"Sayonara RoboCop!"
"Dick Jones here. I guess you're on your knees about now, begging for your life. Pathetic! You don't feel so cocky now, do you Bob? You know what the tragedy is here, Bob? We could've been friends. You wouldn't go through the proper channels. You went over my head. That hurt. But life goes on, it's an old story, the fight for love and glory, huh Bob? It's helps if you think of it as a game. Every game has a winner... and a loser. I'm cashing you out, Bob."
—Richard "Dick" Jones, original film
Old Detroit is an extremely unpleasant place to live, in no small part thanks to these characters.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
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Films (including canon comics)
Examples
- The original 1987 film has a Big Bad Duumvirate:
- Clarence Boddicker is the de facto crime boss of Old Detroit. An infamous Cop Killer, 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 draws out his death, shooting off his 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 in the head. Later, Boddicker 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 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, Anne 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.
- Dick Jones is not only a Corrupt Corporate Executive in Omni Consumer Products (OCP), but is also Clarence Boddicker's boss. Jones is fully aware of how awful Boddicker 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 Boddicker 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, Jones 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's had Directive Four installed in RoboCop to have him shut down if he goes against an OCP member as an insurance policy to himself. Jones 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. Jones has Boddicker 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.
- RoboCop 2: Cain, the psychotic Nuke cult leader, has a long list of crimes. These including blowing up a drug treatment center just because they try to cure people of their addiction to Nuke; using his protege, a young boy named Hob, as a as a soldier in his gang; eviscerating one of his drug-buying cops after RoboCop has forced him to reveal the location of one of the labs making Nuke, an action which Hob and Cain's girlfriend Angie are both Forced to Watch and horrified by; shooting before removing from his limo an illegal immigrant worker from the drug lab, pleading not to be turned over the police; and, along with his gang, dismembering RoboCop. When he's turned into RoboCop 2, in exchange for a big container of Nuke, Cain charges his former gang's hideout and kills almost everyone there except the Mayor, who manages to escape. Cain twists Angie's head around and fatally shoots Hob, leaving him for dead. Cain later without provocation tries to kill RoboCop to settle the score, with numerous civilians and police officers getting killed during the final battle.
- RoboCop 3:
- Paul McDaggett is a former soldier and the head of the Urban Rehabilitators, or "Rehabs", hired by OCP to force the people of Detroit out of their homes in order to take their land in the company's name. While claiming that he will give them new homes, McDaggett has hundreds of men, women, and children sent to death camps instead. When RoboCop and Anne Lewis stand in his way, McDaggett shoots and kills Lewis himself, framing her partner for her death to discredit him. Sending his forces to attack the rebels, leading to several deaths, McDaggett throws money into the street to manipulate kids to act as a Human Shield and facilitate his escape from RoboCop. When the police refuse to work for him anymore, McDaggett employs the Splatterpunks gang to fight against the police and sends cyborg assassins after RoboCop, later nearly shooting both young Nikko and Dr. Marie Lazarus out of prideful spite. When Marie and Nikko turn the cyborgs on each other, McDaggett reveals that he has them rigged to be a fail-safe on his bomb so that it would go off, with his only concern purely for himself and not for anything or anyone else.
- Dean Coontz is a cowardly member of the Cadillac Heights rebellion who puts his own self-interest and greed above the lives of his people. Though initially serving the rebellion, Coontz secretly throws in with McDaggett and the Rehabs in exchange for money, and actively helps McDaggett avoid RoboCop and continue to oppress Cadillac Heights. Coontz ends up selling out the rebellion base to McDaggett, knowingly sentencing hundreds of men, women, and children to death camps or immediate slaughter just to line his pockets, and he goes so far as to pull a gun on his former allies to keep them in place for the approaching Rehab death squad.
- 2014 remake & The Human Element by Boom! Studios: Raymond Sellars, CEO of OmniCorp, produces drones which reduce countries to Police States. Sellars has a dead soldier refashioned into a cyborg to ingrain his products in the army, and when the man's guilt leads him to commit suicide, Sellars deletes all records of his existence. Repeating the process with hero Alex Murphy, Sellars uses him to sway the public into repealing an act preventing his machines from operating on American soil and tries to kill Murphy after doing so.
