The Honking - Plot

Plot

As part of his late uncle Vladimir's last will, Bender has to spend a night in his family's sinister old castle near Thermostadt, the capital of the Robo-Hungarian Empire. However, the castle's holographic "robot ghosts" cause him to flee out into the night, where he is promptly run over by a mysterious car that "creeps (or crept) on the ground on four rubbery feet, like a wolf." (Wheeled propulsion has long ago faded from the population's collective memory, as seen in previous episodes.)

After returning to New New York, Bender begins to experience nightmares and blackouts, and starts to believe that the car has followed him home. In the city, mysterious tire tracks are discovered at places where Bender has been. Worried, he seeks "professional help" from a coin-operated Gypsy Bot machine. It informs him that he was run over by a "werecar," the robotic equivalent of a werewolf, and has thus become one himself. He is cursed to keep running people over and eventually kill his best friend, Fry. The only thing that can lift the curse is to destroy the original werecar.

That night, Bender indeed turns into a sedan that resembles the Lincoln from the movie The Car and goes after Leela. This angers Fry, who takes this as a sign that Bender does not consider him to be his best friend after all.

After narrowly surviving Bender's nocturnal rampage, the crew returns to the village near Uncle Vladimir's castle. From there, they follow a trail of various bizarre werecars (e.g. the "abominable snowmobile"), until they ultimately find the original werecar: Project Satan, a demonic car built a thousand years earlier from parts of the "most evil cars in history" (such as Hitler's Mercedes and the Manson Family's Volkswagen transporter).

In the final act, Bender once again transforms, and this time goes after Fry, to the latter's immense joy. A climactic fight (which quotes extensively from John Carpenter's Christine) ensues between Leela, Fry, Bender-car and Project Satan, Project Satan accidentally drives into a large furnace, destroying himself and lifting the curse.

The episode ends with a cured Bender trying to strangle Fry for taking his last beer, signaling their friendship has returned to normal—or what passes for it between them.