Headscratchers / RoboCop (1987)

• What idiot decided to load ED-209 with live ammo for a demonstration in a crowded conference room? Even if you're not expecting anything to go wrong, you still shouldn't have that kind of thing just lying around. (Then again, what would ED have done to poor Kinney in lieu of shooting him?)
  • ...probably the same idiot who programmed it to shoot to kill?
    • Why shouldn't it shoot to kill? Being a walking gun platform, any less would be a failure of its primary design.
    • I believe the troper prior to this one meant shoot to kill at the demonstration.
    • Well, that's easy enough to explain: ED-209 was supposed to be ready to deploy. They were using the same software that it would be deployed to the streets and battlefields with, not some special demonstration software. If it had worked the guy wouldn't have been in any real danger. Of course, he also wouldn't have been in any real danger if, as the OP noted, it hadn't been loaded with live rounds.
    • Well, consider that actual live rounds of that caliber would have left no recognizable remains, blown all of the glass out of the room, and done significant collateral damage to whatever was next door. My take is that they were stage rounds of some sort, but with enough of a punch to beat the poor fellow to death. A blank in a small-caliber pistol is pretty dangerous at close range.
  • It just goes to show you how much they care about the lives of their fellow employees. It's not even a concern on their minds.
  • Fridge Brilliance, this was a deliberate move to make the program look bad.
    • By whom and why?
    • Maybe the guy who spearheaded the RoboCop project did it.
    • Bob Morton (the guy you referred to) didn't seem to have much power in the company. I mean, he didn't even have access to the VIP restroom. Plus he seemed genuinely shocked about the ED-209 incident. Nothing in the film really suggests that he may have a hand in it.
  • I see this question all the time. I never thought much of it because it was clear that what we see in the boardroom scene is only the beginning of a longer presentation for ED-209. I assume there would have been a part where they would all be led into a shooting gallery (or the shooting gallery would be brought into the room) to demonstrate ED-209's accuracy and prowess; for this, he would have needed live ammunition. Obviously, no one expected the thing to malfunction, since it had likely been tested hundreds of times prior; the chances of a guy being murdered were likely considered less than zilch.
    • Eh, seems unlikely to me. The boardroom doors were barely big enough to admit ED-209 as it was (which, when you think about it, demonstrates how poorly-thought-out it was as an urban pacification weapon), and I doubt they'd have brought a shooting gallery into the room as it still would have messed up the walls with bullets going everywhere. If they were going to do that, they either would have had the meeting at the shooting gallery, or they would have reconvened there... and they could have either had a second ED-209 waiting there, or moved the first, and could have loaded it with live ammo while moving it or once they'd arrived at the gallery. So it still comes down to negligence.
  • The scene was a demonstration, not a test. They were about to let ED-209 onto city streets. If they didn't trust it enough to arm it, then they wouldn't have been demonstrating it.
  • Dick was shown to be incredibly arrogant, to have very little regard for safety and was pathologically focused on the bottom line and his own advancement. He probably ordered it be armed for the demonstration. In the scene in the executives toilet, we see all the other executives on the company flee (one while not being finished yet, leaving a large stain on his pants), so it's safe to guess nobody wanted to question his order...
    • Basically this. Jones was arrogant and didn’t care about putting anyone in danger. That’s one of the themes of the movie - the rich and powerful see humans as disposable products.
  • Dick Jones the premiere example of Corrupt Corporate Executive with a generous helping of zero empathy. He simply saw the dollar signs on his deal with the Army, and when his subordinates put the schematics for the ED-209 on his desk, as well as the layout for the demonstration, he probably just said "yeah, yeah", and signed off on it without even looking up.
  • Then they do it AGAIN with Cain...
    • Cain was probably scheduled for deployment immediately after.
    • Also, Doctor Fax seems to have a bizarre and unhealthy infatuation with Cain (or at least with Cain as Robocop 2) perhaps out of narcissism, or at the very least was fully convinced that her hold over him with promised Nuke was absolute. It's likely she simply trusted him not to abuse his guns in the presentation, and Cain could give less than two shits with the double wammy of the Old Man waving a Nuke canister within reach and Robocop walking in.
