Good Omens: Difference between revisions

The mix-up causes plans for Armageddon to spin wildly out of control, as agents of both Heaven and Hell try to find out just why things aren't going as planned. Two of those agents, an angel (Aziraphale) and a demon (Crowley) who have formed a friendly rivalry (more friends than rivals by this point), are trying to find the Antichrist and put a stop to [[The End of the World as We Know It]] because they decided they ''like'' humanity. Also in the mix are the last witch-finder in England (and his new assistant), and a modern-day witch who is the heir to a book of oddly specific but still conveniently obscure prophecies.

 

 

 

Some useful annotations for the inquiring (or nonplussed) reader can be found [http://lspace-us.puntbow.net.au/books/apf/good-omens.html here].

{{tropelist}}

* [[Abstract Apotheosis]]: The Bikers under go this when Adam is near. Only Death doesn't change (some things don't).

* [[Aluminum Christmas Trees]]: You know Aziraphale's copy of the Bible that accidentally read "Thou Shalt Commit Adultery"? [[wikipedia:Wicked Bible|It exists]].

* [[Ambiguously Gay]]: Aziraphale is described as giving the impression that he is "gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide". The same passage explains, however, that divine beings are without sexual characteristics (unless they really want) and therefore couldn't be considered to have any sexual orientation.

* [[Anthropomorphic Personification]]: The four Horse''persons''.

* {{spoiler|[[Anti-Anti-Christ]]: Adam.}}

* [[Bad Boss]]: Crowley is a demon, so his superiors include [[Those Two Bad Guys|Hastur and Ligur]], [[Voice with an Internet Connection|Dagon]], Beelzebub and [[Satan]] - all of whom are nasty pieces of work and threaten to [[Cold-Blooded Torture|make him regret some of his choices]]. On Aziraphale's side, there's the Metatron - the [[Knight Templar]] [[Jerkass]] Voice of God.

* [[Balance Between Good and Evil]]: {{spoiler|The Anti-Christ}}.

* [[Because Destiny Says So]]: This is essentially the logic with which Anathema lives her life.

* [[Beware the Nice Ones]]: Aziraphale may be an angel, but it's still not a very good idea to piss him off.

** Humanity. We apparently gave the world the Spanish Inquisition, Milton Keynes and the concept of ''traffic wardens''.

{{quote|She licked a spatter of blood—someone else's—from the back of her hand with a scarlet, cat-like tongue. Then she smiled.}}

** Considering what [[Horsemen of the Apocalypse|her job is]], not that surprising...

* [[Blue and Orange Morality]]: Azrael/Death probably goes here. And possibly [[God]], what with all the [[Arc Words|ineffability]].

* [[Brick Joke]]: Oh so many. One includes Tropical Fish. Then again, consider the authors.

*** And {{spoiler|a delivery boy pointing out the man and asking, "Does he remind you of anyone?"}} to which {{spoiler|Famine}} promptly replied "No." Also possibly a slight dig at Elvis, considering {{spoiler|Famine probably ''wouldn't'' have ever met him.}}

** There's also a footnote about the "Buggre Alle This" Bible indicating that this particular edition of the Bible had three extra verses in Genesis 3, and suggesting that they were inserted by Aziraphale. This is a callback to the very first prologue.

* [[Chekhov's Boomerang]]: Aziraphale's flaming sword.

* [[Chekhov's Gag]]: That Crowley arranged the M25 to be a demonic sigil. It seems like a throwaway gag at first, but it comes back in a big way.

* [[The Chosen One]]: Technically subverted, first when {{spoiler|the Antichrist is [[Switched At Birth]] one too many times, resulting in the wrong person being prepared for 11 years}}, and secondly when {{spoiler|he then decides he doesn't want to cause Armageddon and convinces both Heaven and Hell not to go through with it}}.

* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: Pollution, who is thought to be of a hippie until people notice he's leaking things everywhere and is groovy about littering.

* [[Cool Car]]: Crowley's Bentley. Although towards the end, it's a {{spoiler|[[Incredibly Lame Pun|totally hot car]]}} instead.

* [[Cool Old Guy]]: Shadwell, for a given value of "cool".

* [[Cool Old Lady]]: Agnes Nutter.

** Arguably Madame Tracy.

** Which he could probably hide, but then what would be the point of always wearing [[Cool Shades]]?

*** Which he probably ''couldn't'' hide, as the book's co-written by Pterry, who ruled in [[Discworld]] that supernatural beings can't disguise the nature of their eyes.

