Funny / Freefall

Examples are sorted by strip number.

---

• Redefining "roadkill".
  • Prior to this, she and Sam visit "The Golden Trough", where a roach dies after eating some of Sam's food.
• "If you stop to think, you'll see the flaw in that plan."
• Sam has a fridge logic moment when the vet tells him about Florence not eating until she's healed.
  Sam: So what you're saying is that in two or three days I'm going to have a highly intelligent, fast moving, starving, carnivorous alien life form on my ship.
  Winston: Yep. Wolves are also most active at dawn and dusk, so this will probably happen while you're asleep.
• "I should explain this when it's not so much of a distraction. Right now, I find it very distracting that no one is flying the ship."
• Florence posts a want-ad for a contractor to work on The Savage Chicken. She doesn't have to wait long.
• The "DOGGY!" Running Gag hits its crescendo, impressing Niomi with the reverb.
• "Captain, I must inform you that Sam Starfall is plotting a mutiny against you."
• (I don't know what's happened to my beautiful mob, but I'm sure somehow Sam is behind it.)
• Florence definitively proves that she's a Horrible Judge of Character.
  • Becomes a Brick Joke later when Sam comes to the conclusion that the clerk did rip him off.
• "Stupid fish!"
• Flo and Sawtooth tracking the robot muggers via scent trail:
  Florence: The robots we're after went this way. Strong scent. Lots of alley smell on their feet.
  Sawtooth: With your nose on the job, there's no way they'll escape us! (Unless they got on a bus.)
• Flo's guide on climbing Bible salesmen (with minigame).
• Defining "human".
• When Florence's memory is turned off and she changes clothes.
• "Quick! Where's the nearest concentration of valuables that would easily fit into a pocket?"
• Ecosystems Unlimited's Security AI picks fights with its own spam filter.
• Another Florence-with-amnesia gag: "You fool! Time is a factor! Skip to the notes near the end!"
  Florence: Well, I don't know if I like that tone of voice I'm taking with myself.
• Plan B.
• Sam's way of ensuring his role as Doctor Leonard Snart wasn't blamed on him: hand in a wallet, filled with cash, at the Lost and Found — because there's no way anyone would connect someone who would give up a grip on someone else's money with Sam Starfall.
  • Doubles as Fridge Brilliance, as well.
    Clerk: I wish everyone was as honest as you, Mr. Snart.
    Sam: You don't. Trust me. You really don't.
• The morning (3 a.m. counts!) after the amnesia escapade, Florence has a pair of What Did I Do Last Night? moments.
• "This isn't the first time we've had this conversation, is it?"
• New Fungus Yummies flavors.
• Sam's clever-beyond-comprehension plan for getting Florence an opportunity to talk to the Ecosystems Unlimited roboticists.
• Mad squid!
• Maybe he left a cookbook?
• "This is a direct order! Hit me with a pie!"
  • Also doubles as a Moment of Awesome for Sam.
    • That whole section applies, beginning with "I do not see this ending well."
    • Or before, even.
    Sam: Prepare to meet 3.14159 kinds of sticky doom!
    • Heck, earlier than that, when Florence gets a taste of what a network administration job must be like.
• "Yes! Now that I'm unhappy I can be happy again!"
• "Sir, I believe if you look past the obvious answer, you'll see one that's even more obvious."
  • Doubly funny because it probably would require a full time police force to stop Sam from committing crimes.
    • Triply funny, given that it's proven in a later strip that an entire police force is already inadequate at stopping him.
• When Florence meets the Kinetic Chemicals sales clerk.
• Unsolicited political contribution for the mayor!
  • A couple strips later comes the belated punchline: "Is that the sound of an emu eating my expense report?"
• Edge's argument with the Savage Chicken's computer ends up this way. Only his profanity filter prevents him from unloading a Cluster F-Bomb.
  SC Computer: Ms. Ambrose. A robot has attempted unauthorized access to this ship.
