Characters / RoboCop: The Character

Alexander James Murphy / RoboCop

"Your move, creep."

^{Alex Murphy}

Played by: Peter Weller (1987 and 1990), Robert John Burke (1993)

Dubbed by: Patrick Floersheim (European French, 1987) Jean-Luc Kayser (European French, 1990), Richard Darbois (European French, 1993)

Appears in: RoboCop | RoboCop 2 | RoboCop 3 | RoboCop: Rogue City

"Dead or alive, you're coming with me."

Once a police officer named Alex Murphy, he became the eponymous cyborg police officer after being shot to death by Clarence Boddicker and his gang during his first day at the job on Detroit's Metro West precinct.

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Original Trilogy

• Amnesiac Hero: He loses all his memories of his life as Murphy after he's reborn as RoboCop, but he regains some of them thanks to Lewis going against orders to remind him of his true identity.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • His right hand and entire arm are blown off when he's killed. The rest are taken off when he's turned into RoboCop—one doctor says they could save his left arm, before being told that all the limbs have to go.
  • He also loses an arm during each of the sequels, though it's less permanent due to him being a cyborg.
• Arm Cannon: Has access to one in the third film. It's also a Fire-Breathing Weapon.
• Back from the Dead: He's killed by Clarence and his gang, but OCP brings him back as an uber-powerful cyborg.
• Badass Boast: "Your move, creep"; "Dead or alive, you're coming with me"; "I'm not arresting you anymore"; "Come quietly or there will be...trouble".
• Baritone of Strength: Both of his actors in the original trilogy gave Robo a deep, booming voice that goes well with his powerful and nigh indestructible build.
• Beware the Nice Ones: When he was human, him being a mild-mannered policeman didn't mean he wasn't able to kick some criminal butt. After becoming Robo, criminals better watch out.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Robo's signature "data spike", which is an odd example given that it's actually not a weapon but a customized jack Robo uses to upload/download data to police computers. However, it sees some action as a stabbing weapon at least once in the films, and a lot more usage as a weapon in Mortal Kombat 11.
• Body Horror:
  • When Clarence blows his hand off, he just looks at it, stunned. Then it gets worse after he wakes up and comes to realize practically his entire body has been replaced with mechanical parts. Not only that, but he has to lie on the operating table, unable to move, while the team of scientists working on him casually discuss, for example, whether to remove his arm or not.
  • His rebuilt form as RoboCop; they basically discarded everything except his brain and certain vital organs, and jammed it all into a mechanical body. And then they peeled off his human face and grafted onto a cybernetic skull, to try to lessen the Uncanny Valley effect. This is really brought home in the scene where he takes off his helmet by removing the screws from his temples and then gazes sadly at what's left of himself in the mirror.
• Brain/Computer Interface: His neural spike allows him to jack into computers and download or upload information directly from his memory. Also, it seems his targeting system is interfaced with his brain rather than being part of his visor, since he can still use it when he takes his helmet off.
• Broken Faceplate: During his confrontation with ED-209, there's a dramatic closeup of his cracked visor and a single eye can be seen for the first time.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Even though he was designed to be a badass crime-fighting machine, he still has memories of his past life and misses his family.
• By-the-Book Cop: One of his prime directives is "uphold the law". When he arrests Boddicker, he throws him through a couple of plate-glass windows for good measure, but refuses to kill him when his directives show up onscreen and remind him of his duty.
• Chrome Champion: Has this appearance, since he's covered in gleaming metal armour.
• Clingy Costume: His body after being resurrected as Robocop. Justified since he has no limbs and machinery integrated into most of his torso — what is technically armor is, in all practical purposes, his skin.
• Cool Helmet: Rather than simply graft armor to his skull, OCP supplied him with a nifty-looking helmet. It's mostly for show though, as later in the film we see he doesn't need his helmet to use his heads-up display.
• Cop Killer Manhunt: Goes on a one-man version of this in both the original, with Boddicker and his gang for killing him, and in 3 after McDaggett kills Lewis.
• Corporate-Sponsored Superhero:
  • Robo has a few OCP logos on him, along with an OCP-001 serial number. Plus, whenever he gets smashed up it's OCP's money that pays for the rebuild (or not).
  • The media also spares no opportunity to remind viewers exactly who it is that built the city's new soldier in the War on Crime.
• Cowboy Cop: His human side allows him to be one in regards to making decisions.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Although his arms aren't held out to the side, his execution plays out very much like the crucifixion of Jesus in the Bible: he's mocked, tortured, and finally, brutally killed and left for dead. (See Messianic Archetype.)
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He (as Murphy) dies this way, being systematically blown apart with shotgun fire.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Most encounters with the criminals he comes across have him dishing this out.
• Cursed with Awesome: Would you want to be a Nigh-Invulnerable supercop if it meant losing everything dear to you?
