Leela quits Planet Express out of a moral objection to bringing a tanker of dark matter by a penguin preserve on Pluto, and joins a band of protestors. Bender is made captain instead, and when he crashes the tanker, a concussion (brought about by his escape from community service) causes his software to change to penguin mode. Meanwhile, the dark matter causes the penguins to multiply rapidly, and the conservationists turn to hunting to save them from starvation, horrifying Leela.
Tropes
- 2-D Space: Averted when the Penguins Unlimited protesters form a ring around the tanker to keep it from leaving, only for it to fly up over their heads. Lampshaded immediately afterwards.Leela: When you were planning this peace ring, didn't you realize spaceships can move in three dimensions?
Free Waterfall, Sr.: No, I did not. - Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Inverted. Bender, after going too long without a drink in depression from Fry's rejection of his captaincy, stupidly crashes the tanker on Pluto.
- All Planets Are Earthlike: Pluto is depicted as being exactly like the Antarctic, having the same light and gravity as Earth. All according to Rule of Funny.
- Animal Wrongs Group: Free Waterfall, Sr. as the leader of Penguins Unlimited. He's a tiny bit better than the last Waterfall, but once he decides that the penguin flocks need to be culled to prevent starvation, he and his group shift from animal lovers to rednecks who like their jobs too much.
- Artistic License – Physics: Leela says that, with the windchill, "it's 20 below absolute zero" outside on Pluto. Absolute zero is the point at which all motion stops, so there'd be no way for wind to exist at that point. But since it's going below that point, it's Rule of Funny at work.Leela: It's 20 degrees below absolute zero out there!
David X. Cohen: (on the commentary) Take that, physicists! A blow to your precious logic! - Ass Shove: Free Waterfall, Sr. seems a little too obsessed with using "nature's pocket" to keep things in.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- While trying to run from the penguins, Leela and Bender reach a cliff edge with no easy way down. Cursing their lack of a toboggan, Leela is then seen eyeing up Bender as if contemplating riding him down the cliff. Cut to the next scene, showing Bender riding Leela like a sled.
- After Bender crashes the Tanker, we're led to believe that he is put in the jail cell, with Hyper-Chicken speaking to him about his community service. The camera zooms out to show that Hyper-Chicken is the one in the jail cell, after he mentions he is awaiting his trial for incompetence. Bender then leaves the jail room.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Bender asks Fry to toast him.Fry: To Captain Bender, he's the best... at being a big jerk who's stupid... and his big ugly face is as dumb as a butt.
- Big Stupid Doo Doo Head: Fry's Bait-and-Switch Comment above sees him in typical Fry form at coming up with insults.
- Call-Back: Free Waterfall Jr. was the smelly hippie who got eaten by Lrrr in "The Problem with Popplers". His father has a more... relaxed attitude towards taking the life of creatures.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Free Waterfall, Sr. is a complete kook who enjoys rubbing permafrost into his crotch and shoving his hands between his butt cheeks to keep them warm.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- As Free Waterfall, Sr. dies, his father, Old Man Waterfall, appears and swears to avenge his death.
- The orca whale that causes Bender to reset to penguin mode shows up to devour the penguins threatening Bender and Leela.
- Contrived Coincidence: Leela only manages to shoot one "penguin"... which happens to be Bender, which reboots him back to human.
- The Corrupter: Bender manages to turn the penguins from innocent, harmless and docile, to violent, aggressive and xenophobic in mere moments:Leela: (witnessing the penguins maul Free Waterfall Sr. to death) They used to be such peaceful birds. I suppose this was your doing.Bender: Yup. It's like I taught 'em: if it ain't black and white, peck, scratch and bite.
- Crazy-Prepared: Bender has a pre-installed penguin mode.
- Debate and Switch: See Animal Wrongs Group above. Through outside forces, the penguin population explodes, which will eventually lead to their collective starvation. Hunting is then proposed by the activists to curb their population and save them from a miserable slow death. This can actually be Truth in Television, and there are many different beneficial note outcomes to saving an animal population via selective killings. That said, the activists inexplicably turn into bloodthirsty hunters the moment they get their hands on some guns and get excited about the idea of murdering the very penguins they came to save. Naturally, Leela takes offense, not at the hard truth solution, but their ecstatic attitudes. Leela delivers the episode’s Aesop outright ("[a tough decision like this] shouldn’t be in the hands of people who want to kill for fun."), and the hunters never get the chance to kill; nature works itself out and killer whales take care of the job by eating them.
- Devious Dolphins: Bender Going Native is caused by an orca mauling him when he ends up in the ocean. That said, the orcas ultimately become a solution to the penguins' overpopulation by devouring them.
- Devoured by the Horde: Free Waterfall Sr. is pecked to death by the penguins, telling Leela to make sure they use every part of him.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Bender removes his suit, not even seconds after telling Leela he told the penguins to kill anything that wasn't black and white.
- The protestors linking hands in a ring in order to stop the oil tanker...not knowing that it's a spaceship and can move in three dimensions.
- Drunk Driver: A weird inversion, where Bender is arrested for Driving While Not Intoxicated, his alcohol level well below the legal limit. (Seeing as being sober is debilitating to him.)
- Drunk with Power: Unsurprisingly, Bender doesn't take too long to go mad with power when he's promoted to captain to replace Leela.
