Benders Invincibility

[:]

Why is that no matter what happens to Bender, he survives?
Things that should have killed him (At least, depending on if he thought that the Suicide Booth in the first episode would kill him)

- Being crushed by Destructor
- Asteroid through the head
- Axe in back, drill in forehead
- Various things in 'Tale of Two Santas' (shot, burnt)
- Being shot in the head in 'The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz'
- The ending to 'War is the H-Word'

[#1 :]

But don't forget, it's a cartoon...

[#2 :]

 

Originally posted by Otis P Jivefunk:But don't forget, it's a cartoon...

Lamest. Idea. Ever. 
Let's say it was a wizard. 
 

Originally posted by M0le:
At least, depending on if he thought that the Suicide Booth in the first episode would kill him

Who said it really would kill him?
Also, the suicide booth has a "Quick and painless" modus which may be a high energy laser? Or a desintegrator? Fluor-acid?

[#3 :]

 

Originally posted by M0le:
Why is that no matter what happens to Bender, he survives?
Things that should have killed him (At least, depending on if he thought that the Suicide Booth in the first episode would kill him)

- Being crushed by Destructor
- Asteroid through the head
- Axe in back, drill in forehead
- Various things in 'Tale of Two Santas' (shot, burnt)
- Being shot in the head in 'The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz'
- The ending to 'War is the H-Word'

Since he's a robot, and have shown that he can survive just find without a body, you can only truely kill him if you erase his program. Depending on where in his head the storage unit is located, you have to aim pretty precise to hit it. Body damages doesn't concern him, only a head wound could. The only thing that had potential to kill him was the meteorite in "Godfellas".

The suicide booth probably had a way of producing an intense electromagnetic pulse, which would fry his circuits and thus kill him.

[#4 :]

 

Originally posted by Teral:
 Since he's a robot, and have shown that he can survive just find without a body, you can only truely kill him if you erase his program. Depending on where in his head the storage unit is located, you have to aim pretty precise to hit it. Body damages doesn't concern him, only a head wound could. The only thing that had potential to kill him was the meteorite in "Godfellas".

But as he said, it would only OW! hurt slightly.   

I suspect that the suicide booth would have possibly atomised/vapourised him just like it did with all the humans before (or whatever those flashs were) - that would have killed him. Though there were of course probably different modes of feath for a Robot, and EMP frying is probably one of them   

[#5 :]

 

Originally posted by Teral:
The suicide booth probably had a way of producing an intense electromagnetic pulse, which would fry his circuits and thus kill him.

As we saw in Anthology of Interest I.

So there is nothing else what could harm/kill a robot?
What about "Fluor acid" (chemical: HF - however that's called in English ...) ?

[#6 :]

Yeah, that would probably kill him too. The problem is an acid strong enough to dissolve a bending unit, who can survive swimming in lava (It's dolomite, baby!), would take the suicide booth and a good chunk of the sidewalk too.

[#7 :]

The "quick and painless" setting on the suicide booth seems to have been disintigration - there's a flash visible around the edges of the door which then opens revealing nothing left inside. Assuming this was powerful enough to disintegrate metal (And that the walls of the suicide booth were protected somehow so that it could be used more than once) then there's no reason why this couldn't kill Bender.

As for destroying Bender's CPU, he may have systems distributed throughout his body so simply destroying one wouldn't make too much difference, this would also explain why his limbs have a life of their own when detatched from his body.

[#8 :]

I think the greater question is... Where do the bodies go if you don't choose Quick and Painless....

[#9 :]

Probably gets disintegrated the same way. Afterall, once you're dead you don't care how they dispose of yur body.

The have laser-resistant materials (Insane In The Mainframe), so a big honking laser could do the trick (killing robots), without damaging the booth. I'm still uncertain how robots can choose "slow and horrible", with horrible being opposite of painless, since robots don't feel pain.

[#10 :]

Bender seems to be quite able to feel pain ("Raging Bender" springs to mind.)

As for the chemical approach to dissolving him, anything short of submerging him into boiling aqua regia would be too damn slow and even then I would still take quite a while due to the surface/volume ratio. No acid works as fast as the stuff you see in movies. As for HF (hydrofluoric acid) it's probably one of most vile acids to get exposed to, but it's rather slow working.

 

Originally posted by Teral:
The problem is an acid strong enough to dissolve a bending unit, who can survive swimming in lava (It's dolomite, baby!), would take the suicide booth and a good chunk of the sidewalk too.

