Calculon

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Secondary character
Deceased character
Calculon
Calculon.jpg
Calculon in 3004 (4ACV06).
AgeOver 993
(at time of death)
Date of birthBefore 2019
Date of death3012 and 3013
GenderMale
SpeciesRobot
Planet of originEarth
ProfessionActor, Director
First appearance"I, Roommate"
(1ACV03)
Episode
Voiced byMaurice LaMarche
This article is about the acting unit. For the All My Circuits character, see Calculon (All My Circuits).

Calculon was an acting unit most famous as the star of the hit robot soap opera All My Circuits. He has also appeared in films, including The Magnificent Three, for which he was nominated for an Oscar at the 1074th Academy Awards. In 3012, Calculon was killed in the World Acting Championship. In 3013, he was resurrected for a brief period, before dying once more after he had delivered the best acting performance of his career.

Biography

Throughout his career, he had lived a secret life unknown to the public. Calculon claimed to be 27 years old, but he was actually almost 1000 (2ACV18). He started his life humbly as a motorized service arm working on Project Satan. He was later offered acting talent through a deal with the Robot Devil, who collected on that bargain in 3004 by asking Calculon to give up his ears (4ACV18). He made his way to being many of history's great acting robots, including Acting Unit 0.8, Thespa-mat, and David Duchovny. For most of these thousand years, he was also a Were-Car, until Fry and Leela broke the curse by destroying the original were-car.

At some point in his career he became acquainted with the works of Harold Zoid, whom he came to idolize (3ACV08). He was presented with the opportunity to work under Zoid's direction on The Magnificent Three, with the promise that he would win an Oscar for his work on the film. When he was not nominated, he threatened Dr. Zoidberg, Bender, and his idol Harold Zoid with death. Through Zoidberg's manipulation, he was nominated for Best Actor but ultimately lost to Zoid (again, through Zoidberg's manipulation).

In 3004, he was invited at the Late Night with Humorbot 5.0, where he met Coilette from Robonia, winner of five gold medals. He fell in love with her, not knowing she was actually Bender who changed his sex. They dated, and he asked Coilette to marry him. On the wedding day, Coilette faked her death, having suffered of African Hydraulic Fever. Calculon then starred in Coilette: A Calculon Story to honor his old love's memory (4ACV13).

He is a member of the League of Robots and, for a time, was its president. Under his leadership the organization remained lenient on it's official human-killing plank. After Bender joined in 3008, and was caught helping his human friends escape during Yivo's universe-wide mating (despite his frequent anti-human tirades), Calculon and the rest of the League mocked Bender (TBwaBB). Bender challenged Calculon to a duel and won, vaporizing Calculon's arm. Calculon resigned his leadership in the organization.

In 3010, he was directing a disaster film, but most of the props and the actors were presumably destroyed and killed in a real disaster in shooting the first scene (6ACV08).

In 3012, Calculon consumed a bottle of food colouring, which is fatal to robots, in an attempt to defeat Langdon Cobb in the World Acting Championship. Despite his sacrifice, Cobb still won the championship.

In 3013, Fry and Bender set out to bring Calculon back from the dead, due to their mutual disliking of the inferior robot actor who replaced Calculon on All My Circuits. With help from the Professor, they were able to bring his software back from Robot Hell and successfully reinstall it back into his body, which Bender had previously dug up. Calculon 2.0 was hereby born. During the year that Calculon had been dead, everyone had forgotten about him and he was now classed as a bad actor. The network executives at All My Circuits refused to recast Calculon 2.0 back into the lead role he once had in the show. This shocked and deeply saddened Calculon, as he always thought he was the greatest actor who had ever lived. Even his star on the Hollywood walk of fame was removed. Eventually he was persuaded to audition in disguise for a bit part on All My Circuits, playing himself. After a wake up call from Leela in which she called him a "grade-"B" actor" who was "immediately forgotten", Calculon lost his strong sense of ego and became very sad. This newfound emotion set him up for his acting scene in which he delivered a moving performance, perhaps the best of his entire acting career. The cast of the show, Fry, Leela, Bender and the executives are hugely impressed and tell him he must take a bow. As he bends over, he pulls the prop rope, pulling a large lighting rig crashing down, missing Calculon narrowly. However, just moments after, another part of the stage above comes flying down. It crushes Calculon, and he is killed instantly, as the crowd looks on horrified. In honor of Calculon 2.0, his star on the walk of fame was reinstated. Calculon 2.0's wish of dying knowing he was a great actor who was adored again was fulfilled, and Calculon 2.0's spirit went back to Robot Hell to spend eternity, much to the Robot Devil's dismay.