• Cyber Cyclops: His visor has the look down to a T. It's pretty unnerving to look at, especially if you're one of those criminals he's arresting.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: At first played straight, but in the end averted. While he is exclusively government by his programming at first, his humanity gradually returns, and by the end of the first film, he has reclaimed his old identity. Both sequels see him as every bit the incorruptible hero he was in life. Notably, the erasure of all directives in the second film fails to noticeably affect his behavior in any way.
• Cyborg: Well, duh. He's a rare example of a high-conversion model; apart from his face — which is explicitly skin that was peeled off and placed on a cybernetic skull — and certain organs (mostly the brain), all of him is machine.
• Deadpan Snarker: Notably when he is usually damaged in someway or has done some damage.
  • For example, reading the Miranda Warning to Clarence Boddicker while casually tossing him around and through a pane of glass.
  • At the end of RoboCop 2 when Lewis complains that OCP is going to get away with unleashing a killer cyborg on the city he puts a ratchet to his head, starts tightening and says "We're only human."
• Death by Origin Story: Murphy himself is gunned down by Boddicker and his gang before being turned into RoboCop.
• Defiant to the End: "Buddy, I think you're slime."
• Determinator: So much so that this is the reason why Murphy is the only non-psycho cyborg OCP has ever successfully produced.
• Dissonant Serenity: He's a cyborg who doles out justice in a brutal manner thanks to his super strength, but rarely raises his voice, mostly speaks in a monotone, and never delivers a Precision F-Strike towards anybody.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: When he asks Lewis what happened to his family.
  RoboCop: I can feel them ... but I can't remember them.
  (Lewis starts to put a hand on his shoulder)
  RoboCop: Leave me alone.
• Double Consciousness: After being cyberized, he struggles with having both a robotic side that's programmed to mindlessly obey OCP's orders, and his re-emergent human side. His human side wins in the end.
• Dying as Yourself: He puts himself at least at risk of this in the second film, when the new mass of directives he had been programmed with nearly caused a breakdown, Murphy subjecting himself to a potentially lethal electric discharge in the hope that it would reset his processor rather than kill him.
• The Everyman: According to his actor Weller in this interview, Murphy was just another mild-mannered "average Joe" (or perhaps the clean-cut model kind in comparison to his cynical police department colleagues) before becoming Robocop. He was just an ideally average Detroit police officer doing his duty to fight crime to protect the fellow little guy from getting picked on. Then Clarence and his gang attacked and killed Murphy, leading into his transformation into Robo.
• Expy: Word of God says that he's based on Judge Dredd. An early character design even had him with Dredd's head as a placeholder.
• The Fettered: His prime directives give him a strict moral code which he cannot break. It's present in his human side too; in the second film, one of the doctors on the RoboCop 2 project hypothesizes that his dutiful nature (clean service record, happy family life, devoted Catholic, etc.) gave him a strong core of personality that allowed him to avoid the problems faced by other "subjects."
  • In RoboCop 2, he becomes more literally "fettered" when OCP gives him a mass of new directives to make him more 'publicly appealing', to the extent that he's unable to actually shoot anyone and just criticizes suspects with inane chatter rather than actively arresting them.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: He is stripped of everything but his brain, face and a few vital organs before being rebuilt. Even the rest of his skull is obviously metallic, face aside.
• Good Is Not Soft: Programmed to uphold the law, and dedicated to serving that cause even when he was fully human. This does not stop him from doling out violent retribution, or simply killing criminals on-sight for refusing to surrender.
  • Doubly so in Robocop: Rogue City; it's completely possible to play RoboCop as a genuine value to the community: going out of his way to help the civilians of Old Detroit by rescuing their cats, doing odd jobs and being extremely lenient towards more minor crimes - while at the same time being more than capable of mowing down entire armies of gang-members by shooting them all in the dick.
• Gorn: The audience is not spared from seeing every detail of his Cruel and Unusual Death.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: In the films, post-"cyborgification," he never swears as he is programmed not to; even when he was a once human, he never did seem to cuss on-screen, further backing up how much well-mannered and mild-mannered he is that matches his criteria as an Ideal Hero, in contrast to the filthy mouths that are packaged with the cynical nature of most characters whether neutral, good or bad in the films in comparison. Might have been because of his Catholic upbringing. That being said, the only time where he amounted to a curse was the "slime" comment to Boddicker in the first movie, even though the word "slime" can also considered to be not vulgar profanity and just a wholesome, age-appropriate insult.
