History YMMV / RoboCop1987

** Similarly, the scene where Enil is drenched in toxic waste and is reduced to a moaning, gargling sack of flesh can come off as more [[BlackComedy grotesquely hilarious]] instead of horror-inducing.

* OlderThanTheyThink: The line "I'd buy that for a dollar!" is derived from a sarcastic put-down from 1951 short story ''The Marching Morons'': "Would you buy it for a quarter?".

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Bob Morton is a {{Jerkass}} CorruptCorporateExecutive who helped reassign cops to risky areas and was partly responsible for placing Murphy in harm's way. After his promotion, he is shown snorting cocaine and playing with escort women. The filmmakers fully expected audiences to cheer when he got killed by Boddicker. Instead, to their surprise as disclosed in the audio commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD, they found that the audience actually felt ''sorry'' for him, if only because he was killed in a fairly grotesque manner. Plus, he's a relatively but significantly better person than Dick Jones and Clarence Boddicker. Also and more importantly, he's the one who rescues Alex from near death and turns him into Franchise/{{RoboCop}} (again, completely ignoring that he put Murphy and cops like him in harm's way ''in the first place'')! Creator/MiguelFerrer's natural charisma and èlan certainly helps him towering above the overall bleakness of the film, giving Morton some fatherly undertones of a man proud of his creation while overseeing Robocop's first steps.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Bob Morton is a {{Jerkass}} CorruptCorporateExecutive who helped reassign cops to risky areas and was partly responsible for placing Murphy in harm's way. After his promotion, he is shown snorting cocaine and playing with escort women. The filmmakers fully expected audiences to cheer when he got killed by Boddicker. Instead, to their surprise as disclosed in the audio commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD, they found that the audience actually felt ''sorry'' for him, if only because he was killed in a fairly grotesque manner. Plus, he's a relatively but significantly better person than Dick Jones and Clarence Boddicker. Also and more importantly, he's the one who rescues Alex from near death and turns him into Franchise/{{RoboCop}} (again, completely ignoring that he put Murphy and cops like him in harm's way ''in the first place'')! Creator/MiguelFerrer's natural charisma and èlan certainly helps him towering above the overall bleakness of the film.

** [[ADickInName Dick Jones]] is not only a CorruptCorporateExecutive for OCP, but is also Clarence Boddicker's boss. Jones is fully aware of how awful Clarence is and uses his thirst for violence to his own advantage and prosperity. Jones doesn't care when his ED-209 malfunctions and blows holes in an innocent executive, believing it was a necessary loss to test his subject out. Jones orders Clarence to kill plenty of good-working and innocent cops so that he can make money with their deaths and get more support for ED-209 so that his project will be the one that profits. When Bob Morton gets the upper hand with his [=RoboCop=] project, he has him killed, leaving a message to taunt him and taking pride in his victory. When [=RoboCop=] later confronts and tries to arrest him, it's revealed that he had Directive Four installed in [=RoboCop=] to have him shut down if he goes against an OCP member as an insurance policy to himself. He orders ED-209 to go after [=RoboCop=] to destroy what he believes is Morton's "mistake" and has him framed as a dangerous enemy when he survives. He has Clarence and his men, whom [=RoboCop=] had all arrested, released just for the purpose of killing him and then later takes the Old Man hostage and threatens his life to try to get away when he's exposed.

** [[AxCrazy Clarence Boddicker]] is the de facto crime boss of Old Detroit. An infamous CopKiller, Boddicker is under suspicion of murdering 31 police officers, and opens the movie killing three more. When Alex Murphy, the future [=RoboCop=], attempts to arrest him, Boddicker [[CruelAndUnusualDeath draws out his death]], shooting off his [[{{Fingore}} hand]] with his shotgun, before letting his men continuously shoot Murphy in the chest until they're out of ammo, at which point Clarence himself shoots Murphy [[BoomHeadshot in the head]]. Later, he takes immense pleasure in assassinating Bob Morton, the corporate rival of Boddicker's ally, Dick Jones. As he plays a taunting message from Jones, Boddicker shoots Morton repeatedly in the legs then leaves behind a live grenade to finish him off. The leader of a sadistic gang of criminals, Boddicker [[BadBoss cares nothing for the lives of his men]], at one point cracking a joke as he kills one of them by throwing him into the path of a pursuing police car as a distraction. Trying to assassinate [=RoboCop=] and his partner, Ann Lewis, at the climax of the film, Boddicker shows that in addition to being paid for his crimes, he takes psychotic pride in them every step of the way.

** When [=RoboCop=] throws [[spoiler:Dick Jones]] out of the building at the end of the movie, his arms morph to about twice his height and he looks horribly deformed as he falls. That's to say nothing of the horribly obvious greenscreen effect over which he has been crudely superimposed. Even in 1987, most critics and audiences thought the entire scene looked laughably fake.