Personality

Calculon was a skilled actor who is programmed to be very busy. He is idolized by many people, including Bender, and he can be extremely self-centered. Calculon's acting talent seemed to have infused itself into his everyday life, and he speaks very melodramatically. He could be driven to violence when he doesn't get his way, such as when he was not nominated for an Oscar after appearing in The Magnificent Three and threatened to murder Zoidberg, Zoid, and Bender. However, he is also incredibly gullible. He hired Bender as an actor on All My Circuits because he believed "the audience" was rejecting the actors trying out for the show, when it was just Bender right outside the casting room yelling and disparaging everyone who came before him.

Known filmography

Calculon in 3013, after his second death (7ACV20).

Additional Info

Trivia

  • Calculon is one of the few non-primary characters who appear in every film.
  • He owned a big house in Hollywood.
  • He owned an enormous yacht named "Calculon's Talent" in the pool of which he sails a large yacht named "Calculon's Pride".
  • He enjoyed hot showers.
  • He tended to see life as a huge soap opera.
  • Bender once worked as his hot water boiler in Hollywood. Bender was also his Official Stalker at one point.
  • He ran over Judge Whitey some time prior to The Beast with a Billion Backs, and was sentenced to community service.
  • He states explicitly in Into the Wild Green Yonder that his operating system is Windows Vista, and hence encounters an error in his programming seconds later.
    • This suggests that his OS had remained the same since his days as an assembly arm to death, which would date his assembly between 2007 and 2009 when Vista was the current Windows OS. Moreover as Project Satan is a military project and the US Army switched to Vista in 2009[1] and with Windows 7's release, it is likely his assembly was in 2009 making his age 1015. Fans are further befuddled because of the television broadcast of Into the Wild Green Yonder, where the mention of Windows Vista was edited to say Windows 7.
  • Calculon is featured on a Pez dispenser that Bender once stole.
  • He seemed to be friends with the Robot Devil.
  • Calculon's acting style appears to be based heavily on that of the late real-life actor Charlton Heston.
  • Seeing as when he was killed during his performance against Langdon Cobb and was in hell ever since, Calculon either had the same missing part as Bender, in regards to immortality through body replacement, or since he is over 1000 years old it is possible that he was simply built before that was commonplace for robots.

Quotes

    Robot Devil: Calculon, old friend, I'm afraid I need your ears.
    Calculon: Well I do owe you for giving me this unholy [melodramatically] acting talent!

    Calculon: Oh, how cruel and melodramatic fate is. [shouting] Why?

    Calculon: NOOOOoOO0O!

    Coilette (Bender): But you always said you'd rather burn down a convent than give up show business.
    Calculon: I always said many things.

    Calculon: Honey unit, I'm home. [He gasps.] Monique!
    [Monique is in bed with Boxy. She pulls the sheets up around her.]
    Monique: Calculon!
    Boxy: [beep]
    Calculon: Oh, how I wish I could believe that. You may be my evil half-brother, but there's no law against murdering the other half!

    Calculon: That was so terrible, I think you gave me cancer! I don't care how popular you are, you will never work on my show!
    Fry: Yay, Bender!
    Leela: We demand Bender!
    Calculon: However, you've got the job.

    Calculon: Nay, I respect and admire Harold Zoid too much to beat him to death with his own Oscar.

    Monique: Calculon! But I thought you were.....
    Calculon: Egyptian?!

    Calculon: [thinking] I'd like to thank the Academy, my agent and most of all, my operating system, Windows Vista, for everything it-- [crashes] [mechanic voice] System error.

    [Bender sings incoherently and haphazardly dances on a table.]
    Calculon: I'm unfamiliar with the... type of thing I'm seeing.

Appearances

References

  1. ^ Noyes, Katherine (04 June 2009). No title. (Technewsworld.) Retrieved on 12 July 2012.