RoboCop/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The film series provides examples of

  • Alas, Poor Villain: Hob in the second film, though it's of questionable success as the trope is forced by the filmmakers upon a character who would be a Complete Monster except for the fact that he's only fourteen.
    • I think it ties in more with Murphy's ruminations on losing his family more than any real attempt to generate sympathy for the kid.
  • Anvilicious: Frank Miller, Irvin Kershner and especially Paul Verhoeven are not aiming for subtlety here (in fact, Verhoeven has never even heard of such a concept). The movies gleefully raise Anviliciousness to an art form, bombarding the viewer with Drugs Are Bad and Capitalism Is Evil.
    • Perhaps the most confusing thing about all the anviliciousness is just how... unbiased it all is overall. Especially in the second film, where conservative strawmen and liberal strawmen alike are taken to ridiculous levels. It seems that when working with Frank Miller's original concepts and script offerings, rather than tone down his own strawmen, they just decided to fire back with equally over-the-top strawmen of their own.
  • Armor-Piercing Question: In the Miranda rights scene, Robocop throws Boddicker through numerous plate-glass windows, intent on hurting him or killing him. Boddicker confesses Jones' involvement in the plot, but Robocop keeps going. Boddicker finally gets Robo to stop by saying "You're a cop!", reminding Robo that his first duty is to the law. Robocop stops his Roaring Rampage of Revenge and arrests Boddicker instead.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: The satirical humor goes over the heads of a lot of younger viewers, making the TV commercials and news spots seem out of place and strange.
    • In the second movie, when Murphy is walking around one of Cane's nuke plants, he takes a moment to examine a strange collective of artifacts on display there, like Elvis' supposed skeleton.
  • Complete Monster: Dick Jones in the first movie is a Corrupt Corporate Executive combined with this trope. He joins forces with Clarence Boddicker to kill Bob Morton, and was willing to have the future utopia Delta City overrun with all sorts of criminals.
    • Clarence Boddicker is an insane, short-tempered, raging psychopath that kills a lot of hard-working police officers (and innocent civilians) simply For the Evulz. During the chase scene, when Bobby (one of his goons) gets shot in the leg by Murphy, Clarence just orders his others goons to throw Bobby on the hood of Murphy's car. Of course, his true Kick the Dog moment is the horrible murder of Murphy at his hands and those of his goons.
    • Cain in RoboCop 2 isn't just wrecking the city by selling Nuke, he's a total sicko who kills anyone he perceives as a threat. His two worst deeds are the horrible murder of Duffy and literally cutting RoboCopinto pieces. Getting turned into RoboCain just makes him worse, and he ends up killing a whole lot of police officers and innocent bystanders.
    • In the same movie, Dr. Faxx, a female example for this franchise. She cares about nothing but herself and her pet project, with which she intends to replace the "obsolete" RoboCop. She's even willing to use the brain of a psychotic drug lord, and isn't shy about killing him to get it.
    • McDagget might be the worst of the lot. He's the one who killed Lewis without any reason. He convinces the public that the Rehabs give the people of Old Detroit new houses (actually putting them in death camps) and that RoboCop is a criminal. The last straw was, when the Detroit Police refused to work with the Rehabs to clear out Cadillac Heights, he simply hired some Splatterpunk gangmembers to do the job. Don't worry, Robo put them all, especially McDagget, out of their misery for good.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: 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 hundreds of bullets into him with gallons of High-Pressure Blood spraying everywhere as the engineers try to disable the robot. The original intent of the film was to make it so outrageously violent you couldn't take it seriously. The studio cut forced out much of the violence so that some scenes ended up a bit more depressing than others.
    • Likewise, the proud debuts of the failed RoboCop 2 candidates.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: The ED-209. Who's a cute widdle stupid Mecha Mook? Yes you are, yes you are! That nigh-unstoppable killing machine had a wide audience as a kids' toy.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Paul Verhoeven states that Murphy / RoboCop was deliberately conceived as a Christ figure. He dies an incredibly torturous death, gets resurrected, walks on water, and is the people's only hope in this Crapsack World. Also, he kicks ass.