* CatharsisFactor: Anytime Robocop guns down a criminal, considering how horrible all of them are. Special mention goes to the scene where Robo shoves a helpless Boddicker through a bunch of windows and later stabs him in the throat, or finally puts an end to Dick Jones by shooting him out of a window.

** On the subject of cars, the producers choosing the then-new Ford Taurus as the vehicle of choice for the future Detroit police. At the time, it was because of the aerodynamic, streamlined look the car had (in comparison to most other 80s cars, which were still brick-like); now, it's more an UnintentionalPeriodPiece than anything else, but it gets funnier when you realize the current version of the Taurus began to be used by police forces after the Ford Crown Victoria was discontinued in the late 2000s.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Bob Morton is a {{Jerkass}} CorruptCorporateExecutive who helped reassign cops to risky areas and was partly responsible for placing Murphy in harm's way. After his promotion, he is shown snorting cocaine and playing with escort women. The filmmakers fully expected audiences to cheer when he got killed by Boddicker. Instead, to their surprise as disclosed in the audio commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD, they found that the audience actually felt ''sorry'' for him, if only because he was killed in a fairly grotesque manner. Plus, he's a relatively but significantly better person than Dick Jones and Clarence Boddicker. Also and more importantly, he's the one who rescues Alex from near death and turns him into Franchise/{{RoboCop}} (again, completely ignoring that he put Murphy and cops like him in harm's way ''in the first place'')! Creator/MiguelFerrer 's natural charisma and èlan certainly helps him towering over the overall bleakness of the film.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Bob Morton is a {{Jerkass}} CorruptCorporateExecutive who helped reassign cops to risky areas and was partly responsible for placing Murphy in harm's way. After his promotion, he is shown snorting cocaine and playing with escort women. The filmmakers fully expected audiences to cheer when he got killed by Boddicker. Instead, to their surprise as disclosed in the audio commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD, they found that the audience actually felt ''sorry'' for him, if only because he was killed in a fairly grotesque manner. Plus, he's a relatively but significantly better person than Dick Jones and Clarence Boddicker. Also and more importantly, he's the one who rescues Alex from near death and turns him into Franchise/{{RoboCop}} (again, completely ignoring that he put Murphy and cops like him in harm's way ''in the first place'')!

* TooBleakStoppedCaring: While it's not as bad as [[Film/RoboCop2 the sequel]] in this regard, the original film can still fall into this for some viewers due to its violent nature, venomous tone, and extremely [[CrapsackWorld crapsack]] setting. Essentially, no matter what the titular cybernetic lawman does, his world will still be an impossibly depraved hellhole dominated by {{corrupt corporate executive}}s, [[DityCop corrupt law enforcement]], and [[AxCrazy crazed psychopaths]].

* SoBleakItsBoring: While it's not as bad as [[Film/RoboCop2 the sequel]] in this regard, the original film can still fall into this for some viewers due to its violent nature, venomous tone, and extremely [[CrapsackWorld crapsack]] setting. Essentially, no matter what the titular cybernetic lawman does, his world will still be an impossibly depraved hellhole dominated by {{corrupt corporate executive}}s, [[DityCop corrupt law enforcement]], and [[AxCrazy crazed psychopaths]].

* AlasPoorVillain: Even though he was amoral and something of a {{Jerkass}}, many viewers nevertheless felt sorry for Morton during his death scene, especially seeing as how he comes off more as simply unethical in his ambitions than outright evil like Dick Jones.

* SoBleakItsBoring: While it's not as bad as [[Film/RoboCop2 the sequel]] in this regard, the original film can still fall into this for some viewers due to its violent nature, venomous tone, and extremely [[CrapsackWorld crapsack]] setting.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: While it's not as bad as [[Film/RoboCop2 the sequel]] in this regard, the original film can still fall into this due to its violent nature, venomous tone, and extremely [[CrapsackWorld crapsack]] setting.

** Verhoeven would run into this again with his similarly misguided attempts at making people horrified about war with ''Film/StarshipTroopers'', apparently having not learned the lesson that 1) summer action blockbusters are really not the place to try and put across "deep" sociological commentary, because people will just take it as a summer action blockbuster, and 2) the vast majority of people understand that what they're seeing is fiction and thus don't react to it as if it were real violence or something that were actually happen, especially when it's made so ridiculously over-the-top as Verhoeven seems to love to do.

** The trailer for the film features Brad Fiedel's theme for ''Film/TheTerminator'' and Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger was originally considered for the title role, then comes ''ComicBook/RoboCopVersusTheTerminator''.

* SpiritualLicensee: Many argue that ''Robocop'' was a film adaptation of ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd''. Many of the themes are quite similar, particularly the use of BlackComedy. In fact, the reason a Dredd film wasn't made during TheEighties was because ''Robocop'' came out before it could happen.