• Got Volunteered: Alex J. Murphy was a beat cop who got transferred to the dangerous Detroit Police Department's Metro-South Division on the same day that the ED-209 prototype went haywire, and Bob Morton pitched his "Robo-cop" idea to the Old Man. When the Old Man decided to give Morton an audience, Morton told Johnson that to complete their project all they needed was some "schmuck" to volunteer. After Murphy was gunned down by Bodicker and his gang, he regains consciousness in an OCP research lab as part of the RoboCop program, where it's stated by Morton and Johnson that since "[Murphy] signed the forms, we can do whatever the hell we want," and thus Murphy awoke, and was commissioned a year later, as RoboCop.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: OCP never expected his human side to reemerge.
• Guest Fighter: RoboCop joins the roster of Mortal Kombat 11 as part of the Aftermath expansion. This also allows him to once again go toe-to-toe with the T-800.
• The Gunslinger: He is between types Trick Shot and Vaporizer.
• Gun Twirling: He was fond of it as a human, both because his son liked it and because he thought it was cool. As Robocop, it was one of the first bits of his original personality to re-emerge.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: He was blond. Once he becomes RoboCop, he loses the blond hair but not the heart of gold, not completely.
• Hand Cannon: His iconic Auto-9 machine pistol, which is basically a burst-fire submachinegun designed to be wielded one-handed. In real-life, it's a bulked-up Beretta 93R that was custom-made because the original weapon the filmmakers wanted to give him, a Desert Eagle, looked far too dainty compared to Robo's massive bulk.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Has a Cool Helmet, but he takes it off after the disastrous escape from ED-209 and the entire Detroit police force leaves him heavily damaged (see Broken Faceplate).
• The Hero: Mostly as Alex. After he comes Back from the Dead, he is more of an Anti-Hero.
• The Hero Dies: Subverted. He dies during a failed arrest of Boddicker's gang, but he's resurrected as a much tougher hero cop.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Zigzagged greatly. Generally, RoboCop is admired by children and responsible adults alike. When it comes to teenagers, the impoverished, and those less trustful of the law however, they think of him as a pathetic monument to ineffectual and ineffective authority, be it that of the failures of the system to the people or as a walking dumb sack of steel shaped in the fashion of a "pig". For some major examples:
  • After Dick Jones decides to have him killed because He Knows Too Much, and sends the entire Detroit police force to gun him down in the parking garage of OCP headquarters. Despite his heavy armour, he barely escapes with his life.
  • In 2, RoboCop enters into an arcade that also doubles as a meeting ground and hotspot for drug activity. Whimsically asking the youths if it's a school night, every one of the teens then pelt RoboCop with junk food and popcorn, knowing that he won't harm anyone who doesn't meet the legal age range of an adult, and out of the fact that he is a tool of authority. Later when he becomes reprogrammed to be a more "PC" figure of the law, he ineffectually confronts kids in a low income neighborhood who outright tell him to fuck off.
• Heroic Build: His armor gives him an exaggerated masculine form, with a broad chest and huge arms.
• Heroic Willpower: Stated by Juliette Faxx as being the reason why Murphy was the only police officer to be subject to the Robocop enhancement program and not end up committing suicide or breaking down after conversion. Murphy was a police officer who believed wholly in upholding the law and serving the people and it was his strong moral character combined with his strong sense of duty that allowed him to keep it together in the face of the overwhelming despair caused by his circumstances.
  Juliette Faxx: [The police] are a physical bunch. They're macho, body proud, finding themselves stripped of that... it's no wonder they become suicidal.
  Donald Johnson: Our one sucess was a cop.
  Juliette Faxx: Well, yes Mr. Johnson. Officer Alex Murphy. Top of his class, devout Irish catholic, family man, and everything in his profile indicates a fierce sense of duty. That's probably what kept him alive.
• Humble Hero: He was The Everyman with a family to feed to begin with even when he was a human police officer. His personality prior to his "cyborgification" and Robo Speak monotone afterwards contradicts him from the Evil Is Hammy villains.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: What's left of Robo's human side mourns the things he lost with his cyber-upgrade.
• Ideal Hero: When he was human compared to his cynical colleagues, doesn't stop after becoming RoboCop.
• Immune to Bullets: Downplayed. His armor can deflect a stream of bullets easily, but multiple streams (i.e. an entire police squadron) gunning him down with sustained fire can kill him. Heavier ordnance, such as Grenade Launchers and autocannons can also cause heavy damage to him.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Boddicker runs him through with a rail when he's trapped under fallen scrap at the climax of the first film. It's only the fact he stopped to gloat that gives Murphy the chance to turn the tables.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: His cybernetic implants give him an auto-targeting system that's incredibly accurate.