    • Although Dr. Fax did make sure that Cain's weapons weren't armed when he was unveiled. It was her own stupidity to just wave the only remote that could stop him around like that.
  • As noted above, it's possible that it was already up and running and thus was meant to demonstrate a ready-to-deploy model. This gives a possible explanation for why they were dumb enough to demonstrate it with live ammo: If it was in a deployed state, it might be programmed to not perform its function without first submitting to maintenance and loading, so it would likely recognize if its weapons aren't loaded. Whether blanks would've solved that issue, given the distance and firepower involved...
  • Fridge Brilliance: Which slimy corporate suit has reason to sabotage the project? That's right, Morton, the one that shortly afterward has a good cop - Murphy - butchered so he has a test subject for his project.
    • This is already addressed above. Morton is never established to even have the pull to sabotage the project, much less do we see anything that suggests he did so. The whole point of the ED-209 project in the film is to be incompetent. It was never designed, constructed or implemented well. It was just supposed to sell. Remember Dick Jones sneering, "Who cares if it worked?"
  • Another possible Fridge Brilliance: Dick Jones is so morally lacking and confident he might as well have ordered this himself. Seeing the reaction from all the co-workers in the bathroom would explain why nobody would talk back.
    • He'd be an idiot then, since this exact fuck-up is what caused the Old Man to shelve the ED-209 project and move forward with Robocop.
  • The board member could have been a whistle-blower or someone else undesirable to the rest of the board, and ED-209 was an easy way of eliminating him under cover of a "malfunction."
    • Jones had no problem sending Boddicker out to blow Morton up. He could have found all sorts of ways to kill a rival executive that didn't involve humiliating himself in front of the CEO.
• How did Murphy manage to survive having his limbs blown off and a gunshot wound to the head execution-style long enough to be admitted to hospital after dark and only being declared dead after a couple of hours on the operating table?
  • Depends on if the viewer thinks Murphy a) barely survived or b) outright died from the ordeal. If a) then note he only lost his right arm from the initial attack (the other limbs survived but were probably riddled to hell too). He's wearing substantial body armour as a riot cop in Old Detroit, so that helped too. People have survived worse in freak incidents of Nigh-Invulnerability, yes even with gunshots to the head. And this version of the future might have advanced tourniquets and other medical equipment, used by cops deployed in scumhole areas, which might have helped Officer Lewis to sustain him until the paramedics arrived. Don't read too much into the sunset either; the car chase likely started shortly before it so the passage of time is plausible. If however, you think b) is the case, then you have to grant that OCP's advanced cybernetic technology must be outright capable of resurrecting dead people in a cybernetic form, complete with vocal accent and residual memories from the subject's prior life (much as the MegaCorp would rather that these memories were deleted).
  • He didn’t, obviously, and was on his way out when he was admitted to the hospital. Doctors have an ethical obligation to try and save their patients but even the hospital staff knew he wouldn’t make it - hence why they quit treating him. The flashbacks represent Murphy’s brain shutting down.

• An amusing bit of Fridge Logic (This is one of my favorite movies, I saw it a year after it was released when I was a kid, but it didn't hit me till a few months ago while driving home from work): How in the hell did Clarence survive being arrested? I'm not talking about being thrown through half a dozen plateglass windows, but how do you survive being a cop killer arraigned in Detroit, in a police station that had lost several cops to him in the last several months? It practically screams You're not getting out of there. Only hiding behind Dick Jones could have saved him.
  • "Just give me my fuckin' phone call..."
    • Which is less of a law and more of a courtesy. They could have told him no and that would have left him in no better state.
  • The fact that RoboCop, the arresting officer, taped himself committing an act of blatant police brutality might have had something to do with that. Clarence may have been a cop killer, but even the most incompetent attorney in the world could have gotten him off when that came to light.
    • That wasn't RoboCop throwing Boddicker around, it was *Murphy*. We see his memories returning earlier in the film, but it's the first time we see Murphy's emotions come to the surface in the context of work. Tellingly, Murphy doesn't flinch at Boddicker telling him that they work for the same people and he's on the verge of strangling Boddicker there and then - until Boddicker reminds him that he's a cop. ^note  And Murphy was an outstanding, by-the-book policeman - decorated for bravery and good conduct. He realises that what he's doing is murder...