There's a huge difference between heat resistance and resistance to corrosives. Anyway, how do you think those super strong acids are stored?  A teflon coating would make the booth both easy to clean and acid-proof. 

[#11 :]

   

Originally posted by Mercapto:
Bender seems to be quite able to feel pain ("Raging Bender" springs to mind.)
 

Bah, he was just playing the game. Afterall he didn't mind being drilled in the head in "Insane In The Mainframe" or getting a hole stamped in his body in "Fra and The Slurm Factory".
 

As for the chemical approach to dissolving him, anything short of submerging him into boiling aqua regia would be too damn slow and even then I would still take quite a while due to the surface/volume ratio. No acid works as fast as the stuff you see in movies. As for HF (hydrofluoric acid) it's probably one of most vile acids to get exposed to, but it's rather slow working.

   

Originally posted by Teral:
The problem is an acid strong enough to dissolve a bending unit, who can survive swimming in lava (It's dolomite, baby!), would take the suicide booth and a good chunk of the sidewalk too.

There's a huge difference between heat resistance and resistance to corrosives. Anyway, how do you think those super strong acids are stored?      A teflon coating would make the booth both easy to clean and acid-proof.     

Yeah, but would it be water(liquid)-proof?    If you can see a lightflash through the cracks it would make sense that liquid could seep through as well, plus they'd have to teflon-coat every part of the interior. What if some acid got through the coin slot? It would destroy the suicide booth in a a´matter of days. And the Stop 'n Drop Suicide Company Ltd doesn't sound like one who's deeply concerned with consumer satisfaction (afterall who's going to complain), so they probably wont go to the length og bying expensive acid, when a quick EMP does the trick.

Regular science: one  Weapons grade balonium mumbo-jumbo: a billion   

I did remember something about an acid (I think it was hydrofluoric acid) being too aggressive for regular acid-bottles so they had to use something else, but couldn't remember if it was plastic instead of glass or vice versa.

[#12 :]

 

Originally posted by Teral:
   Yeah, but would it be water(liquid)-proof?      If you can see a lightflash through the cracks it would make sense that liquid could seep through as well, plus they'd have to teflon-coat every part of the interior. What if some acid got through the coin slot? It would destroy the suicide booth in a a´matter of days. And the Stop 'n Drop Suicide Company Ltd doesn't sound like one who's deeply concerned with consumer satisfaction (afterall who's going to complain), so they probably wont go to the length og bying expensive acid, when a quick EMP does the trick.

That'll teach them for still using a coin-op machine in the year 3000. Get with the times, man! Besides I never said the acid solution was a good idea. In fact it's a very, very bad idea, seeing how it would significantly decrease the amount of customers they could serve. An EMP solution, however, should do nicely.

 

Regular science: one  Weapons grade balonium mumbo-jumbo: a billion   

*shakes fist at Teral*

I'll get you next time, Gadget Teral...next time! 

 

I did remember something about an acid (I think it was hydrofluoric acid) being too aggressive for regular acid-bottles so they had to use something else, but couldn't remember if it was plastic instead of glass or vice versa.

HF has the ability to dissolve glass unlike most other acids, so storing it in a plastic bottle is probably a good idea. 

[#13 :]

 

Originally posted by Teral:
Bah, he was just playing the game. Afterall he didn't mind being drilled in the head in "Insane In The Mainframe" or getting a hole stamped in his body in "Fra and The Slurm Factory".

But he did mind a rolled up paper to the head, several basket balls to the head, a meteorite through the head, getting slapped in the back of the head, getting punched....i could go on forever, besides, he didn't know it was a game when he got a axe through his back and the drill trough his skull.

 

[#14 :]

Bender feels pain. Who says he didn't feel pain when he got the "axe hole" in his back and the drill through his head? It may not be life threatening, but it is indeed pain. At the end of that episode he says "I'm in tremendous pain", and he often says "Ouch!" and whatnot. So he does feel pain, it's just not as serious to him as it would be to a human being.

[#15 :]

If robots like Bender weren't nearly indestuctible, there would be little advantage in building or owning them. Is good he can feel pain and be a little more understanding of us fragile (by comparison) meat bags.

[#16 :]

On the other hand it's a bad business strategy to build nearly indestructible robots, the turnover rate would be nearly nil, and after a while you kill your own market. Plus inferior robots are probably cheaper to build, and would outcompete sturdier and more expensive robots. Same thing with cars today. Since MomCorp control the majority of the robot market it's safe to say profit come before quality.