• Improvised Weapon: The metal spike in his right hand, which is a computer jack, also happens to work great for stabbing someone in the neck.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: As Alex Murphy, he's this compared to his colleagues at the precinct or to any fellow Detroit citizen who cynical and/or amoral, while swearing like a sailor in contrast to Murphy's kind-hearted and mild-mannered nature and clean vocabulary. Becoming RoboCop has not gotten rid of his moral principles.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: OCP and the other police sometimes refer to him as "it", as if he were actually a robot instead of a person. Lewis is the only other character who still calls him by his real name. And then defied at the end of the movie when the Old Man, grateful that Robo has just saved his life, asks him what his name is and he proudly replies, "Murphy".
• Jet Pack: He gains access to one in the third film that doubles as a charging station whenever he runs low on power.
• Job-Stealing Robot: When he shows off at the firing range, one of the police officers wonders aloud if he's going to replace them all. Eventually subverted in that they eventually come to see Murphy as a comrade, enough to be horrified and outraged when they are ordered by Dick Jones to open fire on him.
• The Juggernaut: RoboCop is heavily armored against gun fire, rendering him impervious to the bulk of whatever he runs into.
• Just a Machine: OCP usually refers to him as nothing more than a creation of theirs.
  Bob Morton: Let me make something clear to you. He doesn't have a name. He has a program. He's product.
• Knight In Shining Armour: Kevlar/titanium laminated armor, to be precise. (With nifty purple-on-blue highlights.)
• Last-Name Basis: A very interesting example. Since Murphy died on his very first day on the job, he never got to socialize with his coworkers, so them calling him "Murphy" was just out of professionalism. But after he's brought back to life as the Hollywood Cyborg we all know and love, and once his former identity is revealed, many of his fellow cops choose to keep calling him "Murphy" instead of "Robocop" as a way to acknowledge him as the person he is rather than the OCP enforcer he was rebuilt as. Notably, Lewis never once called him "Robocop", and her calling him by his true name played a key part in helping his old memories to resurface.
  Lewis: Murphy... It's you!
• Loss of Identity: Underwent this upon being reconstructed, though it didn't quite take as he started to remember.
• Made a Slave: Alex Murphy is a dead man. RoboCop is a product of OCP, beholden to their interests and their directives.
• Made of Iron: Both literally and figuratively, as a matter of fact ! RoboCop is able to shrug off anything short of armor-piercing rounds and rockets, feels no physical pain and will keep walking even while covered in flames. Ironically, Murphy already fit the trope before he became a cyborg, remaining conscious the whole time while being viciously shot to death by Boddicker's gang and even surviving a point-blank Desert Eagle shot to the head long enough to finally die at the hospital about two hours later.
• Meat-Sack Robot: The eponymous RoboCop was designed to essentially be a robot using a critically injured cop's central nervous system as a Wetware CPU. They left enough of a digestive system to sustain the brain and spine, and grafted his face on for looks, but he's otherwise a robot meant to be subservient to programming. Him partially regaining his previous identity was an unexpected accident.
• Messianic Archetype: Believe it or not. Paul Verhoeven said he wanted to make a film about an "American Jesus" and there are multiple allusions to this, like Murphy being mocked and tortured before he's killed (and the Impaled Palm scene), his dying and being resurrected, and a scene where it looks like he's walking on water. He even gets pierced in his side with a spear.
• Mighty Glacier: He may be slow (to the point he's never shown moving faster than powerwalking speed), but he can take a lot of punishment before his armor is even dented, his nigh-perfect sharpshooter skills means he doesn't need to close the distance to kill or incapacitate, and he's strong enough that just about anything that does get within grabbing distance is not gonna break loose once he takes hold.
• More Dakka: His Auto-9 is very much a quantity-over-quality weapon, chewing through enemies with bursts of 9mm bullets given impossible accuracy by the advanced, recoil-proof cyborg holding it.
• Multiple Gunshot Death: How Murphy was killed before OCP used him for RoboCop.
• Nice Guy: At least Alex Murphy was; as a human he's seen as a sweet-tempered and mild-mannered Boy Next Door who never swore once before he was killed.
• Noisy Robots: He has heavy, thudding footsteps and makes a lot of mechanical whirring sounds as he moves around. This helps create the illusion that he's a real cyborg and not just a guy in a suit.
• Not Himself:
  • After first reawakening as RoboCop, he retains no traces of his personality as Murphy and behaves like, well, a robot who's been programmed to enforce the law. Over time, he regains it.
  • After being heavily modified by OCP in 2 to the point where's a walking mental mess due to all the many and contradictory directives programmed into his system.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • In one of the few moments of post-roboticization displays of emotion, he has this in the first film when on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle from an ED-209.
• One-Man Army: RoboCop was designed to be this in order to counteract with the extremely violent and drastically numerically superior criminals of Detroit/Delta City. Super-Strength, computer-assisted targeting, Nigh-Invulnerable armor-plating and attachable weapons all allow him to take on large groups of average criminals and kill them without hesitation.
• Only Sane Man: Both before and after post-"cyborgification", he's considered to be this in comparison to his more frustrated and cynical colleagues who wanted to go on strike.
