Publication Information
- Host : RoboCop
- Host : Alex Murphy
- Real name : Alexander James Murphy
- Nickname(s) : RoboCop "Murph"
- Species : Human (cyborg)
- Gender : Male
- Occupation : Detroit Cybernetic Police Officer
- Title : OCP Crime Prevention Unit 001
- Family : Russell Murphy (father)
- Spouse(s) : Ellen Murphy (1987, deceased), Nancy Murphy (1994), Clara Murphy (2014)
- Children : James Daniel Murphy (David Murphy in the 2014 film)
- Police File : OD5839484E09, Murphy, Alex J., 548 Primrose Ln, Detroit, MI, Grade : 1 00 33
- Deceased : Service: 7 Merit - Miranda Award, GD Conduct, BRVRY
Dead or alive, you're coming with me.
RoboCop is programmed to follow three main prime directives (accompanied by a mysterious fourth), which are comparable with Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics":
First Directive : Serve the public trust
The First Directive places RoboCop to help the civilians in any ways possible and protect them from any lethal or non-lethal harm. This places RoboCop as a police civil servant in the series and is the moral directive programmed into him. This also disables him from prosecuting, arresting or killing innocent civilians or act in any way against them unless if he is attacked by them, which then activates the Third Directive.
Second Directive : Protect the innocent
The Second Directive, translated as innocent until proven guilty, places RoboCop in a situation that although he can kill criminals, he only can kill criminals that have committed a serious crime (etc. murder), and as such, can only arrest the minor criminals. However, he can engage against them in physical (and possible lethal) combat if they physically attack him.
Third Directive : Uphold the law
The Third Directive establishes RoboCop/Murphy as a police officer and as such he has to protect and serve. This directive forces him to serve as a police officer, and as such, he cannot go on strikes, for instance, and it is impossible for him to be fired or request termination of his employment. The directive also disables him from directly attacking or terminating a police officer, but he can arrest one if proven guilty.
Fourth Directive: Classified
The Fourth Directive, which is programmed to be hidden from RoboCop unless it becomes relevant, renders him physically incapable of arresting or injuring any senior OCP employee: "Any attempt to arrest a senior OCP employee results in shutdown." This is Jones' contribution to RoboCop's psychological profile. Jones informs RoboCop that he is an OCP product and not an ordinary police officer. As a result, RoboCop is unable to act against the corrupt Jones until the Old Man terminates Jones's employment with the company, allowing RoboCop to act against him.
Directive four has been erased twice, in each of the sequels. RoboCop 2 sees the deletion of all of the directives; after Dr. Faxx has RoboCop reprogrammed with so many new directives that he is nearly incapable of taking action, RoboCop is forced to subject himself to high voltage electricity to clear his database. In RoboCop 3, Directive Four is declassified and reworded as "Never oppose an OCP officer." It is eliminated so that RoboCop could avenge Lewis's death.
By the time of RoboCop: Prime Directives, Directive Four was not present at all, but a saboteur instituted one which is stated as "Terminate John T. Cable." In RoboCop: The Series, Directive Four was also not present. At the end of Prime Directives, all his directives were erased, but RoboCop stated to his son that he would do "What I do: Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law," noting that he would keep his directives by his own will, not through the imposition of programming.
Upgrades, weapons and equipment
Robocop carries guns designed for him and is equipped with enhanced reflexes, speed and strength, visual and auditory capabilities.
- Auto-9
- Cobra Assault Cannon
- Machine gun / rocket launcher
- Flightpack / recharging station
- Mini-gun / cannon
- Data spike
- Explosives
- Ramset / Rambolt
Perception
RoboCop's vision 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). In the television series, he is capable of lie detection by means of a polygraph.
Body structure
Various displays and interpretations range from RoboCop being mostly electronic and mechanical, while others depict his structure as balanced between the two. In the original print of the film, director Van recorded the death scene largely destroying Murphy completely to the point where crime lord Clarence Boddicker shoots Murphy in the head at point blank range and is shown blowing out the complete rear left side of Murphy's head which would necessitate the computer running RoboCop with Murphy's only partial brain interacting with the computer.
This scene and successive conflict structure was removed from the original release though the back head explosion scene and destructive showing of Murphy's head is included in most successive home releases as a deleted scene. In the released theatrical version and original VHS home releases, only the front of Murphy's head and the entry wound are shown (visible when RoboCop removes his helmet in the final act). Alex Murphy's brain, nervous system and personality apparently remain intact; he is able to fully reassert himself after most of the external controlling systems are destroyed and punctuated at the end of the film, where he states his identity as "Murphy" rather than RoboCop.
While all of Murphy's limbs have been replaced with "total body prosthesis" (as indicated with the scene where Murphy's left arm is announced as salvaged) Murphy's nervous system is maintained. The first movie lets the viewer assume that some of Murphy's organs were transplanted into the cyborg (without clearly stating which ones and to which extent), since he needs to feed on a "rudimentary paste that sustains his organic systems". Donald Johnson (played by Felton Perry) comments Robocop's paste "tastes like baby food".
RoboCop's reconstructed external 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. In RoboCop and RoboCop 3 the body armor is gray, and in RoboCop 2 the armor is blue. RoboCop's hands, midsection, and neck armor are black. As demonstrated in RoboCop, the body armor can sustain thousands of armor-piercing rounds before damage begins to appear on the armor. It is also highly resistant to heat, as in RoboCop, he was unaffected after being caught in a gasoline 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, and is attached with screws. When the visor is removed, only Murphy's face (which is grafted onto a completely mechanical skull) from the top of the neck up is exposed. When the helmet is removed, the back of his head exposes part of the metal casing and some minor mechanical elements.
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 face 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 where Boddicker shot him in the head, though he tells Murphy's wife, in RoboCop 2, that "they made this to honor him." After touching it, she says, "it's cold." In RoboCop 3, Dr. Marie Lazarus, RoboCop's chief technician, stated that Murphy's face was indeed transplanted onto a mechanical skull, and that it is not a replica.
In the 2014 RoboCop reboot, RoboCop's body is significantly less bulky than in the original films. The remaining parts of Murphy's body are specified as his head and brain, one eye, his lungs and right hand. Unlike the previous films, RoboCop's head is contained within a helmet instead of his face being transplanted onto a metal skull, and his visor can flip up and down at will. He is initially painted black as a marketing decision by Omnicorp CEO Raymond Sellars, but following Sellars' death at the end of the film, he is given a new body by Dr. Dennett Norton that is colored silver, much like his body in the original films.
In RoboCop: Creating a Legend, a bonus feature on the RoboCop: 20th Anniversary DVD, it is stated 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 he saw the reflection of a robotic image instead of his original image of humanity.
See also:
- RoboCop - Character
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