Bender (Futurama) - Personality

Personality

Bender often shows signs of sociopath-like behavior, as he is a pathological liar and rarely shows empathy towards anyone. He has a mostly voluntary morality and constantly steals, ranging from the petty theft of wallets to much higher crimes like kidnapping Jay Leno's head and stealing Fry's blood. He also once stole Amy's earrings while giving her a hug. It was shown in "Roswell That Ends Well" that even in a disassembled state, his individual limbs carry on attempting to steal anything in proximity; the hand on his dismembered arm steals a wallet right out of a scientist's pocket before becoming inactive again.

Bender is shown throughout the series as having a secret desire to be a folk musician that only manifests itself when a magnet is placed on/near his head. This desire is finally fulfilled in the episode "Bendin' in the Wind": an accident involving a giant can opener leaves Bender with a severely ripped-open chest and paralyzed from the neck down and an encounter with Beck during his hospitalization leads to him becoming his lead washboard and the two teaming for a musical tour that turns Bender into a folk hero for other broken robots, only for his career to end when he recovers from the damage.

Bender is also fascinated with cooking, being the Planet Express ship's chef, though he is shown to have no sense of actual human taste, in fact, his early dinners were so horrible that even the literally omnivorous Zoidberg could not eat it. In his first attempt, he creates a dinner for the crew that is so over-salted they all gag (which is aggravated further when their drinks turn out to be salt water, or "Salt with water in it," as Bender puts it), then tells them that the food was fine since the salt content was 10% below a lethal dose (Dr. Zoidberg remarks that he "shouldn't have had seconds"). In "The Problem with Popplers", he creates dinner consisting of nothing but capers and baking soda and mistakenly expresses the belief that humans eat rocks. He seems to improve his cooking skills over the series, cooking a lavish cake for Nibbler's birthday party and beating Elzar for the title of Iron Cook (though he uses a potion called "The Essence of Pure Flavor," consisting of water and a generous portion of LSD to make the judges hallucinate that his food tastes good). In Into the Wild Green Yonder, he mistakenly bakes prison guards a cake with nutmeg thinking it was a natural human sleep drug, before being corrected by Amy that nutmeg is in fact a baking drug.

Bender also states, "I've always wanted to break into gooning." in the episode "Bender Gets Made."

As a robot, Bender possesses an incredible amount of patience. In Futurama, he is shown to wait over a thousand years in sand after his head is lost during a trip back in time to 1947, as well as many thousands of years in subterranean caverns under (New) New York City (although on this occasion he was also in the presence of multiple alternate versions of himself that had previously made the same 'trip'). Despite the long wait, it is suggested that Bender does not power down, apparently enjoying his own company so much that he does not consider it necessary. However, in one episode, he shows next to no patience as a one-time joke.

Although consumption of booze is necessitated by Bender's design and should not be generally viewed as a vice for alcohol-fueled robots, he apparently drinks far more than he needs for energy conversion. Bender's excessive drinking contributes to his characterization as an alcoholic ("Hell Is Other Robots" reveals that robots can function equally well on mineral oil instead of alcohol, also contributing to the perception of Bender's alcohol use as a vice). If Bender is deprived of alcohol, for instance during periods of depression, he ceases to function properly and shows signs similar to human drunkenness, including developing a rusty 5 o'clock shadow. As noted above, his disembodied head has survived for millennia with, presumably, no source of alcohol, so it may be that, when a mere head, Bender neither requires alcohol nor suffers from its absence.

When he is sufficiently frightened or sickened, bricks fall from his backside (a reference to the slang "shitting bricks"). When sufficiently fascinated by something, he may pull out a camera and snap a picture, adding the catchphrase "Neat!" In addition to drinking, Bender also has an affinity for cigars, which he lights up with a lighter built into his finger, although in "Decision 3012" he uses a Zippo. Unlike drinking alcohol for fuel, Bender tells Fry that he smokes cigars simply because they "make (him) look cool."

Despite being a robot, Bender has been seen to show emotion on many occasions, going so far as to shed a tear in "Crimes of the Hot", to the astonishment of Fry. One of the series' running jokes revolves around Bender having emotions, while technically he should be unfeeling. Bender is seemingly unaware of his emotions, stating in the episode "Anthology of Interest II" "I mean, being a robot's great but we don't have emotions and sometimes that makes me very sad". In his very first appearance, he tries to commit suicide via a suicide booth out of guilt for having unknowingly participated in creating suicide booths. Bender has also been known to be nonchalant to the point of appearing both uncaring and incredibly brave, even when faced with life-threatening situations.

