39,327
edits
Good Omens: Difference between revisions
m
Mass update links
m (Dai-Guard moved page Good Omens (Literature) to Good Omens over redirect: Remove TVT Namespaces from title) |
m (Mass update links) |
||
Line 6:
A novel about the apocalypse, in which [[The Antichrist]] is accidentally [[Switched At Birth]] and given to a normal family, where he grows up free from any influence of Heaven and Hell and becomes a completely normal and average child. Well, normal aside from the fact that he's subconsciously using his powers to make sure his small, quaint hometown ''stays'' small and quaint...
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
Co-written by [[Terry Pratchett]] and [[Neil Gaiman]], [[Dream Team|each at the top of their form]]. The pair considered working on a sequel, but aside from the potential title ''668: The Neighbour of the Beast'' nothing has yet come of this.
Line 43:
** By the end he gives up and starts to enjoy it, realizing much as Crowley has that Earth is so much more interesting than Hell.
* [[Badass Normal]]: [[Badass Bystander|Pepper, Brian, and Wensleydale]] who {{spoiler|defeat the Horsemen}}, and Shadwell, who's {{spoiler|ready to take on [[Satan]]. With his ''head''}}.
* [[Bad Boss]]: Crowley is a demon, so his superiors include [[Those Two Bad Guys|Hastur and Ligur]], [[Voice
* [[Balance Between Good and Evil]]: {{spoiler|The Anti-Christ}}.
* [[Batman Can Breathe in Space]]: Technically, angels and demons don't need to breathe.
Line 84:
* [[Cosmic Plaything]]: ''Everybody''. With the possible exception of {{spoiler|Adam}}.
** 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 [[
* [[Crazy Prepared]]: Crowley {{spoiler|keeping holy water on hand.}}
* [[Curb Stomp Battle]]: [[One-Man Army|Crowley takes on]] [[Redshirt Army|a jeep full of soldiers]] [[Conservation of Ninjutsu|at the Lower Tadfield airbase. By the next paragraph... It's Crowley's jeep.]]
Line 94:
* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Newton becomes one at the end, for some reason or other.
* [[Death Glare]]: [[Psychoactive Powers|When deployed by Crowley]] [[Evil Eye|reality tends to realign accordingly.]]
* [[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 buye 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
* [[Demonic Possession|Angelic Possession]]
* [[Defictionalization]]: At the time of ''Good Omens'''s writing, there was no "Best of Queen" album containing "Another One Bites the Dust," "We Are the Champions," "I Want to Break Free," and "Fat-Bottomed Girls." This has since been rectified.
Line 119:
* [[Elvis Lives]]: A [[Running Gag]]. (For the record, he unwittingly works for Famine at a burger joint.)
{{quote| '''Death:''' {{smallcaps|I don't care what it says, I never laid a finger on him.}}}}
* [[Embarrassing First Name]]/[[Embarrassing Middle Name]]: Pepper's real name is [[The Lord of the Rings
{{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
* [[Energy Beings]]: {{spoiler|[[Unusual User Interface|Beings of angelic stock can travel through the phone lines.]]}}
* [[Evil Albino]]: Pollution.
Line 130:
* [[Evil Is Stylish]]: Crowley again
* [[Evil Redhead]]: War.
* [[Exactly What It Says
** {{spoiler|Should come as no surprise that it was Famine who was responsible for these products}}
* [[Eyes of Gold]]: Crowley.
Line 171:
** Crowley has a tendency to ''hiss'' when he forgets himself.
* [[Glowing Eyes of Doom]]: Death/Azrael. Crowley, as well, when he's straining himself.
* [[Go-Karting
* [[God]]
* [[Going Native]]: Aziraphale and Crowley who have more in common with humanity and each other than they do with Heaven or Hell.
Line 182:
** Fandom preference can be argued for, or rather not actually disproven by canon, as there is no mention of specific colours 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 colour 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.
* [[Granola Girl]]: Anathema Device is something like this.