• Papa Wolf: Hurt any member of his family, and nothing will stop him from killing you.
• Police Brutality: Murphy's not above this, considering he tosses Clarence Boddicker through several windows, punches former city councilman-turned-terrorist Ron Miller out of a window, his interrogation of Dirty Cop Duffy involves throwing him into several arcades machines and smashing his face into a screen, and infamously uses his gun to castrate a rapist.
• Political Overcorrectness: In the second movie, after he's saddled with a couple hundred politically-correct directives that almost literally drive him mad before he manages to erase them.
• Power at a Price: Best explained in Cursed with Awesome above.
• Protagonist Title: He is The Hero of the film.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Rogue City gives Robocop several moments where he hears people out with their problems, humors them with benign requests, and even potentially will respond to some petty crimes by letting them off with a warning. Gameplay points out that doing these things is acting in service to his "Serve The Public Trust" directive.
• Religious Bruiser: Alex Murphy was a devout Irish Catholic in life, which is speculated by OCP to be one of the factors why he's so stable as Robocop; unlike the other two candidates, his lingering religious beliefs prevent him from killing himself upon realizing what he has become.
• Quest for Identity: The entire point of the first film is his struggle to find out who he is and what happened to him, and to bring those responsible to justice. At the ending of the film, he proudly states that his name isn't RoboCop, but Murphy.
• Real Men Love Jesus: In RoboCop 2, it was stated by OCP's evil scientists that one of the reasons Murphy didn't snap and kill himself like the RoboCop 2 candidates did is because he is a devout Irish Catholic, to whom suicide is a damnable sin.
• Restraining Bolt:
  • The fourth directive, which is classified. It prevents him from acting against a senior member of OCP's board of directors. The third film also adds one that prevents him from acting against Rehab personnel (but not their equipment). Predictably, Robo gets around both. These are deleted over the course of the second and third films.
  • Technically, his other directives are this as well, but since Murphy was a cop who lived by these tenets already, it's not so big a deal. The third directive (Uphold the law) does come into play in the first film when he's got Boddicker at his mercy and brings him in, instead of killing him in revenge, as he so desperately wanted to do.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: Before his death, Murphy was just another unremarkable, mild-mannered, yet still skilled and honest "average Joe" of a police officer, albeit not as cynical as his other colleagues. When he becomes RoboCop, he is much more distinctive than before.
• Robo Cam: His field of vision is a Heads-Up Display that shows all kinds of pertinent information about his surroundings, including crimes in progress, potential targets and when he is in "arrest mode". His directives also come up from time to time to remind him how to act in a given situation.
• Sense Loss Sadness: Once he's cognizant enough of his human origins to remember that he used to have them.
• Simple, yet Awesome: His general design, especially compared to something like the ED-209. He may not have the same flash or firepower but all his parts are at the highest level of quality, he can negotiate terrain much more easily, he possesses enhanced intelligence and scanning capabilities and he's able to resolve situation with a minimal of destruction and that's in addition to being incredibly strong and durable and an outstanding marksman. Compare that to the ED-209 which is good only for it's massive firepower and nothing else.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: While OCP is reconstructing him, he can do nothing but lie there hearing them casually discuss, for example, whether they ought to remove his arm or not. Horrifying inverted in RoboCop 2, when Cain and his gang dissemble him, all while Robo is fully aware what's going on and is clearly experiencing pain from it.
• Strolling Through the Chaos: Likewise, walking right into the firefight at the drug lab, not even bothering to respond for several seconds while two dozen guys shoot him totally ineffectively. He then casually raises his gun commences to waste the lot of them.
• Super Cop: He gets called this by name in one scene, and in the first animated series, the intro explicitly describes him as a "super cop".
• Super Hero Origin: More or less a superhero in all but name.
• Super-Strength: Thanks to his Artificial Limbs, he's strong enough to move extremely heavy weights and toss grown men around with no issue at all.
  "It's 400 foot pounds. He could crush every bone in your hand."
• Super-Toughness: Even if you can penetrate his Nigh-Invulnerable armored skin in the first place, what's underneath is mostly machine; very few vulnerable spots to damage, and little in the way of actual pain. RoboCop can tank just about anything and survive, if requiring repairs afterwards. One of the few times he ever displays a human-like reaction to pain is when Boddicker impales him with a metal pole after being buried in girders, but this could easily be an act to get Boddicker to lower his guard.
• Theme Music Power-Up: His leitmotif appears in many scenes when he does something cool. Inverted in the Parking Garage scene where it becomes a Dark Reprise.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: His own death. Also, some of the crooks he blows away.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: The first film ends with RoboCop telling "The Old Man" his name is Murphy. By the end of the third film, he gets this way with what's left of OCP.