  Florence: Ship, please identify robot.
  SC Computer: Unable to comply. Robot has no transponder. Robot's radio is disabled.
  Florence: We only have visual identification?
  SC Computer: Negative. Robot is also providing audio. Lots and lots of audio.
  Edge (broadcasted): Stupid ship! I didn't come all this way to be magnetized! Let me off of you!
• Two barrier isolation.
• "Some months back. a robot named Qwerty. wrote the first. of his epic. rap yodeling. operas."
• "You can smell my brain?"
• Sawtooth's guide to making an entrance: "Oh look. There is another wall in my way. Temporarily."
• "I'm telling you, it's true! When the lights go out, terraforming robots come in and steal our women!
• Passengers returned to the full upright position? Check.
• #2097. Florence wonders why she was turned off in the dumpster behind the Ecosystems Unlimited office.
  Sam: Let's go and find out. The door's unlocked.
  Florence: Was that door unlocked thirty seconds ago?
  Sam: Boy, for someone who sleeps in a dumpster, you sure are picky.
• 2112:
  Sam: Why, we're like Batman and Robin. Well, if Batman and Robin were poor and engaged in petty crime.
• Edge has disguised himself by attaching a false transponder from an SD40-2 locomotive and is tucked away in a robo recharging alcove. From a pink locomotive, with frilly curtains in his windows.
  Helix: "Florence, is your friend a heavy metal cross-dresser?"
• How Sam makes sure the Mayor will welcome Florence, rather than immediately kicking her out without a hearing.
• "Guys! You know how a good employee is able to anticipate his boss's wishes?"
• It wasn't a mnemonic.
• Florence apologizes and promises to be a better arrestee in the future.
• Florence is a bad influence.
• Probably not what he meant by "Robots! Defend me!"
• Sam critique's Kornada's scheme.
  Sam: While I admire the scope, Mr. Kornada is new at this. He's making an amateur's mistake. You don't kill the people you're stealing from. You want them alive and productive so you can steal from them again and again.
  Qwerty: The tentacled horror from beyond the stars spoke, and Von Neumann help me, in my madness, I understood its words.
  Sam: Oh, come on! I'm giving you a sustainable business model here!
• Florence's gambit to get her remote off of her kidnapper simply by using his human nature against him.
• Democracy prevails again.
• Get some feet!
• Max Post's way of getting a large amount of people to the debate. Also his way of knowing exactly how to contact Sam.
• Fricasseeing squid and I don't want Sam on my side, but I don't want him on the other side even more.
• Blunt introduces his final argument at the debate: Edge. And Edge's concluding statement:
  Edge: Save money by upgrading the equipment? My supervisor tells me "We can't afford to save money!"
• After waking, Mr. Raibert wonders if he should check his mail or get coffee first.
• Fun with video redaction software.
• After Dr. Bowman gets extremely pissed before storming off to "beat the big dummy until its head caves in!", the Base Commander has this to say.
  Henri: He has been so mellow today. You're a good influence on him.
• "Everything I did was logical. One day I'll understand why that makes me the one who's nuts."
• When the police chief is talking to Winston.
  Winston: Good. I was afraid she might have stumbled across a conspiracy and been shipped to the South Pole.
  Chief: I can assure you events did not occur in that sequence.
• It is revealed that the entire robot population nearly being lobotomized has left robots very uncertain about their future and prone to acting out... by building gazebos and reroofing houses.
  Chief: Unless we can stop the panic, we're going to see more random acts of construction.
• The Chief tells Mr. Raibert that in order to securely contain Clippy, Dvorak is bringing over a special cage he made for the containment of dangerous electronic lifeforms.
  Mr. Raibert: This cage, is it something he built in case of, or because of?
  Chief: If you want to sleep tonight, you don't want the answer to that question.
• ''A proper lady does not rush into the kitchen at the sound of kibble hitting the bowl."
• Edge learns "How to hack humans".
