The Bizarre, Sausage-Obsessed Character That Inspired Futurama's Bender
Bender, the alcoholic robot from "Futurama," is one of the primary protagonists of the show, but might also be considered one of its central villains. Bender (John DiMaggio) is an unabashed kleptomaniac and heavy drinker who mugs people regularly, sometimes takes hostages, siphons blood out of humans when they're not looking, and encourages people to beat their children on live TV. He even once worked as a professional stalker, creeping out the robot TV star Calculon (Maurice LaMarche). In one 2012 episode called "Fun on a Bun," he accidentally fed his best friend Fry (Billy West) into a sausage grinder, turning him into hot dogs that he unwittingly served to people at Oktoberfest. Leela (Katey Sagal), Fry's sometime paramour, even had a few healthy bites before realizing the truth.
Don't worry. It is later revealed that Fry is safe. But for a while, it looked like Bender was complicit in sausage-based cannibalism. Bender was only capable of feeling so much remorse in that situation.
And speaking of sausages, it seems that they had a passing relationship with the voice DiMaggio conceived for Bender. In early episodes of "Futurama," Bender's voice was a little more strained and slurred, leaning into the fact that the robot was required to stay a little bit intoxicated at all times to keep his batteries charged. As the show progressed, Bender became louder and more brash, taking on a "drunken bullhorn" quality."
As it turns out, DiMaggio based the voice of Bender on three specific figures, figures he talked about at the 2023 Rhode Island Comic Con, hosted by the podcast Funbearable.
The three faces of Bender
DiMaggio has clearly given Bender a lot of thought, and laid out his influences plainly, saying:
"Bender was three things. Bender was every drunk at the end of every bar on the East Coast, northeast coast specifically. You know, from Cape May to the top of Maine, you know?"
Cape May is a peninsula in the south of New Jersey. The geographical stretch DiMaggio describes includes about 650 miles of coastline, and covers areas of New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, a short strip of New Hampshire, and Maine itself. DiMaggio himself was born in North Plainfield, New Jersey, and attended Rutgers University nearby. He knows what he's talking about when it comes to New Jersey drunks. He continued:
"And then my man Slim Pickens from 'Blazing Saddles.' 'What in the hell in the wide, wide world of sports is a-goin' on!?'
Slim Pickens, of course, played the sniveling cowboy and slave driver Taggart in Mel Brooks' 1974 comedy "Blazing Saddles." Pickens was a long-working cowboy actor who appeared in dozens of Westerns in his career on TV and on the big screen. In the early 1950s, Pickens played a cowboy version of himself for multiple cowpoke flicks directed by William Witney and put out by Republic Pictures. He also appeared in Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." He was the one who rode the atomic bomb like a rodeo horse.
Naturally, DiMaggio can do a crackerjack Slim Pickens impersonation. Professional voice actors, you will learn, are typically very good mimics.
How the sausage is made
The third source of Bender's voice is a person known only to DiMaggio:
"I had a buddy of mine, Ralph Colombino from college, I went to Rutgers with, and he used to do a character called Charlie the Sausage Lover. And Charlie was ... and I made him do it, and I would do it back and forth with him. 'Sausage, sausage, fun to have, fun to have. You can eat all kinds of sausage. Italian sausage, sweet sausage, three sausage, dry sausage, you know, ooh! Hot sausage, hot Italian sausage, then you get the supersonic sausage, sausages! You can have all kinds of German sausages and wurst, wurst sausage you have a wurst kind of sausage.'"
Comedy gold. The voice DiMaggio uses seems to be an enthused greasy spoon chef excited to share with the world the glories of sausages. This may be relatable, as close friends, especially in acting circles, foster weird characters and in-jokes that will never be understandable to the outside world. Charlie the Sausage Lover seems to be one of those characters. DiMaggio recalls he and Colombino trading sausages in school. DiMaggio said: "Then I just put the three of them in the blender together and kind of, you know, 'It's shinier 'n yours, you meatbag!'" Bender was born.
Ralph Colombino, incidentally, has also remained in acting since his days at Rutgers, having appeared on Broadway extensively. He also appeared in and directed a few shorts and low-budget films in his career. Mainly, Colombino serves as artistic director at the Actor's Playground. Although it's not listed in his credits, he might lay claim to one-third of Bender.