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Futurama character
Bender Bending Rodríguez
Age	Indeterminable due to continuous time travel but built circa 2998
Gender	Manbot (changed to fembot for one episode).
Species	Robot powered by a MOS Technology 6502 as shown by an F-Ray scan.
Planet of Origin	Earth, specifically Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
Job	Formerly Cook then assistant manager of sales for the Planet Express Delivery Company, professional thief, and former female bending Olympian.
Relatives	Builder: Mom's Friendly Robot Company Mother: Robot Arm Father: Unknown (Deceased) Uncle: Vladimir (Deceased) Aunt: Rita Same model robot: Flexo
First Appearance	Space Pilot 3000
First Line	"Bite my shiny metal ass."
Voiced by	John DiMaggio

Bender, full name Bender Bending Rodríguez, designated Bending Unit 22, 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"^[1] and by himself as possessing a "swarthy Latin charm".^[2]

Contents 1 Casting 2 Origin 3 Hardware 4 Software 5 Celebrity encounters 6 Production 7 Alternative appearances 8 References

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.^[3] Because of this, every voice actor that 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.^[4] 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.^[5]

In the series, Bender is a robot built by Mom's Friendly Robot Company at its plant in Tijuana, Mexico, circa 2998. 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 swears, fights, argues, smokes cigars, drinks, and gambles. A petty thief, Bender steals other peoples' wallets, watches and other valuables at any opportunity. He claims to have no emotions; but occasionally he is portrayed as having them, usually for comedic purpose. The series provides contradictory information about Bender's origin. In several episodes, he is portrayed as having been assembled in a factory in his current form only a few years prior to the start of the series. This is supported by the appearance of Flexo, another Bending-Unit 22 robot identical to Bender with the addition of a goatee. However, in "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles", he is shown as going through growth and development like an animal and said to have "robo- or RNA", a DNA equivalent. In the DVD commentaries, David X. Cohen states that the viewer only sees a full-sized Bender emerge from the machine that built him, while what happened inside the machine was not revealed.^{[citation needed]} His full name is revealed to be Bender Bending Rodríguez in "The Luck of the Fryrish", and in "The Cyber House Rules" the "Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium" is renamed the "Bender B. Rodríguez Orphanarium" after him. Bender was educated at Bending State University (with a major in Bending and a minor in Robo-American Studies) and was a member of the Robot House fraternity, as disclosed in "Mars University".

There is very little consistency in Bender's hardware throughout the series, and his internal workings vary as required for the story or for comic effect. Like all robots in the series, Bender has square pupils whereas the biological characters have round pupils.

Bender uses alcohol as fuel to recharge his fuel cells, and produces greenhouse gases as a result in the form of fire whenever he belches or sometimes farts. He suffers symptoms of intoxication when he stops drinking, becoming disoriented and developing rust around his mouth, the robot equivalent of a five o'clock shadow. While alcohol is his primary fuel source, he is also capable of processing mineral oil, dark matter, and photons (solar energy). He is also equipped with a nuclear pile as revealed in "Godfellas".

His "extenso-matic" limbs are extendable, detachable, retractable, and capable of functioning independently of his body. Bender can also retract his limbs and head into his chest cavity. In most cases, his eyes are shown to be extending cylinders with rounded ends (resembling light bulbs or vacuum tubes), but are generally replaceable as necessary for the plot. The housing for Bender's eyes is detachable, and function like binoculars, as Fry did in "Roswell That Ends Well".

Like his limbs, Bender's head is detachable and retractable, appears to be attached to a thin, maneuverable wire, as seen in "Insane in the Mainframe," and can continue to function when not attached to his body, even for 1,000 years in "Roswell That Ends Well". This clashes with Bender's past breakdowns into a delusional state with a 5 o’clock shadow when he goes without alcohol in a matter of days, such as "I, Roommate" and "Obsoletely Fabulous"; but since Bender's head was detached from his body, he must have not needed a lot of energy, or had just turned off to save power. Bender's head is capable of various functions depending on the situation. It has been seen functioning as an audio tape recorder, answering machine, CD player, film projector, camera, martini shaker, a bell, credit card terminal, and a can of spray paint. The camera aspect of his head is a consistent feature, which he uses in multiple episodes, often zooming in on items, people or robots of interest. In other episodes, he is seen using a small purple camera. When he sees something interesting, he says "neat" and takes a picture. On top of his head is a retractable antenna, which is multi-functional and can work as a radio transmitter, a remote control receiver, sword, toilet flusher, or laser light show generator, or an all purpose push button. In "I, Roommate", Bender's antenna interferes with satellite signals and cell phone signals, the latter capable of picking up his thoughts via antenna. Bender is sensitive about it, seemingly equating it with a human penis.

Bender's chest cavity uses the fictional idea of hammerspace, as Bender frequently pulls and stores objects within it that are far bigger than what physics would normally allow. In the episode, "The Route of All Evil", Bender ferments 5 gal. 6 oz. worth of ale in his chest cavity. Also, in "I Second That Emotion", Bender uses his chest cavity as an oven to bake a four-layer cake for Nibbler's birthday.

