Bender (Futurama)

Bender, full name Bender Bending Rodríguez, designated Bending Unit 22 and built in Mexico, is a fictional robot character in the animated television series Futurama. He is voiced by John DiMaggio. In the series, Bender plays the role of a comic anti-hero, and is described by Turanga Leela as an "alcoholic, whore-mongering, chain-smoking gambler" and as possessing a "swarthy Latin charm" (despite not having a Latin accent).

Role

Bender serves as one of the crew members hired by Hubert J. Farnsworth to deliver goods for Planet Express. He is one of Fry's closest friends, though the relationship is often one sided. Bender is a heavy drinker, smoker, and gambler. He also constantly steals, ranging from the petty theft of wallets to much higher crimes like kidnapping Jay Leno's head due to their long feud (this event being mentioned as a brief joke in Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV).

Bender is a robot built by Mom's Friendly Robot Company at its plant in Tijuana, Mexico, circa 2996. He is a Bending-Unit 22, serial number 2716057, chassis number 1729. He was created for the task of bending metal girders for the construction of suicide booths. He is left-handed. While different creation processes have been shown, David X. Cohen stated that the viewer has only been shown Bender emerging from the machine that created him, while what happened inside the machine was not revealed.

Bender is shown throughout the series as having the secret desire to be a folk musician, this desire coming out whenever a magnet is placed on his head which "screws up his inhibition unit," causing him to sing folk songs. After being horribly damaged and disfigured by a can opener making his hydraulics "shot" (akin to being paralyzed from the neck down) in "Bendin' in the Wind" he teams up with Beck to fulfill this desire, becoming a folk legend to other broken robots.

Bender also is fascinated with cooking, though he is shown to have little sense of actual human taste, creating a dinner for the crew that is so disgusting they gag. He responds by telling them that the salt content is just below lethal so they should not have an issue (Dr. Zoidberg remarks that he shouldn't have had seconds). He also creates dinner consisting of nothing but capers and baking soda in "The Problem with Popplers" and believes that humans eat rocks in the same episode. He seems to improve his cooking skills over the series, cooking a lavish cake for Nibbler's birthday party and beating Elzar for the title of Iron Cook (though he uses a potion called "The Essence of Pure Flavor," consisting of water and a generous portion of LSD to make the judges hallucinate that his food tastes good).

Bender as a Robot possesses an incredible amount of patience. In the series and movies he is shown to wait over a thousand years in sand and many thousands of years in subterranean caverns under New York. Despite the long wait, it is suggested that Bender does not power down, apparently enjoying his own company so much that he does not consider it necessary.

Bender's constant drinking stems from the fact that he needs alcohol to power his fuel cells; the process produces waste gases and heat, which he often expels as a flaming belch. If Bender is deprived of alcohol, for instance during periods of depression, he ceases to function properly and rusts around the mouth, producing the unshaven look of a human after an alcohol bender. When he is sufficiently frightened or sickened, bricks fall from his backside (a reference to the slang "to crap a brick"), as seen in "Space Pilot 3000", The Beast with a Billion Backs and "Bendin' in the Wind". When sufficiently fascinated by something, he may pull out a camera and snap a picture, adding the catchphrase "Neat!" In addition to drinking, Bender also has an affinity for cigars. Unlike the fuel that alcohol provides, Bender tells Fry that he smokes cigars because they "make me look cool."

Despite being a robot, Bender has been seen to show emotion on many occasions, going so far as to shed a tear in "Crimes of the Hot", to the astonishment of Fry. One of the series' running jokes revolves around Bender having emotions, while technically he should be unfeeling. In the second Anthology of Interest, Bender proclaims, "Because I'm a robot, I don't have any emotions, and sometimes, that makes me sad." Bender can perform many functions that seem to be restricted to humans, such as whistling, having bloodshot eyes, being tickled, and dreaming. Despite these humanoid characteristics, he can function in the vacuum of space, in the deep sea, or while submerged in lava. Bender is a classic narcissist, as seen in The Farnsworth Parabox when he falls in love with an alternate version of himself, stating that he has finally found someone "as great as me". Also, in Bender's Big Score he is so taken by time duplicates of himself that he meets under New York, he brings them to the surface when they were not logically supposed to, tearing a hole in space-time itself. Despite these human characteristics, Bender has no soul, as seen in Obsoletely Fabulous when he passes through a 'soul detector' without an alarm sounding.

