Robosexual

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Tasha: Data. You are fully functional aren't you?
Data: Of course, but...
Tasha: How fully?
Data: In every way, of course. I am programmed in multiple techniques. A broad variety of pleasuring.
Tasha: Oh, you jewel! That's exactly what I hoped.

—Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Naked Now"

Any sentient machine, whether robot, computer, or something else, having romantic or sexual relations with an organic lifeform. The Mechanical Lifeforms version of Interspecies Romance. Most writers address the big white elephant in the room by somehow mentioning that the robot is anatomically correct.

Such a plot often involves a Robot Girl of course, and even a Robotic Spouse.

A Super-Trope to Sex Bot (a sentient machine is explicitly built for sex).

Compare Robo Ship, Kiss Me, I'm Virtual, Interspecies Romance, Extreme Omnisexual.

No real life examples, please; this is All The Tropes, not Tropes After Dark.

Examples of Robosexual include:

Anime and Manga

  • The premise of the ero-manga Petit Roid 3.
  • In Chobits, humans can have sex with robots. This is an important plot point because getting it on with Chii would erase her memory. In the manga, at least. This plot point does seem to be virtually absent from the anime: Dragonfly did touch Chi there when he activated her after he abducted her, and when Chii (or was it Freya?) awoke, she didn't lose her memory at all (except of this particular specific event itself), she just went homicidally berserk, stating that only her Special Someone could touch her, but since Dragonfly wasn't that person, he never should have even tried. She then proceeded to tie up and beat him with cables he had attached to her earlier that she was somehow moving telepathically now, and she would most likely have killed him if Hideki hadn't arrived in time.
  • Chachamaru of Mahou Sensei Negima is certainly capable of love, and it is heavily implied that she can experience sexual pleasure, though in an unorthodox manner. It still involves screwing though.
  • Armitage III had multiple people in relationships with the Thirds. Armitage was the only third whose human spouse knew what she was.
  • Deunan in Appleseed isn't particularly bothered that her man Briareos has a robot-body.
  • Da Capo: Miharu has a robotic double. This is a little squicky considering her father built it. Apparently, it's necessary to not only give robots the ability to have sex, but to also give them a hymen and the ability to feel the loss of virginity. What the hell.
    • Da Capo II (which has another robot, Minatsu) justifies this by saying that the original scientists involved didn't want to just create laborers, second class citizens or anything, but rather build robots who could interact with humans as equals and do everything they could as well.
  • Makoto and Ifurita in the OAV version of El-Hazard: The Magnificent World. While Ifurita does seem biological "enough", it will probably help that Makoto has the inherent skill to psychically meld with any El Hazard technology.
  • In the anime series Kikaider, the lead heroine seems to fall in love with the android Jiro. How physical their relationship went is rather ambiguous thanks to a vaguely erotic looking semi-offscreen repair sequence.
  • In Osamu Tezuka's movie Hi No Tori 2772 (also known as Space Firebird), one of the major plot lines is the relationship between Godah and Olga. They do eventually find themselves together, happily embraced - except Olga may not just be Olga. And in the very ending, she is reborn as human, and as his MOTHER.
  • Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix: Resurrection - one of the main plot lines.
  • Shunted aside by The Big O, as Roger Smith/R. Dorothy is hinted at, but never develops.
    • There were a few others as well.
  • This was presented as a significant social problem in the world of Eve no Jikan. The issue was most explicitly explored with Koji, whose mistress was unhealthily obsessed with him, and Rina, who was illegally modified to be capable of sex. Amusingly enough, Koji and Rina end up in a relationship, each believing the other is human.