    • I wouldn't be so sure about the outcome of that case. OCP owns the police and RoboCop specifically. I wouldn't be surprised if the company had a crack team of lawyers dedicated solely to handling cases of police brutality.
    • While true, this is a moot point. Clarence was acting on the orders of an OCP employee.
  • The temptation would be there, sure. But the Detroit police are by and large good honest decent people who leave justice up to the courts.
  • Even aside from that, they may have just figured that it was important Boddicker was brought down by the book. The city's in turmoil, and the cops' position is uncertain. Boddicker dying under "mysterious circumstances" in police custody would erode any trust left in the system. It would have been a coup for them to bring down Boddicker properly, to show everyone that the law still works.
  • Sgt. Reed seemed like a very By-the-Book Cop. Despite his disgust for Boddicker, he didn't come off as the type to let cops institute "frontier justice" on his watch. And Boddicker probably wasn't in jail long enough for, say, the guard assigned to his cell block to take a sudden "coffee break", allowing a few cops to visit Boddicker in his cell and inflict some payback.
  • A related question is why Boddicker was not in federal custody during the police strike. Bank robbery is a federal offense, as is murder committed in connection with a bank robbery (which means that the murder of Alex Murphy would have made Clarence eligible for the federal death penalty). Clarence was surely wanted by the FBI for bank robbery, and even though the police were ordered to release Boddicker, Surely nothing would stop them from letting the FBI take custody of a cop killer. ( Dick Jones ordering the Detroit PD to shield Clarence Boddicker from the FBI would only raise complicated questions. )
    • It's a MegaCorp-run Bad Future. For all we know, the FBI may have been dissolved by a corrupt, shortsighted, businessman-turned president and his likeminded Congress in the backstory.
  • How could Boddicker, a known criminal, openly visit Jones at OCP headquarters and give his own name to the secretary?
    • OCP own the police, Jones is within a hairline of being in charge of OCP, and Boddicker works for (in his mind with) Jones. Not to mention that Boddicker is pretty arrogant and cocky. Basically, he's a bit overconfident in Jones's ability to cover for him.

• ED-209 was supposedly designed for "urban pacification". I can see it possibly being deployed in urban war zones alongside regular infantry but as a replacement for a police force? Police officers are also supposed to arrest people and bring them in for questioning. All ED-209 could do is shoot and blow things up. It couldn't even use stairs. Plus, would anybody really want to move somewhere with killer deathbots patrolling the streets?
  • ED-209 being big, stupid, and inefficient was the whole point, as I understand it.
  • As Jones succinctly put it, "Who cares if it worked or not?". Pacifying Old Detroit was just to drum up publicity. The real money was in getting the military to buy, and they were interested.
  • ED-209 wasn't meant to clean up the streets in the traditional sense. Old Detroit had to be cleared for the construction of Delta City. The idea was to blow away a few criminals to demonstrate that OCP isn't kidding around, and everyone will be running out scared.
  • The robot was quite clearly designed for military purposes, not for law enforcement. OCP wanted to put the damn thing on the streets to kill two birds with one stone, giving it a live test run to prove the unit's worth to any potential buyer and to clean the streets by any means necessary in order to facilitate the building of the new Detroit.
  • Besides, I can see some applications for ED even in the police force, like the "drug bust" Murphy performs. ED would've done the same thing even swifter, and he wouldn't have that pesky disadvantage of trying to take anybody alive and having them spill the beans.
  • Considering how much of a burnt-out hell hole much of Detroit is, using it as a proving ground for the ED-209 prior to being deployed to the battlefield doesn't actually seem like a bad idea. If you're routinely losing police every day to gang activity, a walking tank isn't the overkill it might seem.
  • Verhoven has said ED-209 and OCP are a satire on American industry at the time, particularly the car industry. Design is rushed, construction is done by the lowest bidder, and corners are cut everywhere. It just has to look impressive enough to get the buyers to sign the contract.

• Why doesn't RoboCop show the evidence of Dick Jones's wrongdoing to the cops and have them arrest Dick?
