I worked as a telephone operator for ten years and that whole sequence was my favorite bit in the movie. That whole idea of “I don’t know what to do with this demanding caller” and the senior guy responding with “Alright, give him to me” is a conversation I had at work many many times. Of course, fucking with the caller by putting them on speakerphone never occurred to me but the whole idea of having a laugh at a difficult caller’s expense… well I can’t say that never crossed my mind.
From various other Whedon properties:
(Season five of Angel) You have reached ritual sacrifice! To sacrifice a goat, press 1 or say “goat”!
(In Your Eyes) You got a problem buddy?
Tell him to go fuck himself!
No…
Go fuck yourself, dude!
No… no… nope. No problem at all. We’re cool.
You’re such a wimp!
You like it when we get hit?
(Season six of Buffy) Spike: Here we are now… entertain us.
(Whedon himself) Look, my pony did its trick again!
Nick Fury: “The world has gotten even stranger than you already know.”
Captain America: “At this point I don’t think anything would surprise me.”
Fury: “Ten bucks says you’re wrong.”
Later, the carrier rises into the air and becomes invisible, and Cap silently hands Fury ten bucks the next time he sees him. Hilarious.
My favorite part of that scene is the noise Loki makes while lying there in the indentation in the floor Hulk just pounded him into - that low-level “eeeeeeeeeeeeee” of intense and unexpected pain. It’s a noise that says “I’m just going to lie here for a while and hurt, if that’s okay with you.”
More Firefly:
Mal: Well, we may not have parted on the best of terms. I realize certain words were exchanged. Also, certain… bullets.
Zoë: Sir? I like you to take the helm, please. I need this man to tear all my clothes off.
Wash: Work, work, work…
Mal: Mercy is the mark of a great man. [stabs Atherton] Guess I’m just a good man. [stabs Atherton again] Well, I’m all right.
Inara: Any well-bred petty crook knows that the small, concealable weapons go to the far left of the place setting.
Jayne: 'Cause I don’t know these folks. Don’t much care to.
Mal: They’re whores.
Jayne: I’m in.
Also - not a main character but one of the best burns in the whole damn show, from “Shindig”:
Old Guy At Party: Why, Banning Miller! What a vision you are in your fine dress. It must have taken a dozen slaves a dozen days to get you into that getup. 'Course, your daddy tells me it takes the space of a schoolboy’s wink to get you out of it again.
Spike on Willow’s guilt about the Chumash tribe spirits:
“You won. All right? You came in and you killed them and you took their land. That’s what conquering nations do. It’s what Caesar did, and he’s not goin’ around saying, “I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.” The history of the world is not people making friends. You had better weapons, and you massacred them. End of story.”
River: They weren’t cows inside. They were waiting to be, but they forgot. Now they see sky, and they remember what they are.
Mal: Is it bad that what she said made perfect sense to me?
Wash: We gotta go to the crappy town where I’m a hero
Willow: Bored Now.
Mal: We’ve done the impossible, and that makes us mighty.
Zoë: If they take the ship they will rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing, and if we’re very, very lucky, they’ll do it in that order.
Warren: It was an accident, you know.
Willow: Oh. You mean, instead of killing my best friend, you killed my girlfriend.
Warren: It- It wasn’t personal, that’s all.
Willow: Well, this is.