Comic Books

  • The Scarlet Witch and Vision. Their relationship is very complicated—they are the center of a Tangled Family Tree. After much experimentation, they found out that The Vision is infertile, even in a realistic body. It took a mix of reality warping and Functional Magic for them to have kids. And then John Byrne got his hands on the poor tykes...
    • The current[when?] legacy character, Vision 2.0, is into a relationship with Stature over in Young Avengers.
      • And it is believed that two of the Young Avengers are actually Wanda and Vision's kids reincarnated. Yes, a very Tangled Family Tree.
  • XXXenophile: "I Swing the Body Electric", "R.U.R. or Are You Ain't My Baby?"
  • In the 2000 AD comic Lobster Random the eponymous main character, a hard-as-nails mercenary, is a robosexual. And not for those android models, either—he prefers them if they don't look human.
  • From the same comic, there's ABC Warriors Joe Pineapples, who makes a habit of shagging human women.
  • The Avengers Hank Pym and Jocasta. It's a very complicated arrangement.
  • If iron golems count as robots, then Pandora Breedlswight's relationship with Fantasia Faust in Ironwood makes her one.
  • In the original Barbarella comic there's a single-panel gag about Barbarella's current lover - a robot guy - thinking his movements are "a bit mechanical". Might be better in the original French.
  • Madison Jeffries, at least since he joined the X-Men. As far as he's concerned the more obviously mechanical a woman is, the better. His lack of social skills makes his pursuit of Danger rather tentative.
  • In The Black Ring arc, Lex Luthor qualifies. In the first part, he is shown having dinner with an android duplicate of Lois Lane that was built using Kryptonian and Brainiac's technology, along with DNA traces of the real Lois. Initially, he had the android built specifically to offer opposing viewpoints to his own ideas (he tends to get enraged when actual employees do so) and she does that job pretty well, but he ends up sleeping with her later.

Fan Works

  • The Fallout 3 fan fiction Trouble details the incredibly complex and bizarre relationship between Butch Deloria, a leather jacket toting greaser barber, and Harkness, the chief of security in Rivet City who is secretly an android.
  • During the early parts of Undocumented Features‍'‍ The Symphony of the Sword storyline, Miki Kaoru (human embracing Dantrovian philosophy/spirituality) and R. Dorothy Wainwright (gynoid, exploring life in general for the first time) enjoy a long-standing intimate romantic relationship. (They later amicably split up.)

Film

  • One of the scenes in Heavy Metal.
  • In Bicentennial Man, Andrew Martin falls in love with Portia. His urging to become legally recognized as a human being is brought on by his desire to have his marriage to her recognized.
  • Flubber: Robin Williams was on the other side of such a relationship in with his floating female robot having an unrequited crush on him. This was mostly just Played for Laughs.
  • Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, although they are Organic Technology in the movie.
  • At the end of Screamers (1995) the protagonist Hendricksson realizes that Jessica is also a Killer Robot when an identical Jessica shows up. Earlier he'd tested Jessica by cutting her hand and the copy appears to know this, taunting Hendricksson by saying: "We can bleed, we can cry, we can fuck."
  • Westworld. The protagonists have sex with some android hookers. A scene written for the script by Michael Crichton (but not in the film) had a company representative demonstrating the next generation of android servants for the home—at one stage he shows off a male android's implied larger 'equipment'.
  • The protagonist falls in love with the titular Cherry 2000, and when she breaks he goes off on an adventure to replace her body. But in the end he decides to throw her away after repairing her and hook up with the movie's Action Girl.
  • A.I.: Artificial Intelligence involves a gigalo-bot who accompanies David on his adventure.
  • Kay-Em 14 and her creator Tsunaron are in such relationship in Friday the 13th (film).
  • In Serenity, Mr Universe is married (for all we know, this might be legally buinding) to a "Pleasurebot".

Literature

  • The book Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships investigates Real Life examples of this trope.
  • The Robots of Dawn: This is a plot point in the classic Isaac Asimov novel, for a number of reasons.
    1. The robot in question is one of only two humanoid robots ever created, who look just alike.
    2. The other such robot is Detective Elijah Baley's partner in the investigation of a murder.
    3. No one on the world of Aurora finds anything odd about the relationship, despite its uniqueness; Aurora is such a sexually open society one character blames her father for ruining her life because he wouldn't sleep with her.
  • This is also brought up in one of Isaac Asimov's short stories concerning Susan Calvin, where she is trying to figure out what happened with a robot that seduced its owner's wife (apparently it was trying to do something about the wife's self-worth issues, in accordance with the First Law's edict to not permit humans to come to harm through inaction). Of course, the problem in the long run was that while robots can't fall in love - women do.
  • Silver Metal Lover: It's a major plot point, because it's the reason used to destroy the eponymous robot - if he were functioning properly, the protagonist wouldn't want to have sex with him. Or so the Bureaucracy's reasoning goes. In actuality, they destroy him because he's acquired a soul and it terrifies them that he's acting more human than the humans themselves.
  • Planetary Trilogy: This is one of the two horrifying perversions attributed to inhabitants of the Moon in C. S. Lewis's series. (The other horrifying perversion is birth control.)
  • George Martin's Wild Cards feature Modular Man, a Ridiculously Human Robot built by a hyperinventive Ace scientist, and considered an actual Ace by others. Modular Man is shaped like a male supermodel, fully functional in regards of this trope, and pretty popular with the ladies. His creator then uses the memory cache for porn, to Mod' Man's grief.
  • Played with in The Alchemy of Stone: The clockwork Robot Girl protagonist, Mattie, is not physically capable of having sex, but certain aspects of her mechanism that have no direct connection to sex eventually take on symbolically sexual meanings for her. Eventually some of this peculiar sexuality is made quite explicit in her interactions with other characters.
  • Charles Stross deconstructs this with his protagonist in Saturn's Children. She's a robot built for ultimate human sexual pleasure in an universe where humans no longer exist.