  • He does, eventually. Keep in mind that events unfold quickly, from Directive 4 incapacitating him, to Dick Jones releasing ED-209 on him, and having the entire police force ordered to destroy him on sight. He is only able to go to the OCP board after a period of retreat (that includes his vendetta against his murderer).
  • He was the cops. Granted, he should have let someone know what he was doing before heading out and left a copy of the evidence somewhere, but he did have the authority to walk into Jones' office and arrest him. Of course, how well the charges would have stuck is another question. Recording or not, all RoboCop really had for evidence was the unsubstantiated testimony of a drug dealer who had murdered a cop and was trying to keep the officer taking him down from summarily lynching him. A good attorney could convince a jury that Boddicker was making that testimony up to protect himself - especially if Boddicker suffered an accident before he could reveal any physical evidence linking him to Jones before it comes to trial (Which the local police wouldn't try to hard to prevent given that he had murdered a cop).
    • That's what I meant. However, I'm pretty sure he had a video of Dick Jones confessing after confronting him with his evidence.
    • Yep, the video has Dick making a direct confession. Of course, video can always be manipulated.
    • I imagine that unless Robocop went straight to the board and the Old Man directly - who goes on to ask him to display evidence - that Directive Four might well have started up again and shut Murphy down if he tried to show anyone else the video. It's also important to note that every police officer in the city is gunning for him as a defective product as per Dick's orders. By going straight to the Old Man, Murphy is able to display the evidence but is still unable to physically act against Jones until he no longer belongs to OCP. So I think it's the Old Man asking for proof that initially bypasses Directive Four.
    • Indeed, he played that video in front of the OCP board
  • Another thing to bear in mind is, the cops were on strike by that point. There was no one left to show the evidence to.

• Why was the gun that Jones brought in for the ED-209 demonstration still there when Robo tried to arrest Jones four months later?
  • What makes you think it was the same gun? Same model, perhaps, but it's not like they just left the gun lying on the floor. Jones just had the same model gun as his own gun.
    • The gun in the demonstration was taken from a case. The gun Jones used to hold the Old Man hostage was taken from an identical case that was lying on a side table.
    • The case doesn't look like a demonstration case. It looks like an expensive custom case for an expensive gun. I just assumed that it belongs to the Old Man, and he keeps it in the board room as a symbolic gesture of his power, as well as means of self-defense in case some nutcase managed to get through his security.
    • Plus, so what if it's the same gun from the demo? People forget stuff all the time. It was laying there like it was supposed to be there, so everyone left it be. No one probably removed it in the immediate aftermath because they were more focused on ED-209 being a failu-, er, the horrible tragedy of an employee's death.
  • It could have been there as a reminder/veiled threat. "Remember what happened last time you idiots fucked up and cost the company millions (oh, and the life of a beloved employee, of course). Don't fuck up again."
  • We know from the third movie that OCP executives carrying pistols around beneath their tailored jackets isn't unusual, given that one of them pulled his out in preparation for shooting himself, so having a gun on display wouldn't be inconsistent.
    • When Ah-nuld was governor of California he kept the sword from Conan in his office on display. Maybe the Old Man just thought the Desert Eagle was cool so had it left there?

• Why on Earth would someone design an urban pacification military bot that is not only incapable of walking on stairs but is actually surprised by the fact that stairs even EXIST?
  • It's not that they meant to design it that way. Dick Jones says outright that the plan was to establish a lucrative military contract, spare parts and all. "Who cares if it worked or not?"
  • I always figured it was designed to take the role of a light armoured vehicle, hence was never meant to navigate stairs.
  • And why would they make it squeal in anguish when it falls down?
    • Rule of Funny.
    • In practical terms, it's probably not a "squeal of anguish", it's probably an alarm tone to let its minders know that it's fallen into a position where it can't right itself. The fact that the alarm tone sounds like a squeal of anguish is the Rule of Funny part.
    • I always thought it was the sound of it overstretching and/or its parts grinding as it tries to right itself.
  • OCP products suck. That's the point.

