Viva Mars Vegas

"Viva Mars Vegas" is the one hundred and twenty-sixth episode of Futurama, the twelfth of the seventh production season and the ninth broadcast season. The Planet Express crew stages a casino heist to recover stolen property from the Robot Mafia.

Act I: "Category Five Sucker Now Arriving."
The Robot Mafia steals some money from a delivery company. Meanwhile, the crew decides to go to a casino in Mars Vegas. Zoidberg is excited to go, but Amy tells him not to come because of his poor money managing skills. Dejected, he goes back to his dumpster. Meanwhile, the Robot Mafia is being chased by the police, so they decide to dump their money in Zoidberg's dumpster, where Zoidberg takes it. Zoidberg goes to Mars Vegas, and after a few risky bets, he loses all of the money. When he gets back to the dumpster, he finds it occupied by the Robot Mafia wanting their money back.

Act II: "Mr. Wong, we have a mafia proposal for you. Your casino...give it to us."
After Zoidberg tells them that he lost all of the money to the casino, they try to kill them, but Zoidberg escapes by triggering his ink defense, which covers him in ink. He goes to the Planet Express building, where Professor Farnsworth accidentally uses a ink remover to make all the ink on Zoidberg invisible. This makes Zoidberg invisible as well, and then the Robot Mafia break into the PE bulding and look for Zoidberg. Because Zoidberg is invisible, he cannot be found by them. The mafia decide to get their money back by taking over the casino. In the process, they take away all of Leo and Inez Wong's property, including their mansion, which reduces them to living in the area they set aside for their employees. However, Amy comes up with a plan to get the money back, with a little help from Zoidberg.

Act III: "He STINKS like the inside of a Tauntaun."
Using a smelly shrimp cart to hide Zoidberg's stench, the crew goes upstairs to the area with the safe. Leela, Amy, and Fry, who are pushing the cart, pretend to have a broken wheel so that they have a reason to stay up there, while Professor Farnsworth, Hermes, and Bender distract Donbot to keep him from closing the safe door prematurely. Meanwhile, Zoidberg gets into the safe and eats all of the money, except a few bills he coughs up, making it just as invisible as he is. He also eats a black box. However, after eating all of this, he becomes too heavy to move, so the Professor, Hermes, and Farnsworth have to carry him out until they can get him on the shrimp cart. They had intended to escape through the roof, but Zoidberg's weight made the elevator fall to the first floor, forcing them to escape through the main lobby. Zoidberg starts coughing up money as they go. Despite this, they almost make it to the exit, until a blind guard, Blind Joe catches them. He tries to force them to give him the money, but Amy tries to make a deal with him. Because the guard is a Native Martian, he doesn't like making deals with the Wong Family. Amy says that this is because he doesn't know about the original deal, which only gave the Wong family the right to occupy the land for 100 years before they gave the land back to the Native Martians. Because of this, the Native Martians own the casino, and they kick the Robot Mafia out. Fortunately for the Wong family, the Native Martians give back the Wong's mansion and their other casino. Professor Farnsworth tells Zoidberg that he'll become visible again as soon as he takes a bath, and he goes with Amy to the other casino.

Production
On 29 February 2012, CGEF revealed the episode's title, its writer to be Josh Weinstein and its director to be Frank Marino. On 10 July, updated their Futurama episode guide, revealing the episode's plot and air date. The same day, released a TV listing of Futurama which showed the same information about the episode, with slight variation from the plot published by MSN.

On 12 July, following the broadcast of the episode "Zapp Dingbat", the public were given the opportunity to participate in a live chat with the Futurama cast and crew. Several clips of "Viva Mars Vegas" during the live stream.

Trivia



 * Both this episode, which was originally planned to be the second-to-last episode of the ninth broadcast season, and "Stench and Stenchibility", which is the second-to-last episode of the tenth broadcast season, have Zoidberg as the main character.
 * When the vault scans the Donbot's finger, it identifies him as Don "Smith".
 * The title sequence for this episode is a live-action recreation, which was also used to promote the new season through ads on Comedy Central. It is also the second major alternate one-off title sequence since Into the Wild Green Yonder.
 * Zoidberg reads a newspaper called "The Daily Bum Blanket".
 * This is the second episode (in production order) of season 7 to be aired out of order, as the broadcast order of both this episode and "31st Century Fox" were swapped.
 * It is confirmed in the commentaries that this swap was requested by Comedy Central as they wanted to advertise Patrick Stewart being in the season finale (which they subsequently did not).
 * The Professor says that he is a young internet billionaire, in reference to, who created Facebook whilst at University.
 * Arriving at the parking lot of the casino, Planet Express Ship crushes what appears to be Mars, although it appears larger than the real life robot compared to the size of the ship.