** Arguably, even him. It's noted that trying to understand the ineffable plan is something akin to playing poker for infinite stakes in a pitch black room with blank cards and a dealer who refuses to tell you the rules, and who smiles ''all the time''. It being, by its very nature, impossible to understand except by God, who ain't talking.

* [[Crack Fic]]: It basically ''is'' one for [[The Bible]].

** War, after getting her sword in a bar full of armed soldiers, decides it's time to get to know them better.

* [[Dark Action Girl]]: War.

* [[Dark Is Not Evil]]/[[Light Is Not Good]]: See [[Not So Different]].

** "...stretching off to infinity, were the hosts of Heaven and Hell, wingtip to wingtip. If you looked really closely, and had been specially trained, you could tell the difference." Incidentally, this is also a shout-out to a very famous series of pictures by MC Escher depicting... you guessed it: geometrically-spaced angels dovetailing perfectly with geometrically-spaced devils.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Newton becomes one at the end, for some reason or other.

* [[Deconstruction]]: Agnes is a deconstruction of [[The Seer]]. On the one hand, we see that she is always right, but sometimes her predictions are oddly specific (don't buy Betamacks), too ahead of their time (jogging helps people to live longer), centered on her relatives in the future (she predicted for 11/22/1963 that a house in a small English city would break down, but doesn't mention the assassination of [[John F. Kennedy]] on the same day - one of her relatives might be in that city at that day, but apparently, none of them wanted to go to Dallas), and she didn't bother to order her predictions or explain them in detail. On the other hand, she uses her power to successfully [[Write Back to the Future]] (and also to avoid people responsible for delivering said message to snoop), and since she can predict EVERYTHING, this includes knowing when Anathema will read a specific prophecy - so it always fits.

* [[Designated Girl Fight]]: An unusual version of one; violent little tomboy Pepper versus War.

* [[The Determinator]]: Crowley. And ''how''.

* [[A Dog Named "Dog"]]: Dog, a hellhound who goes from a massive terrifying beast to a miniature mutt with a funny ear.

* [[Don't Explain the Joke]]: Subverted. Footnotes were added to American version to explain some of the jokes that depend on knowing British geography and such. Except they tend to boil down to "If you were British, you'd be laughing."

** He takes this to the level of a superpower. He once got a joke circuit board that isn't supposed to do anything, and ended up building a wireless radio that picked up Radio Moscow.

** Winds up as a {{spoiler|[[Brick Joke]] when he "fixes" the launch computers, causing them to fail in spectacular fashion.}}

* [[Dreaming of Times Gone By]]

* [[Dream Team]]: [[Terry Pratchett]] and [[Neil Gaiman]]... Working together.... Think about it.

** Though at the time it was written nobody would have come to that conclusion before they actually read the book.

** And note that this was before either was very well known. They've made clear that neither ever had any moments of "It's so cool that I'm working with you" during the process.

* [[Earth Is Young]]: The Earth has only been around for 6,000 years and all the 'old' stuff in the ground is God's decoration. Or [[Troll|personal amusement]]; consider the dinosaur skeletons.

* [[Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette]]: Anathema. She is a witch.

* [[Elvis Lives]]: A [[Running Gag]] (for the record, he unwittingly works for Famine at a burger joint).

* [[Embarrassing First Name]]/[[Embarrassing Middle Name]]: Pepper's real name is [[The Lord of the Rings|Pippin Galadriel]] [[The Neverending Story (novel)|Moonchild]]. It's also her [[Berserk Button]].

{{quote|"There are only two ways a child can go with a name like Pippin Galadriel Moonchild, and Pepper had chosen the other one."}}

* [[The Empath]]: Aziraphale when they're trying to find [[The Antichrist]] is puzzled when he doesn't [[Detect Evil|detect any evil]] in the area, but rather [[The Power of Love|love.]]

* [[The End of the World as We Know It]]

* [[Evil Albino]]: Pollution.

* [[Evil Counterpart]]: Inverted. {{spoiler|The Them}} are the good counterparts to {{spoiler|the Four Horsepersons.}}

* [[Evil Is Stylish]]: Crowley again.

* [[Evil Redhead]]: War.

** {{spoiler|Should come as no surprise that it was Famine who was responsible for these products}}.

* [[Eyes of Gold]]: Crowley.