Live-Action TV

Fred: [about the cyborg] This thing really blurs the line between human and robot.
Spike: Aha. So you're not ruling out that a human being could have boffed a robot. {{[[[Beat]] Everyone stares at him}}] Sex with robots is more common than most people think.

    • This joke makes more sense if you realize Spike had previously demanded Warren build him a robot version of Buffy for the sole purpose of "boffing".
  • MythBusters: Frequently joked and hinted about Grant, loading in as much Geeky Turn On as they can for a G-rated show. In the episode where they're testing lie detectors, it's "revealed" that he's given serious thought to building a female robot (or just got the giggles and threw off the polygraph, as has been known to happen). Then the episode where they introduce the professional bomb squad robot and it's apparently love at first sight. (Trivia: Grant has been in Battlebots, worked for ILM and was the driver of R2-D2 in the prequel movies.)
  • Though The Sarah Connor Chronicles doesn't state it outright, this is strongly implied to be the relationship between future John Connor and Cameron, and almost happens between the current John and Cameron (for given definitions of "penetration"....)
  • In a talk at a 1970s Star Trek convention, Gene Roddenberry mentioned that network executives objected to a script in his proposed series The Questor Tapes because it contained a scene where the titular character Questor sleeps with a woman. Roddenberry joked that he had inadvertently invented an entirely new form of intolerance.
  • Star Trek: Voyager‍'‍s EMH. In one episode he had fathered a child, and when asked how, he doesn't really answer.
    • He said he had a son, not that he's fathered him personally. He could have been adopted.
      • And the time his sexual subroutines were deleted so he could fit into a smaller data, ah, package, for transmission to the Alpha Quadrant.

EMH: I'm as close to a sentient life-form as any hologram could hope to be. I socialize with the crew, fraternize with aliens. I've even had sexual relations."
EMH Mark 2: "Sex? How's that possible? We're not equipped with a--"
EMH: "Let's just say I made an addition to my program."
EMH Mark 2: "Before you leave maybe you could... download those subroutines into my database?"

  • Lexx‍'‍s 790 was a robot head (mis-)programmed for love, yet incapable of interfacing with anyone as he lacked even a tongue. Not that that stopped a robot head fetishist who owned a special groin attachment...
  • Caprica: Philo and Robot Zoe. Complicated by the robot having the mind of a dead girl and doubly complicated by him not knowing this.
  • Sikozu of Farscape is revealed to be a Robot Girl and ends up in a relationship with Scorpius. However, she is made of organic technology, as opposed to mechanical.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • The Buffybot was originally built by Warren at Spike's request to act as a sex toy. Eventually Willow reprogrammed her and she joined the Scoobies, but still occasionally flirted with Spike - much to his annoyance. On a related note, Buffy's reaction to learning this was rather realistic - she called him a pervert.
    • Warren himself built an android version of his ex-girlfriend April after she dumped him. (For those who didn't get the hint about Warren, he was a pervert, misogynist, and was bat-shit crazy.)

