Of course, it was not the evil corporation’s intention to build a genocidal robot, as that would be bad for PR. Rather, things seemed promising until Robot Santa’s nice/naughty detector got messed up on his maiden voyage, presumably due to some sort of programming error. It’s only in this week’s new season 11 episode, when Professor Farnsworth travels through time to cure Robot Santa of his need to purge the world of its naughty citizens, that we learn the whole truth: it was Farnsworth, thinking he was pre-emptively fixing Santa’s sensor right before it went haywire, who actually caused the error in the first place.
“I’m the one who made Santa evil!” he laments, and it could’ve been a huge deal. After all, Farnsworth is now single-handedly responsible for over 200 years of murder and mayhem, and for soiling Santa’s good name to the point where Amy tells her children earlier, “I’m sorry, kids; I never wanted you to know Santa was real.” But any such dwellings on the ramifications of Farnsworth’s crimes against humanity are averted by the reveal that Bender and Zoidberg have accidentally saved the day. Trying to get revenge on the crew by drunk-driving back in time to last Xmas to kidnap Robot Santa, the two unlikely friends accidentally go forward in time and kidnap this year’s Robot Santa. Then they murder him and turn his body parts into party appliances.
Bender and Zoidberg spend the second half of the episode thinking they’ve murdered the good Santa, but luckily their incompetence and malevolence have gone unpunished once again. “You’re heroes!” Farnsworth declares, and so concludes what’s turned out to be a surprisingly wholesome episode. Everyone’s together, all is forgiven, and the evil Robot Santa is now dead. Or is he?