{{quote|"The park was deserted except for a member of MI9 trying to recruit someone who, to their later mutual embarrassment, would turn out to be also a member of MI9."}}

* [[Foil]]: Crowley and Aziraphale, Shadwell and Tracey, Newton and Anathema, etc. See [[Geodesic Cast]], below.

* [[Friendly Enemy]]: See the [[Odd Couple]] entry.

* [[Friend to All Living Things]]: Parodied by Crowley, who talks to his plants to encourage their growth. Topics include disappointment in growth rates and what happened to the last plant that didn't bloom. His plants are very tall, very green, and very frightened.

** Aziraphale exhibits this trope in several instances where Crowley is about to get someone killed.

*** Also gets a minor subversion at one point. Aziraphale, having tried and failed to replace a stage magician, ends up suffocating a dove by leaving it tucked in his sleeve for too long. He seems much less bothered by that than by the fact that the hellhound he and Crowley are watching for hasn't shown up, and Crowley's the one who carefully resurrects the bird and sends it on its way.

** At one point, St. Francis disguises himself as a gardener and plays the [[Friend to All Living Things]] trope literally and explicitly for the benefit of an impressionable child. It doesn't exactly work.

* [[Functional Magic]]

* [[The Fundamentalist]]: Sergeant Shadwell, almost-but-not-quite played for laughs.

* [[Funetik Aksent]]: Parodied with Shadwell, whose accent is described as a random, shifting mixture of accents from all over Britain. Likely meant to be a [[Take That]] to American portrayals of British accents that unwittingly mix regional dialects.

*** Alf's accent was fairly firmly in Sarf London, the one area Shadwell's never goes near.

* [[Funny Foreigner]]/[[Eagle Land]]: {{spoiler|Sister Mary mistakes Mr. Young for the American diplomat.}} [[Hilarity Ensues]].

* [[Go-Karting with Bowser]]: Aziraphale and Crowley most of the time.

* [[God]]

* [[Good Is Boring]]: It's explained that Heaven doesn't have any good, notable musicians or actors.

** The two musical exceptions that Crowley says Heaven possesses are Elgar and Liszt. It's implied to be very terrible.

** Crowley underlies some of the [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|horror]] underlying Heaven's [[Glurge|glurgy]] tedium when he tells Aziraphale that if Heaven wins Armageddon, in the time it takes for a bird to fly from one end of the universe to the other and wear down a mountain by sharpening its beak against it, Aziraphale ''still'' won't have finished watching ''[[The Sound of Music]]''. And Aziraphale will enjoy it. ''Every single time''.

*** [[Not So Different|Note that this is a parody of the traditional hellfire sermon, where the bird flying across the universe is used to suggest how long the torments of the damned will go on.]]

* [[Good Wings, Evil Wings]]: Subverted, there is little difference between the wings of angels and demons [[Evil Is Sexy|though the wings of demons tend to be better groomed]]. The fandom mostly ignores this, choosing instead to represent demons' wings as black and angels' as white, or, more rarely, to have the latter simply lighter in color than the former.

** Fandom preference can be argued for, or rather not actually disproven by canon, as there is no mention of specific colors in the book. Azrael's wings are called "angel's wings" while also being described as black holes into space with visible stars, therefore not even feathers. Both Beelzebub and Metatron could be seen as having flaming red and gold wings, respectively, as they are both on fire. If one makes the assumption that angels only have white wings, there are countless examples of classical artwork and stained glass windows with every color in the rainbow. The concept of only white wings seems likely to have begun with the works of the artist Bougeureau in the 1800's.

* [[The Gump]]: Subverted. Crowley received a commendation from Hell for starting the Spanish Inquisition. He didn't, rather he just happened to be in the area when it started. When he finally got around to seeing what this new-fangled Inquisition was, he ended up [[Even Evil Has Standards|spending a good deal of time drinking to forget what he saw]].

** Likewise, Crowley and Aziraphale both claimed Milton Keynes as a success, and believed meter maids were a plot by the other side, but both were entirely human creations.

* [[Have a Gay Old Time]]: Non-sexual example in ''The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter'' (the word 'nice' didn't settle on its modern implication until the 19th century). Probably influenced by the story of Alice Nutter and the Device family of Pendle, Lancs., being recorded in a 1612 book called ''The Wonderful Discovery of Witches in Lancashire'' - wonderful at the time meaning simply 'amazing'.