Music

Newspaper Comics

Tabletop Games

  • Exalted: One of the perks for Alchemicals is having access to a Charm installation to make them better lovers (with the ability to use mind-altering pillow talk). It's called Thousandfold Courtesan Calculations. The second edition Manual of Exalted Power: Alchemicals even mentions that high-Essence Alchemicals (who become first Humongous Mecha, and subsequently cities) tend to install a Charm that lets them control a human-scale robot for "emergencies" - but the officials have learned not to press the issue of how "a night with that hot young Sodalite member" counts as an emergency...
  • New Horizon has its Wafans., which come in three shapes: Aesir (short human-looking androids originally built for janitorial/sexbot purposes), Vanir (the first model built, looking like humans with a robotic flare), and Jotun (large, clearly artificial mechbeings). All three are human, all three come in both genders, and all three are fully functions. Yes, even the Jotun...

Video Games

  • In Wizardry 8, you can try to name RFS-81 (an android) as the "sacrifice" for a succubus. If attempted, the android will say, "RFS-81 model, 'Savant Trooper', does not possess required components to carry out order. Model RFS-99 required." Raises some questions about the hobbies of the Big Bad, doesn't it?
  • In The Sims 2 your Sim can have a relationship with a Servo if they want. If you have a later expansion pack, you can set robots as one of their turn-ons.
  • Reploids easily qualify as Ridiculously-Human Robots, and in Mega Man Zero, we do meet a reploid who fell in love with a human woman. As the woman got older, the reploid decided to get his parts replaced to make himself look older. After she died, he declined reverting his body to its youthful appearance so that he would never forget the memories he had of her.
  • Part of the "Wang Dang Atomic Tango" quest in Fallout: New Vegas has the Courier searching for a "sexbot" to add to the stable of unique prostitutes at the Atomic Wrangler Casino. It is heavily implied, however, that one of the casino owners secretly wants it for his own, um, interests.

Courier: I can't feel my legs!
Fisto: Numbness will subside in several minutes.

  • Persona 3 FES adds Aigis in the Social Links. Hers is mostly about how she is discovering about life...and how her feelings for the protagonist are romantic in nature. It's mostly kept the same with the Female Protagonist in Portable with Aigis going through some Gayngst instead.
  • In Xenoblade, the main character Shulk doesn't seem to mind too much the fact that his childhood sweetheart, Fiora has come Back from the Dead as an ass-kicking Robot Girl but averted since at the end Fiora turns back to be a Hom again.
  • In Super Robot Wars, whenever a beautiful girl shows up in a feminine-shaped giant robot, Ryusei Date is pretty much guaranteed to be staring and drooling over the giant robot instead. Even when the pilot is herself a smaller robot. Taken to damn near in-universe Robo Ship levels with Fei Yen in Alpha 3.
  • In Mass Effect 3, after EDI gains the Cerberus assassin robot's body, she can be encouraged by Shepard to pursue a relationship with Joker, which is unsurprising, considering all the UST from the previous game, and therefore making Joker a target of this trope.
  • DEMI from Subverse brings this out in The Captain, and a few other crew members.

Web Comics

  • In Penny Arcade this shows up in the first part of one of the Automata (a sort of futuristic detective universe they explore from time to time) stories.

Officer:"They even got a name for it. They call it 'auto-erotic'."

Riff: I wonder if she's fully biologically functional.
Torg: Either that or she's full of sharp jagged metal parts and ...
Riff: Yeaaaahh! Question withdrawn!

No one is quite sure who decided it would be useful for artificial intelligences to posess [sic] libidos, but it is generally agreed that it would be more trouble than it is worth to remove it. Besides, the horny little buggers would revolt.

    • Eventually happened within the cast, with more than one pair. Oh, and there's a book on this (the next page is named "The Birds And The Beeps").
  • In Zap, the Stickles are an entire race of Mad Scientists... and as a byproduct of that, they tend to get really... excited about autonomous Artificially Intelligent robots. Main character, Kasey the Stickle, is all over Robot (AKA: xr-743-9q) with hearts in her eyes, and acts like a jealous girlfriend whenever Robot has to 'interface' with their ship, Excelsior.
  • Diesel Sweeties: A central part of the narrative.
  • Chester 5000 XYV: The entire premise. Definitely NSFW.
  • xkcd:
  • In L's Empire, one of the main characters is going out with Roll.
  • Never Mind the Gap features at least 1 married couple (human woman & robot man). They ask Jim to build the body for their baby.
  • Averted after a buildup in Times Like This, because the robot doesn't have the necessary hardware or programming.
  • Full Frontal Nerdity on Cyberpunk 2077 here:

Lewis: All I'm saying is that Cyberpunk's dating pool is severely limited for a transhumanist dystopia.
reader 1: That’s what mods are for!
reader 2: Considering what we’ve heard about his dating life, a cyberized Roomba may represent a step up.