• OK, at the end RoboCop shows OCP a video of Jones' confession of killing Bob Morton. But why doesn't he also show the video of Clarence Boddicker screaming he's working for Dick Jones?
  • Robo probably erased it, or it was accidentally erased by a malfunction, caused by his fight with the SWAT at the OCP parking garage.
  • Also, Boddicker could be lying for all we know (but he eventually isn't), just to make Murphy stop beating the crap out of him.
  • What would be the point? He has a video of Jones directly confessing to first-degree murder. A video of the hitman he hired to perform the murder making his own confession would be redundant, especially since Boddicker is already dead by that point.

• Why was it so easy to negate the Fourth Directive at the end of the movie? A senior officer of a major corporation can't be officially terminated with a simple "You're fired!" Jones would have needed a lot of severance paperwork for it to count as the end of his employment.
  • From a scripting point of view it's clearly intended to be a fatal Idiot Ball moment on Jones's part, *because he holds hostage and threatens the one person in the company who has the power to terminate his employment verbally and with immediate effect*.
  • He can't be in our world. In the screwed-up world of Robocop, he apparently can.
  • Additional: Jones doesn't need to be legally fired - Robocop only needs to believe that he is.
    • Whether or not Jones could be fired that easily, we're talking about program. A piece of code hardwired into his brain. It cannot work on things like belief or self-conviction, and you cannot tell it: "See? His boss has just de facto fired him. Now let me shoot him." I presume there would have to be a list of people in Robo's database that he cannot target, and Jones would have to be removed from it before he could target him, and obviously, they wouldn't give Robo himself this ability. So I agree, this is a gap in logic.
    • This is not a gap in logic. Sure, you can't fire someone this fast normally, but even in real life, it is possible to do that depending on the contract (https://smallbusiness.chron.com/can-employee-fired-warning-31282.html). Even if you have a good contract that prevents you from being fired this quickly without warning, you can still be fired quickly in a legal way if an act of misconduct or crime is committed on the company's premises. This is grounds for immediate dismissal in most companies and at this point, the dumbass trying to take over the company is holding his boss at gunpoint in front of a robot with a built-in camera. Even if Richard wasn't dropped to his death and tried to take the company to court over his 'wrongful termination', all Omni would have to do is show the recording of him holding the boss at gunpoint and threatening to kill him and the case would be thrown out. Then, Richard would be taken into custody as a criminal or sued by Omni Consumer Products for wasting their time in court (and that is with modern laws, imagine the laws in the world of RoboCop where corporations run everything).
    • Probably unintentional Fridge Brilliance on the part of the writers - multi-threaded programming was in its infancy at the time, but it is absolutely technically possible for a program to create a separate "thread" that runs independently of the main program and can update data without the main program thread having to "know" about it.
    • The Old Man has stated his intent to have Jones fired. The Old Man is essentially the God of OCP. If he told Robocop that someone does or doesn't work for the company, his word is the law, regardless of paperwork. Besides, it's shown to work, therefore it works, and the gap in logic is really of your own making.
    • If "it's shown to work" when by all means it shouldn't have worked, then it's a plot hole, plain and simple. I don't argue that Old Man couldn't fire Jones this simply - I argue that it couldn't have been enough to negate the Directive. It's a program. You cannot just tell it to stop working. There has to be some trigger, and it cannot be Robo's mere knowledge as to whether a certain person is an OCP executive or not, because he's not even supposed to know about the directive and clearly has no control over it. They would need to input the list of executives in his brain, and, consequently, remove a person from it externally, should the need arise.
    • The entire point of building Robocop was that he could make intelligent, rational decisions. While still constrained by his directives, he could interpret them as a normal human would, rather than being strictly bound to them.
    • With the first sure, but D4 was meant to constrain him and prevent him from making intelligent decisions (i.e. arrest the SOB). If not my way, how do you suppose it worked? They would input "Do not attack people who you think are executives of OCP unless you can rationalise otherwise" into his brain and then treat him to a presentation of OCP staff? It seems needlessly complex compared to simply programming "Do not attack this list of people" directly into his brain.