Allusions

 * The episode's title is a reference to the 1964 Elvis Presley film .
 * The song played through the montage of Zoidberg spending his cash and sung by Zoidberg himself at the end of the episode is a parody of the song from 1966 musical.
 * The Binks Armored Express truck at the beginning of the episode is a reference to the Star Wars character from , and the  armored trucks. The truck is also piloted by two aliens that bear a striking resemblance to the s, Jar Jar's species, and they also speak like him.
 * The Donbot refers to the stolen money as "De Niros", a play on "denaros" and whom the Donbot is based upon. Of De Niro's various films is  which involves mob connections in Vegas.
 * The Professor says "Dude, where's my ship?", in reference to the 2000 stoner comedy film 
 * The ball that the croupier uses in the roulette game flaps its "wings" and flies around the roulette wheel, making it very similar to a from . It does not behave this way during the final spin that results in Zoidberg losing, though.
 * The plot of an orchestrated casino heist has been the subject of many films including.
 * The deal made by Sir Reginald Wong with the Native Martians was supposed to last as long as the deal the deal the British made with the Chinese to gain control of Hong Kong.
 * Wong Island is a parody of the Las Vegas hotel and casino . Its name may also be a reference to New York's.
 * Fry's tattoo after the weekend in Vegas is a reference to the Hangover Part II.

Continuity

 * Sir Reginald Wong is mentioned again.

Goofs

 * Native martians are seen here, but they all left Mars in "Where the Buggalo Roam".
 * That doesn't mean some few would not return possibly out of a sense of attachment to their ancestral lands.
 * Zoidberg spends a lot of money before he gets to the table, so he couldn't have had eight million left. Because of this, he shouldn't have been able to buy eight chips, each worth a million dollars.
 * At the beginning of the episode Donbot said "It's over eight million bucks". So Zoidberg could only spend the "over" part.
 * If the Wongs had two casinos, then why not just go there when the mafia take their first casino and their house? Furthermore, if this is New Mars Vegas as in Into the Wild Green Yonder, wouldn't the Wong family have many business holdings over the entire planet?
 * It might have been possible that most of the building were damage during the Farewell to arms' incident with only those two casino being operational at the time.
 * None of the mafia, or the native martians seemed to question, why the old shrimp carriers, and all those people turned up (the crew in disguise) in the money counting room, despite the fact its supposed to be the most secure area.
 * This may have been done intentionally as a joke.
 * The deal between the native martians and the Wongs here is different to the deal mentioned in "Where the Buggalo Roam".
 * The deal only involved paying for the land, there was no mention of whether Sir Reginald was purchasing or leasing it. Thus his compassionate intentions to give back the land must have been a lost detail that only Amy was familiar with.
 * Amy also might have told Blind Joe something that he'd want to hear to make him side with her family.
 * Zoidberg doesn't eat the two 100 dollar bills that fall out of his mouth.
 * The ink on Zoidberg's mouth is wiped off, exposing it. When Amy escorts Zoidberg to Wong Island, the ink on Zoidberg's mouth has returned, as the pink of his skin would have been able to see from the back of him.
 * It's possible that it doesn't show because the ink on the back of his head covers it, which would be why we can't see inside of him.
 * The Professor says that the ink will wash off when Zoidberg takes a bath. But in the bath scene, the ink doesn't wash off.
 * As a robot, Bender doesn't possess a scent, so how could Blind Joe smell, he was stealing money?
 * Bender would have a strong scent of alcohol and tobacco.
 * In Godfellas the Professor notes that Bender does have an odor, however mild.
 * In Hell is Other Robots Bender is said to smell of "vodka and motor oil."
 * Why didn't the ink come off on the money or Amy when Zoidberg touched them?
 * The ink would have dried by then.
 * When Zoidberg places his third bet on 34 red, he pushes all the chips away to his left onto 34 on the roulette board, but while the wheel is spinning the chips are right in front of him again. His sardinie has also filled back up after he loses, although it could be a refilling glass like the ones seen in "That Darn Katz!".
 * Zoidberg's eyes weren't covered with ink, neither was the inside of his mouth. So, while he is invisible, you should have been able to see his eyes and see his tongue when he speaks.

Characters

 * 21st Century Girl
 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Debut: Blind Joe
 * Clamps
 * Donbot
 * Farnsworth
 * Fry
 * Hermes
 * Hypnotoad
 * Inez Wong
 * Joey Mousepad
 * Leela
 * Leo Wong
 * Masked Unit (cameo)
 * Michelle (cameo)
 * Morbo (cameo)
 * Petunia
 * Randy
 * Sir Reginald Wong
 * Smitty
 * URL
 * Zoidberg

Places

 * Family Bros. Pizza
 * Mars
 * Mars Vegas
 * Nigeria
 * Debut: Planet Express chart room
 * Planet Express conference room
 * Planet Express employee lounge
 * Planet Express hangar
 * Planet Express headquarters
 * Planet Express lab
 * Debut: Texas
 * Wong Hotel & Casino
 * Debut: Wong Island
 * Wong Ranch
 * Zoidberg's dumpster