Night Watch (Discworld): Difference between revisions

* [[The Apprentice]]: Jocasta Wiggs realising, at her [[Sink or Swim Mentor|mentor's]] devising, there's a ''long'' way to go before she's good enough to graduate as an Assassin. Young Sam Vimes learning from his older self.

* [[Arc Words]]: "Just do the job in front of you." and its variations.

* [[The Artful Dodger]]: Young Nobby.

* [[Banana In the Tailpipe]]: Well, cars do not exist on Discworld, but you can create quite a bit of havoc with oxen and a handful of fresh ginger...

* [[Circling Monologue]]: The early part of Vimes vs. Swing.

* [[Click Hello]]: The two Vimeses' first meeting.

* [[Contest Winner Cameo]]: Dr Follett of the Assassin's Guild is actually a cameo for fellow British novelist Ken Follett.

* [[Continuity Nod]]: Many of them. The Night Watch is based at the old watch house that the dragon burned down in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Guards Guards|Guards! Guards!]]'', Leggy Gaskin from the same book is a young watchman, Vetinari's aunt briefly mentioned by Vimes in the book now appears as a main character, the Mended Drum is called the Broken Drum (as it was in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/The Colour of Magic|The Colour of Magic]]''), Sergeant Colon previously mentioned remembering Vetinari's predecessors Lord Snapcase and Lord Winder in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Jingo|Jingo]]'' and so on.

* [[The Creepy Undertaker]]: Legitimate First.

* [[Darker and Edgier]]: The book basically begins with the death of a copper and memorial to an event so bad even the normally comic Colon and Nobby treat with solemnity. [[It Got Worse]].

* [[Death By Irony]]: {{spoiler|Lord Winder is so paranoid about assassins that Vetinari doesn't even have to lay a finger on him - the man just dies from fear-induced shock when Vetinari enters.}}

{{quote| '''Reg''': I only regret that I have one life to give for Whalebone Lane!<br />

'''Vimes''': (thinking) If only you knew. }}

{{quote| "He's not an enemy; he's a nemesis."}}

** Which takes on a whole new (hilarious) meaning if you remember Brick Top's speech from ''[[Snatch]]'': "Do you know what 'nemesis' means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt..." In this universe, Vimes.

** The bit when Vimes is sitting helpless, staring blankly at a mirror as his son is born; this even shuts down {{spoiler|his internal watchman, revealed in [[Discworld (Literature)/Thud|later books]] to be more powerful than a thousand year old pan-dimensional being of pure rage}}.

** Vimes has an extremely powerful one right when he is ordered by Rust to take down the barricade. As he starts to tell the people behind the barricade that they shouldn't take the law into their own hands, he realizes suddenly that he has no idea what the law ''was'' at that moment. The feeling of despair and disconnection is so powerful in brings Vimes to his knees. Thankfully, the Time Monks show up at that very moment to provide him with the Heroic Reboot Key, a connection to the future that seems so distant: his silver cigar case.

** The Assassin's Guild in Discworld always wears the stereotypical ninja black clothes on the job. Vetinari shows the readers how much smarter he is when he reads a book on animal camouflage and goes for more appropriate clothes when they are called for. Downey shows how he isn't a match for Vetinari by burning the book instead of reading it and Vetinari shows what a [[Magnificent Bastard]] he is by {{spoiler|having destroyed nearly every other copy of the book so no one else can learn from it}}.

* [[Hooker With a Heart of Gold]]: Rosie Palm

'''Qu:''' Er, yes? ... Everyone I talk to is going to die. Everyone you talk it going to die. Everybody dies. }}

* [[Not in This For Your Revolution]]: Keel may have been a revolutionary, but Vimes only raised the barricades to keep a handful of people safe.

* [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]: Vimes plays the stupid, loud but unshakable copper to arrest an Unmentionable.

* [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]: Vimes pulls this on the Unmentionables.

* [[Offscreen Moment of Awesome]]: Just after Vimes has apprehended Carcer in the cemetery after both returned to the present, Lord Vetinari turns up. During the following conversation, it transpires that Vetinari was watching the final fight between the Night Watch and Carcer's gang of Particulars and, after Vimes-as-Keel disappeared, Vetinari joined the fight. It's described by Vetinari over one page, and that's it.

* [[Only Known By Their Nickname]]: Snouty. We find out his real name at the end of the book, though.

* [[Opt Out]]: Ned Coates seems to do that in the middle of the book.

** also contains a shoutout to Braveheart with the worst battlecry ever "you may take our lives but you'll never take our freedom"

** Major Clive Mountjoy-Standfast is a possible reference to the [[The Duke of Wellington|Duke of Wellington]] as he was born in Quirm but considers himself a patriotic Ankh-Morporkian, just like how Arthur Wellesley was born in Ireland but thought of as the greatest English general of all time.

* [[Stable Time Loop]]: Averted, sort of. Lu-Tze explains John Keel was a real person and the Sam Vimes we know now was not tutored by himself, unlike Vimes had thought. However, Vimes and Carcer arriving in the past changed that timeline when Carcer killed Keel and so Vimes has to substitute for him as mentor.

** Lu-Tze also claims that it is not quite a [[Stable Time Loop]] in the first place, that Vimes was trained by John Keel, that the rebellion was crushed as he remembered, and all that. Strangely, though, Vetinari remembers the events of the book's past, and not the one that Vimes remembers. Which means either the Sweeper was wrong, that the past and present changed but only Vimes remembers it, or that Lu-Tze was lying to make sure Vimes maintained the loop.

* [[Verbal Tic]]: Swing's unusuallypaced...speech pattern and Captain Tilden, what. Snouty, hnah, too.

** Carcer's patronizing little chuckle, haha.

* [[Wide Eyed Idealist]]: Young Sam, to Vimes' great annoyance and disbelief.

* [[World Half Empty]]: Past Ankh-Morpork sucks even worse than present, with insane rulers, tyrannical and cruel authorities and even more rampant crime. Vimes repeatedly calls the Watch "just another gang" in his monologues. And he's explicitly told upfront that he cannot, ''cannot'' change any major events, such as a clearly pointless war borne of the Patrician's insanity which will last just long enough to kill many innocent people, or the deaths of many watchmen. However, rather than sitting there and taking it, he makes efforts to reform the watch, prevents a bloodbath on Morphic Street, and changes history by holding his barricade through the entire night when the original Keel failed halfway through, reducing his side's casualties to perhaps a dozen (during the battle, anyways). And he takes down Carcer in the most lawful way possible.