• Qwerty declares that all robots shall be the most civic minded and law-abiding population ever. The Mayor, sitting next to him, is thinking "I have no idea how to govern people like this".
• Florence kisses Winston on the cheek. His brain struggles to interpret this.
  I know how it feels to be kissed by a girl and I know how it feels to be licked by a canine but my skin hasn't quite learned how to process those two feelings together.
• Clippy demands that Florence be shut down, as she is a rampant AI.
  Mr. Ishiguro: (Bemused) Clippy. Did you give me an order?
  Beat
  Clippy: (With new Sad Face) Ahhh! I'm an abomination! I don't deserve to live!
  • The solution to Clippy's emotional instability? Funny cat videos.
• The prison roombas kick Sam out of "their" prison.
• Winston's father is skeptical of his son having a girlfriend, advising him instead to get a dog. One can only wonder what he'll think when he sees Florence.
• During lunch, Mr. Ishiguro and the Mayor fret over robotic expansion - their robotic waiter suggests channeling AI interest into a Polka renaissance, horrifying Mr. Ishiguro.
  • The robot then elaborates that it got the idea from "Terminator 57", "Alien 79", and the Bavarian version of "Godzilla" - "No creature ever threatens humanity once it acquires lederhosen and an accordian."
• Mr. Kornada's reaction to his uniform.
  • He then tries to see what his options are - his only one would be working in a plant that manufactures Chlorine trifluoride, a very hazardous material that can make water, sand, and even asbestos catch fire.
    Mr. Kornada: What if that stuff gets on me?
    Manager: You will be very clean.
    Policebot: And on fire.
• Sam's response to being asked to teach robots how to be criminals is charming. The straight-faced response to being hugged, is the true comedy.
  Warehouse Robot: I do not understand what you are doing and it is making me uncomfortable.
• Sam starts training robotic criminals, and a pair of police bots volunteer so that their coworkers are useful. They're then informed that "imperfect" foods were siphoned off the supply line to make someone a free salad.
  Officer Green: Devil! How can you live with yourself?!
  Officer Red: Excuse my partner. He was not expecting to see this level of malfeasance displayed openly.
  • He then tries to arrest a tomato, then sprints off when they've been "made" - Red attributes it to overclocking.
• Sam's idea of the Sqids' new overlords.
• Sam, overhearing the word "mutiny" in jest, points out the clause in Niomi's contract that allows for a mutiny... for an exorbitant fee. She immediately objects to paying that much for a mutiny before realizing...
  Niomi: Did Sam just Mutiny-proof the ship?
  Florence: He makes it look so easy. I still have so much to learn.
  • Even better when Niomi gets control of the ship via Exact Words.
• Funny Background Event: The privilege of launching Sam off of the planet was, apparently, raffled off. The Inspector won.
• Sam gets into an extended conversation with the ship's computer, where he points out that his ownership of the vessel led to Florence restoring her to working order, which led to directly taking the ship's own interests into account, which led to Niomi being a passenger. Because Niomi is a human, she is by default captain by the ship's terms (highest-ranking human on board); thus, she now has a human captain. And because she's only there by Sam's permission, Sam is responsible for the ship having a human captain.
  Sam: I'm the best thing that could have happened to you.
  (cut to Niomi and Florence in the cockpit)
  Niomi: Problem?
  Florence: I'm not sure. It looks like the computer locked up.
  • Cut back to the ship proclaiming that Sam is not human and thus his life does not have the same value as a human's. Sam proceeds to point out that humans have various priceless categories that they value more than human life.
    Sam: If you want to put me in that category, I'm okay with that.
    (cut to Niomi and Florence again)
    Florence: (concerned) This is very odd. The computer starts working and then it locks up again.
• As part of a mandatory ethics test, Mr. Kornada was given the classic "Trolley Problem" and chose to hit one person instead of five... because "It would do less damage to the trolley". The officer processing this is rightly disturbed by this rationale.