*** Although he is excited when he finds out that they wanted the faggots to burn them.

* [[Hellish Pupils]]: Quite literally, in Crowley's case.

* [[Hell of a Heaven]]: Crowley hints that Heaven's a boring place with few composers, theaters and films. ''"Listen, the point is that when the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, right then...then you still wouldn't have finished watching ''[[The Sound of Music]]''. And you'll enjoy it."''

* [[Heroic Fire Rescue]]: Crowley runs into a burning bookshop with what everyone else perceives is an intention to rescue the (similarly immortal) angel Aziraphale; but what Crowley is really after, and rescues, is the extremely vital sole remaining edition of ''The Nice And Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Wyttche''.

* [[How Do You Like Them Apples?]]: Eden is mentioned. Do the math.

* [[Humanoid Abomination]]: The Horsemen approach this as Armageddon draws near. Their human forms are described as "ill-fitting" and their human-like personalities start to fade as their basic programming as bringers of destruction becomes dominant. {{spoiler|Something similar nearly happens to Adam.}} Only Death is unaffected - Death never changes, after all.

* [[Humans Are Flawed]]: "It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people."

* [[Humans Are Special]]: Crowley is equally confused and amazed at how humans are so much better at ''Aziraphale's'' job.

* [[I Just Want to Be Normal]]: {{spoiler|Adam}}.

** {{spoiler|Newton Pulsifier may also qualify, convincing Anathema not to use the followup book also keeps him from using it.}}

** And what happens when {{spoiler|the Them}} face off against the Four Horsemen.

* [[Incendiary Exponent]]: Crowley's Bentley.

* [[Insult Backfire]]:

{{quote|'''Anal homeowner:''' "How would you like it if I littered on your lawn?!"

** Newt's Wasabi has a recorded voice that plays to remind riders to fasten unfastened seat-belts (which never goes off, because [[The Alleged Car|hey, it's Newt's Wasabi]]). At one point, the voice is described as saying "Prease frasten your seat bert".

* [[Just Following Orders]]: Invoked and (duh) played with. A lot.

** Its personality changes when it gets Named and its role thus resolved. It is expecting a name like Terror or Stalks-By-Night, but {{spoiler|Adam}} decides to name it simply Dog, whereupon it discovers a tremendous love of its master and a desire to wag its tail.

** Played horrifyingly straight for {{spoiler|the forces of Heaven and Hell}}.

* [[Laser-Guided Karma]]: The {{spoiler|M25}}.

* [[Last-Name Basis]]: Shadwell and Wensleydale.

** Anthony J. Crowley (technically, that's not his real name anyway).

* [[Lean and Mean]]: Sable/Famine.

* [[Let's Get Dangerous]]: Aziraphale and the [[Flaming Sword]]. "Once you learn, you never really forget how."

* [[Line-of-Sight Name]]: Due to Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell's shady book-keeping and limited imagination, the suspiciously small organization that is the Witchfinder's Army is made up of the likes of of Witchfinder Majors Milk, Tin, Cupboard, and Saucepan.

* [[Magicians Are Wizards]]: Subverted. Aziraphale refuses to use his actual powers during his magic act, because it would be cheating.

* [[Male Gaze]]: War's legs get mentioned significantly more times than anyone else's, and with complimentary adjectives attached.

* [[Meaningful Name]]

** Crowley, a reference to occultist Aleister Crowley. It also references his original role as the serpent ("Crawly") that tempted Adam and Eve.

* [[Mundane Utility]]

* [[Murder Is the Best Solution]]

* [[My Significance Sense Is Tingling]]/[[Spider Sense]]

* [[My Species Doth Protest Too Much]]

* [[Nuns Are Spooky]]: Parodied by the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl.

* [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]: Aziraphale, to GOD.

* [[Odd Couple]]: [[Go-Karting with Bowser|Aziraphale and Crowley.]]

** [[Dating Catwoman|Newt and Anathema.]] But that one makes a certain amount of sense. He was a Witchfinder and, well, he found himself a witch.

* [[Oddly Small Organization]]: The Witchhunters are just Shadwell, joined by Newt. Everyone else is long dead, and a good chunk of those "Witchunters" were mostly interested in claiming the property of those accused.

* [[One of the Boys]]: Pepper.

