When Fry first meets Bender in "Space Pilot 3000" (Season 1, Episode 1), the robot is a dour, if impatient, sad sack on line to use a suicide booth (driven to self-loathing after realizing the girders he bends are used in suicide booths). Fry and Bender survive the booth, and, on the run from Leela, they find themselves at the head museum. Trapped in the Hall of Criminals, Fry tries to convince Bender to bend some window bars and free them. Bender refuses, saying destructive bending is against his programming, but when he gets electrocuted, he completely changes his mind and does the deed. Redditor THE LOUDEST PENIS (yes) suggests that the electrocution completely rebooted Bender's system, and being that he found himself in the Hall of Criminals, he configured himself to fit in. Consider -- in "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz" (Season 3, Episode 5), a tuxedo-ed Bender is lost amongst a group of penguins. He reboots, and keeping in tune with his surroundings, becomes a penguin. Plausibility: High. Though not airtight (Bender tries to steal his quarter back from the suicide machine at the beginning of the episode), the theory is solid, especially when looking at "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz." Could Bender's whole personality be as random as a location?
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
