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Brick Joke/Literature: Difference between revisions
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Examples of [[{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]]s in [[{{SUBPAGENAME}}]] include:
== ''[[Discworld]]'' ==
* The
{{quote|"'Your wife is a great big hippo!" Rincewind said. }}▼
== Other works ==
* In ''[[Wayside School]] Gets A Little Stranger'', one of the students is [[Hypno Fool|hypnotized]] by the school psychologist so that any time a particular female classmate says "Pencil", he'll think her ears are candy and try to eat them. The remainder of the chapter details how, for the whole day, she comes agonizingly close to saying "Pencil" but never does. Since the chapter is titled "A Story With a Really Disappointing Ending", the reader is led to assume that this is the end of it. Several chapters later, the class does a physics experiment by throwing several school items out the window--and the same girl points out "We'll need a new pencil sharpener." Cue ear licking.
** Also thrown out the window is the principal's coffeepot. Six chapters after that, after announcing the installation of elevators, he then adds, "By the way, has anyone seen my coffeepot?"
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** For that matter, practically the entire book is like that. Almost any throwaway line anywhere in the book has some bearing on either plot, characters or backstory. Some just make better sense of other things, some are subtle foreshadowing, and some reappear long after you've forgotten them. It makes for a good second read.
** Since the plot involves {{spoiler|time travel}}, bricks fly in both directions.
*
▲* The ''[[Discworld]]'' book ''[[Men At Arms]]'' mentions that the sign on the Ankh-Morpork post office reads "NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT..." (in a parody of the motto on the US post building in New York). Eleven years later, Terry wrote ''[[Going Postal (Discworld)|Going Postal]]'', which reveals that the sign is spelled like that because several letters were stolen to make up the sign of a nearby hairdresser's called Hugos.
▲** An earlier brick joke would be in ''[[The Light Fantastic]]''. The Librarian's transformation into ape-hood is without much- if any- fanfare: ''And several of the wizards later swore that the small sad orangutan sitting in the middle of it all looked very much like the head librarian.'' Later on in the book we see the Librarian going "Oook" and accepting bananas.
▲*** This becomes a [[Running Gag]] throughout the series after the Librarian refuses to be turned back into a human.
▲** An example happens in ''[[The Last Hero]]''. Ponder Stibbons mentions in a throwaway line something along the lines of "I'm not a rocket wizard." Later in the book we see a picture of him wearing a t-shirt that says, "Actually I AM a rocket wizard."
▲** Another one occurs in ''[[Unseen Academicals]]''. Right at the start we are told that one Pastor Oats rode into a small town bringing...forgiveness. Not until right at the end do we find that {{spoiler|Forgiveness is [[I Call It "Vera"|the name of]] his Double-Headed Battle-Axe}}
▲*** There was also {{spoiler|"come on if you think you're hard enough"}}.
▲** The final battle between Mort and Death in the book ''[[Mort]]'', published in 1987, has the setup to a joke (?) that is only resolved in ''[[Soul Music (novel)|Soul Music]]'', published in 1994.
▲** In one Discworld book we're told that Rincewind could scream in panic in seceral languages, and that this is an important skill to have since while to us "ARGH!" might just be a panicked scream, in some languages it's a phrase translating into "Your wife is a great big hippo!" Later, something scary happens. How does Rincewind react?
▲{{quote|"'Your wife is a great big hippo!" Rincewind said. }}
▲** In ''[[The Light Fantastic]]'' and other early Discworld novels, much was made of the fact that wizards avoid saying the number between 7 and 9 (they use room numbers like "7a" instead of the number in question), because it tends to attract the attention of [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]]. As Discworld moved away from being a generic fantasy pastiche and started being an original world in its own right, this plot point became less and less important, and in fact went unmentioned for ''years'' (and at least a dozen novels). Then ''[[Going Postal (Discworld)|Going Postal]]'' came out, the first Discworld book since ''[[The Light Fantastic]]'' to use chapters. And what followed chapter 7? ''Chapter '''7a'''''.
▲** A very early Rincewind book featured the line ''"!" said Rincewind''. In ''Interesting Times'', he sees the pictogram in Agatean that's equivalent to an exclamation point, which looks like a dog urinating, and in a moment of surprise we get ''"Oh, urinating dog," said Rincewind''.