  • Fetish Retardant: Fabiana Udenio in a bikini is awesome, but not when covered in green and blue goo (Sunblock 5000).
  • Fridge Brilliance: From a corporate stand-point, Dick Jones' "guaranteed military sales, 25 years of spare parts, renovation programs" plan for the ED-209 turns out to be much more solid than Bob Morton's: Robocop is not cost effective, he's irreplaceable, and needs millions of dollars of maintenance every year. Meanwhile ED-209, while not very good at police duty, did turn out to be a capable (not to mention easily manufactured) sentry bot and widely employed as security/military drones. Even its toys are very popular and sought-after in the real world!
    • Which sort of leaves out the thing that Dick said immediately after that stuff: "Who cares if it worked?!"
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: "Oh my God, ED-209 killed Kinny!"
    • The line "Bitches, leave!" is more amusing after hearing the line "Bitches, come!" in XXX.
  • Iron Woobie: Robocop, ignoring the pun.
  • Irony: Robocop, a classic rumination on Capitalism Is Evil, has it's title character featured in a Korean advert for a chicken-frying machine. Also, the general idea behind Robocop and the sheer amount of merchandise behind the character, to the point it becomes bizarre, as mentioned in the Misaimed Fandom section.
  • Memetic Mutation: "I'd buy that for a dollar!"
    • "You're dead, we killed you!"
    • "Dead or alive, you're coming with me."
    • "Please put down your weapon, you have 20 seconds to comply."
    • "BITCHES LEAVE!"
  • Misaimed Fandom: The ED-209. Who's a cute widdle stupid Mecha-Mook? Yes you are, yes you are! That nigh-unstoppable killing machine had a wide audience as a kids' toy. The third movie even encouraged this!
    • Of course, it helps that it's just a machine. It's not like it's inherently evil (like RoboCain), it's just badly-programmed and controlled by the bad guys.
  • Narm: "It's turning into a war zone!"
  • Narm Charm: "Behave yourselves!"
  • Nightmare Fuel: The Prototypes of RoboCop 2 from, well, RoboCop 2. It builds up with triumphant music, showing a clunky looking brown cyborg which reveals the human face inside the body—which then flinches its face in anger, complete with sparks, realizing that he's lost his humanity, and then proceeds to gun down the scientists near him, all while only able to say what's been programmed into him -- "Stop or I'll shoot."—with the words getting weaker with each sentence, until the prototype shoots himself in the head. And after that, we get the other prototype, which looks much sleeker and more friendly—but then removes its helmet, revealing a skull with wires coming out of it, which pathetically screams in pain before it dies from inadvertedely severing it's life support. Unlike Murphy, these would-be RoboCops failed because they weren't prepared to give up their lives and humanity for the line of duty. That, and the insane amount of psychological stress of being slaves to a corporation for the rest of their operational lives. The jerky stop-motion animation of the prototypes doubles the Uncanny Valley factor, and combined with the completely ironic, triumphant music only makes the scene even more creepy than it already is.
    • RoboCain, the RoboCop 2 prototype that did work -- too well, in fact. A hulking, nearly unstoppable arsenal of lethal weapons combined with the mind of a serial killer that breaks free of its corporate controller to wreak havoc makes for a genuine threat. The amazing stop motion effects done to create this metal monstrosity only enhance the fear factor. Also, there's Cain's "Screen Face", complete with an Uncanny Valley CGI head—sadly not featured in that video.
    • The results of one of Boddicker's henchmen taking a toxic waste bath during the climax of the first movie.
    • Duffy, a dirty cop, squeals on Cain. He wakes up tied to a hospital bed. In the room are Cain, his girlfriend, and Hob who is all of fourteen years old and a sad-faced man who's getting his scalpels ready to vivisect him.

Doctor: Maybe you oughta have the kid leave?\_
Cain: Why?

