Today in "funnier in light of a (sort of) prequel": Doctor Breen's "highest bidder" line in Half-Life 2. Given how Half-Life Alyx reveals that the G-Man had been the prisoner of the Combine for a while, we've got three possibilities here:
the G-Man used time travel shenanigans to undo his capture (and thus a supermajority of the plot of Half-Life Alyx), and Doctor Breen was unwittingly implying that the possibility had existed that the Combine could have done business with a guy who'd been their prisoner;
the G-Man left the events of HLA largely unchanged, and Doctor Breen was knowingly going "Hey, Gordon, did you know that if things had gone differently, we could have been the ones to hire you from that guy we stuffed in a box that was powered by vortigaunts in order to try to contain him?"; or
regardless of which of 1 or 2 is the case, the G-Man didn't consider his imprisonment to be sufficient reason not to do business with the Combine
and all three of these possibilities are objectively hilarious.
@narklos be out here inspiring me to give HL antagonists the appreciation they deserve (?) after giving lots of appreciation to the protagonists. Tried something a bit ambitious here with the lighting.
Half-Life Alyx from Gordon's perspective (endgame spoilers)
So the Combine Advisors have just killed Eli in the hangar at the end of Episode 2, Dog killed one and the other fled, and Alyx was sobbing over Eli's body, right?
Now: suddenly fade to black as Gordon finds himself in one of the G-Man's weird dimensions, seeing him from behind while a five-years-younger Alyx is looking bewildered. The G-Man is saying "-- unable ... or ... unwilling ... to perform the tasks laid before him. We struggled to find a replacement ... until now" whilst tossing Gordon's crowbar back over to him. Then Gordon finds himself back in the hangar without the crowbar, the Advisor that killed Eli is dead and Alyx is just gone, Eli is pissed and now wants to kill the G-Man, and Dog shows up to bring Gordon the crowbar again.