Par for the series in general, there were quite a few ridiculously funny moments in this installment of The Dresden Files. WARNING: Unmarked spoilers below!
- Death doesn't seem to have slowed down Carmichael's wit much.Dresden: (completely shocked) C-c-c-c...Carmichael: Say it with me. Carmichael.Dresden: But you're...you know, dead.Carmichael: Whoa, buddy. We got us a real, gen-yoo-wine detective with us now. We got us the awesome wizardly intellect of mister man himself.
- Mort's reaction to seeing Harry's ghost.Mort: Oh, perfect.
Harry: Hiya, Morty.
Mort: This is not happening. This just can't be happening. No one is this unlucky. - The Blue Beetle being referred to as "Herbie's trailer park cousin."
- Mort's reaction after Mister interacts with Ghost Harry."Oh sure. Professional ectomancer with a national reputation as a medium tells you what's going on, and nobody believes him. But let a stump-tailed furry critter come in and everyone goes all Lifetime."
- When Molly looks upon Harry with her Sight, she’s shocked and asks how she can know it's him. The surefire, undeniable proof that he’s really Harry Dresden?"You will go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me."
- Which only becomes more Hilarious in Hindsight when it's revealed who's been teaching Molly while Harry was away.
- And later, during the same scene:Murphy: Miss Carpenter?
Molly: Yes?
Murphy: It's him?
Molly: He greeted me with a quote from The Empire Strikes Back.
Murphy: Him.
- The moment where it's revealed that Bob now has, thanks to Butters, full access to the Internet. Tremble, ye mortals.Bob: [almost giddy] It's like ninety-percent porn!
- Butters tells one of Marcone's people he'll start training for combat after he gets a functional lightsaber. Wait two books - He gets one. And immediately starts combat training with Michael and Charity.
- Butters laying in a really quiet dig when Harry and Murphy utterly refuse to ask Marcone for help. For bonus points, he says it while they're in their Marcone-built and -staffed headquarters."No going to Marcone for help. Because that would be... (looks around the room meaningfully) unprecedented."
- When Molly is fighting the Fomor servitors, she makes heavy use of illusion magic, including false walls of flame, which they eventually see through. Then Harry joins with Molly, and creates a similar wall of fire. The result is pure Black Comedy.One of them gave the wall of flame a disdainful snort and calmly walked into it.
Like I said, I'm not much when it comes to illusions.
I am, however, reasonably good with fire. - While it's also rather heartbreaking in how it shows just how much of a torch Molly is still holding for Harry, the following exchange between them in the IHOP is also amusing:Molly: So. You've finally been inside me. I feel like I should be offering you a cigarette.
Harry: [chokes and clears his throat] - Harry's Call-Back to Agatha Hagglethorn's Victorian-era Chicago demesne in the Nevernever back in Grave Peril:
- Harry considers having a demesne and asking Bob for suggestions. Then he realizes that asking Bob would lead to suggestions like constructs in French Maid costumes "and would only get more depraved from there."
- As he's considering this, he realizes that his demesne can resemble anything he can imagine, with whatever he wants. However, he concludes that, in the end, it would either look exactly like his old apartment or a Burger King, and stops thinking about it since he finds it way too depressing to dwell upon.
- Harry describes Charity as "The being I wish least to anger" Keep in mind up to this point in the series Harry has tangled with and snarked at Faerie Queens, Fallen Angels and creatures beyond human comprehension, and he still puts Charity above them all.
- Before it becomes utterly horrifying with the arrival of He Who Walks Behind, there's a young sixteen-year-old Harry's attempt to stick up a convenience store. He ties his sweaty T-shirt around his head like a makeshift balaclava, rips the patches off his letter jacket so the cops won't be able to identify him (apparently missing how a letter jacket with torn-off patches is plenty identifiable), and sticks his right hand in a paper bag he fished out of the trash so he can use evocations to make it look like he's got a concealed gun. Needless to say, he does not cut the most intimidating figure when he marches into the gas station, and he only starts to succeed at all because Stan the clerk is utterly stoned out of his gourd.
- And speaking of the paper bag, he quickly realizes that there's mayonnaise on the inside of the bag and he can feel rubbing against his "gun" hand, seriously Squicking him out.
- Additionally, Harry tried to use a hex to take out the streetlights and security cameras in front of the store to make it harder for passers-by to notice him sticking up the place. He succeeds... and also blows out the store's freezers and overhead lights on pure accident.
- Harry's attempt at intimidating Stan: He points his "concealed gun" at the liquor bottles behind Stan, screams "Ka-bang! Ka-bang!" and uses force magic to make the bottles explode.Harry's Narration: My verbal incantations have actually gotten more sophisticated and worldly over the years, not less.
I know, right? It shocks me, too.
- It’s a major case of Mood Whiplash, but during Harry's otherwise terrifying encounter with He Who Walks Behind, he gets a good joke off, serving as the first chronological hint of his use of humor to ward off his fears. Made even funnier by how it completely takes the wind out of the Outsider's sails - It's pretty clear that, even for a terrifying and ancient Eldritch Abomination more powerful than mere human ken that was shaping Harry into their Unwitting Pawn, they certainly didn't see that coming:"Pathetic," said He Who Walks Behind, growing nearer with every word. "Whimpering, mewling thing. Useless."
Terror.
I couldn't think.
I was going to die.
I was going to die.