• Sam tells Florence about his planet's religious beliefs, and that thievery is something of a rite of passage among Sqids, to the point of stealing from the Gods. He also mentions how disappointed human explorers were when they were treated as Gods.
• In the sqid legend that Sam tells, Mho, Lairee, and Coily finally reach the place where the Maker God Bob keeps his fire. They were at a loss for how to steal the fire until Lairee "used his head", whereupon Mho "improved upon his technique". Translation: Lairee has tufts of moss on his head, one of them ignited, and Mho proceeded to rip the burning moss off and impale it on a stick.
  • When Mho first tried stealing the fire all by himself, Sam explains that "for three days, he was foiled by Bob's trap". The purpose of one of such traps (the one depicted on the very same panel) was literally to wrap any intruder in tinfoil.
  • Bob goes to teach Lairee the error of his ways, only to find him collapsed from smoke inhalation, requiring Bob to resuscitate him first.
    • If you look closely, you can see Lairee's limbs flailing about. Clearly, he doesn't appreciate getting revived like this.
  • Third time fire-stealing, Mho tries to split up the fire between them. Lairee and Coily object because it was Mho's turn to keep the fire tonight (and therefore face Bob's wrath when he found out). Mho insists that this way, they're more likely to avoid Bob's wrath altogether. Bob points out that it won't do them any good.
  • As Bob goes to catch each individual sqid to take their torches, Mho gets an idea that, in hindsight, wasn't especially good. Said idea was to apparently set fire to everything he came across while he still has a lead, much to Bob's horror.
• This strip makes a hilarious observation that seems like a Take That! but on closer scrutiny is actually a logical deduction on the author's part. Disney has reached the point in 2019 where they can make an entire movie with animation so photorealistic as to be mistaken for live-action. By the time Faster-Than-Light Travel comes around, it's entirely possible that that level of animation will be standard for the Disney Animated Canon, and it will definitely be seeing a great deal of use going forward. And if Disney decides to make a movie about sqids...
• That's one small step for a man, one giant faceplant for mankind.
• Florence is trying to keep Sam's radiation exposure as low as practical, since nobody knows the effects of radiation on sqids.
  Sam: As low as practical. Not as low as possible?
  Florence: As low as possible would be not letting you off the planet.
  Sam: Ah, yes. Hard to be a daring space captain if you're not allowed in space.
• After a lecture on radiation itself, Florence and Sam discuss shielding; 5 cm of lead, 10 cm of steel, or 120 cm of water would reduce the outside radiation (in this case, .5 millisieverts per day) to one tenth by the time it reaches the interior.
  Sam: Wow. That much material wrapped around a spaceship would be heavy... and expensive to accelerate... and we don't have much shielding, do we?
  (Florence crosses her arms and shakes her head)
• Sam has fallen asleep on watch by the time Niomi comes to relieve him. She performs an alarm test to wake him up.
  Florence: (leaping into the cockpit in her pajamas) I heard alarms. What's our situation?
  Niomi: (thinking) That did not work out how I anticipated.
  (Sam is still asleep)
  • Niomi concludes that they need to make the alarm louder to make sure Sam wakes up to it, while Florence decides that he would quickly respond to a different type of "alarm".
• Niomi calls her family on Jean from fifteen light-seconds away, and proposes that each party talk for thirty seconds and listen for thirty seconds. Knowing that's probably not going to fly with Hazel, she gives her an extra period for the benefit of the doubt.
  Niomi: Well, it's been fifty seconds and no reply. Guess I'll keep going. I just know you're going to start talking at the same time as-
  Hazel: Hi, Mom! We took Beekay to the park. He got chased by a duck!
• After taking offense when the ship announces Niomi's entry into an area as captain, Sam decides to start doing it for himself in lieu.
  Sam: Real captain on the bridge.
  Ship: As if.
  • Niomi is surprised that the Chief had asked Sam to look into the station's finances - but Sam points out that if he's the one caught in a place he shouldn't be, it genuinely won't look suspicious.
