The Laundry Series: Difference between revisions

* [[Demonic Possession]]: A common plot element. In particular, a botched summoning at the climax of ''The Fuller Memorandum'' causes {{spoiler|Bob to get possessed by ''himself''.}}

* [[Depleted Phlebotinum Shells]]: standard ammunition for the Laundry takes the form of "banishment rounds"--silver-plated bullets with spells engraved onto them in 90-nanometer scale. Takes care of certain nasties being [[Immune to Bullets]] very nicely, and it still works on other targets as well.

** [[Justified Trope]]: Angleton [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|isn't stupid]], and there's a perfectly good reason why he uses a machine so outdated that it shouldn't ''exist'': there's this procedure called [[wikipedia:Van Eck phreaking|Van Eck phreaking]] that you can use to eavesdrop in a CRT or LCD monitor and gain access to classified information. The memex uses microfiche readers, and is not vulnerable to this method. It also cleanly averts [[Everything Is Online]] and the myriad of Laundry network problems that Bob always complains about.

* [[Disaster Dominoes]]: Bob notes early in ''Memorandum'' that no disaster is a single event; instead, they're the result of a whole chain of small missteps that all add up in a spectacularly wrong fashion. This comes back as a [[Brick Joke]] {{spoiler|when Iris and the rest of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharoah try to sacrifice him to summon up the Eater of Souls. Unfortunately for them, they've made a chain of missteps and misunderstandings: nothing disastrous individually, but ''in toto...''}}