▲** Early in ''[[Lords and Ladies]]'', one of the Lancre Morris Men Granny Weatherwax is noted to have given someone two red pills as a cure for an animal, who is told to "stick it where the sun don't shine". Another Morris Man gets confused about the phrase (there's a gorge near the town of Slice known as [[Punny Name|"The Place Where the Sun Don't Shine"]]), and one of his friends tries to clarify it with the phrase "where the monkey put his nuts". Near the end of the book, said friend tries to trick the still confused guy into asking the Librarian (an ape who [[Berserk Button|gets rather testy about being called a monkey]]) "where he put his nuts". The trickster eventually gets thrown into a river by the Librarian.
▲** Early in ''[[Feet of Clay (novel)|Feet of Clay]]'', Sam Vimes discusses coats of arms with the head of the College of Heralds. One of the coats of arms described is for the candlemaker, Arthur Carry. Unlike the rest of the coats of arms, which use [[Canis Latinicus|Old Morporkian]], this one uses recent language, with the inscription "Art Brought Forth the Candle," a bad play on the word Art--a name and a profession. Near the end of the book, after we've learned that {{spoiler|the candlemaker has been poisoning Vetinari's candles with arsenic}}, Vimes translates the inscription into {{spoiler|"Ars Enixa Est Candelum"--or, The Candles are Arsenic}}.
▲** In the beginning of ''[[Equal Rites]]'', a wizard called Drum Billet dies and asks {{small-caps| DEATH}} what it would be like to be reincarnated into an ant. At the end, it is revealed that Drum Billet is an ant now.
▲*** Perhaps the biggest, it's mentioned at the end of ''[[Equal Rites]]'' the Esk and Simon go on to develop a whole new kind of magic, after this they seemingly disappear from the plot, until ''[[I Shall Wear Midnight]]'', in which the new form of magic is revealed {{spoiler|it's time-travel}}.
▲**** With only slightly less of a delay: It's mentioned in ''[[Reaper Man]]'' that Ridcully want the university to form a team to compete in the 'City and Guilds' a sort of primitive form of rugby/football. And then just recently we get ''[[Unseen Academicals]]'', a book about, surprise surprise, the Unseen University forming a football team.
▲** In ''[[All There in the Manual|Nanny Ogg's Cookbook]]'', a recipe for peppermint candies provided by the Master of Assassins is accompanied by strong editorial warnings ''not'' to include one of the listed ingredients, which is arsenic. Much later in the book, an illustration shows a rat holding a peppermint while the Death of Rats peers over its shoulder, which is captioned: "We really meant that about the arsenic."
▲* Another Terry Pratchett book, ''[[Nation]]'', makes a joke about Mrs. Ethel J. Bundy's Birthday Island early on. In the second-last chapter, {{spoiler|it turns out to be a real place}}.
* In the first book of the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series, it's established that during the war against Panis Rahl, the [[Evil Overlord]] had cursed all the red fruit grown in the Midlands to be poisonous, and nobody has been able to undo it. This isn't brought up again for the rest of the series until {{spoiler|the last book, when Richard, after using the Power of Orden, reveals among the other wrongs he's set right, he's undone the enchantment on the red fruit.}}
* In ''[[Good Omens]]'', the story breaks the fourth wall to ask the audience what they think happened to the child who was [[Switched At Birth|one of the children switched at birth in order to give the Antichrist to some parents]]. The joke, at the time, is that it's most likely that some horrible thing happened to him, but if it makes us feel better we can imagine that he grew up normally, maybe having a hobby of collecting tropical fish. Later on in the book, an irrelevant character is briefly discussed... who has a habit of collecting tropical fish. Interestingly, in ''that'' brief mention of the character, the story mentions that he's a [[Gentle Giant|big, clumsy child that any American football coach in the world would kill to have on his team]]. Cut to the end of the book, and it mentions that {{spoiler|the Antichrist altered a magazine the kid was reading so he would learn about, and be interested in, American football.}} (That bit was specifically added to increase the potential market in the USA for the book.)
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