"...I think I'm just gonna poop out the airlock."
- During the "Also Sprach Zarathustra" intro, the most dramatic part of the score is not reserved for the title or the on-screen vista—an extraordinaire alignment of celestial bodies—but for the appearance of Kubrick's name.
- Seeing one of the man-apes push a tapir away when it got too close.
- During the first confrontation at the water hole, as the losing tribe slinks off screeching and hooting, one of the winning apes looks back over his shoulder and screeches in a way that essentially means "you lost, quit whining, piss off".
- At first, the ape-man smashing the skeleton is rather comical, with the clanking of bones and all, and Soundtrack Dissonance. But then, a shot of the ape lifting up the bone...
- As Moonwatcher's group beats the rival man-ape leader to death, there's a touch of Black Comedy in how one of the attacking apes (the one with the axe-shaped club) tries to get a hit on it, but runs off in a panic when it fails to connect. Then after the opposing leader is certainly dead, "Axe-Wielder" finally throws his bone at the corpse, seemingly in a pathetic attempt to share in the credit for the attack.
- The sight of Dr. Floyd asleep on the Orion shuttle. The audience has most likely been wowed at this point with the poetry of space travel, and here's this guy just snoring away, as you realize he's probably done this so many times, it's routine.
- Similarly, when he and some others are traveling to the Monolith site: they are zipping across the surface of the freaking moon, and the men spend the trip sucking up to the boss and complaining about the food.
- Dr. Floyd reading the long list of instructions for using a zero-gravity toilet.
- After we see HAL take over the space pod, we see Frank flying by frantically on one of the monitors Dave is looking at.
- HAL's understated and deadpan delivery is actually quite funny from time to time.Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult. - HAL's entire sequence as Bowman tries to get into the master control room. However, it ends pretty abruptly afterwards.HAL: Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
- Dave's face when HAL reveals that he could tell the astronauts were keeping secrets from him, and that he read their lips. For a grown man, he looks remarkably like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar.