- Egg-Laying Male: The plot deals with an extreme explosion of the penguin population on Pluto due to a spillage of dark matter making them extra fertile. So fertile, that not only have the females been laying six eggs every fifteen minutes that hatch in less than twelve hours, but even the male penguins have started laying eggs.
- The End... Or Is It?: Two penguins find some abandoned rifles, and clumsily pick them up. We see them eyeing one another suspiciously, hear a gun cocking ... and cut to black.
- Epic Fail: Somehow Fry and Zoidberg wind up getting attacked by a giant squid, not to mention "leaving space as [they] know it", looking for a robot who never left the planet they started on. Also, the protesters' effort to stop the Juan Valdez.
- Explosive Breeder: Dark matter causes the penguins to breed faster, leading to overpopulation. It's even stated that the males have started laying eggs.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Penguins look down on puffins. Bender is able to rally the penguins into running away by declaring standing still is "puffin talk".
- Bender corrupts the penguins into attacking everything that isn't also black and white.Leela: They used to be such peaceful birds. I suppose this was your doing.
Bender: Yup. It's like I taught 'em: if it ain't black and white, peck, scratch and bite.
- Feathered Fiend: Bender turns the penguin colony into killer birds that attack anything that isn't black and white. At the end of the episode, they even arm themselves with guns.
- Foreshadowing: When Bender reboots in Leela's presence, he does so as human, despite Leela's long-standing belief that she's an alien. Anyone who watches this again after "Leela's Homeworld" would know exactly why this happened.
- Forgot About His Powers: Bender thinks he's safe when he cuts himself off from the penguins by breaking off an ice floe and floating away. The penguins promptly jump in the water to continue the pursuit.Bender: Oh right, they can swim.
- Gasp!: The environmentalist group gasps after each problem that Free Waterfall, Sr. says dark matter has caused. One man even becomes injured from "over-gasping".
- Going Native: After landing on his head, Bender reboots in the middle of a penguin colony. Considering that his reboot interface makes him imprint on the first species he sees, Bender is essentially brainwashed into adopting the language and eventually, the lifestyle of penguins.
- Gun Nut: Every member of Penguins Unlimited. One of their members is the head of the NRA.
- Guest-Star Party Member: After Leela quits, Zoidberg joins the crew of the Planet Express ship.
- Identical Stranger: One of the penguin activists/hunters looks like Scruffy, Planet Express' janitor.
- Identity Amnesia: Bender, after hitting his head, reboots into "penguin mode", leading to him thinking he's a penguin.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: Bender assures Fry that his "mighty robo-logic" is immune to the trappings that the rank of Captain gives to a human ego, then puts on an archaic captain's hat and starts ordering Fry and Zoidberg around.
- Insignia Rip-Off Ritual: When Leela refuses to tow the tanker through Pluto's penguin preserve, the Professor insists she turn in her 'Captain's Jacket'...even though it's just her normal jacket.
- It Has Been an Honor: Zoidberg shouts "It's been an honor to serve under you, sir!" to Fry as they come under attack from the giant squid.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Free Waterfall Sr. may be a gun-toting redneck, but he is right in saying that the rampant overpopulation taking place will eventually result in the penguins starving themselves to death.
- The Napoleon: The first thing Bender does is put on a Napoleon hat. then he goes mad with power.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It's quite possible most of this would have been avoided if Leela had stayed in command of the ship, as she would have certainly taken more care while piloting the oil tanker and may have avoided the whole accident.
- Not So Above It All: Leela admits she enjoys blowing up dams.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Free Waterfall Sr. is killed by penguins in front of his father, who vows to avenge his death.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: A tuxedo is all it takes to disguise Bender among the penguins.
- Polar Penguins: The icy dwarf planet Pluto became a preserve for penguins.
- Police Are Useless: URL and Smitty are Bender's assigned parole officers but are too busy having a hug-fest to notice Bender's sneaking off.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: Zoidberg becomes one to Bender after the latter becomes captain.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The tanker crash is, naturally, based on the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the "go to" oil spill in fiction in The '90s and early 2000s.
- Running Gag: Free Waterfall, Sr.'s death establishes the death of Waterfalls as one.
- Shout-Out:
- After getting munched by the orca, Bender whistles R2-D2 style.
- The killer whale beaching itself on the ice floe to devour the penguins is from the ending to Orca: The Killer Whale.
- The dark matter tanker is named Juan Valdez, after the mascot for Colombian coffee and as a pun on the Exxon Valdez.
- The title is a reference to Robert Stroud, The Birdman Of Alcatraz (who ironically only had pet birds in Leavenworth Penitentiary; when he was transferred to Alcatraz, he wasn't allowed any pets).
- Shown Their Work: The episode depicts real-life hunting behavior of orcas, by thrashing their prey around in water and throwing themselves onto ice floes to eat penguins.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Bender, unsurprisingly, goes completely power-mad on being put in charge of the ship, and acts like he's some great military hero adorned with medals, despite Fry pointing out that they're just bottle-caps and pieces of pepperoni.
- Super-Speed Reading: When Fry asks Bender if he's read the captain's handbook, Bender takes it from him, flips through all the pages in a second, and says "I have now." Being a robot, he really means it.
- This Is Gonna Suck: When Leela sees the oil-leaking tanker flying towards her and the rest of the protesters (who are screaming and panicking) she simply rolls her eye and sighs in resignation before pulling up the hood of her parka and zipping it up so only her eye is showing as the wave of oil crashes down towards her.