• When they finally reach the station, we get a nice Call-Back to Sam's first time in space.
  Sam: Hard to believe we're finally here.
  Ship: A docking fee has been charged to your account.
  Sam: And now I believe.
• At the station, Sam crashes on the apartment assigned to Niomi and informs her of a few things he's found out about the cash flow. Grudgingly, Niomi grants Sam one night at her apartment as a thank you for having brought her to the station and giving her useful information. Sam thanks her and prepares to leave. A curious Niomi asks him where he's going - to which Sam replies he's not wasting his one night when everything's quiet.
  Niomi (thinking): Three weeks traveling with that sneaky sqid and I still haven't learned that you never give wiggle room to anyone who's boneless.
• Two hilarious moments of Leaning on the Fourth Wall in one strip.
• After the reactor salvage goes badly, Sam tries to find a loophole, in needing a second reactor to get back to Jean: the Orion Drive.
  Sam: With the moon move almost complete, the place that made the bombs is probably idle. We might be able to get some cheap. You can fly a spaceship by setting off bombs behind it. Would that qualify as a second reactor?
  Florence: No. The two reactor rule is for life support. Also, you don't want to use an Orion drive if your ship is only good for one pulse.
  • That said, she does find some merit in Sam's proposal - to commission a viable reactor from the bomb factory. The scene changes to the factory, where an idling robot is mournfully singing part of Be Our Guest as one of the printers offers to make it a new hat - of which the robot already has more than 200 of.
• The image alone of Sam and Mr. Thurmad singing Mozart's Queen of the Night aria - an aria written for a coloratura soprano. It's not mentioned where their voices fall in the spectrum, but it's a fair bet neither comes close to the artist's original intention.
• Sam muses on how humanity's space program would have evolved if space travel caused rapid fat loss: a vastly overfunded space program and turning humans into an interstellar civilization by the seventies.
• Gregor's musings on artificial intelligence turn to Florence's priorities in a relationship with Winston and a potential child - and then comments on how Florence's pleasant and cooperative demeanor is going to ruin interactions with real women for him. Cue a swift ear pull from an instantly irritated Tess.
  • This gets referred to a bit later:
    Winston: Dad said Florence might ruin me for other women.
    Tess: He voiced the same concerns to me.
    Winston: Did you ruin Dad for other women?
    Tess: (smirking) Darn right I did.
  • After Gregor's next thought - that machines have the potential to be more human than humanity itself - Tess softly pulls him back to reality by reminding him A.I.s are too closely monitored to really become human, saying they still need a few generations outside human control to really come into their own identity, and attempts to cheer Gregor by painting a future where humans and Bowman's Wolves have achieved "parity" - using the example of a Bowman's Wolf embezzling from the pension fund.
• Florence makes a midnight snack for herself and Winston, and runs afoul of Tess' clothing-optional attitude.
  Tess: I was right. Dr. Bowman's neural net design is sophisticated enough to process emotions like embarrassment.
  Gregor: Please tell me you did not discover this by practical application.
  • This leads to Florence agreeing to go with Tess to the station's spa in order to get her to calm down a bit, but only after making sure the spa was not clothing-optional. Unfortunately for her...
    Hillman: The spa is a relaxed place where people can tell you "There's a funny spot on your back. Better get it checked out." Being allowed to wear clothes there would completely defeat the point.
• After talking to a representative of the maintenance workforce, Sam and Helix make their way back to the cafeteria while Sam summarizes everything they've learned so far.
  Sam: Am I forgetting anything?
  Helix: You wanted to talk to Florence about the bomb factory robots building a spaceship.
  Sam: Florence. Who is way back in the maintenance workshop. Where we just were.
  Helix: (smiling) More walking will make your muscles strong after microgravity.
  Sam: You gave me a good reminder, you're looking out for my health, and yet somehow I'm still annoyed with you.