  RoboCop: My friends call me Murphy. You call me RoboCop.
• Tin Man: He clearly didn't remember his past life until regaining his memories and personality. This is put to the test in RoboCop 2, during the scene in which Murphy has to look his wife in the eyes and tell her that he is just a machine that doesn't remember her. This is only because OCP forced their hand into telling him that Murphy was dead and that his "face" was all that remains.
• 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: He still has a scar on his forehead from where Boddicker shot him to finish him off.
• To Be Lawful or Good: In RoboCop 3, he's faced with a situation where his first two directives (Serve the public trust, protect the innocent) clash with the other two (Uphold the law, do not oppose an OCP officer). Since there are an equal amount of directives on both sides, he is able to make a judgement call himself and side with the innocent civilians against the Rehabs.
• Tomato in the Mirror: When Emil reveals to him that he used to be a cop who was killed. He uses this information and the name Lewis gave him to piece together what happened to him, and realizes he is the resurrected Alex Murphy.
• Tranquil Fury: When he and Boddicker are facing off against each other, you can practically feel the hateful undertones in his monotonous voice.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: It's likely it was caused by the coup de grâce delivered by Boddicker: a shot to the frontal cranium. It could also be due to OCP meddling with his brain though; it's unclear what exactly is meant when Bob Morton says "we're gonna blank his memory anyway".
• Two First Names: Murphy is commonly used as a girl's name.
• Uncanny Valley: Invoked In-Universe; Murphy's face was pretty much peeled off his corpse and grafted onto a robotic skull. While it's not too noticeable while he has his helmet on, as soon as he removes it, it becomes painfully obvious that he is a cyborg and that his human face is little more than a fleshy mask.
• Under Statement: "Come quietly or there will be... Trouble". Said "trouble" basically translating to Murphy shooting dead every single henchman in a drug lab without breaking a sweat in the first movie. From then on, "trouble" can pretty much be considered a code-word for "a massive shootout will ensue and a lot of bad guys are going to die" whenever Robo utters it.
• Undignified Death: As mentioned in Cruel and Unusual Death above, his death is very gruesome and Murphy screams in agony throughout.
• Unflinching Walk: The Out of the Inferno gas station scene.
• Unlikely Hero: In a sense. At the time of the film's making, the casting of a little known actor named Peter Weller invokes The Everyman Ridiculously Average Guy aura for not being played by an A-lister like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who himself was considered for this role. And he starts out as just another human policeman fighting crime before ending up just another Red Shirt cop (common in action and crime films), but after getting killed then resurrected, he becomes the iconic cyborg cop tattooed in the memories of movie-goers.
• Unorthodox Holstering: The move where he spins his gun around on his fingers and tucks it into the holster built into his leg. It's one of the quirks he carried over from his life as Murphy, and the first hint to Lewis as to his identity.
• Unwilling Roboticization: He didn't have a choice in being resurrected, since OCP legally owned his body. In fact, it's implied they put him in harm's way (reassigning him to the most violent precinct in the city) because they thought he would be a good candidate for their program.
• Uriah Gambit: Part of his origin as Murphy was the victim of an odd one. He and Bob Morton never met each other; Morton just wanted an experienced police officer for a subject for the RoboCop project and sent several officers to Metro West for that purpose. Murphy just had the crappy luck of being the one picked.
• Virtuous Character Copy: To the Terminator, another famous Made of Iron Implacable Man Cyborg of '80s sci-fi action cinema, especially in his first film. While the Terminator is a villainous Killer Meat-Sack Robot who murders scores of innocent civilians and cops over the course of the film, RoboCop is a heroic Super Cop who protects the innocent and Was Once a Man, his human conscience stated to be what makes him a hero. This changed in the later Terminator films, however, where the original-model T-800 became a hero not unlike RoboCop.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Thanks to being made into a cyborg, any physical damage he sustains sans the head can be repaired.
• We Will Use WikiWords in the Future: His name is properly styled RoboCop.
• What Have I Become?: Seen especially in the scene where he takes off his helmet for the first time and looks down unhappily at his robotic body.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Since it's one of his prime directives to protect the innocent, and Children Are Innocent, he cannot bring himself to harm them. Exploited by Hob in the second film, who notes that Robo won't shoot a child even if said child is armed and shooting at him.
• X-Ray Vision: One of his many abilities (see Robo Cam).
• You Are Number 6: His serial number, OCP Crime Prevention Unit 001.
• You Can't Go Home Again: When he visits his former home looking for his wife and son, and finds out they've moved away, and only left a crumpled family photo behind.