Bender is a classic narcissist. He considers himself flawless, a "towering inferno of physical perfection", and frequently refers to himself in the first and third person. In "The Farnsworth Parabox" Bender seemingly falls in love with an alternate gold-plated version of himself, stating that he has finally found someone "as great as me". Even his personal email address, bender@ilovebender.com, reflects his self-absorbed nature.

Despite these human characteristics, Bender has no detectable soul, as seen in "Obsoletely Fabulous" when he passes through a 'soul detector' without an alarm sounding. But in "Ghost in the Machines", due to his suicide, Bender is turned to a ghost who can't interact with people and can possesses machines: he used this ability in order to "scare Fry to death" when he makes a deal with Robot Devil to get a new body. Though never addressed, an explanation to this seeming contradiction can be found on the fact that, as noticed by the Robot Devil himself, Bender's spirit existes on a universal wireless that allowed him to travel in the physical world while trapped in a Limbo-like loop. The fact that Bender's ghost is an incorporeal program rather than a soul is further supported by the fact that the "spirits" on "The Honking", where actually mere holograms of an old computer folder.

Bender's relationships with the crew of Planet Express vary from person to person, although he treats nearly all biological organisms with disdain. The only one of his friends who he has openly shown affection for is Fry, his best friend and roommate. "Of all the friends I've had, (he is) the first." Although he is verbally and physically abusive towards Fry and considers him to be vastly inferior to him, he has been shown to care for him a great deal. In "Jurassic Bark" he states that he loves Fry "the way a human loves a dog" and in "I Second That Emotion" when Bender gets jealous of Nibbler and flushes him down the toilet, a distraught Leela asks how he would feel if she did the same to Fry, effectively describing Fry as Bender's pet (Bender responds with an apathetic "Only one way to find out."). He routinely takes advantage of his friends, framing them for crimes, robbing them, stealing Fry's blood on more than one occasion, stealing Fry's power of attorney, using Fry's body to smash open a window, stealing jewelry from Amy, as well as using Zoidberg in various get-rich-quick schemes, although it is probable he does not consider Dr. Zoidberg a friend since in "Obsoletely Fabulous" Bender begged the 1X Robot to "save (his) friends and Zoidberg" (Though it is seen that he helps Zoidberg from time to time, as seen in "That's Lobstertainment!"). He even betrays Leela to Zapp when she becomes a wanted criminal out of jealousy of her steadily growing rap sheet in Into the Wild Green Yonder, only to break her out of prison to make sure his own rap sheet is longer than hers. Although he regularly frustrates the group, they have demonstrated a certain affection for him as well; during "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back" the entire crew traveled to the Central Bureaucracy to recover his brain after Morgan Proctor downloaded it onto a disc and sent it away, Hermes Conrad subsequently risking his bureaucratic license to locate the disc with Bender's brain on it by sorting the entire pile in just under four minutes. In this episode, when Amy asked why they had to fix him, after being met with a brief period of uncertain silence, Leela responded with "Those arguments aside, we're still going." Amy and Bender even dated for a time in "Proposition Infinity", the relationship becoming so serious that Bender proposed to Amy and participated in a campaign to legalise human/robot marriage, although the relationship ended because Bender realised that marriage would require monogamy.

Despite his often criminal and immoral attitude, Bender is not free of a soft side; he can feel guilt and remorse over his actions if he goes too far, even for his patterns, indicating that he is not selfish or unkind as he appears to be. In fact, Bender intends to commit suicide in "Space Pilot 3000" due to his role in the creation of suicide booths. In "Bendless Love", Bender intends to get rid of Flexo in order to gain the love of fembot Angelyne, but when the latter gets stuck under a gigantic steel girder, Angelyne shows sorrow for him. Bender decides that her happiness is more important than his own and he ends up saving Flexo. Also in "Jurassic Bark", when Bender becomes jealous of Fry's petrified dog, Seymour, he decides to throw him in magma. But when he realizes how Fry becomes deeply hurt, Bender apologizes for his behavior and in the finale, he saves the dog. In "Godfellas", he becomes a god of a microscopic alien race (the Shrimpkins) and abuses his title by commanding them to produce beer for him. But when his abuse causes their death, Bender cries in mourning and remorse.