* [[Operation Game of Doom]]: Crowley getting out his holy water and placing it in a bucket. One splash on him, even a TINY DROP, means it's over.

* [[Parody Names]]: Burger Lord.

* [[Perplexing Plurals]]: Shadwell's instructions to Newt are to search for:

2. Unexplainable Phenomenons. Phenomenatrices. Phenomenice. Things, ye ken well what I mean.}}

* [[Person of Mass Destruction]]: The Antichrist.

* [[The Pig Pen]]: Brian. Pollution in his real form.

* [[Poke the Poodle]]: Crowley, who's considered an incompetent idiot by his fellow demons for choosing to annoy an entire population than drive one person to ruin and temptation, such as tying up the phone lines of Britain for seconds or causing traffic jams.

** Subverted by the narration, which backs up Crowley's claim that this a more effective investment of effort for the given corruption. Annoyed people have a tendency towards taking it out on others, and where other demons take years to corrupt a single person, Crowley in an afternoon slightly tarnishes ''thousands'' of souls.

* [[Prophecy Twist]]: Tons of them.

* [[Psychic Powers]]: Anathema.

* [[Queer People Are Funny]]: the running gag is that the lead duo are [[Mistaken for Gay]].

* [[Read the Fine Print]]

* [[Reality Warper]]: {{spoiler|Adam}}, and ''every single supernatural being'', to a greater or lesser extent.

* [[Red Right Hand]]: Crowley has snake eyes, a forked tongue, and snake skin boots that may or may not be actual boots.

* [[Religious Horror]]: Parodied.

* [[Samaritan Syndrome]]: Aziraphale. "Lord, heal this bike."

* [[Science Is Wrong]]: Parodied.

* [[Screw Destiny]]: The entire book is about breaking away from destiny and people's expectations of you, and finding your own path. At the end, {{spoiler|Newton Pulsifer even convinces Anathema Device not to live her life trying to interpret prophecies left to her by a distant ancestor}}. Also, {{spoiler|the Anti-Christ averts Armageddon.}} However, {{spoiler|Agnes may have seen it all coming.}}

** Hilarious that the plot to [[Screw Destiny]] is actually orchestrated by God, and everything might just as His [[Magic Franchise Word|ineffable]] plan intended; even the angels and devils really have no idea.

* [[Shout-Out]]: Many, many of them, ranging from [[Edgar Allan Poe]] to [[Dirty Harry]].

** One of the Them mistakes Metatron for [[Transformers|Megatron]] when he introduces himself.

** When the Them are playing Adam does the best [[Star Wars|Darth Vader]] impression. Reference is made to the arguments over who gets to wear the coal scuttle and blow up planets.

** Little girl at Warlock's birthday party: "I gotter [[Transformers|transformer]] anna [[My Little Pony|mylittleponyer]] anna [[Transformers|decepticonattacker]] anna [[Thundercats|thundertank]] anna..."

** There's also the [[Doctor Who|alien that looked like a pepper pot]], described as ''beeping,'' so... [[Star Wars|it's a bit of a twofer.]]

** At the {{spoiler|last paragraph after Adam managed to avert the apocalypse [[Nineteen Eighty-Four|"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot]]... No, imagine a sneakerlace trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human... [[The Second Coming|slouching hopefully towards Tadfield...]] [[Nineteen Eighty-Four|forever..."]]}}

** Adam's style of speaking is pretty much an homage to William Brown in the ''[[Just William]]'' stories.

** Pepper's real name, [[The Lord of the Rings|Pippin Galadriel]] [[The Neverending Story (novel)|Moonchild]] is twofer reference to ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' and ''[[The Neverending Story (novel)|The Neverending Story]]''.

* [[Sidetracked by the Analogy]]: Too many to list. It seems no one can make an analogy without being derailed by their listeners.

* [[Signs of the End Times]]: Naturally, given it's the Biblical Apocalypse.

** The dunking stool doesn't work out quite as planned - it's a hot day, and no one doing the dunking quite understands why Pepper's kid sister is the one who gets to go into the water.

* [[Spanner in the Works]]: Sister Mary Loquacious, an incompetent cultist and a satanic nun of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl.

* [[Spotlight-Stealing Squad]]: Not in-universe, but a fandom example. A quick glance at the fandom might have you believe that Aziraphale and Crowley are the main, or even the only, two characters, despite the fact that this is very much an ensemble work.