Web Original

  • In Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Special Edition, Tails mocks the player at one point by going on and on about how Metal Sonic is "one sexy robot" and "more of a man than you'll ever be".
  • In one Barats and Bereta video, they aid their friend in his pretending to be a robot so that a girl will fall for him. That way, he can have sex without a condom on. Unfortunately for him, she also liked him because as a "robot", he couldn't contract any of her long list of STD's. whoops.
  • Endless Mike, a veteran poster from the Outskirts Battle Dome is known for his love of toasters.

Western Animation

  • Futurama
    • The episode "I Dated a Robot" is full of this.
    • Also mentioned in the pilot, when Fry asks Bender to be his friend:

All right, but I don't want anyone thinking we're robosexual or anything, so if anyone asks, you're my debugger.

  • The post-resurrection episode "Proposition Infinity" deals with the controversial issue of robosexual marriage.
  • Amy also slept with Bender at least once, but then, Amy is the Anything That Moves type.
  • South Park played with this in "Awesome-O". Cartman pretended to be a robot, and a guy asked if he is capable sexual activity. Cartman fortunately runs out of the room before it goes further than that.

"LAME."

Sheldon: Twin-manifold access ports? Ohhh, baby!

Brad also dated another robot, Melody, who looks human. He didn't realize it until later. It wasn't a deal-breaker.

Dean: What are you doing to our robot???
Monarch: Uh, giving her robot-chlamydia?

  • Mike Sorayama and his Leslie-Bots - just assuming.
  • Octus in Sym-Bionic Titan with the cheerleader, Kimmy. She doesn't know he's a robot though.
  • In the Legion of Super Heroes animated series, Brainiac 5's man-crush (yes, the term has been used by the writers of the comic adaptation) on Supes counts. When you're programming 'training simulations' of being held by Superman while you die in his arms complete with romantic music, you've got it bad.
  • Although it's more subtle than most examples, this trope is heavily implied in the Time Squad episode "Ex Marks the Spot."
  • In Archer, Dr. Krieger used company money to build a "Sex Bot" named Fister Roboto and nearly married an AI. When his use of company funds it challenged he asserts "and the best part is, he's learning!"
  • One episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes featured Jimmy falling in love with Schmeloise, a robotic clone of Heloise. Since Schmeloise was designed after his Stalker with a Crush, she returned the feelings and the two end up dating until Heloise's reprogramming resulted in Schemloise self destructing.
  • Used for a short sketch on Robot Chicken, where a lecture on advances in robotics is ruined when a journalist asks, "Can you fuck it?" When the professor says "No," everyone leaves extremely dissatisfied.
  • In the Merrie Melodies short "Hair-Raising Hare", Bugs Bunny is lured to an evil scientist's lair by a mechanical fembunny. When he sees it at the end of the cartoon he snarkily dismisses it as mechanical...until it kisses him. "All right, so it's mechanical!"
  • In SpongeBob SquarePants, Plankton's wife is his talking, sentient computer, Karen. The two actually have a son named Chip, Karen is able to purchase a robot off the internet to serve as their child. (As a baby, Chip is a calculator, but quickly grows into a handheld payment terminal, then a video game console as a teenager, then a personal computer, and finally, as an adult, an ATM machine.) While bizarre, Plankton's love for his family is one of his few redeeming qualities.
  • Zigzagged in the Batman Beyond episode "Terry's Friend Dates a Robot". Howard actually "dates" Cynthia after buying her from a guy who is selling androids for this purpose on the black market (building Ridiculously Human Robots is illegal in this setting, for obvious reasons) but does so hoping that having a hot girlfriend might make him more popular with actual girls. Unfortunately, Cynthia becomes a Clingy Jealous Girl who attacks anyone who even insults Howard, and then becomes a Yandere when he finds out what she's doing and tries to get rid of her.
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