Hermes Conrad

Hermes Conrad
Futurama character
Hermes Conrad
First appearance	"The Series Has Landed" (1999)
Last appearance	Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow (2017)
Created by	Ken Keeler (writer) Matt Groening (designer)
Voiced by	Phil LaMarr
In-universe information
Species	Human
Gender	Male
Occupation	Bureaucrat Grade 35 and accountant of the Planet Express delivery company.
Spouse	LaBarbara Conrad (wife)
Children	Dwight Conrad (son)
Origin	Kingston, Jamaica

Hermes Conrad (born July 15, 2959) is a major character in the American animated series Futurama. Hermes is Jamaican Rastafarian and grade 36 Bureaucrat, and proud of it. He works at Planet Express, handling stamping, filing, collating, and accounting. He is voiced by actor Phil LaMarr.

Fictional biography

Hermes is a workaholic bureaucrat and the accountant at the Planet Express from Jamaica with a heavy Jamaican accent, known for his 31st-century Jamaican exclamations - for instance, "Sweet manatee of Galilee!". He manages the Planet Express delivery business with responsibilities that include paying bills, giving out legal waivers, and notifying next of kin. Hermes is very enthusiastic about the Limbo and was once an Olympic limbo athlete. However, an accident in the 2980 Olympic Games in which a fan broke his back trying to emulate Hermes left him traumatized, and he could not bring himself to limbo again until decades later when it was needed. The series also alludes to Hermes using marijuana, though he is never seen actually using it.

Hermes frequently admonishes the staff for not working hard enough, and strongly dislikes Doctor Zoidberg, often treating him as a "thing" and not a person, and normally punishes Zoidberg first even when obviously innocent. Zoidberg is generally oblivious to this, considering Hermes his friend, but upon learning the truth in "The Six Million Dollar Mon", he callously calls out Hermes for his treatment of him. Later episodes show them building an uneasy rapport, with Hermes slowly softening to Zoidberg. He is also known to dislike labor unions, once referring to Labor Day as created by "fat-cat union gangsters", though seconds later he exclaims "Hot damn, a day off!" upon learning that it was that very day ("When Aliens Attack"), and consulting Glurmo about firing the entire crew and replacing them with Grunka-Lunkas for half the pay ("Fry and the Slurm Factory"). It is also a recurring gag that Hermes wants to kill some or all of the members of the Planet Express crew; in "The Farnsworth Parabox", he suggested that Leela shoot the rest of the crew and pondered ejecting the entire crew of both universes except him in Universe 1 into the sun.

Despite his disdain and attitude towards most of his coworkers, he has more recently been portrayed as one of the most compassionate characters in the series, and seems to have a soft spot for Bender. In the Season 6 episode "Lethal Inspection," it is revealed that Hermes used to work for Mom's Robot Factory in Tijuana, Mexico as Inspector #5, checking robots for defects as they came off the production line. Bender was built here without a backup module, but Hermes' compassion for the baby robot led him to override Bender's "defective" assessment and give him a chance at life. He turned in his resignation immediately afterward, and later destroyed all evidence of his employment there in order to prevent Bender from learning the truth, almost being killed in the process. As the episode ends, he smiles quietly at his burning personnel file and nods, showing him to be proud of his choice. In the earlier episode "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", he risked his bureaucratic license to rescue Bender, sorting the entire Master IN pile in under four minutes to recover the disc containing Bender's downloaded brain.

Hermes is married to LaBarbara Conrad, with whom he has a son Dwight. However, LaBarbara was formerly married to Hermes' former Limbo rival Barbados Slim, and got back with Barbados twice when Hermes was temporarily decapitated in Bender's Big Score. Hermes is also overweight, caused by over three decades of overeating including LaBarbara's goat curry, which has made his skin too spicy and acidic for consumption by others.

Character

Creation

Actor Phil LaMarr states that Hermes did not originally have a Jamaican accent and was more uptight, but was asked by series creator Matt Groening to do so for his character. This resulted in making the character more workable, according to Groening.