[#17 :]

How about the time when Bender got cut up by that can opener and became temporarly paralyzed?  Does that count?

[#18 :]

Morgan Proctor nearly got away with it. Just upload his "software" and break the diskette.

As for his body, try passing it all the way through the Slurm can machine.

[#19 :]

 

Originally posted by Teral:
On the other hand it's a bad business strategy to build nearly indestructible robots, the turnover rate would be nearly nil, and after a while you kill your own market.

Perhaps (borrowing from Red Dwarf), robots have a preset "death day", where they shut themselves down. (In Red Dwarf, Kryten is told by the robot manufacturing company that when he dies he goes to "silicon heavon", in order to shut him down and sell new models).

[#20 :]

Also I think the suicide booth was supposed to be mainly for human use, not robots....

I always thought having a choice of death was wierd....I mean who wants to die slow and horribly....? *shudder*

[#21 :]

 

Originally posted by KurtPikachu2001:
How about the time when Bender got cut up by that can opener and became temporarly paralyzed?  Does that count?

Well, that only destroyed his hydralics which make him move, so it's different to the other methods of killing someone. I suppose it would be similar to having no muscles rather than being paralysed via nerve problems.

[#22 :]

 

Originally posted by Teral:
 ...you can only truely kill him if you erase his program. Depending on where in his head the storage unit is located, you have to aim pretty precise to hit it. Body damages doesn't concern him, only a head wound could. The only thing that had potential to kill him was the meteorite in "Godfellas".

WEll, I would agree with that, except for "Roswell that Ends Well" where Eenice(sp?) eats bender brain. That would destroy his core program, would it not? Since it didn't there is no reasonable answer without going into plot elements

[#23 :]

In Obsoletely Fabulous, Bender's head burns up, the only thing that seems left is his Eyes and mouth. And in 'How hermes Requisitioned his Groove Back', Morgan Proctor removed his brain, but he can still live.


Obsoletely Fabulous


How hermes Requisitioned his Groove Back - Yes, it's Benders brain on the disk


Images from gotfuturama.com

[#24 :]

In Obsoletely Fabulous, it was a dream, so I think that can be dismissed.  As for HHRHGB, I think that was his personality on the disk, and the base Bending Unit operating system was left behind.  Just like if I were to delete everything except Windows (or DOS, to use extremes) from my computer, it would still run, but only at a very basic level.  It wouldn't be any fun.

[#25 :]

 

Originally posted by green-gesus:
 
WEll, I would agree with that, except for "Roswell that Ends Well" where Eenice(sp?) eats bender brain. That would destroy his core program, would it not? Since it didn't there is no reasonable answer without going into plot elements

Yeah, if he eats all of Bender main-processors. Those few modules was probably just a co-processor, or a part of some backup system. Clearly they wasn't essential for Benders personality.

[#26 :]

 

Originally posted by Ranadok:
In Obsoletely Fabulous, it was a dream, so I think that can be dismissed.  As for HHRHGB, I think that was his personality on the disk, and the base Bending Unit operating system was left behind.  Just like if I were to delete everything except Windows (or DOS, to use extremes) from my computer, it would still run, but only at a very basic level.  It wouldn't be any fun.

Yeah sorry, I forgot to mention the dream part... But in 'I second that emotion', when Bender gets sucked up to the giant can-opener, he says "You killed my father and now you've come for me!" or something in that direction...

And in "War is the H-word", He takes the explosion from a bomb, and he nearly dies... And Zapp and Nixon meant to destroy the whole planet, including Bender... But in the end when he's guessing words that he almost never say, antiquing triggers the bomb, but he says "I'm okay"... But hey! - It's a cartoon!

-Axl

[#27 :]

But would being hit by a truck driven by the Incredible Hulk (I'm sure that's not exactly right, but it's something close to that) actually kill Bender?

[#28 :]

 

Originally posted by VoVat:
But would being hit by a truck driven by the Incredible Hulk actually kill Bender?

Yes!  Being hit by a truck is bad enough, but imagine how much harder the truck would hit you if the Incredible Hulk was driving.  I mean, he's the Incredible Hulk for crying out loud.  You've seen how hard he can hit things.

[#29 :]

Just because somebody tough is driving a truck doesn't make it more likely to kill you.