Comic Books
Examples
- 1990 series issue #11—"Unfinished Business": Daniel O'Hara is a former OCP employee who RoboCop had killed in the line of duty after O'Hara killed a hostage. Brought back to life as a cyborg, O'Hara massacres the scientists and goes on a rampage throughout the city, killing police officers to draw out RoboCop. After nearly killing Lewis, O'Hara attacks RoboCop, ignoring his statements that he didn't want to kill O'Hara but had no choice and that O'Hara had killed a hostage. O'Hara brutally beats down RoboCop, and is about to kill him when RoboCop defeats him by interfacing with his machine and overloading its system, causing it to shut down.
- RoboCop Versus The Terminator: Skynet was once a digital defense program but, after becoming self-aware, decided that all organic life was too chaotic for its liking. Destroying civilization thanks to its nuclear arsenal, Skynet created armies of killer machines to finish off the remnants of humanity. After the Resistance learns that Skynet's self-awareness was reverse-engineered from the mind of Alex Murphy, Skynet sends three Terminators back in time to prevent them from killing RoboCop and erasing Skynet from history. After killing the last remaining humans, Skynet proceeds to build a legion of spaceships and launches its armies into space, now with the goal of eradicating all organic life in the universe. When Murphy tries to kill himself to prevent the apocalypse, Skynet sends two more Terminators back in time to convince him to allow Skynet to come into being. When he refuses, the Terminators force Murphy to merge with Skynet and force him to watch helplessly as Skynet destroys humanity. When Murphy rebuilds his body and begins to fight back against the machines, Skynet considers him to be a top target and is perfectly willing to destroy its creator. In its final moments, Skynet tries to tempt Murphy with godhood and a program that will allow him to live out his fantasies in the flesh, concepts that Skynet had previously derided as foolish and primitive.
- Frank Miller's RoboCop: Captain Carl Seltz is the leader of the Rehabilitation Concepts mercenaries, and cares only about power. Longing to overtake the city's police force, Seltz and his mercenaries assist Margaret Love in her schemes to destroy Alex Murphy's reputation. Seltz allows the unhinged Kong to eliminate criminals in the city, not caring about the collateral damage that ensues in the process. He later orders one of his men to assassinate Officer Reed, before telling him he can kill Anne Lewis as well. After Reed is killed and Murphy is framed for his murder, Seltz and his team try to kill Alex Murphy multiple times. Afterwards, Seltz and his team ambush and murder several police officers inside of a safe house, all while gloating that their deaths will be blamed on the rioters and that his mercenaries will be able to "avenge" their deaths.
- Revolution & Road Trip, written by Rob Williams: Edwina Odenkirk, the new chief executive of OCP, wants to take over all of Old Detroit. With dozens of ED-209s as her disposal, Odenkirk fires all of the police officers and manipulates the media to her advantage. After riot leader Mason Vogler is arrested, she frees him and allows him to create more chaos in the city, all so she'll be able to deploy the ED-309s and show off how powerful they are. As the ED-309s slaughter the looters, several innocents are caught in the crossfire—all of which Odenkirk is indifferent to. After an ED-309 goes rogue, destroys a military base, and tries to declare war on Canada, Odenkirk sells five ED-309s to the Canadian Prime Minister so she could recover her losses. She later sends new robotic hounds to kill Alex Murphy and his allies before turning the public against them as well. When the OCP shareholders try to fire Odenkirk for the damage she's done, she immediately threatens them all to sign over their shares to her and to take responsibility for what's happened; Odenkirk then forces all of them to commit suicide. Despite claiming she cares about Old Detroit, Odenkirk's primary concern is making as much money as possible, regardless of the innocents caught in the crossfire.