2014 Reboot

Alex J. Murphy/RC-2000/RoboCop

Played by: Joel Kinnaman

Dubbed by: Jean-Pierre Michaël (European French)

Unlike the original series, Alex Murphy is a plainclothes officer with the Detroit Police Department. He was wounded in a car bomb attack perpetrated by rogue police officers under the order of crime boss Antoine Vallon after he and his partner Jack Lewis tried to arrest him for gunrunning. He was selected by Raymond Sellars to be RoboCop in order to persuade the public to allow OmniCorp-made droid to perform law enforcement duties throughout America.

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• Adaptation Personality Change: While the original Murphy could be a Cowboy Cop, this Murphy is more of a hothead and rougher than the mild-mannered Nice Guy of the original.
• Adaptational Badass: Keeping with OmniCorp's improved competence when it comes to their robot prototypes, this RoboCop is a full-on Lightning Bruiser compared to the original's ungainly Mighty Glacier.
• Adaptational Job Change: In the original, pre-RoboCop Alex was a beat cop. This version is a plain clothes detective.
• Call-Back:
  • This time, RoboCop rides his own specialized motorcycle, calling back to RoboCop commandeering a cruiser from a rider when pursing Cain in RoboCop 2.
  • Alex is reduced to just his head, spine, lungs and one of his hands, similar to Cain's operation in RoboCop 2 but less severe. Like Cain, Alex loses his composure and is paralyzed without his machine but he gets a hold of himself with the prospect of seeing his family again.
  • Alex doesn't have a Jet Pack like in RoboCop 3, but has much greater agility in all circumstances. He can run and jump like a superhero.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: He's only called RoboCop twice: once by Pat Novak and the second by Lewis as part of a wisecrack. Otherwise, unlike earlier incarnations, his identity as Alex Murphy is a matter of public record, so he's referred to by his real name.
• Cop Killer Manhunt: Much like in the original, Murphy goes on a One-Man Army version of this against Vallon after he breaks free of Omnicorp's attempts to suppress his humanity.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Averted for Murphy: trauma of being turned into a cyborg aside, he's still pretty much himself. Then it is played straight when they start messing with his brain chemistry to get him under control. He fights his way back.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Murphy’s Robocop armor is jet black, but he is a cyborg who fights criminals while the original Robocop from the original films fell under Light Is Good due to having grey and silver armor.
• Determinator: Nothing will prevent him from catching the bad guys and saving his family.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Because of the remake's PG-13 rating and Bloodless Carnage nature, unlike the original Alex Murphy who gets shot to bits as a human (before his resurrection as the titular Robocop) this one was killed by a Car Bomb instead.
• Guns Akimbo: His preferred way of handling guns is in both hands.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: Like the original, he retains only a few organic parts in the Robocop cell: his head, his lungs, and (for some reason) his right hand.
• Heroic Willpower:
  • After getting his emotions dialed down to almost nothing, Murphy is brought back by his wife pleading with him to visit his family. Later, with his family's lives on the line, Murphy manages to overcome the Restraining Bolt prohibiting him from attacking Red Assets.
  • Murphy is able to power through being shot up by multiple ED-209s as he tries to break into OmniCorp HQ. We are told early on that .50 Beowulf and larger will breach Murphy's cyborg body and can kill him. He's hit multiple times and he continues to power through it.
• Job-Stealing Robot: This is the purpose of RoboCop in the 2014 reboot; OCP has a line of military robots that have done extremely well overseas, but the American public isn't so keen on having deathbots patrolling their streets. RoboCop is halfway measure designed to warm them to the idea.
• Lightning Bruiser: This version of RoboCop is significantly faster and more agile than the original 1987 version, being able to run at high speeds (doing about 30 mph), leap tall walls in a single bound, and even dodge gunfire and rockets. He's also still a super-strong, heavily-armored robot, although perhaps slightly less nigh-invulnerable than the original version owing to his slimmer physique and more biological components.
• In-Series Nickname: Mattox dubs Murphy "Tinman" in a deliberate taunt.
• Paint It Black: RoboCop starts off with the classic chrome armor and a black visor, but OmniCorp opts to give him a matte black makeover with a glowing red visor, making him appear more menacing. After the death of Sellars, he is refitted back to the classic suit.
• Papa Wolf: If you even so much as threaten his family, then Restraining Bolt or not, he will kill you.
• The Power of Love: Alex's love for his family allows him to reverse OmniCorp's tampering of his brain chemistry and overcome the Restraining Bolt preventing him from attacking Red Assets.
• The Protagonist: He's the main character, after all.
• Super Cop: He's RoboCop, after all. Not only does he have robotic enhancements to catch bad guys, he has digitals copies of evidence and surveillance footage in his head.
• Super-Toughness: As in the original film, Murphy's a walking tank capable of shrugging off sustained assault rifle fire without major damage. It's stated that it takes .50 Beowulf (a round designed for use against lightly armored vehicles) or above to damage his armor, and in both of the film's major shootouts he manages to power his way through opponents using such weaponry.
• Superior Successor: Murphy's combat software and robot hardware are significantly more powerful than the older, mass-produced EM-208 robots. It's justified in that Murphy is designed as a unique propaganda piece; they're only making one of him, so they put in a lot more resources, and they want to make absolutely sure he doesn't embarrass them by getting killed by some gangbanger getting lucky.
  • He also counts out-of-universe as this to the 1987 version, which was much slower.
• The Stoic: Invoked. When the police database of unsolved crimes gets downloaded into Murphy's brain, he freaks the hell out when he comes across the car bombing that mutilated him. In order to make him get over it, his brain chemistry is tinkered with, which has the side effect of suppressing the rest of his emotions.
• Tranquil Fury: While interrogating, and in one case, shooting, the corrupt cops responsible for his death, he remains calm and composed yet evidently furious as he exposes their conspiracy to car-bomb him as well as their affiliation with Vallon to the entire precinct.
• We Can Rebuild Him: The only things left of his human body are his head, lungs, and his right hand.

1994 Series

Alex Murphy/RoboCop

As in the movies, Alex Murphy was once a police officer, then he became the eponymous cyborg police officer after being shot to death in the line of duty.

