Futurama/Hell Is Other Robots

Hell Is Other Robots
Season 1, Episode 9
Airdate	May 18, 1999
Production Number	1ACV09
Written by	Eric Kaplan
Directed by	Rich Moore
← 1x08 A Big Piece of Garbage	2x01 → A Flight to Remember
Futurama — Season One

Hell Is Other Robots is the ninth episode of the first season of Futurama, and the ninth episode overall. After having been addicted to electricity, Bender becomes a religious zealot to the chagrin of his friends. Fry and Leela take him to Atlantic City to tempt him with old vices, but Bender is in for more than he bargained for.

Guest Stars: Byrne Offutt (Ultility Player), The Beastie Boys (Themselves), Dan Castellaneta (Robot Devil)

Plot Overview

The Planet Express crew decide to spend their free time by going to a Beastie Boys concert. Bender sees an old acquaintance at the concert who takes him backstage to "jack on". Bender gets juiced so that he doesn't look like a square to the other robots. Soon Bender becomes addicted to electricity and spirals out of control. During a mission, Bender crashes the Planet Express spaceship into an electrical field and nearly kills everyone. He wanders the streets out night trying to find a way to get juiced, and makes his way to a Robotology church and converts.

With his new faith, Bender starts acting differently to all of his friends. Leela and Fry decide to take him to Atlantic City so that he'll be turned back on to all of his old vices. It works, and he's soon back to stealing, drinking, smoking, and chasing impressionable female robots. Having violated his religion, Bender is kidnapped by the robot devil and taken to robot hell where he suffers from tortures such as singing and dancing. Leela and Fry use Nibbler to track down Bender's scent to see where he is. They find him in robot hell, which is in New Jersey. There the robot devil offers a chance to win Bender's freedom through a fiddle contest. Leela instead uses the fiddle to knock on the robot devil and they escape.

Arc Advancement

Characters

• Hermes and Zoidberg: The beginning of the rivalry between Hermes and Zoidberg begins in this episode when Hermes accuses Zoidberg of wasting electricity.

Trivia

The Show

• Opening Caption: Condemned by the Space Pope
• Opening Cartoon: Before the Planet Express ship crashes into the giant screen, a Betty Boop cartoon is shown.
• Music: The songs that the Beastie Boys play at the beginning of the episode are Intergalactic, Super Disco Breakin and Sabotage. They were originally going to use Fight For Your Right (To Party), but the group requested that it not be used because they're sick of it. The song that the robot devil plays at the end of the episode was actually a classical piece with Mephisto in the title.
• First Appearances: This episode marks the first appearance of the Robot Devil and the Preacher Robot.

Behind the Scenes

• Guest Recording Issues: Although the Beastie Boys are all credited as being in the episode, Adam Yauch (MCA) was not available for recording. Instead, Adam Horowitz (Ad-Rock) did an impression of MCA for the speaking roles.
• First Draft: The original version of the script called for the crew going to a planet where all the inhabitants were horse-people instead of the mob planet. Instead of getting the kiss of death, a carrot was eaten out of Fry's hand. Also in the original draft, Bender crashed the Planet Express ship into the Empire State Building to use it as a lightning rod. Finally, there was a long subplot where Leela was learning how to play the Theramin from the Beastie Boys.
• Complaints: The Church of Scientology did give Matt Groening a call of concern about the Temple of Robotology, perceiving it as a direct stab at Scientology. Beyond the organization's problems with it, a staff member for the series refused to work on the episode because of the negative religious conotation.
• Deleted Verse: Originally, the song at the end of the episode included a line about how Bender seduced a nun machine. It was later cut, possibly for time or because the episode is sacreligious enough without it.

Allusions and References

• Beastie Boys: The Beastie Boys are a hip-hop group who first got their roots in the late 1980s along with other pioneering groups like Run DMC. They were the first group of white hip-hop musicians to gain popularity and success. When this episode was written, they were riding the success of their album Hello Nasty, which included hit songs like Intergalactic and Body Movin. The group is notable for their style of rhyming that harkens back to the old school days of hip hop as well as Mix Master Mike's older styled turntablism.

• Coalsack Nebula: The nebula that the Planet Express crew travels through is a real nebula located in the southern part of the Milky Way galaxy. It is easily visible to the human eye and can be placed near the Centaurus and Musca star constellations.

Memorable Moments

• The robot devil delivering a long and drawn out musical number followed by a fiddle solo.

Quotes

• Fry: Who was that guy?
  Bender: Your mama! Now shut up and drag me to work!

In Robot Hell

Cigars are evil,

You won't miss 'em,

We'll find ways to simulate that smell,

What a sorry fella,

Rolled up and smoked like a panetela,

Here on level one of Robot Hell!

Gambling's wrong and so is cheating,

So is forging phoney IOU's,

Let's let Lady Luck decide,

What type of torture's justified,

I'm pit boss here on level two!

Just tell me why.

Please read this 55-page warrant.

There must be robots worse than I.

We've checked around, there really aren't.

Then please let me explain,

My crimes were merely boy-ish pranks.

You stole from boy scouts, nuns and banks!

Ah, don't blame me,

Blame my upbringing!

Please stop sinning while I'm singing!

Selling bootleg tapes is wrong,

Musicians need that income to survive.

Hey, Bender, gonna make some noise,

With your hard drive scratched by the Beastie Boys!

That's whatcha, whatcha, whatcha get on level five!

I don't feel well.

It's up to us to rescue him.

Maybe he likes it here in Hell.

It's us who tempted him to sin.

Maybe he's back at the motel.

Come on, Fry, don't be scared,

I'm sure at least one of us will be spared,

So just sit back, enjoy the ride.

My ass has blisters from the slide.

Fencing diamonds,

Fixing cockfights,

Publishing indecent magazines,

You'll pay for every crime,

Knee-deep in electric slime,

You'll suffer till the end of time,

Enduring torture's, most of which rhyme,

Trapped forever here in Robot Hell!

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