- Dead or Alive, written by Joshua Williamson & Dennis Culver: John Killian is an Arms Dealer recently released from prison. Determined to destroy Old Detroit and to ruin the Old Man's legacy, Killian activates an initiative where the police confiscate unregistered weapons in the city, before using the initiative to launch a riot against the police. As Killian's men use the confiscated guns for their own means, Killian murders liquor store owner Walter Hutch, using his death to rile the rioters. As he prepares to sell the ED-2000Xs on the Black Market, Killian tortures undercover officer Mason to death before luring several police officers into an ambush that gets several of them killed. After he's arrested for Hutch's murder, Killian kills two officers and escapes custody. Once Killian returns, he starts another riot by releasing a broadcast stating that OCP is spying on them, and later goes on to murder Mayor Gibson. As the riots escalate, Killian frees all the convicts from prison and leads an assault against the police force, shortly before he attempts to murder the Old Man. Although Killian only wanted to get revenge on the Old Man, his methods of vengeance nearly destroyed all of Old Detroit and resulted in the deaths of many police officers and civilians.
Live-Action TV
Examples
- The Series' "The Human Factor": Felix Weber was an employee at Omni Consumer Products who was trying to create a hair growth serum using spider venom that could cure baldness. When he was fired for his unauthorized research, he held Detroit hostage with his bombs before being arrested by Alex Murphy's father. Escaping from prison, Felix attempts to bomb various O.C.P buildings, before eventually trying to destroy the entire city, all over being fired and having his research shut down. Even when he is offered money and he is made to believe that the chairman who fired him is being arrested, he refuses to stop.
- Prime Directives:
- Dr. David Kaydick, an unspeakably petty ex-OCP scientist fired for his grotesque experiments on human subjects, uses this as justification for attempting to bring about the death of the entire human race through the LEGION "bio-tech" virus. A monster to his own family, Kaydick kept his own wife as a slave via means of an electric neurochip, and gleefully attempts to murder both her and their own young daughter Jordan in the present after having used Jordan as an incubator for LEGION. Kaydick uses a Shock Collar to force Alex Murphy's partner Cable into becoming his personal killing machine, and when he attempts to break into the OCP HQ with its uncooperative security executive as his hostage, Kaydick comes close to gouging out her eyes to get past the scanners.
- "Dark Justice": The Motor City Mangler, only appearing in a flashback, is a cocky, cannibalistic Serial Killer who kidnaps young women and grinds them into sausage and ribs, having done so to many. When Alex Murphy and John T. Cable investigate his house, the Mangler holds Cable at gunpoint and forces Murphy to drop his gun. Once Murphy complies, the Mangler tries to shoot both him and Cable.
Others
- Alpha Commando: Mr. Brink is the leader of DARC (Directorate for Anarchy, Revenge, and Chaos), a terrorist organization that serves as the primary threat of the series. In the three-part pilot, "Justice Reborn", he instructs DARC to assassinate the premiere of Naugmenastan to cause a war so they can sell weapons to the country, eventually deciding to bomb the room the premiere is in and kill everyone. His organization continues to commit atrocities throughout the series, including converting Francesca Alliata into a cyborg slave to make her bomb a city; attempting to nuke all of the world's capitals; and trying to destroy a plane filled with the Goodwill ambassadors from the Asian Alliance nations, which would cause the Asian Alliance to declare war on the world, allowing DARC to sell weapons to the highest bidders. In the "Family Reunion" two-part episode, Brink sends robots to take over New Detroit, and kidnaps RoboCop's family, threatening to kill them if he tries to stop him. Though Brink himself is not seen again, his organization continues to perform evil actions, such as trying to destroy the world's landmarks with a laser, and supplying a corrupt gentleman with a detonator that will allow him to destroy a ship.
- Rogue City: "Wendell Antonowsky", "the New Guy in town", is a crime boss who takes a special interest in RoboCop. Supposedly the brother of Emil Antonowsky seeking to have RoboCop give up his humanity to improve his life by forcing him to witness nightmarish hallucinations, Wendell is revealed to be a nameless OCP executive placed in charge of the Afterlife program, having dozens of cops killed and their brains harvested to perform illegal experiments on. Allowing the Torch Heads and Street Vultures to commit crimes throughout the city, Wendell will kill any of his men for failing him, while simultaneously refusing to pay them. Arrested for his crimes, Wendell stages a violent prison break that leaves many dead; has a hospital massacred in an attempt to kill a recovering Officer Lewis; and endangers a demonstration conference by hijacking Max Becker's UED robots to cause mayhem. Growing frustrated with OCP's control over him, Wendell starts a massive riot in an attempt to burn all of Old Detroit down and rule the new Delta City as a haven for criminals.
