Futurama: Bender’s 10 Best Episodes, Ranked

Futurama is a far departure from Matt Groening’s original claim to fame, The Simpsons. It’s not exactly a family story, and it certainly doesn’t take place in a small town like Springfield. However, if there was ever a parallel between these two series, it’s their appreciation of loveable, destructive drunks (both of which kind of have the same head design).

And, in Futurama‘s favor, theirs can bend metal without breaking their back (mostly). Bender is the iconic mascot of Futurama whose drunken antics and in-your-face attitude reliably added spice to the franchise during its more than ten-year run. Easily the most quotable yet ever hard to imitate, Bender is a special figure among adult animation who helped give Futurama some of its most memorable episodes.

10 The Bots And The Bees

“The Bots and the Bees” answers one of life’s most important questions, “Where do robots come from?” Apparently, when manufacturers aren’t able to meet demand, engineers set up a way for robots to make more robots between themselves.

In “The Bots and the Bees,” Bender gets into an illicit relationship with the office soda machine, and the two end up having a robot baby. The mother immediately abandons them, and Bender has to deal with the trials and beauty of raising his son (mostly to be a petty thief). However, when it comes to teaching the kid how to bend, Bender has to start asking himself what he’s willing to do for his child’s happiness.

9 Benderama

One Bender alone was apparently not meeting the demands of Futurama‘s scrutinizing and hungry audience. To mitigate this, “Benderama” creates a seemingly never-ending supply of Benders. Here, the Professor invents a machine that can create two, half-sized duplicates of anything. Bender uses it to save himself from work and creates little minion Benders.

However, these inevitably end up being just as lazy as him, and they make Benders for themselves and so on. Things get really out of hand when the microscopic Benders get the smart idea to start rearranging water molecules into alcohol. With a boundless supply of Benders and water supplies running low, this episode shows that there probably can be too much of a good thing.

8 Overclockwise

In the age of planned obsolescence, an old robot-like Bender is gonna have a hard time keeping up with the most mundane of tasks, such as winning at video games. In “Overclockwise,” Cubert decides to make Bender smarter and better at an online video game by overclocking him like an iPhone.

The drastic improvement makes Bender greedy for more knowledge, so he sets off to collect more data and coolant. This leaves Cubert and Dr. Farnsworth in trouble, as their breach of service puts them in a hefty lawsuit from Mom. Will Bender try to clear save them or will his pursuit of knowledge take him other places?

7 A Pharaoh To Remember

In “A Pharaoh to Remember,” Bender worries that he might not be well-remembered after his death. Even when his friends try to stage him a fake funeral, he still doesn’t feel appreciated. However, he starts learning how appreciated one can really get when he and his friends get tricked into slavery by a pseudo-Egyptian planet trying to build a monument to their pharaoh.

After the pharaoh eventually dies, Bender takes it as an opportunity to steal his throne and use the slaves, including Fry and Leela, to build him his own monument. With Bender at his highest pedestal yet, it doesn’t take too long for everyone to start considering regicide.

6 Love And Rocket

“Love and Rocket” stands as proof that workplace romances don’t typically end well. Even worse, it can force people into a deadly homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here, the Professor repairs the Planet Express ship, with one of the most noticeable changes being in the Planet Express’ interface.

Bender immediately starts a romantic relationship with the new software but quickly grows bored of her when things get too serious. Because Bender has great timing, he decides to break up with the ship while the crew was in the middle of a battle with the Omicronians. With the ship damaged and heartbroken, the crew has to fight for their lives to escape the danger of an ex-girlfriend’s wrath.

5 Obsoletely Fabulous

While Bender has never been the most productive robot, he’s still been a treasured member of the Planet Express crew. That value comes into question however when the Professor acquires a new and more efficient robot for the company. Seeing how jealous and threatened their friend is feeling, Planet Express decide to have a correctional center reprogram him to be more amicable towards new robots.

Bender, however, manages to escape at the last second and runs away on a raft. It eventually takes him to an entire, lost island full of obsolete robots. While there, Bender learns to appreciate a quieter, less advanced world. This peace teaches Bender one thing: the rest of the world is wrong and that he and his obsolete friends should wage war against modern society.

4 Lethal Inspection

Confronting one’s own mortality does a lot of things to a person. Sometimes they’ll get scared and try to run away from their problems. Others try to live every day as if it were their last. Bender, however, is one of the few who gets angry at their creator when he finds out how flawed and limited he really is.

In “Lethal Inspection,” Bender discovers that he has a factory defect that prevents him from backing up his consciousness to a new body after death. Taking Hermes along, Bender goes on a warpath to kill the inspector that let him be mortal. As the story unfolds, the fans learn a mysterious connection between Hermes and Bender.

3 Hell Is Other Robots

Only in Futurama will people find robots who have turned to religion (among other, thought-provoking concepts). In “Hell Is Other Robots,” a recent bender (not the robot) has Bender turn to a robot religion for salvation. While the crew immediately appreciate his change in attitude, they soon learn that his change makes him less fun and convenient as a friend.

They eventually work to turn Bender back to his old ways; and when he inevitably does, Bender learns the consequences of abandoning one’s faith which is essentially just getting kidnapped by the Robot Devil and sent to Robot Hell. It must’ve taken a really cruel world and an even crueler engineer to envision and build Robot Hell.

2 A Flight To Remember

Unlike Fry, Bender is far from a romantic in Futurama. Most either end in violence or him abandoning his girls. However, “A Flight to Remember” stands the test of time as being one of Futurama‘s most romantic episodes, even for a cold, heartless robot-like Bender. Here, Bender meets a fancy, aristocratic on board a space version of the Titanic.

At first, he just tries to steal from here like everybody else in his life. However, after getting close to her, he falls in love. Even when she finds out how poor he is, she falls in love with him. The two begin a romance that could never tragically go wrong.

1 Godfellas

“Godfellas” isn’t just the best Bender episode, but it’s one of the best episodes in Futurama‘s history. When Planet Express gets into a battle with space pirates, Bender tries to find some peace and quiet within one of the cannons. Fry and Leela inadvertently fire with him inside, and he’s shot off to the distant void.

While floating through space, Bender suddenly finds himself housing a community of tiny aliens who believe him to be a god. Bender initially uses them for personal gain before trying to be a benevolent ruler. Neither method works out as his citizens eventually kill themselves in a holy war. Alone and in an existential fit, Bender only finds solace after coming across a cosmic entity.