    • Maybe the list of OCP execs was uploaded into his brain. As for why D4 was 'Do not attack OCP executives' and not simply 'Don't attack these people' - from what we've seen about OCP, it's not exactly big on trust. If the Old Man had anything to do with Robocop's programming, it makes goddamn sense he would input 'A person stops being an OCP employee the moment I say he/she does' instead of listing all papers that should be filled. Just in case an employee decides to go The Starscream on him.
    • Directive 4 was stated to be a secret contribution made by Jones himself to the programming; it doesn't prevent him from shooting, just arresting. It originally didn't kick in until Robocop actually tries to handcuff Jones.
    • As mentioned, the whole point of Robocop was his ability to use human judgment in evaluating circumstances (such as whether a suspect has dropped his gun). Directive 4 wasn't some totally self-contained piece of programming, it called out to other subroutines. Dick Jones wasn't a programmer, he just gave the order to someone who was, who sensibly coded a function to check whether Robocop's current "target" is an OCP officer. That function then called another function which invoked Robocop's human assessment ability, which was already being used for engagement scenarios, to evaluate the target. The programmer then reported back that Dick's order had been implemented in the best, most reliable way possible, which was true, because it re-used well-tested code and existing features. That's how good programming is done.
  • Probably just crappy programming done on the cheap and without much forethought as to unintended consequences, just like everything else OCP does. A simple bit of code saying "If someone states OCP executive status then do not arrest. Invalidation of OCP Executive status only by other OCP executive of equal or more senior rank". Slap a bit of secrecy around it so no one else will find out about that key and they were good to go. Yes, it is stupid and liable to fall apart, but that is part of the film's whole message.
    • Unlikely. Morton was a ruthless, avaricious character, but it's heavily implied that he (unlike Jones) genuinely wanted to build a superior product using thorough methods.
    • To add, remember the point made above that the Old Man is basically God as far as OCP is concerned and his word is Law. So no doubt Robocop's programming operates on the basis the Old Man directly firing someone counts as an immediate termination of their employment, regardless of whether or not they still have to fill out all the paperwork, so they are no longer covered by Directive Four.
  • It's possible that while Robocop can't change his files, he can make updates. He would add recordings and details to reports for the purposes of litigation. In the case of Directive 4, he updated the file that the guy had been fired pending the completion of paperwork. Sort of like making a phone bill payment through the automated system. It tells you that it can take fifteen minutes to be updated in all systems, but your payment has officially been received and processed.
  • If the verbal confession of the crime is enough to prompt an arrest from Robocop without a warrant, and facial recognition is enough to prove Jones is a senior officer of OCP, then the facial recognition of Jones' superior and hearing that superior verbally terminating Jones is probably substantial enough to exempt him from Directive 4.
  • Jones intended to be head of OCP one day, and come that day he may well have intended to use Robocop to arrest other OCP execs (or even kill them) so it makes sense he'd have to leave some code allowing for instant invalidation of OCP executives for himself to exploit. He just hadn't counted on it being used against him by the existing OCP head. Laser-Guided Karma in action.
  • Executives come and go in major corporations. It's cheaper and easier just to have a blanket exemption with a simple override like the one above than to keep uploading an updated list of OCP executives. Each update requires Robo to be taken offline, which takes him off the streets and costs the company money. A more realistic solution would be to require an override code that would have to be authenticated or to require several people (the Old Man, the HR director, and Jones for example) to verify an executive was terminated. But that puts too many people in the loop for Jones' liking, and OCP is demonstrated repeatedly to not really care whether something works well.
  • Legally speaking, gross misconduct is grounds for immediate dismissal, effective from the moment of the occurrence. Taking your boss hostage at gunpoint probably comes under that umbrella.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Even if "You're fired!" is technically not sufficient to get Jones dismissed from OCP in itself, it's surely enough to suspend his executive privileges until the Board of Directors confirms the Old Man's decision. He might still be entitled to a few months' severance pay and the chance to clear out his office, but no company has to allow a just-sacked CEO to keep issuing orders, lest said CEO seize the chance to loot its coffers or sabotage its operations on the way out. In effect, the Old Man can demote Jones instantly to being just a regular employee, and Robocop can impose justice on non-executive OCP personnel without a hitch, no matter how golden of a parachute they have coming to them.
