BenderGate: How The 'Futurama' Reboot Could Ruin Its Best Character (And Its Best Memes)

So, a reboot of Futurama is coming to Hulu with a release date sometime in 2023. We’re all excited — or at least we were until we found out that John DiMaggio, who voices the iconic character Bender Bending Rodriguez, isn’t going to be included. Reportedly, the payment he asked for was too high.

The problem is, if Futurama doesn’t have Bender, is it even still Futurama? Consider it like the Ship of Theseus. If we take Futurama apart, restart it from where it ended before, and then recast one of the main characters, is it still Futurama or simply a half-attempted reunion of the writers and animators? Without Bender’s true voice, the show has lost a novelty to it that no one else can impersonate back into existence.

Bender is the heart and soul of Futurama. He’s a terrible person (or robot), and yet he’s hilarious. He’s always mean, drunk, and somehow still incredibly endearing. And we can’t picture him without DiMaggio’s voice. Yes, we know he’s an animated character. But Bender with a different voice is just not Bender anymore. The old Bender was a god to the meme community. To honor our fallen hero, here are the best Bender memes from Futurama.

Blackjack and Hookers

The second episode of Futurama involves Bender trying to build his own theme park on the Moon, displeased with the current one, which kicked him out for trying to steal from a claw machine, A picture of him in a pimp’s coat (or the original, where he’s simply yelling at a building on the moon), captioned "I’ll build my own theme park, with blackjack and hookers!" morphed into a meme format where the theme park is replaced with anything of the meme creator’s choosing.

Neat

Bender has a running joke of carrying around a camera and photographing various situations as if he’s a tourist, saying "Neat!" every time he takes a photo. In typical Bender fashion, it's always completely inappropriate or dark situations he’s photographing. And that’s made this a perfect reaction image over the years and has also become a popular trope to recreate using different characters.

Oh Wait, You’re Serious? Let Me Laugh Even Harder

In the season 4 episode “Love and Rocket,” Leela accuses Bender of betraying his girlfriend’s trust and implies that he should feel guilty. He responds by laughing, followed by the iconic quote. Of course, he does laugh harder, and Leela is understandably not happy.

The Suicide Booth

The first we see of Bender, he’s standing in line to commit suicide in the local suicide booth. Has he fallen on particularly tough times? No. That’s just Bender. He grows impatient as he stands in line and cackles at his future death, and John DiMaggio’s nonchalant voice acting is perfectly suited to the scene. There’s no imagining this moment, as well as the rest of Bender’s most amusing moments, without DiMaggio as the mastermind behind it all.

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