RoboCop(orOCPCrimePrevention Unit 001) 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 crimegang. 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. RoboCop also made an appearance on World Championship Wrestling's 1990 pay-per-view event Capital Combat, rescuing wrestler Sting from the Four Horsemen by ripping the door off a cage Sting was locked in.
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. Murphy's death was so violent, that parts of it had to be cut from the theratrical release
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. Originally, the ruthless Senior President Dick Jones was developing a fully robotic unit called ED-209, with plans to secure a long-term contract with the military for replacement parts and service. However, ED-209 severely malfunctioned during a demonstration and killed an employee posing as a criminal, even though he dropped his weapon. Ambitious junior executive Robert Morton used this as a justified reason to go over Jones' head and pitch his "RoboCop Program" directly to OCP's CEO, the "Old Man".
Morton and his team restructured the police force to place 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 of on-the-street law enforcement. Murphy was killed during an encounter with Clarence Boddiker and his body was subsequently used to become the prototype RoboCop designated as OCP Crime Prevention Unit 001.
In RoboCop 2, OCP again attempts to replicate the success of Murphy with a new program, however all of the candidates selected go insane up on activation and commit suicide, due to the severe mental strain of having a cyborg body. To find a suitable personality, Dr. Faxx turns to a criminal element in the drug lord Cain, reasoning that someone with a strongmegalomania would relish the power of the new body instead. Upon his death, Cain's brain and spinal column are harvested and placed in a larger, more powerful body, referred to as RoboCop 2, which more closely resembles the ED-209 unit than a humanoid shape. Ultimately, Cain's addiction to the drug Nuke proves to be his undoing, as RoboCop distracts him with a vial of the drug long enough to remove his brain casing and smash it on the pavement.
RoboCop 3 features a katana-wielding assassin in the employ of the Kanemitsu Corporation, later revealed to be a cyborg with the model name "Otomo", based on the RoboCop concept.
RoboCop is programmed to follow four prime directives, which are comparable with Issac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics":
"Serve the public trust"
"Protect the innocent"
"Uphold the law"
(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 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. At the end of Robocop: Prime Directives, all his directives are erased, but Robocop states to his son that he will do "What he do: Serve the public trust, protect the innocent and uphold the Law" noting that he will keep his directives by his own will, and not imposed.