  • Given the corrupt corporate-dominated Crapsack World future dystopia of unfettered capitalism that the movie is set in, I'm willing to hazard that employee rights are not a huge priority for either the corporate executive or the legislature, and it's probably a lot easier to fire someone than it is in our world. Ergo, severance paperwork might not have been too much of a concern in this world's reality.
  • Jones presumably has backstabbing underlings of his own, and he could've easily foreseen needing RoboCop to bust one of them immediately after he'd fired them for attempting a Klingon Promotion. Which, if so, would make his defeat at Murphy's hands even more of a Hoist by His Own Petard than before, due to his never anticipating his own boss would be the one to yell "You're fired!"
  • As the ED-209 debacle amply demonstrated, OCP doesn't give a rat's ass about the well-being of their employees, including their executives. It shouldn't surprise anyone that upper management can fire anyone at a whim, termination effective immediately, with your cubicle and desk emptied with the contents thrown out onto the curb seconds before security does the same to you. It's probably in the first paragraph of their contracts.
  • It's possible that when they included D4 into Robo's programming, they also put in some legalese explaining what constitutes an OCP executive and how and when does an executive stop being one. If Jones' contract could be terminated by the Old Man just saying so, then it would be in the D4 program, i.e. any safety mechanism protecting Jones in Robocop's programming was negated the instant he got fired.
  • Also remember, D4 was sort of a bug installed by Jones secretly to protect himself against Robocop should the need arise (probably already anticipating that he was going to illegally get Morton out of the way). This means that rather than a clear-cut legal directive, D4 was just a rather crude Spanner in the Works. Hence, the enforcement of D4 via complicated knowledge of labor and contractual laws was not necessary because it would make programming the D4 more difficult and expensive: all that Jones needed was for Robocop to identify an OCP senior employee in the broadest, simplest terms possible so he could be beyond Murphy's reach.

• Has anyone figured out what the hell that show was about? Yes, the "I'd buy that for a dollar!" show everyone in the movie seems to love. I know the actual phrase is from the short story The Marching Morons, but aside from that, the show always seemed so bizarre and incoherent. Has there ever been any kind of canonical explanation about what it was supposed to be?
  • It's some kind of low-brow, Benny Hill-esque comedy thing.
  • It's not really supposed to have a context. According to Verhoven, the idea of the show was that it's dumb at first, but the stupidity is supposed to become increasingly funny upon further exposure. So basically, Robocop predicted Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!.
  • Verhoeven has said that all the TV segments in the movie were inspired by his reaction to watching American TV for the first time, which he found utterly baffling and idiotic (especially the news!)
  • Here's a rather plausible theory on how it could turn into a catchphrase.

• Wouldn't the convenience store robber have had to be just as strong as Robocop to hold his rifle steady while Robocop bent the barrel?
  • Most likely he had a rage and shock fueled death-grip on it.
  • No matter how tight one's grip, adrenaline alone can't give someone the strength to do what takes a hydraulically-driven machine well over 5000 pounds of energy to do. Since The Dark Knight made this exact same mistake, it's 99.9999% more likely that Hollywood writers simply don't know what leverage is.
  • Why would he need to be, the barrel of that particular type of gun is clearly made from some sort of putty. Very advanced weaponry, highly impressive.
• One of Boddicker's men is holding a grenade launcher and has a clear shot at Robocop who's distracted by Boddicker. He puts down his grenade launcher and goes to activate a crane so he can dump a ton of scrap metal on Robocop instead of using the weapon that he was specifically given to kill Robocop with. Unless he was out of ammo, that was a pretty boneheaded move.
  • Boddicker was close enough to Robocop that he could have been seriously injured or killed by the explosion or flying shrapnel. The guy was putting Boddicker's safety ahead of killing Robocop; the gang as a whole seem to be close, and at the very least, Boddicker's the one with friends in high places that makes him so successful. Besides, Robocop was immobilized by scrap metal and thus an easier target.
• If Murphy's wife and son moved away from Detroit after his "death" and left their vacant house to be sold, why didn't the realtors who installed those video-screens promoting its sale also clean up that abandoned debris in the kitchen? Finding a cracked mug and a bunch of burnt photos and dead houseplants lying around on the countertops sure isn't going to appeal to potential buyers who stop in for a tour.