Bender's family is rarely seen in the show. However, it is known that his mother was a mechanical robot manufacturing arm, and his grandmother was a bulldozer. It is also revealed that Bender has a young son who he willingly sent to Robot Hell in exchange for a robot army provided by the Robot Devil in The Beast with a Billion Backs. He also has an Aunt Rita, a screw.

Bender is known for his catchphrase "Bite my shiny metal ass", which he uses nearly every episode throughout the series and sometimes varying the phrase (when he goes skiing he says "lick my frozen metal ass", when he becomes a giant he says "bite my colossal metal ass", when he is being used as a barbecue grill he says "bite my red-hot glowing ass" and when he is downgraded to a wooden robot he uses the phrase "bite my splintery wooden ass"). The "opposite" Golden Bender from The Farnsworth Paradox also his catchphrase, "bite my glorious golden ass".

In War is the H-Word, a list of Bender's top ten most frequently used words is given, said to be "found on the Internet". They are as follows:

10. Chump
9. Chumpette
8. Yours
7. Up
6. Pimpmobile
5. Bite
4. My
3. Shiny
2. Daffodil
1. Ass

Also in this episode, Bender's most infrequently said word is revealed (most likely as a canon because of the fact that the bomb would explode). The word he says the least is "antiquing".

Bender's makeup is occasionally mentioned, and he has claimed to be 30% Iron, 40% Titanium, 40% Zinc, and 40% Dolemite. In A Pharaoh to Remember, Professor Hubert Farnsworth revealed that he has a .05% Nickel impurity.

Character

Creation

The name Bender was chosen by series creator Matt Groening as an homage to the character John Bender from The Breakfast Club. The design for Bender went through multiple changes before reaching its final state. One of the decisions which Matt Groening found to be particularly difficult was whether Bender's head should be square or round. Initially he worked under the idea that all robots would have square heads in 3000; however, it was later decided that Bender's head should be round, a visual play on the idea that Bender is a "round peg in a square hole". Bender's antennae, which would have been positioned in place of his ears, were also changed to give him a more streamlined appearance. Groening later states in commentary for the episode "Crimes of the Hot" that the robot built by Professor Farnsworth in that episode is very similar to the original design for Bender.

Casting

When casting for Futurama, Bender's voice was the most difficult to cast, in part because the show's creators had not yet decided what a robot should sound like. Because of this, every voice actor who auditioned, no matter for what character, was asked to also read for Bender. After about 300 auditions, series co-creator David X. Cohen even attempted to audition after being told he sounded like a robot. John DiMaggio was eventually chosen for the role after his second audition. He originally auditioned using his Bender voice for the role of Professor Farnsworth and used a different voice for Bender. DiMaggio has noted that he had difficulty singing as Bender in "Hell Is Other Robots" because he was forced to sing the harmony part in a low key.

Reception and cultural influence

Bender has made several cameos in different episodes of the Simpsons, another series by Matt Groening. Within the Simpsons, Bender has appeared in episodes "Future-Drama", "Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade", and "Missionary: Impossible". He also appears as one of the enemies in The Simpsons Game along with Doctor Zoidberg. He also appears as one of the customers in the Mos Eisley cantina in the Family Guy movie Blue Harvest.

In 2008 Bender took second place behind the Terminator in a poll for the "Baddest Movie Robot" on Techradar.com.

A reference to Bender was made as a cameo in the 2008 release of Firefox 3.0. When about:robots is typed into the address bar a page displaying the firefox robot and references to pop culture robots the last stating: "Robots have shiny metal posteriors which should not be bitten."