RoboCop is a fictional cyborg Detroit police officer from the feature film of the same name. The character begins as a human police officer Alex J. Murphy, who is killed in the line of duty by a vicious crime gang. Subsequently, Murphy is transformed into the cyborg entity by the megacorporation Omni Consumer Products. The character's famous catchphrase is "Dead or alive, you're coming with me."

Since his 1987 film debut, the RoboCop character and franchise have been exercised through numerous entertainment media including multiple television series, comic books, video games, and action figures.

History

Police Officer Alex Murphy was serving with the Detroit Police Department when its funding and administration was taken over by the private corporation Omni Consumer Products. Murphy was a devout Irish Catholic and a mild-mannered family man, living with his wife, Ellen, and his son, Jimmy. To provide a good role model for his son, Murphy began practicing the gun twirl move of his son's hero, a cop named T.J. Lazer portrayed on a television show. Murphy’s psychological profile stated that he was top of his class at the police academy and possessed a fierce sense of duty (which helped him adapt to his RoboCop body). This dedication explained why Murphy didn’t exhibit the negative attitudes and statements shared by his fellow officers when he was transferred to the Metro West Precinct, the most violent area of Old Detroit. The police dissatisfaction was a result of OCP’s free-enterprise marketing and efficiency, mismanagement, which lead to the deaths of many police officers in the precinct.

Murphy was partnered with Officer Anne Lewis, a veteran of Old Detroit. During a pursuit and subsequent raid against a crime lord named Clarence Boddicker in a steel mill, Murphy was captured and tortured by Boddicker’s gang. Severely wounding him with their combat shotguns firing armor piercing shells, his entire right arm was completely destroyed, and his organs were completely shredded. While surrounded by the gang and asked for his opinion of Boddicker, Murphy defiantly maintained his sense of duty and ideals of justice by stating, “Buddy, I think you’re slime.” While Lewis was incapacitated, Boddicker executed Murphy with a gunshot to the head. Murphy was transported to the hospital emergency room where he died and his remains were used by OCP in the construction of RoboCop.

[edit] The RoboCop Program

OCP held a contract to fund and run the Detroit Police Department. Security Concepts was the division that provided oversight for the police. In order to supplement the police force that was overwhelmed with crime, Security Concepts began developing robotic law enforcement units. Executive Robert Morton developed the RoboCop program. Morton and his team restructured the police force and placed prime candidates with high aptitude and experience in law enforcement into high crime areas where death in the line of duty was highly probable. Once a death occurred, the deceased officer would be used in the construction of a cyborg law enforcement unit, since they had already signed waivers allowing OCP to do whatever they pleased with their corpses. This unit would be afforded the fastest reflexes made possible by modern technology, a memory assisted by an on-board computer, and programmed with a lifetime experience in on-the-street law enforcement. Murphy was used to become the prototype RoboCop and designated OCP Crime Prevention Unit 001.

[edit] Prime directives

RoboCop is programmed to follow four prime directives:

1. "Serve the public trust"
2. "Protect the innocent"
3. "Uphold the law"
4. (Classified)

The fourth directive, which he was programmed to be unaware of unless it became relevant, rendered him physically incapable of placing any senior OCP employee under arrest: "any attempt to arrest a senior OCP employee results in shutdown". Senior Vice President Richard "Dick" Jones stated that Directive 4 was his contribution to RoboCop's psychological profile. Jones informed RoboCop that he was an OCP product and not an ordinary police officer. In the first movie, it made RoboCop unable to act against corrupt Jones until the chairman of OCP shouted, "Dick, you're fired!"

In RoboCop 3, Directive Four is rewritten as "Never oppose an OCP officer". Also noteworthy is that Directive 4 has been erased twice, in each of the sequels. RoboCop 2 sees the deletion of all of the directives- after he was rebuilt with so many sub-directives that he was practically incapable of taking action, forcing RoboCop to subject himself to a potentially lethal electric shock to clear his database, but in Robocop 3, just Directive 4 was deleted, so RoboCop could get revenge on OCP and avenge Anne Lewis' murder, and in the miniseries, Robocop: Prime Directives, Directive 4 was "terminate John T. Cable". In the TV series directive 4 was not seen at all.

[edit] Weapons
RoboCop holstering weapon

[edit] Auto-9

RoboCop's primary weapon; it is (presumably) a 9mm handgun with a large barrel extension that fires in three-round bursts. The gun remains stored in a mechanical holster which deploys from Robocop's right leg. The prop for the weapon is a modified Beretta 93R. Though unnamed in the films, the script referenced the Auto-9 by name and it subsequently made it into promotional materials including action figures. Some Japanese airsoft manufacturers have made BB gun replicas. It was also modified to not fire unless Robocop is the one using it.

[edit] Cobra Assault Cannon

The Cobra Assault Cannon used in RoboCop could fire explosive rounds equivalent to that of a grenade launcher and is based on the Barrett M82A1 sniper rifle. The version used in RoboCop 2 has a smaller build and fires smaller explosive rounds. This version uses the .50 BMG Pauza P-50 rifle.

