Bender (Futurama) - Back-story

Back-story

Bender, an industrial metalworking robot, was built in 2997 at Fábrica Robotica De La Madre (Spanish: "Mom's Robot Factory"), a manufacturing facility of Mom's Friendly Robot Company in Tijuana, Mexico. However, the story of his construction is a mystery. Although different creation processes have been shown, David X. Cohen has stated that the viewer has only been shown Bender emerging from the machine that created him, whilst what happened inside the machine has not yet been revealed. According to one version, suggested by a Hermes flashback, and also by a reverse aging process shown in the "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles" episode, a newborn Bender possessed a baby-like body. In "Bendless Love", however, Bender is portrayed with a normal, adult-sized body in a flashback sequence conveying his memory of coming into existence. As Bender's memory contains an adult form, the episode's content suggests that the character might actually be recalling a transfer to an adult body, rather than the moment of creation.

Unlike other robots, Bender is mortal and, according to Professor Farnsworth's calculations, may have less than one billion years to live. Because of a manufacturing error that left Bender without a backup unit, Bender's memory cannot be transferred to another robot. After reporting that defect to his manufacturer, Bender barely escapes death from a guided missile and a robot death squad dispatched by Mom in order to eliminate him and effectively take the defective product off the market.

At the factory Bender was programmed for cold-bending structural steel and later attended Bending State University, where he majored in bending and minored in Robo-American Studies. At the university he was a member of Epsilon Rho Rho, a robot fraternity, where he became something of a fraternity hero for his many shenanigans: one night he chugged an entire keg of beer, streaked across campus and stuffed 58 people into a telephone booth (although Bender admits they were mostly children).

Before meeting Fry and Leela and joining Professor Farnsworth's delivery crew at Planet Express where Bender currently works as the assistant manager of sales, he had a job at the metalworking factory, bending steel girders for the construction of suicide booths. Ironically, Bender attempts suicide using one such booth after discovering the sinister purpose of the product of his labor.

Although a robot, Bender has an apartment in the "Robot Arms Apts." building, where he eventually invites his best friend and coworker, Fry, to live with him. Although the pair enjoy living together, Bender is sometimes portrayed as being manipulative to his friend - although oftentimes Fry is oblivious or apathetic about being manipulated by him. In the series beginning, Bender, is shown preferring to occupy smaller areas of their apartment, like the closet, referring to them as "cozy," although in later episodes he is shown to have his own individual bedroom, like Fry.

Bender has a series of relationships throughout the series, and is commonly referred to as a womanizer by his friends and coworkers. Bender does not seem to discriminate between human women and their robot or "fem-bot" counterparts, and is shown actively pursuing both. Likewise, his taste in fem-bot partners does not seem to be affected by the fem-bot's height or weight, and he is shown numerous times chasing fem-bots of all builds. In "Proposition Infinity", Bender's secret affair with Amy Wong leads to a referendum that is eventually approved legalizing robosexuality. In "The Bots and the Bees," he has a sexual encounter with a fem-bot soda vending machine that leads to the almost instantaneous birth of a son whom he names Ben, after the first part of his own name.

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