Brontitall is a planet populated by a highly evolved bird people who live in the right ear of a 15-mile high marble statue of Arthur Dent. Originally the bird people were ground dwellers, but gradually the planet was taken over by the shoe shops of the Dolman-Saxlil Shoe Corporation, thanks to the shoe-shop intensifier ray they deployed. In order to keep the populace buying more and more shoes, they were badly made and ill-fitting. Eventually the shoe event horizon is reached, whereby all of the shops on the planet are shoe shops, but none of the shoes actually fit. The result is economic collapse, ruin and famine - the survivors evolve into birds and never walk on the ground again.
On the ground, an archaeologist called Lintilla discovers the strata of shoes thus revealing the planet's history.
Nearby, a derelict spaceport contains a number of crumbling old spaceships, but one of which is still on power, "delayed" for millennia due to the non-arrival of its complement of lemon-soaked paper napkins.
It has been suggested, possibly by Adams himself, that much of the inspiration for the events on Brontitall arose from his own dissatisfaction with service received in Oxford Street shoe-shops, and on long-haul flights, which he reportedly loathed. These episodes were his revenge!
Brontitall is only mentioned in the original BBC radio show. However, in the books, Frogstar B has some (but not all) of the attributes of Brontitall.
Mostly Harmless.
Frogstar World B is somewhat like the books' equivalent of Brontitall in the radio show; although there are differences between the two, they share some attributes. Although there is no statue of Arthur on Frogstar B, the bird people came about the same way; there is no archeologist called Lintilla in the part of the books that concerns itself with Frogstar B; however, the spaceport with the delayed spaceship is there.
Frogstar B is the namesake of the Frogstar fighters which take Zaphod Beeblebrox to that world. Frogstar B is the home of the Total Perspective Vortex, a machine that destroys your soul by showing you what your place in the universe really is.
Golgafrincham, home of the circling poets of Arium, decided that one third of its population was useless, and devised a ruse to get rid of them by concocting a story that their planet would shortly be destroyed in some great catastrophe. The useless population consisted of middle management, telephone sanitisers, management consultants, marketing executives, hairdressers and the like. Although there were conflicting accounts of the exact nature of the supposed catastrophe, they were generally told that a giant mutant star goat was threatening Golgafrincham. All these people were packed into one of three giant Ark spaceships, and told that everyone else would follow shortly in the other two. Of course they did not follow, and lived happily for a while; but, ironically enough, the whole remaining population shortly afterward died out from a deadly plague spread by unsanitized telephones.
The Ark eventually crash-landed on the planet Earth, and the Golgafrinchans gradually usurped the native cavemen, becoming the ancestors of humanity but thereby ruining the computer program that the Earth was running to find the question for the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
The planet Krikkit is located in a dust cloud that was created by the coaxing of the computer Hactar. Due to the dust cloud, the people of Krikkit never knew that there was anything in the sky other than their sun. Hence, when Hactar built a fake spaceship and crashed it into Krikkit, it came as a surprise to the Krikkiters that there was something in the sky. Since the existence of other life did not fit into their world view, they built a spaceship fleet, horrible weapons, and numerous deadly robots, and they began to launch a massive war against the rest of the galaxy in order to force the universe to fit their world view. The Galaxy was initially taken by surprise, but eventually defeated Krikkit after a war that (according to some fudged numbers) lasted 2000 years and killed ten grillion people. The Krikkiters were sealed into an envelope where time passed extremely slowly (when the envelope was reopened, 10 billion years had passed in the Galaxy compared with 5 years on Krikkit). However, a Krikkit spaceship escaped before the envelope was sealed; the spaceship, along with the Wikkit Gate (a key that could unseal the envelope; it was composed of a Plastic Pillar, a Wooden Pillar, a Steel Pillar, a Silver Bail, and a Golden Bail), went 10 billion years into the future, ending up in the present day and attempting to wreak havoc once more. The robots on the spaceship managed to reopen the envelope, but Arthur, Slartibartfast, Trillian, and Ford Prefect were able to pacify the Krikkiters as they were designing a supernova bomb that had the potential to wipe out everything in the universe.
The Krikkiters managed to leave other marks besides the destruction of numerous worlds; due to racial memories, the Earth sport of cricket was based on the Krikkit Wars.
Magrathea is a planet whose inhabitants built customized planets for tremendous amounts of money, making Magrathea one of the wealthiest planets in the galaxy. But when the great galactic stock market crash occurred, the Magratheans went into hibernation awaiting the recovery of the economy to the point where their services could once again be afforded. They were later awoken by pan-dimensional beings who had a special order for them; they commissioned the construction of a planet-sized computer named Earth to determine the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
One of the chief Magrathean planet designers was called Slartibartfast, and he designed the coastline of Norway. (He enjoyed doing the crinkly bits.)
Milliways, also known as the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, can only be visited by time travel, as it exists at the end of time. One of its major attractions is that diners can watch the universe end around them as they eat. The restaurant's bill can be paid by depositing a dime on any bank account of the present time: by the end of the universe, composite interests will be enough to pay the extremely high bill.
In the book form of the series, the visit to Milliways takes place in book two, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
In the different versions of the story, Milliways is built on the ruins of either Magrathea or of Frogstar World B.
The rich and sunny planet Ursa Minor Beta has the quite peculiar property that most of its surface consists of subtropic coastline. Even more peculiar, on this world it's always Saturday afternoon. Light City, the only city on Ursa Minor Beta, which can only be reached by plane, is the very place where the editorial offices of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" reside.
See also: Minor Characters from The Hitchhikers Guide to the GalaxyBrontitall
Earth
Frogstar World B
Golgafrincham
Krikkit
Magrathea
Milliways
Ursa Minor Beta