** Admittedly the angel-demon [[Odd Couple]] does provide a good deal of the philosophical ponderings of the novel, and they pretty much embody the idea of "good" and "evil" being [[Not So Different]]. But as for actual effects on the plot, Crowley and Aziraphale are basically running a [[Hardy Boys Investigation]]. They put a lot of effort into preventing it, but the net result of their efforts is both jack and squat. Then again, having the entire plot resolved by only the human characters without supernatural help may be the point of the story.

* [[Steven Ulysses Perhero]]/[[Sue Donym]]: Mr. (Ezra?) Fell, Mr A. Ziraphale.

* [[Strongly Worded Letter]]: R.P. Tyler is the king of these.

* [[Sweet Tooth]]: Aziraphale.

* [[Take That]]: Aziraphale's dismissiveness of televangelism and the Rapture while possessing a televangelist who's on the air. [[Is This Thing Still On?|"Gosh, am I on television?"]]

** It's made clear that this televangelist believes what he says and really does funnel most of his enormous income back into the ministry, doing "what he really thought was the Lord's work". One can only speculate whose cause ''that'' helps.

* [[Taking You with Me]]: Agnes Nutter (again).

* [[Tall, Dark and Snarky]]: Crowley.

* [[Teleporters and Transporters]]

* [[Thanatos Gambit]]: Agnes Nutter.

* [[That Poor Plant]]: Plants, plural, and all of them are Crowley's.

* [[True Name]]: Crowley is made to sign his true name, in receipt of one Antichrist.

** The Horsemen are also made to sign their true names in receipt of their weapons.

** Possibly also God.

* [[Trust-Building Blunder]]

* [[Unlucky Everydude]]: Newt. Literally. He has terrible luck at everything he does, minus finding a job. {{spoiler|Gets out of it at the end}}.

* [[Unstoppable Mailman]]: The same mailman is able to deliver packages to all four horsemen of the apocalypse including killing himself to meet Death and deliver a package.

* [[Unusual Euphemism]] / [[Gosh Dang It to Heck]]: "Oh Go--, Sa--, [[Acceptable Targets|Manchester]]!", also "making an effort".

* [[Urban Fantasy]]

* [[Walking Techbane]]: Newton Pulsifer, to an extraordinary extent.

* [[Wannabe Diss]]: Bemused cynical version from demons towards satanists, and from the [[Horsemen of the Apocalypse|Horsepersons of the Apocalypse]] towards the bikers in the bar, who in their turn feel the same about weekend bikers.

* [[Weaksauce Weakness]]: Holy water, and the horseshoe over Anathema's door that wards off demons.

* [[Weather Dissonance]]: Simultaneously played straight and Inverted. Lower Tadfield has perfectly normal weather, a little 'too' perfectly normal. It's always hot and sunny in the summer, snows on Christmas, every Christmas. Adam is playing a living [[Weather Control Machine]] and unconsciously making the localized weather in his happy little town exactly what it's meant to be for that time of year.

** In fact it is how Newt finds him. After all, [[British Weather|when was the last anywhere else in Britain had perfect weather?]]

** Hastur and Ligur look down on Crowley's tying up London's phone system for an hour at lunchtime (tarnishing thousands of souls in a domino effect of people being in bad moods across the city) in favor of their more artful craft of spending a lifetime trying to corrupt a single pious individual.

* [[White-Haired Pretty Boy]]: Pollution. {{spoiler|Until he goes all ''squishy''...}}

* [[Wicked Cultured]]: Crowley.

* [[World-Healing Wave]]

* [[A Worldwide Punomenon]]: Newt named his lemon of a Wasabi "Dick Turpin"... on account of the fact that it holds up traffic wherever it goes.

'''Aziraphale:''' And underlined.

'''Crowley:''' ''Twice''.}}

** Turns out to be literal as well. They compare lists of organizations they consider on their side, and a slight majority are on both lists.

* [[You Were Trying Too Hard]]: Anathema [[Genre Savvy|tries]] and [[Wrong Genre Savvy|fails]] to invoke this trope.

{{quote|Red unconcernedly withdrew the maraschino cherry from her drink, put it to her scarlet lips, and sucked it slowly off its stick in a way that made several men in the room break into a cold sweat.}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:World Fantasy Award]]

[[Category:Comic Literature]]

[[Category:Fantasy Literature]]

[[Category:Literature]]