And then my mouth said, in a damned passable Pee-wee Herman impersonation, "I know you are, but what am I?"
He Who Walks Behind stopped in his tracks. There was a flickering heartbeat of uncertainty in that inevitable presence, and the creature said with audible bafflement, "What?"- Just before this scene, there's also a brilliant moment of Bathos when He Who Walks Behind is literally hurling poor Harry around the convenience store: At one point, when Harry is thrown into a stand holding up several boxes of powdered donuts, he can smell the crushed pastries and is briefly distracted (complete with his stomach growling) by his hunger and dazedly contemplates getting some donuts. He is a teenager at this point in the story, after all.
- Finally, there's how Harry manages to actually escape the convenience store: Realizing that He Who Walks Behind is literally always behind him, he spins himself around dervish-style so that the Outsider can't attack him at any one point... and he does this all while spewing Pee-wee Herman's cartoony laugh. It's somehow made even funnier by how a present-day Harry muses that, in retrospect, his own maniacal impression of Pee-wee Herman's laughter was probably the creepiest thing to hit his ears that fateful night.
- After sharing his story to Lea, Harry grouses that he hasn't gotten any closer to finding his killer than he was at the beginning of the story."In point of fact," Lea said, "you've been doing little else."
I blinked.
She gave me an enigmatic, feline smile.
"Oh, you bitch." I sighed. "You just love doing that to me." - The conversation Harry has with Evil Bob about having a "relationship" (Evil Bob was actually offering a Villain Team-Up). Just...so very Harry. The best part? Mouthing off to bad guys is so second nature for him, he actually uses the time to realize that he has not become a monster and whip up an escape plan.
- Even better: it takes Evil Bob about a minute or so to realize Harry is mocking him.
- Harry notes that he's probably not the first person to lead an army of ghosts into battle. And he's definitely not the first to lead reinforcements through a Way. But he's dead certain (badum-tsh) he's the first person to lead an army of ghosts into battle through a Way, and having them start the assault by yelling, "BOO!"
- Murphy discussing Molly's gambit to try and keep Chicago safe, specifically her nickname, "The Rag(ged) Lady":Murphy: If you're going to create a persona you have to think of these things. Do you know how many extra PMS jokes are flying out there now?
Molly: (looking serious) I think that just makes it even scarier?
Murphy: ...Yeah I guess it might.
Harry: Scares me. - "Well, crap," I muttered. "Over."
- Molly's attempt at a Trust Password for Harry, and his response.Molly: What was I wearing the first time we met?
Harry: ...Clothes? - Molly's Star Trek "defense system" — and Harry keeps referring to them as "Science Molly," "Scottish Molly," "Communications Molly"...
- And she even remembered to add a Red Shirt Molly to die at the first sign of trouble!
- Even better, when Spock-Molly goes for Molly's mental Self-Destruct Mechanism and Kirk-Molly tries to stop her, Harry remarks that the classic Trek fight music
started playing. And later the familiar red alert klaxon is described as sounding like a teenage girl was vocally imitating it.
- Even better, when Spock-Molly goes for Molly's mental Self-Destruct Mechanism and Kirk-Molly tries to stop her, Harry remarks that the classic Trek fight music
- Also, Harry's reaction upon seeing Molly's Star Trek "defense system." He comments that people are either Star Trek fans or Star Wars fans. Molly tells him basically that that unspoken rule among nerds no longer applies. Harry is playfully dismayed.
- And she even remembered to add a Red Shirt Molly to die at the first sign of trouble!
- A bit of black humor: After Harry calls in his favor, Kincaid's response is, "Thanking me. That's new."
- Uriel is an archangel. It's implied that with a bare amount of effort, he could lay waste not just to the Earth, but the entire galaxy. Harry calles him Uri, which he strenuously objects to, as his name more or less means "Light of God", with the "-el" specifically being the reference to God, an implication he understandably dislikes. Harry resolves to call him "Mr. Sunshine" instead, which Uriel considers an acceptable alternative.
- The way Murphy's father ends an awkward conversation with Uriel. Clearly, Clan Murphy is one where the apple does not fall too far from the tree.And then he hung up. On speakerphone. On a freaking archangel.
- Plus the reason Uriel is upset is because he was brought into deception by proxy. Murphy's dad said that three of Harrys friends would die if he didn't help, implying the information was from Uriel. He had no actual advanced knowledge of this and totally just made it up to motivate Harry. Although as he points out, he probably wasn't totally wrong either. Mortals tend to die sooner or later, and Harry being around certainly increases his friends odds of survival.
- Possibly even funnier is the implication, which Harry himself lampshades, is that Jack was actually acting under orders and this way Uriel just has plausible deniability.
- Plus the reason Uriel is upset is because he was brought into deception by proxy. Murphy's dad said that three of Harrys friends would die if he didn't help, implying the information was from Uriel. He had no actual advanced knowledge of this and totally just made it up to motivate Harry. Although as he points out, he probably wasn't totally wrong either. Mortals tend to die sooner or later, and Harry being around certainly increases his friends odds of survival.
- Butters awaking to find himself receiving CPR from two lovely werewolf ladies who had to change to human without any clothing available.Wow, subtract the horrible pain in my chest, this migraine, and all the mold and mildew, and I'm living the dream. <thud>
- Made Hilarious in Hindsight courtesy of "Bombshells" when it's revealed that he started dating one of them.