Bender claims to have a total of eight senses including four of the five classical senses and "smision" (A possible combination of smell and eyesight); however, he lacks the regular sense of taste. Aside from his own faculties, Bender has several external devices which he uses in the series including the following: "gaydar", a purple box with pushbuttons and a radar; a built-in but unreliable "cheating unit" that calculates odds; and a hilarity unit. Bender's computational abilities are self-admittedly poor, which he reveals in "The Cyber House Rules". This seems unlikely, since he was able to easily calculate that Flexo's serial number was the sum of two cubes in a few seconds in "Lesser of Two Evils". Based on Bender's performances in the early parts of both "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?" and "Fear of a Bot Planet" its more likely that he's just too lazy to compute under most circumstances.

Bender seems to have four different buttons for deleting information which are located on his shoulder, chest, antenna, and baseplate. Bender also has a "Patriotism Circuit" which forces him, when signaled, to fight and possibly give his life in times of crisis. Zapp Brannigan has a device that can trigger Bender's 'Patriotism Circuit', (as shown in "When Aliens Attack") and uses it to draft him into Earth's defense force.

According to information from various episodes, Bender is composed of 30% iron ("30% Iron Chef"), 40% zinc ("Fry and the Slurm Factory"), 40% titanium ("A Head in the Polls"), 40% dolomite ("Jurassic Bark") and an unknown quantity of osmium in alloy with the iron with a 0.04% nickel impurity ("A Pharaoh to Remember"); and he also claims to be 40% lead in the Futurama video game. No explanation for the total of over 150% is offered in the series, though it is pointed out in the DVD commentary. David X. Cohen at one point suggests that the various substances may overlap as compounds. Bender's aforementioned calculation skills, or lack thereof, may also be a factor. In "Raging Bender", it is revealed that Bender weighed 525 lb (~238 kg).

In "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", Bender's self-destruct code is "1A 2B 3", a reference to the destruct codes on Star Trek. This blew up only Bender's head, leaving his mouth intact. Bender and Flexo have both shown incredible resistance to severe physical abuse. They have withstood crushing, can openers, explosives, fire, water, guns, extreme temperatures, and even supermagnets. Bender has been shown to operate in vacuum of space and the crushing pressure at the bottom of the sea. Despite this, Bender is still easily overpowered by the Robot Devil, who is able to knock him out with a single hit with his trident (seen in "Hell is Other Robots"), and is able to kick him around with ease.

Bender initially could not act against his programming and was deprogrammed after being subjected to an electric current. It is unknown whether this caused other habits, such as smoking or stealing. In the episode "Roswell That Ends Well", parts of Bender's brain, in the form of computer chips was mistaken as food and was eaten by Fry's grandfather, Enos Fry, yet he functions normally without it throughout the episode. These were probably related to his body only. In "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", Bender's personality is stored on a floppy disk, and without it, is limited to bending girders and saying "I am Bender. Please insert girder."

When Bender is reactivated, he automatically takes on the traits of the first organism he encounters. In "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz", Bender reboots as a penguin after being attacked by a killer whale.

During several episodes, Bender has had encounters with celebrities. In "Bendin' in the Wind", he met Beck who offered to let him to join his band. In "I Dated a Robot", Bender falls in love with Lucy Liu and she is later seen again with Bender in episode "Love and Rocket". In "Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV", it is revealed that Bender has a feud with Jay Leno. In "Xmas Story", Conan O'Brien was doing a comedy routine about Y3K that Bender ruined by saying that Y2K was solved 900 years ago.

In Bender's Big Score, when sent back to the year 2000 to assassinate Fry, Bender unwittingly comes across a Philip J. Fry who works as an assistant for Al Gore's presidential campaign in Florida. In his attempt to kill him, he destroys Gore's pile of recounted votes, leading George W. Bush to win the election. Twelve years later, when he spots Fry coming out of a boat from the North Pole, he hails a hybrid taxi (driven by Al Gore) to go after him.

• Voice actor John DiMaggio has noted that he has difficulty singing as Bender in "Hell Is Other Robots" because he was forced to sing the harmony part in a low key.^[6]
• Bender's apartment number is 00100100, which when translated into ASCII, is the $ symbol.
• The original proposed name for Bender was URL, which was to be pronounced "Earl". It was reused as the name of the smooth-talking robot police officer, also voiced by DiMaggio.
• Besides also being a term for Binge drinking, Bender's name was also most likely derived from Eando Binder (pronounced with a short 'i') authors of the first and highly influential I, Robot story.^{[citation needed]}

• Bender is in The Simpsons episode Future-Drama where he appears besides Homer and says "You guys are my new best friends". Homer says "You wish, loser!" and throws him out of the Hover-Car.

• Bender also appears in The Simpsons episode Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade. When Bart gets bored in class, he day dreams all his class mates turning into characters from TV, of which Bender is one of them.

• He also appears as one of the enemies in The Simpsons Game along with Zoidberg.

v • d • e Futurama
Media	Episodes (by Broadcast Order) · Comic books · Video game · DVD movies
Main characters	Philip J. Fry · Turanga Leela · Bender B. Rodríguez · Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth · Doctor John Zoidberg · Hermes Conrad · Amy Wong
Recurring characters	Zapp Brannigan · Kif Kroker · Nibbler · Cubert Farnsworth · Calculon · Mom · Recurring human characters · Recurring robot characters · Recurring alien characters
Themes	Politics in Futurama · Religion in Futurama
Technology	Cryonics · Nimbus · Planet Express Ship · Robots in Futurama  · Suicide booth
Other	Planet Express Corporation · Chroniton · List of guest stars on Futurama · List of Futurama crew