Soon to be a hit television show
Bender is overclocked by Cubert, becoming more powerful in computing power, causing him to eventually be omniscient. Cubert and Professor Farnsworth are tried in court for violating Bender's license agreement, and Fry and Leela question their on-again, off-again relationship in this Series Fauxnale.
Tropes
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Bender is overclocked by Cubert to make his reflexes faster for playing video games. Bender then begins overclocking himself, becoming smarter and able to predict the future. Eventually he becomes a god-like entity, able to create new worlds just by belching. Eventually the Reset Button is pushed when Mom captures him and resets him to factory standards, as user licenses are apparently more strictly enforced in the 31st Century.
- Bizarre Belching: An overclocked Bender claims that the simple act of burping allows him to create new galaxies - two if he's been eating broccoli.
- Character Catchphrase: Lampshaded, where Cubert cleans out terabytes of outdated catchphrases so he can overclock Bender. Bender responds to this with "It's gonna be fun on a bun!", which is promptly deleted.
- Courtroom Episode: Professor Farnsworth and Cubert are on trial for violating Bender's license agreement.
- Demanding Their Head: Mom orders an army of robots to "bring [her] the clock of Bender Rodriguez," a reference to the movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
- Do Wrong, Right: When Professor Farnsworth and Cubert are in prison, the Professor is angry that Cubert overclocked Bender, but only because he was caught, which his father had taught him not to do.
- Driven to Suicide: Fry decides, after Farnsworth gets arrested and Leela decides to leave Planet Express and move to another planet, to kill himself by jumping down Niagra Falls in a barrel. It doesn't quite work, as it turns out.
- Flipping the Bird: When Bender is playing video games with Cubert and Fry, he is implied to flip the bird in response to being told the console uses motion-capture technology.Bender: Oh yeah? Track this motion!
- "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: Cubert (illegally) overclocks Bender to make him better at video games. Bender then continues to upgrade himself, while dodging manufacturer recall and ends up omniscient before the episode is over, but in the end he turns himself in to keep Farnsworth from being arrested for it and gets returned to normal.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The books Bender reads while in his overclocked state.
- Genius Serum: Cubert overclocks Bender's computing systems in order to give him better reflexes for playing video games. Bender then goes on to keep overclocking himself, becoming smarter and able to predict the future. After inserting more processing chips and going into hiding, Bender ascends to a higher level of existence and becomes a near Physical God, but loses all of it after saving the Professor and Cubert from being convicted by Mom for voiding his warranty.
- Godly Sidestep: Bender temporarily achieves omniscience, and obtains printouts with the answers to life's great questions. He casually throws away "the reason we exist", but does show Fry and Leela an account of their future together.
- Hypocritical Humor: Walt tells Larry that they must deal with losing a video game in a mature manner, then immediately makes a childish cry for his mother to help them.
- I Ate WHAT?!: After first being overclocked, Bender declares that a jar has 3,018 jelly beans. Cubert eats a handful of them. Bender corrects himself, saying that they were 3,018 rat kidneys. Cubert spits them out.
- I Like Those Odds: A suicidal Fry goes to the Niagara Falls, and meets a barrel salesman:Salesman: Barrels here! Can't go over the Falls without a barrel!Fry: What are my chances of surviving in one of those?Salesman: Slim to none!Fry: I like those odds!
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The sign on the Planet Express building after Mom sues the Professor reads "Going Out Of Business Forever (Again)," nodding at how this is the third episode designed to be a Futurama series finale (and it didn't even end this time either).
- Series Fauxnale: The third episode to have the appearance of a finale in spite of not really being the last episode due to once more being a significant development in Fry and Leela's relationship — albeit much like what happened with "Into the Wild Green Yonder", by the time it was actually released it was already known that the show was being renewed for one more season, which is why "Reincarnation" was last in the season's running order instead of this episode.
- Shout-Out: When Mom commands the Hoverfish to go after Bender, she tells them "Bring me the clock of Bender Rodriguez."
- Take That!:
- This episode's main plot was in response to a then-current issue of computer manufacturers disallowing owners of computer processers (CPUs) to overclock them, or else they'd void their warranty. In response, AMD started to be more lenient towards minor overclocks, and only took a hard stance on large overclocking efforts, and it'd only void the warranty if the CPU actually died specifically because it was overclocked. Meanwhile, Intel made CPUs that couldn't be overclocked, and made overclockable CPUs more expensive and marketed them toward the enthusiast crowd. While this episode by itself didn't change the industry, it did bring to light the warranty policies that were enforced by computer manufacturers to the wider public at the time, making the issue hard to ignore.
- The show also pokes fun at EULAs; End User License Agreements, which often have long text and legal spiel, in that the Professor had to agree to Benders License Agreement so he could be used for the first time. In reality, license agreements tend to be pretty hard to legally enforce for much the reason the show highlighted: the average layman are not lawyers, and shouldn't need to hire one to sign up to a new website or use their new device, and many jurisdictions have accepted that fact. The ineffectiveness of EULA terms were already being mocked and questioned by lawmakers, and even jokes were placed inside EULAs (Apple's EULA famously told people to not use iTunes when making nuclear weapons
), so even the people writing them make fun of how nobody reads them.
- The Unreveal: Bender achieves near-omnipotence, but won't answer when Fry asks how his relationship with Leela will go. At the end of the episode, after Bender is returned to normal, he reveals that he did indeed plot what would happen in Fry and Leela's relationship and wrote it down. The two read it together, and we get to see their emotional responses (basically every emotion a couple can experience), but obviously we don't hear a word of it.