  • The idea with the video screens is clearly to indicate that it can be an "open house" without actually having a realtor come in regularly. Some kids or vagrants probably wandered in and did a bit of petty vandalism between actual realtor check-ins.
• How did Robocop find Leon Nash at some random disco and then Boddicker at the drug factory? Are we to assume that both Emil and then Leon sold their buddies out? As noted above, the thugs seemed to be a pretty tight bunch, and later Boddicker surprisingly doesn't have an issue with either of them.
  • He looked up their files, which listed not only their known associates but places where they were known to frequent. Leon probably did sell Clarence out because Murphy likely roughed him up, and after experiencing Murphy being pissed off Clarence probably understood, considering he himself sang like a bird.
• Why does the OCP CEO ask Robocop's name at end of the movie? Shouldn't he already know that? It was his company that made Robocop. Surely he would have done a background check on Alex Murphy to make sure he was a suitable candidate before he gave the green light to Bob Morton to commence with the project. Does it make any sense at all that the CEO would never bother looking into who Alex Murphy was at any point?
  • "Surely" assumes a lot.
  • The whole job of a CEO is to delegate. You wouldn’t expect Shuntaro Furukawa to know every circuit board layout of the Switch by heart. It was Bob Morton’s project, the details were all in his court, the Old Man would really only want progress reports, not minutia. And even if the Old Man isn’t nearly as (obviously) corrupt as his board seems to be, he probably doesn’t stay up at night memorizing the details of a subordinate’s project unless it was necessary to.
    • But I'm not talking about minor details. Just the most basic one, a name. I don't expect the Old Man to know Murphy's height or his favorite color, but how could he not know his name? In all the reports he read on the project, you don't think the name of Robocop's human subject was ever mentioned even once?
    • Because he didn't care who RoboCop was until that moment.
    • Not just the Old Man, nobody at OCP cares what RoboCop's real name is. Morton is the head of the project and he barely cares who Robo is. "He doesn't have a name, he has a program." It's completely plausible that Morton never once mentioned the name Murphy to the Old Man, or included it in any piece of paper that crossed the boss's desk.
    • I never said I expected anyone at OCP to care who Robocop is. But you would think all the higher-ups would know anyway, simply because they would have to run a background check on Murphy in order to make sure he was a suitable candidate for the project. That would require them to know his name whether they cared about him or not. Do you really think the Old Man wouldn't require Morton to get his personal approval for the candidate selected? I have a very hard time believing Morton wouldn't have to give a detailed presentation to the Old Man explaining why Murphy should be used.
  • The precise legality (not to mention the political stink) of creating what's essentially a cyborg slave from the remains of an officer who'd died in the line of duty was probably also something that the Old Man wanted to distance himself from, just in case a scandal erupted later on. Never bothering to find out that Robocop's nervous system came from an actual cop was a means of giving himself plausible deniability, should ghoulish revelations about the project necessitate him throwing Morton to the wolves.
  • The big issue with the Old Man asking for his name surely has to be that his 'name', in OCP's eyes at least, is Robocop. A fact of which the CEO of OCP is 100% aware.
• How did the van fill with toxic waste so quickly? The holes RoboCop shot in it weren't even that big.
  • Pressure in the tank?
• Did Emil blow up the gas station on purpose or by accident?
  • Hitting the gas hose was an accident, but throwing the cigar to ignite the gas was obviously on purpose.
• Why did Dougie reach for his gun when Officer Murphy told him "Don't move"? What made him think that was a good idea?
  • A pretty common case of "You'll never take me alive, copper!"
• How is Lewis strong enough for Murphy to lean on her when he's "injured?" Not only is he bigger than her to begin with, but he's also made almost entirely out of metal.
• Why did the police force never give Murphy/RoboCop a regular police hat to humanize him after his memories return? Or maybe that's more of a headscratcher with the sequels?
  • His body already looks like a bulletproof vest, which is why everyone always immediately recognizes him as a cop without him ever having to show his badge. A police hat isn't necessary.