Maybe after Superman saw how much fun Zod was having he thought he's tip his hand in the cookie jar just once.
The Donner cut of 2 is wayyyyy better than the Lester cut even by taking out the jokes peppered throughout the movie by Lester. It breaks my heart when I hear Donner on the commentary talk about how he and Mank were already coming up with ideas for Superman 3 while they were filming two. He speaks about how they could have went forever with the series because they loved working with the team they had - Reeve, Hackman, Kidder. Sad what could have been