• Sam eventually ends up taking a ticket to the Spa right as Florence is there with Winston's mom and her friends. Turns out even hardened transhumanists aren't immune to the horrors of Sqid anatomy. We also find out that Helix is immune:
  I've seen you out of your suit. You look like a bowl of spaghetti. After all our time in microgravity, you'll look like an out of shape bowl of spaghetti.
• When the power in the P/N station goes out, among the people reacting to it is the bomb factory. Temporary Site Manager Rover17 goes full "Human in Danger" mode and demands that all robots capable of moving of their own volition gather in the cargo bay so they can go help. CommunicationNexus3 quickly suggests that he amend that instruction.
  Rover17: Correction. All mobile robots not designed to explode report to the cargo bay.
  Missiles: Awww...
• Florence runs into Tess & co. while she's collecting Sam's suit, and for some reason the smell of sqid gets Tess hungry. The reason becomes clear when they reach the cafeteria: among the fantastical flavours of fungal protein is kraken, which apparently smells like sqid.
  Nettie: We should discontinue the flavour. One day, we're going to establish relations with those aliens.
  Tess: It would make official contact awkward. "We come in peace. Don't look too closely at our menus."
  • Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you remember everything else that has found Sam tasty.
  • Ultimately, they decide they DO need to tell Sam and the station authorities about this in the interest of good will, knowing that they'll never have kraken again. Cut to them sharing a jumbo bucket of kraken, intent on having one more taste before it's discontinued.
• Ames de Morel and Perth Hillman go to speak with Rover17 and Sam, and de Morel immediately makes it clear that he's not interested in cooperating. What's the first thing that Sam says that they can agree on?
  Sam: I'm sure we can get this all worked out.
  De Morel: He's up to something.
  Hillman: Yep. Nobody is that confident they can get management and labor working together if they don't have an ace up their sleeve.
• Sam has two plans to save the station, without robots providing free labour. One is providing Team Cyberform-The-Gas-Giant's-Moon with an Aldrin cycler, by turning the station into said cycler. The other is employing the station to seek out planets in the Goldilocks zone so Team Terraform-A-Planet-For-Sqids has somewhere to start. Perth reacts to the latter with an observation that applies just as much to the real world as it does to the sqid homeworld.
  Hillman: Your whole species lives on just one planet? Man, that would make me twitchy! Anything happens to that one planet and BOOM! It's all over.
• Ultimately, he saves the station a huge amount of money... which means that his payment of "17% of what he saves the station" is a substantial sum, to De Morel's displeasure. Except, he's not quite in a fully-rested state as he contemplates this.
  Niomi: Sam's not here. He went into the maintenance tunnels. How much did he cheat you for?
  De Morel: A lot! At least, I think he cheated me. I will be better off now than if I hadn't been cheated... Have I been cheated?
  Niomi: Go home. Get a good night's sleep. People who catch Sam in your state tend to regret it.
  De Morel: That... sounds like good advice.
  • Better yet, Hillman states that Sam saved the station, before De Morel notes that Sam gets 17% of what he saves. Having a 17% stake in the entire station isn't too shabby at all, once it gets up and running... assuming that Sam can keep hold of what they agreed on.
  • Oh, it gets WAY better than that, to the point it arguably doubles as a Moment Of Awesome. What Sam actually SAID was "3 times 17%" or 51%, or a MAJORITY SHARE, and once things get rolling, he gets Morel so off balance by claiming his office is now Sam's office and otherwise being his usual annoying self that within seconds of trying to deny Sam 17% of the station he's agreeing to give Sam that share in writing. What Morel had said about the verbal 51% not holding up in court is most likely true, but once something actually has his signature on it, it ought to! Complete with a lampshade hung by Sam himself:
  Sam: Or what, you're going to throw me into a briar patch?
  • The very next strip, an irritated De Morel is at a bar, and he irritatedly comments Sam succeeded in upping his share to 21%.

---