* StrawmanHasAPoint: A standard of Verhoeven pictures. OCP is depicted as callous and opportunistic for wanting to take over Old Detroit and rebuild it as Delta City... and yet we're shown a Detroit on the verge of chaos even before Clarence's men start being more openly provided weapons and funding by Dick Jones, leaving one to wonder if maybe it wouldn't be better off bulldozed and rebuilt. OCP is also shown as heartless and ruthless for taking over the police department... and yet little blame is put on the cops for going on strike and allowing the city to fall into literal lawlessness. And of course, OCP's projects are shown as evil and money-grubbing... and yet they give us Robocop, our hero, who we'll be cheering for during the next three movies as he stops rapists and terrorists.
** [[SubvertedTrope That said]], these "points" can be easily be rebutted by people with Verhoeven's worldviews. When corporate powers want to "develop" run down cities, it usually involves gentrification, which ultimately "[[SarcasmMode improves]]" cities by pricing out poor residents and forces them to leave, making them SomeoneElsesProblem. Corporate and political corruption is also the unspoken reason the cops feel the need to go on strike, as greed and other corruption has helped undermine the cops so they would have a pretext to take over the department in the first place. This in turn forced the cops to choose between going on strike or living in poverty. And RoboCop was only built to be a soulless, mindless, obedient enforcer of the law, and only became a full-fledged good guy when he [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming regained his memories and found a way to defy his programming]] in order to bring an otherwise untouchable CorruptCorporateExecutive to justice.
*** [[DoubleSubversion However,]] as for as the original goes, OCP's goal was to temporarily move civilians into trailers while the city gets rebuilt. Once Delta City was finished they would be returned to a new safer city. On top of that, the Robocop program gave fallen police officers a chance to continue serving the city. Despite the fact that Murphy's Robocop was originally built as a soulless machine, he still reduced violent crime and took out most of the city's major criminals [[RefugeInAudacity on his own.]] There's a reason the old man isn't considered an antagonist until [[Film/Robocop2 the sequel.]] [[note]] And even then, he's only a minor antagonist in the sense that he's corrupt and profit-driven. Compared to both Cain, a drug dealer and mass murderer, and Dr. Faxx, a psychiatrist who only cares about advancing her career regardless of the costs, the Old Man is still the lesser of all evils. [[/note]]

* CatharsisFactor: Anytime Robocop guns down a criminal, considering how horrible all of them are. Special mention goes to the scene where Robo shoves a helpless Boddicker through a bunch of windows and later stabs him in the throat.

** When [=RoboCop=] throws [[spoiler:Dick Jones]] out of the building at the end of the movie, his arms morph to about twice his height and he looks horribly deformed as he falls.

* CrossesTheLineTwice: The scene near the beginning with the demonstration of the ED-209 in the Director's Cut. In the theatrical version, it merely just shoots the executive for a second or two to kill him in a perfunctory manner. In the uncut version, it unloads [[Main/MoreDakka hundreds of bullets]] into him with gallons of HighPressureBlood spraying everywhere as the engineers try to disable the robot. This goes on for about 15 seconds, long after any human being could survive with ED-209 just chewing up the corpse. To top it off, some random guy says "Should we call a medic?" after ED's done turning the guy into paste. The original intent of the film was to make it so outrageously violent you couldn't take it seriously. The [[ExecutiveMeddling studio cut forced out]] much of the violence so that some scenes ended up a bit more depressing than others.

** As noted in EnsembleDarkhorse, the fandom as a whole loves ED-209, and it's become one of the iconic MiniMecha designs. This is despite the fact that pretty much every scene involving ED-209 -- from its gory introduction(incompetent to the extreme) to its falling down the stairs(a police robot that can't climb ''stairs?'') to its obvious weak point(a giant hole in its forward armor for its ''sports car-style radiator grille'') -- is meant to convey the fact that ED-209 is an overpriced piece of junk. Granted, its design is meant to invoke the RuleOfCool in-universe, so it was bound to happen.

** As noted in EnsembleDarkhorse, the fandom as a whole loves ED-209, and it's become one of the iconic MiniMecha designs. This is despite the fact that pretty much every scene involving ED-209 -- from its gory introduction(incompetent to the extreme) to its falling down the stairs(a police robot that can't climb ''stairs?'') to its obvious weak point(a giant hole in its forward armor for its ''sports car-style radiator grille'') -- is meant to convey the fact that ED-209 is an overpriced piece of junk.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: ED-209. So much so that he became a franchise staple rather than just a minor character; ED-209 is the one of the only characters besides [=RoboCop=] himself that appears in nearly ''every'' work of ''[=RoboCop=]'' fiction, even including Robo’s {{Guest Fighter}} appearance in VideoGame/MortalKombat11.[[note]]However, ED-209 doesn't appear in ''Series/RoboCopTheSeries'' and ''Series/RoboCopPrimeDirectives''[[/note]]