Bender Bending Rodriguez

Species: Robot

Planet of Origin: Earth (Hecho en Mexico)

Age: 5 (body), 1060 (head)

Voiced by: John DiMaggio

First Appearance: "Space Pilot 3000" (1ACV01)

General Information
Bender Bending Rodriguez or Bending Unit 22 (possibly his model number) is a Bending unit built by Mom's Friendly Robot Company. He weighs 525 pounds and his central processing unit is a MOS Technologies 6502 processor. His arms and legs can be seperated from the body and may act independently from it, and his head is able to survive without his body. His internal fuel cells are recharged by drinking alcohol or any other liquid capable of delivering chemical energy, such as mineral oil or dark matter oil. If he does not drink alcohol for a while, he suffers symptoms of intoxication, develops five-o'-clock rust around his mouth and leaks oil from his armpits. He carries a nuclear pile that seems to be composed of fissionable material, enabling the construction of miniature nuclear weapons.

Bender has a highly addictive personality, and his favorite passtimes are watching All My Circuits, stealing things, drinking, and smoking. He lives in the Robot Arms Apartments with his roommate Fry. In spite of his general selfishness and family-sized ego, he has occassionally demonstrated a capacity for generosity, even self-sacrifice, where his good friends are involved.

One of Bender's life-long dreams is to be a folk singer&mdash;a dream he briefly lived when he toured with Beck's Head (3ACV13). Normally his inhibition unit keeps his musical urges under control, but it tends to shut down in the presence of strong magnetic fields (especially in close proximity to his head). Ultimately things turned out tragically; fortunately for Bender, he's a robot with many life-long dreams. Another is being a great chef, like his idol Elzar. He acheived this dream as well when he defeated Elzar on the show Iron Cook (3ACV22).

Biography
Bender was assembled in a plant of Mom's Friendly Robot Company in Tijuana, Mexico around 2997. His original job was bending girders, the task he was created for. But once he found out what the girders were for (suicide booths), he decided to kill himself and entered a queue in front of a suicide booth in New New York. There he encountered Fry and escaped the intended self-destruction, befriending the newly defrosted delivery boy. After trying to escape Leela, Bender decided not to follow his programming any more, after his antenna contacted the bare wires of a broken lightbulb, which may have burned out a few of his circuits. After Leela decided to quit her job too, all three entered the service of Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth and his interstellar delivery service, Planet Express, where Bender takes the position of the ship's cook and oddjob unit. Since then, he has never looked back (well, maybe once). In the service of the Planet Express company, he has visited many exotic worlds and met many interesting people, often robbing them in the process. His experiences include living as a penguin, being infected with the ancient were-car curse, working as a super-hero with the New Justice Team, selling his body, enlisting with the Earth Forces and being a war hero, undergoing a temporary sex change, being paralyzed, touring as a folk-singer, being mistaken for a UFO, and meeting an entity that may have been God. Bender's great nemesis is the giant can opener found in the Planet Express building which has on two occasions seriously damaged him, and allegedly killed his father.



Family

 * Flexo, another Bending unit of the same model.
 * Mom, owner of Mom's Friendly Robot Co.
 * His mother, who sends him an Xmas card.
 * His father, who was killed by a giant can opener (2ACV01).
 * Uncle Vladimir, who lived in Thermostadt, capital of the Robo-Hungarian Empire, and died at the ripe old age of 211.
 * Screwy Aunt Rita (who is a screw)
 * Three penguin "children" (3ACV05)

Trivia

 * Bender's apartment number is 00100100. This is a binary representation of the ASCII character '$'
 * Bender's serial number is 2716057. This can be expressed as the sum of 2 cubes. Specifically, 9523 + (-951)3
 * Additionally, he seems to be the 1729th unit produced by his "mommy".
 * The word "bender" can refer to a drinking spree, hinting at Bender's heavy alcohol use.
 * Bender is powered by a 6502 Microprocessor.
 * Bender dies at the end of both of his what-if scenarios in each Anthology of Interest.
 * His self-destruct code is 1A2B3.
 * Apparently stole the Prime Minister of Norway's arm.
 * Is able to simultaneously reattach each of his severed arms with the other.
 * He cannot get up when he is knocked on his back.
 * He, along with Fry and Leela, appears in all episodes of the series.

Catchphrase
Bender's basic catchphrase is "Bite my shiny metal ass!"

Variations on this include the following:
 * Bite my red-hot glowing ass! (1ACV12)
 * Lick my frozen metal ass! (2ACV04)
 * Bite my colossal metal ass! (2ACV16)
 * Bite my splintery wooden ass! (4ACV14)
 * Bite my glorious golden ass! (4ACV15)
 * Oww my shiny you-know-what! (Futurama the game)

Composition
Bender routinely claims to be made of thirty to forty percent of various metals. Unfortunately, his credibility on this matter is thrown into question by the fact that they add up to well over one hundred percent: Total: (greater than) 150%.
 * 40% Zinc (1ACV13)
 * 40% Titanium (2ACV02)
 * 30% Iron (3ACV22)
 * 40% Dolemite (4ACV07)
 * An unknown quantity of osmium (3ACV17)

Additionally, he has a .04% nickel impurity, which doesn't increase total percentage, but slightly decreases the %s of everything else.

Alternate Appearances

 * Giant Bender: In Anthology of Interest I, Bender asks what it would be like if he were 500 feet tall.
 * Cowboy Bender: The only apparent difference being that the Bender of the alternate universe (the only alternate universe at the time) is that he wears a cowboy hat.
 * Were-Car Bender: In The Honking, Bender is transformed each night at midnight into a malicious were-car, determined to kill his closest friend.
 * Human Bender: In Anthology of Interest II, Bender asks what it would be like if he were human.
 * Flying Saucer Bender: After crashing to the New Mexico desert, the US military mistakenly reassembles Bender's body to resemble a small (functional) flying saucer.
 * Young Bender: Bender takes several reverted forms in Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles, including a software disc and a set of "Bending unit blueprints". Modifications include braces and dish-antenna-like ears.
 * Fembot Bender: Bender undergoes a sex-change operation in order to win five olympic gold medals.
 * Wooden Bender: Bender downgrades to a wooden, steam-powered version in Obsoletely Fabulous.
 * Golden Bender: In Universe 1, Bender's coin flip resulted in his choosing the gold finish instead of the foghat grey that we're used to.
 * Cowcatcher Bender: In A Taste of Freedom, Bender has a 19th century style cowcatcher installed to his front to clear a path through the crowd outside the Decapodian Embassy.