    • The stop-motion animation of the ED-209. The jerkiness accentuates its creepy robotic motion. The way it moves puts it right in the Uncanny Valley.
    • Robocop's limbless torso in 2, after the bad guys tore him apart. It still moved and tried to speak, but could only manage a low moan. Watch the scene when OCP is assessing the damages.
  • Reverse Funny Aneurysm
  • Scapegoat Creator: Frank Miller for the second and third movies. His name may be in the credits, but his scripts did suffer a severe amount of Executive Meddling.
    • Of course, once Frank Miller got to write some RoboCop comics to show what his vision would have really been like, it's arguable that the executives meddling in this case was an example of Tropes Are Not Bad.
  • Sequelitis: 2 and 3.
  • Special Effects Failure: In the first film some shots of RoboCop's handheld locating device show painfully clearly how the prop just has a painted-on small map with an embedded red LED. The scenes where it's actually put to use shows a close-up with proper animations, though.
    • People are split on the Go-Motion animations of ED-209 and RoboCain. They look real whenever they remain still, but when they start to move, that's a different story. But to many however, this just furthers their creepiness (They are robots after all).
    • The third film has several, including the destruction of the OCP building and flying RoboCop.
  • Squick
    • RoboCop: Boddicker's henchmen Emil gets dunked in toxic waste, causing him to literally melt. And then he gets hit by a car, and explodes into Ludicrous Gibs. His head slides gracefully along the top of the car, and a substance like dirty water emerges from his exploded body to coat the windshield.
    • Murphy's death. Made more so by the fact that the gang members taunt him viciously as they're turning him into hamburger. "Give the man a hand!" "Does it hurt? Does it hurt?" Watching the trauma team at Henry Ford try to resuscitate the poor guy is every bit as painful. It's one of the more realistic trauma code scenes committed to Hollywood film. The trauma team were played by real paramedics. Yes, they did the research.
    • In the second movie, the demonstrations of initial attempts post-Murphy RoboCops are Nightmare Fuel. In particular, one of the attempts removes its helmet to reveal a screaming skull.
    • Cain gets a spiffy new robot body and kills most of his old gang. Upon seeing his former wife/prostitute however, he opens up his head to reveal his screen-face and makes suggestive expressions and weird electric moans as she giggles for about a minute of film. It was almost a relief when she offended him by mistake and he killed her.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The very impressive stop-motion work done for RoboCain in RoboCop 2.
  • What an Idiot!: Faxx, you honestly thought it was a good idea to put the mind of the city's greatest drug dealer and a serial killer into the body of a nearly unstoppable robot, all under the pretense that that you think he's under you control as long as he doesn't reach his controls? And her arrogance got countless lives lost in the process.
    • A more bizarre example can be found in the first film. What was Dick Jones thinking to demonstrate a robot (ED-209)that clearly if fully armed in a public office?
    • He probably wasn't aware about it, Bob Morton probably put bullets in the droid. Otherwise, if Jones was aware, he would be a true Dickhead.
      • I think it's pretty well established that he was a true dickhead.
    • And in the end, once Murphy reveals Jones' corruption, Jones immediately pulls out a pistol and holds it to his boss' head. Directive Four explicitly prevents him from harming OCP executives, and it doesn't occur to him that he could get fired for holding his boss hostage, which makes the old man telling him he's fired all the more sweeter.
    • Boddicker sees no problem with RoboCop knowing about his alliance with Jones, feeling the confession can't be proven since they were alone at the time and he was being beaten. Jones doesn't quite see it that way: "He's a cyborg, you idiot! He recorded every word you said, his memories are admissible as evidence!"
  • What the Hell, Hero?: The Detroit police department trying to destroy Robocop in the first film simply because they were ordered to. The titular hero had an exemplary arrest record leading up to this point, with absolutely no reason for fellow officers to suspect him of malfunctioning or becoming dangerous to innocents. For the group that we're meant to sympathize with, it arguably puts them past the Moral Event Horizon.
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