Iolaus: You think you know the truth about him? You know nothing. His father was Zeus. The Zeus. King of the gods. His mother, Alcmene, a mortal woman. Together, they had a boy. Half human, half god. But Zeus' queen, Hera, saw this bastard child as an insult, a living reminder of her husband's infidelity. Alcmene named the boy Hercules, which means glory of Hera, but this failed to appease the goddess. She wanted him dead. Luckily, he took after his father. Once he reached manhood, the gods commanded him to perform Twelve Labors, twelve dangerous missions. If he completed them all and survived, Hera agreed to finally let him live in peace. He fought the Lernean Hydra! He battled the Etymanthean Boar! But his greatest Labor was the Nemean Lion. This was no ordinary beast. It had a hide so tough, no weapon could penetrate it. But even this monster was no match for the son of Zeus.
Enemy pirate: What a load of crap.
Hercules has this exchange with Gryza, the pirate chief:
What makes it more hilarious is how nonchalantly Hercules treats the whole thing, strolling up to Iolaus at a sedate pace before gently nudging him back by about an inch so he just misses the stake when he falls, and all the while Iolaus is frantically calling for his uncle to hurry up.
Autolycus adds some Black Comedy into the mix as well
Autolycus: …eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Twenty pirates at two gold pieces a head, minus the headless ones. Let’s see.
This golden exchange:
Amphiaraus: A lion and a crow in strange alliance, fighting across a sea of corpses.
The Snark-to-Snark Combat between Hercules and Autolycus after they finish counting the combined earnings of the whole group:
Autolycus: That’s a pretty sight.
Hercules: One more payday, Autolycus, that’s all we need.
Autolycus: Then we get to live like the kings we’ve served.
Hercules: Or live simply.
Autolycus: You still dreaming of barbarian lands?
Hercules: Beyond the Aegean, at the shores of the Black Sea. That is where I will live out the rest of my days in solitude.
Autolycus: Boring, if you ask me.
Amphiaraus spends a large amount of his time talking about his supposedly foreseen glorious death, which repeatedly seems to happen but then gets subverted. At one point he's alone in a field, and a swarm of burning arrows begin raining down upon him, and he closes his eyes, holds out his arms, and awaits "his moment"... Which doesn't come this time either since all the arrows managed to miss him entirely, and his response is to look around in bewilderment, shrug, and continue fighting.
Later on, a Thracian soldier hurls a spear at him which passes through a torch and he does the same thing believing again that it's his time ... only for Hercules to grab it mid-flight and throw it back at the soldier.
Hercules: You're welcome.
Early when Autolycus are training King Cotys troops Autolycus asks Tydeus to charge at the shield wall which he does roaring like a glorious berserker and he breaks through the wall almost effortlessly which Hercules goes to point how many of them would be dead (and one very dead).
Later on when the men are properly trained Tydeus charges at the shield wall again, only this time to bounce off it as if he had charged at a thick wall. Tydeus doesn't even get mad at this.
When King Cotys troops finally get decent equipment for battle Iolaus attempts to ham up boasting how every piece of armory is made out of legendary materials from Hercules' labours... Only for people to poke holes at his narrative. At one point Iolaus starts to get irked with the "tough crowd".
