Robot Hell (now with additional hell!)

April 27, 2013 7:50 PM

Futurama's "Robot Hell" song as performed by the cast of Team Fortress 2.
posted by mightygodking (24 comments total)

Got a good beat and easy to drink to.
posted by vrakatar at 7:54 PM on April 27, 2013

Personal highlight: Leela as turret.
posted by figurant at 7:55 PM on April 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh I'm sorry I'm projecting my dreams onto the internet again.
posted by The Whelk at 7:56 PM on April 27, 2013 [12 favorites]

Good lord I love this song, and this treatment was well done.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:31 PM on April 27, 2013

And I love the touch that it's not that he's engaging in cockfights, or promoting them, but fixing them. It's the extra touch of evil that makes it Bender.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:33 PM on April 27, 2013 [5 favorites]

Futurama's "Robot Hell" song as performed by the cast of Team Fortress 2.

That it definitely is.
posted by kafziel at 8:56 PM on April 27, 2013

That song is so closely tied to the characters and the plot of the episode, it's a weird choice to animate with different figures.
posted by painquale at 9:09 PM on April 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

The animator's youtube page has a number of pretty cool videos, including this Team Fortress treatment of the Genie's big song from Aladdin and some pretty smooth lego animations.

It's making me want to dig back into Source Filmmaker. Maybe this time I'll actually learn something...
posted by sandswipe at 9:55 PM on April 27, 2013 [3 favorites]

The only downside is that Sniper and Medic got bit roles.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:03 PM on April 27, 2013

I would watch just about anything performed by the TF2 cast. Someone please make a mega-post!
posted by not_on_display at 10:06 PM on April 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Someone please make a mega-post!

There's a lot of TF2 and PONY crossover videos. Just saying, you guys probably don't want me to make that post.
posted by JHarris at 12:44 AM on April 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

is this the post where we discuss our feelings about the second cancelation of Futurama ? Because I feel .... conflicted.
posted by Pendragon at 2:52 AM on April 28, 2013

I'm still upset about the second cancellation. I think that, while the show's quality has been uneven, we've still gotten some excellent episodes from the Comedy Central run. What do you, the viewer at home, think?
posted by JHarris at 3:01 AM on April 28, 2013

I favor the cancellation, because I saw Simpson's Episode 525 _{(eet steenks)} and we not need more of this.

Then again, even Shakespeare wrote Hamlet II, the Swedish Empire Strikes Back. Or not.
posted by hexatron at 6:25 AM on April 28, 2013

Well that was just fantastic. Is the robot model buried in Team Fortress 2 somewhere? It's certainly not one of the main characters. Or did the animator make that character and rig it himself?

The original number is one of the great standout scenes in Futurama. I love the grand tradition of musical numbers in cartoons; this one is particularly complex and full of detail.
posted by Nelson at 8:00 AM on April 28, 2013

I think the robot soldier is from the recent Mann vs. Machine update that added robot enemies and a special horde-mode game type for them.
posted by chrominance at 8:53 AM on April 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

sandswipe, that ending on the Genie's clip is great.
posted by tickingclock at 9:19 AM on April 28, 2013

Yeah, it is. That's where the Spy gets his shiny metal hat, too.

And wow, that was utterly fantastic. I especially love how he synced up the sound effects (so Bender's arm getting pulled off seamlessly becomes Spy/Robot Devil removing his hat from the spike, for instance); that is serious attention to detail.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:56 AM on April 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is an excellent opportunity to ask something I've been wondering about for a long time. Why is it that musical numbers about or in hell are always swing type things? I think most of the examples I can think of are cartoons (this, Monkeybone, several classic toons) but also stuff like Squirrel Nut Zippers' "Hell".

Where does this come from?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:22 PM on April 28, 2013

Serious answer: Maybe because ragtime, the blues, and upbeat jazz were associated with evil and moral corruption by ye olde racist America? They were called the Devil's music, after all.

Jokey answer: Because devils have horns.
posted by painquale at 5:47 PM on April 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

Also, this was a pretty big thing in the history of animation
posted by The Whelk at 6:26 PM on April 28, 2013

Joakim Ziegler: "Why is it that musical numbers about or in hell are always swing type things? I think most of the examples I can think of are cartoons"

Dethklok would like to have a word with you. [NSFW]
posted by not_on_display at 8:07 PM on April 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Joakim Ziegler, don't forget about Deconstructing Harry or this number from Buffy, both of which also fit your theme.

My guess is that this trope arises out of the prohibition-era jazz clubs. A secret underworld of drink, drugs, sex and hip new music (not to mention scandalous race-mixing!) Hell became in certain interpretations essentially a sinister speakeasy, because that's how a lot of people saw speakeasy's already.

Is my guess, anyway.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:31 AM on April 29, 2013

This little number from Neil Young's Greendale fits the pattern as well.
posted by figurant at 9:32 AM on April 29, 2013