Played by Richard Eden

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the movies, he has dirty blond hair, but here, as seen in flashbacks, this version retains Richard Eden's brown hair.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: This version of Murphy doesn't engage in police brutality or kill his enemies.
• Adaptational Comic Relief: While not to the same extent as in Alpha Commando, this version of Alex is prone to snarking at enemies and even allies at times.
• Adaptational Wimp: Technically speaking, Murphy is a less stronger than he was in the movies where he could almost withstand anything bar anti-material rounds like the Cobra Assult cannons or arm cannons from an ED-209 or RoboCop 2. Despite the damage, he would be able to keep on fighting. On the show, Murphy's RoboCop shell still is able to withstand small arms gunfire but larger weapons and experimental weaponry will or would put him down for the count, shutting him down for the count and needing a total reboot just to work again.
• Badbutt: As this version is aimed more for children.
• Berserk Button:
  • Unsurprisingly, he has zero tolerance for cop killers. Two of his colleagues getting killed in "Heartbreakers" cause him to raise his voice and be even more invested in solving the case than usual. The killer goes even further by pressing Murphy's other button: endangering Nancy.
  • Invoked once. Robocop and Madigan are tracking a stolen donor organ meant for a dying child, and bluff two perps for info by pretending to get bad news from the hospital, at which point Robo smashes a concrete pillar and grabs the two, claiming to have entered "dismember mode."
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: This version of Murphy will more often than not do this to any foes he encounters.
• Brain in a Jar: RoboCop himself could also be considered this, as he is a brain with a human face and a few organs for life support.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: As in the movies, he misses his family.
• But Now I Must Go: His go-to response at the end of a given situation, as he insists some crime is occurring that he must deal with. At times, though, it's pretty clear he's just using this as an excuse to leave an awkward situation, such as when around people from his old life.
• Cool Car: The series gives him a Ford Mustang as a prototype of a new police cruiser OCP made.
• Cool Helmet: As it is tradition with Murphy.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: At the end of the Pilot Movie, he refuses to reveal his true identity to his wife and son. As he says to Madigan, it might make him feel better, but he can't be the family man they need no matter how much he wants to be. There's also how he knows his enemies would try to get to him through them.
• Deadpan Snarker: More prone to this than his movie self, but not to the extent of his Alpha Commando self.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You:
  • "Prime Suspect": Averted. He goes out of his way to avoid harming the cops pursuing him, as they're just doing their jobs.
  • "Heartbreakers": Nancy is kidnapped to blackmail him into stealing a prototype weapon. He refuses to ask for help, and he won't let those guarding the warehouse stand in his way. However, the ending reveals he never stole the desired warehouse item, so this may've just been a bluff.
    Robo: You are brave men. There is no need to prove it.
    [Nervous cops step aside, as Robo walks by]
• The Fettered: As in the movies, he must obey his prime directives.
• Friend to All Children: He's got a soft spot for Gadget and other kids. He once agreed to a promotional appearance with an actor playing Commander Cash, in order to set a good example for the kids in attendance.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: He will sometimes insist that he does not miss his old life and that any contact he has with his wife and son is purely professional. Madigan and Diana will often retort that he's not fooling anybody.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Aside from extra ammunition (as referred to in the episode "Provision 22"), Robo carries several types of both non-lethal and lethal ordinance (mines, airbags), coolant and other devices/gadgets that would be used in any given episode, all stored in his left leg.
• I Have My Ways: Diana often provides him vital intel to get a Villain of the Week or just catch minor criminals operating under the radar. Occasionally, Parks or someone else will ask how he pulled it off, and he'll simply remark that he has his sources.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: The reason he hasn't told his family who he is. His father, Russell, later learns it in a later episode.
• Knight in Shining Armor: He is RoboCop after all.
• Living Lie Detector: His voice/stress analyzer gained this ability.
• Metaphorically True: The Villain of the Week in "Heartbreakers" kept dropping hints to Nancy about her connection to Robo. When she asks him what was meant by that, Robo simply says cops look out for the spouses of fallen officers.
  Robo: We are all family.
• Non-Lethal Warfare: The series took advantage of the publicity given to NLW at the time to avoid having Murphy kill anyone. RoboCop is instead armed with an array of Non-Lethal Weapons which he uses to capture the bad guys.
• Papa Wolf: Do not go after his family.
• Real Men Love Jesus: While only shown in one episode, this version is also Catholic, as in the movies.
• Restraining Bolt: Again, the prime directives.
• Secret-Keeper: Is this for Diana. His unwillingness to have her undergo the same persecution that Bob Takker is subjecting him to is the reason why he's the main suspect when someone uses the prototype of his gun and helmet to kill Takker, as he was talking to her when the crime happened.
• Super Cop: Again, this is RoboCop.
• Superhero: More explicit in this version in the episode "RoboCop versus Commander Cash".
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: His worst fear is realized in "Heartbreakers" when the Villain of the Week learns his true identity and kidnaps his wife to blackmail him into stealing the eponymous weapon's parts.

Mortal Kombat 11

See his character entry for story and gameplay tropes.

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"My friends call me Murphy. You can call me... RoboCop."