's answering machine, in which he's rather preoccupied and as a result completely fails to notice he's speaking to a recording. Culminates in this exchange:
  Machine: BeeeEEeeeeEEE
  Aziraphale: Stop making noises!
• The Them mistaking the Metatron for Megatron.
• Aziraphale offering Crowley the obligatory We're-About-To-Get-Creamed-So-Let's-Make-Amends concession that, deep down, the demon's got enough goodness in him to be worthy of liking ... and then Crowley turning the cliche around and saying Aziraphale is worth bothering to like because, deep down, he's a bit of a bastard.
• On his way to investigate Lower Tadfield, Newton Pulsifer encounters a flying saucer.
  "You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?"
  • Not to mention the lawyer-friendly Dalek cameo. Which is particularly funny given that Neil Gaiman later went on to write for Doctor Who.
• It's mentioned that the only person to call Pepper by her real name is her mother... and Greasy Johnson and his gang. When they're feeling particularly brave. And they're absolutely sure she's out of earshot.
• When the Four Horsepersons walk into a biker bar, some bikers there ask them about their jackets, which say "HELLS ANGELS" on the back. When asked what chapter they belong to, Death takes him literally and replies "Revelation, Chapter Six".
  "Verses two through eight," added the boy in white, helpfully.
  • Leading to all the gang members but one looking dumb, the last one noting they are in big trouble — he had to hide in a hotel room for a good while and had nothing but the Bible to read, so he gets the reference. He later thinks he would've paid a bit more attention to Revelation if he knew he was going to be in it.
  • Although, considering that this is (essentially) the Discworld version of Death, he might just be messing with the bikers.
• Everything about Dog going from a fierce Hellhound to, well, a small, yappy dog. In between the frankly creepy segments of Adam's Reality Warper powers manifesting, we get Dog bemoaning all the fun things he'll never get to do again in Hell. He's going to miss chasing rats and smells and fetching sticks!
  • He even laments that, well, "there are no bitches in Hell".
  • Later, it's implied Dog is attempting to hump R.P. Tyler's poodle.
• After talking down Beelzebub and the Metatron, there is a huge earthquake as Satan himself is coming. Cue a sweep of the arm from Adam... and it stops, only for Mr. Young to show up, because Adam heard "his father is coming." And of course... "Adam rarely did what his father wanted him to."
• Mr R.P Tyler giving the Four Horsemen directions to the air base in a really long-winded, convoluted way. It has to be read to be believed.
  Famine: I, uh, I'm not sure I got that...
  Death: I did. Let us go.
  • The fact that Tyler intentionally gave them a convoluted route, despite there being more direct ways.
• Crowley has a car phone, the book having been written before cell phones became widely available. "Like most demons, [Ligur] had a very limited grasp of technology, and so he was just about to say something like 'I bet it needs a lot of wire'..."
• Crowley is behind Manchester and Glasgow, while Aziraphale is behind Edinburgh and London. Neither of them did Milton Keynes, but both counted it as a success. In the American edition, this is accompanied by a footnote, which explains that Milton Keynes is a new-ish city that was designed to be a pleasant place to live... and that many people in the U.K. find this amusing.
• Crowley is responsible for the notoriously-hellish M25 highway. He pulled this off with a few computer hacks, a small bribe, and a night spent rearranging survey markers.
  • Apparently when Crowley got the first report of tail-back shortly after it was opened, he felt the glow of a successful bad job.
  • The Brick Joke at the climax, when (as Aziraphale predicted) the seeds of evil bring only destruction to the evildoer, and Crowley's beloved Bentley is incinerated by the M25.
• When trying to persuade Heaven and Hell not to fight, Adam talks about how he and the Them don't really want to defeat the Johnsonites, because it wouldn't really be any fun. No one present has even the slightest clue who the Johnsonites are or what he's talking about. Aziraphale assumes they're some obscure Christian sect he hasn't heard of.
• In the diner scene, there's an amusing Lampshade Hanging of the Jesus Taboo. When Big Ted realizes he's talking to Death himself, he exclaims "Jesus Christ!". Pigbog takes him literally and says that "He's probably looking for somewhere to park his bike." This is the only direct reference to the Messiah during a story about Armageddon.
• The entire discussion on how God does not play chess, but rather prefers his own game, which to the other players (I.E.: everyone) resembles a mysterious game of poker, played in a pitch-dark room for unknown stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and "smiles all the time".