[edit] Machine gun/rocket launcher

This weapon made its appearance in RoboCop 3 and was never referenced by name other than being called a "weapon arm" in promotional action figures, and a "gun arm" by the production team. To use it, RoboCop removes his left hand and replaces it with the weapon assembly. It contains a 9mm machine gun, a flamethrower and a small missile launcher with a projectile potent enough to destroy an armored vehicle.

[edit] Flightpack/recharging station

A large jetpack that allows RoboCop to fly. It also doubles as a replenishing system for when RoboCop's battery system is low on power. As seen in RoboCop 3, the jetpack allows Murphy to overcome his relatively limited mobility for tactical advantage in combat. Referred to in the film as a "flightpack" and by production as a "jetpack", some Japanese schematics also mention "Gyropack" as a name.

[edit] Mini-gun/cannon

This weapon appears in Frank Miller's RoboCop comic book and was originally meant to be RoboCop's arm cannon prior to the final product in RoboCop 3.

[edit] Perception

RoboCop has an internal zoom capability for better aim as well as tracking. RoboCop also has different vision modes but the only one that has been used in the movies was thermal vision in RoboCop and RoboCop 3. His systems use a grid which is crucial to RoboCop's targeting as well as bullet trajectory (allowing him to make ricochet shots), though apparently the targeting reticle of RoboCop is internal to him, as seen in the first movie. As seen in RoboCop 2, RoboCop's programming prevents him from targeting children, which allowed Hob to shoot RoboCop and escape the Nuke drug lab. He also has a recorder which can detect voice fluctuations and stress as well as play back audio/visual. This recording capability enables RoboCop to document any situation he encounters with perfect recall and unbiased neutrality, with his memory being deemed through legal agreement as admissible evidence in a court of law. As seen in RoboCop 2, RoboCop possesses a directional microphone with which he can track conversations from a distance. It would seem to be very sensitive, as he can hear vehicles approaching from afar despite being indoors (as he did when he was hiding out in RoboCop 3).

[edit] Body structure

RoboCop's body, while incorporating portions of Alex Murphy's living tissue, is largely electronic and mechanical. This interior structure is protected by an armored shell composed of "titanium laminated with Kevlar" making RoboCop incredibly resilient against both bombs and bullets, as well as extreme impacts such as being hit by cars and falling off skyscrapers. As demonstrated in RoboCop, the body armor can sustain thousands of armor-piercing rounds before damage begins to appear on the armor itself. It is also highly resistant to heat, as in RoboCop, he was unaffected after being caught in a gas station explosion and in RoboCop 3 when he was briefly set aflame. His visor is made of the same material and a black strip of bulletproof anti-fog glass which protects the cranium apparatus and eyes. The visor also has an undercloth of Kevlar which protects the neck and covers up any wires etc. It should also be noted that the visor conceals most of Alex Murphy's face inside it. The visor is attached with screws. When the visor is removed only the front of Murphy's face, from the top of the neck up, is exposed; the back of his head is entirely mechanical.

In RoboCop 2, RoboCop's right arm contained a display that alerted personnel to his health status. RoboCop's hands also contain actuators strong enough to crush every bone in a human hand (about 400 foot pounds). His right hand also contains a spike (referred to by fans as a "dataspike" and by production as the "terminal strip") which is used to retrieve or display data from any computer bank with a corresponding port. At the end of the first film, the jack is also used as a stabbing weapon against the antagonist Clarence Boddicker. RoboCop is extremely strong, able to lift the front of the average car over his head with one arm or resist the crushing effort of a car crusher, as seen in the TV series (episodes 5 and 21, respectively). He was designed to be able "to penetrate virtually any building," and breaks locks with ease.

In Frank Miller's RoboCop, RoboCop stores his reserve box magazines in his right wrist; this is never shown in the film series. He is seen reloading the Auto-9 in RoboCop 2 with a magazine already in hand at the start of the scene. In the later television series, the holster area of his left thigh is used to store grenades, though on some schematic drawings the same area is used to store an emergency oxygen tank.

RoboCop implies that only Murphy's head and brain was used in the construction of RoboCop, as Morton states that "total body prosthesis" was an agreed-upon parameter. It is unclear in the first two films whether or not RoboCop's human face is merely a replica of Murphy's, as it contains a scar in the location where Boddicker shot him in the head, though he himself tells Murphy's wife (in RoboCop 2) that "they made this to honor him." After touching it, she says, "it's cold." In the script of the same film, it was initially planned that Cain and crew would remove Murphy's face during their attack on him, to reveal a Terminator-esque skull underneath. In RoboCop 3, Dr. Marie Lazarus, RoboCop's chief technician, stated that Murphy's face was indeed transplanted onto the mechanical skull, and that it is not a replica. In the first film it is mentioned that RoboCop eats a "rudimentary paste that sustains his organic systems." In RoboCop: Creating a Legend, a bonus feature on the RoboCop: 20th Anniversary DVD, it is speculated that Murphy's face was removed from his corpse and implanted on the cyborg's head to give RoboCop a sense of identity. This psychological disruption RoboCop may have experienced is explained from the basis that a person whose memory has been erased would still possess the memory of being human and would suffer a psychotic breakdown if that person saw the reflection of a robotic image instead of their original image of humanity.