* [[The Grim Reaper]]: Similar to but a lot less interested in humanity than the ''[[
* [[Guardian Entity]]: Aziraphale and Crowley to the [[Anti-Anti-Christ]], sort of. Also, the hellhound to the [[Anti-Anti-Christ]]... also sort of.
* [[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]].
Line 266:
* [[Name's the Same]]: Apparently Adam went on to become a [[Owl City|successful musician]].
* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: Parodied and invoked. Sister Mary tries and fails to convince the adoptive father to name the {{spoiler|misplaced}} [[The Antichrist|Antichrist]] Wormwood, Damien, Errol, Cary, Saul, Cain, and a large number of demons and Hollywood villains, before settling on... {{spoiler|Adam}}. A more persuasive nun convinces the ambassador to name the {{spoiler|wrong}} [[The Antichrist|Antichrist]] "Warlock".
** There's also Dagon and Beelzebub ([[Exactly What It Says
** Subverted with the Hell's Angels. After joining the Horsepersons, they attempt to give themselves proper apocalyptic names. This quickly degenerates into a laundry list of petty annoyances.
** Both 'Nutter' and 'Device' are names of real families who were persecuted under the early 17th century witch hunts (though their situation seems rather different to the one described in the book). The case of the [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14490790 Device family] is particularly tragic and disturbing (though Anathema's existence suggests that little Jennet must have had children of her own in this 'verse...) ''Alice'' Nutter, a yeoman's daughter caught up in the same place, was probably guilty simply of being a Catholic; their story is told in a book called "The Wonderful Discovery of Witches in Lancashire".
Line 285:
* [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]: Aziraphale, to GOD.
* [[Occult Detective]]: The modern Witchfinders.
* [[Odd Couple]]: [[Go-Karting
** [[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.
Line 311:
* [[The Philosopher]]: Crowley and Aziraphale.
* [[The Pig Pen]]: Brian. Pollution in his real form.
* [[Playing
* [[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 investement 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.
Line 341:
** 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 [[
** And, of course, the dedication: "To [[
** [[E.T. the
** 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.
** A few to the ''[[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy|Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' series. When discussing the coming apocalypse while drunk, Aziraphale mentions, "Something about dolphins."
** Pepper's real name, [[The Lord of the Rings
** And guess where the names [[
*** Hastur is from a story by Ambrose Bierce. Dagon was an Assyrian fertility god.
* [[Shown Their Work]]: You'd think that Nutter and Device were just comedic last names made up for laughs. Anathema's lecture on the topic certainly plays this aspect up. However, if you're familiar with the [[wikipedia:Pendle witches|Pendle Witches]] then you'll know that they were the last names of some "actual" witches.
* [[Sidetracked
* [[Signs of the End Times]]: Naturally, given it's the Biblical Apocalypse.
* [[Slouch of Villainy]]: Played with in regards to {{spoiler|Adam}}.
Line 359:
* [[The Spanish Inquisition]]: The children's version involved straw donkeys and asking girls "art thou a witch, ''[[Gratuitous Spanish|viva España]]''?"
** 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
* [[Speech Impediment]]: Crowley tends to [[Sssssnaketalk|hiss when agitated]].
* [[Spirit Advisor]]: Aziraphale is stuck like this for a time.
Line 373:
* [[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
* [[Tall, Dark and Snarky]]: Crowley.
* [[Telepathy]]: "He wanted a real gun." Mind reading also seems part of the angelic/demonic power set.
Line 386:
* [[Tomes of Prophecy and Fate]]: Agnes' prophecies.
* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: If Shadwell doesn't have some higher regional superior doling out the pay for the greater general Witchfinder's Army, he definitely fits under this trope, because the pay scales haven't been revised since the organization was founded (back when having a whole pound to burn was posh money), so he fudges the numbers on his budget with made-up superiors and underlings so that he can make enough to survive on.
* [[Town
* [[Trademark Favorite Food]]: Shadwell's cans of condensed milk. He doesn't appear to subsist on anything else.
* [[Trickster Archetype]]: Crowley.
| |||