an idle thought:
Rocket and Yondu, hanging around post Yondu surviving; Rocket pulls his weird little “stealing prosthetics is hi-larious” routine around Yondu again.
Yondu has his own prosthetic. That fin of his is effectively the same as, say, Vorker’s cybernetic eye: it’s a replacement for a sensory and communicative organ that is now missing and which he no longer possesses, and having it lets him do the things he otherwise wouldn’t be able to do to function. How you think he’d respond to watching Rocket steal other people’s prosthetics? I think he’s largely confused the one time he sees Rocket demand Vorker’s eye in canon, but he definitely doesn’t laugh. That said, he’s got bigger shit on his mind, what with trying to not get handed over to the Kree and pick up Peter and all.
(secondary thought: Rocket, what the hell is going on with you and the prosthetic thing? Is this some kind of demented joke about bodily autonomy and you taking out not having had your own on other people? It feels like something that comes out of a real deep bitterness, but that’s about all I got.)
I imagine it as a self hatred thing – his whole self could be dismissed as artificial, so when he takes away prosthetics and mocks people for having trouble without them, it’s a way of attacking himself for being dependent? On the scientists who tortured him, to boot. And projecting that he thinks of himself as ‘some little monster’ – people who rely on mods and/or have damaged bodies being not quite real is something I think he’s internalised.
Yondu seemed exasperated and maybe very slightly disgusted, in a familial kind of way, about Vorker’s eye once he got what Rocket was going for. I’m not sure he would have a stronger reaction than that, but I think he’d probably start to poke Rocket about his motives if it happened often.
Also, I’m hoping Rocket’s developed enough as a person not to pull this stuff in infinity wars and beyond, because if I have to sit through “I need that guy’s arm” with Bucky, I’ll be… very disappointed. Popcorn-throwing would ensue. I would like to see him have a conversation with Nebula, though, because I think she probably simultaneously has some of the same feelings about being depersonalised by non-consensual bodily modification, and wouldn’t take any of his nonsense about it.