"I've been very patient, Johnson. Five months!... Nineteen billion dollars. I wanna see some results!"―The Old Man[src]
The RoboCop 2 program was an OCP initiative designed to combat the new and huge wave of crime sweeping the city due to the new designer drug nuke, and to help protect workers during the construction of Delta City.
The project was first headed by Donald Johnson and Dr. Schenk. Johnson had tremendous difficulty finding a suitable candidate like officer Alex Murphy - a dutiful, inherently good person who was reconstructed as RoboCop. This led to failures as the cyborgs could not accept their new, inhuman forms. A psychologist named Dr. Juliette Faxx was to persuade the Old Man to try using a nuke addict in the hope that his dependence on the drug would lead to better control over the cyborg.
The final product of the project was achieved through the use of deceased Nuke Cult leader Cain.
History[]
Prototype failures[]
The initial RoboCop 2 was a bipedal machine whose entire body was mechanical and possessed his remaining human head in the carapace. Almost immediately it went rogue, disturbed by the psychosis of being a machine, the robot attempting to fulfill its mission it immediately acted, shooting one techie dead and wounding a second, before shooting itself through the cranial dome, destroying itself. A third technician slithered to the ground attempting to fake death and through this act, he was unharmed.[1]
The second prototype, a mostly humanoid, almost skeletal type of cyborg, was more tragic. After stepping through the doors and presenting itself, it attempted to remove its suffocating helmet to expose its human face, having none, it severed its life support lines. The abomination's skull-like visage managed a gruelling wail of distress before it fell face first to the floor, dead for a second time.[1]
Psychology behind the failures[]
All attempts to replicate the success of Alex Murphy as RoboCop ended in miserable failure. Further analysis as to why various candidates failed suggests the human attachment to their prior human bodies and lives. While good officers, the mental state of these officers revolved around their human bodies, their families, and lifestyles, all traits they would lose as cyborgs. [1]
The officers when traumatically stripped of their human bodies and placed in unfeeling mechanical bodies that prevented from reuniting with their families or resuming their personal lives, caused them to lose all sense of self and thus became suicidal. Murphy's success lay in his personality, namely his desire to live and uphold the law. [1]
Dr. Faxx concluded that Alex Murphy's strong sense of duty and his staunch Irish Catholic religion – thus his opposition to suicide – were the reasons behind his ability to adapt to his resurrection as RoboCop.[1]
Final RoboCop 2 design[]
The subject for what finally became RoboCop 2 one was a nuke addict, as suggested by Dr. Faxx. In theory, this may have been a successful idea, Faxx convinces the Old Man to let her control the project, this time using someone who wanted to be a robot or more than a man, even a criminal with a desire for power and immortality. However, this particular nuke addict was Cain, already pre-mad and pre-psychotic, even before being killed and reformatted into RoboCop 2.[1]
Notes[]
- The stop motion designers revealed that the RoboCop 2 designs were designed as the worst bodies a human could imagine.
- It said the first RoboCop 2 prototype was based around the idea of a human head encased in a clunky giant diving bell.
- The second prototype was based around a metallic skeleton with a helmet with only small slits for its eyes and mouths.