Viva Mars Vegas

"Viva Mars Vegas" is the one hundred and twenty-sixth episode of Futurama, the twelfth of the seventh production season and the ninth broadcast season. The Planet Express crew stages a casino heist to recover stolen property from the Robot Mafia.

Act I: "Category Five Sucker Now Arriving."
The Robot Mafia steals some money from a delivery company. Meanwhile, the crew decides to go to a casino in Mars Vegas. Zoidberg is excited to go, but Amy tells him not to come because of his poor money managing skills. Dejected, he goes back to his dumpster. Meanwhile, the Robot Mafia is being chased by the police, so they decide to dump their money in Zoidberg's dumpster, where Zoidberg takes it. Zoidberg goes to Mars Vegas, and after a few risky bets, he loses all of the money. When he gets back to the dumpster, he finds it occupied by the Robot Mafia wanting their money back.

Act II: "Mr. Wong, we have a mafia proposal for you. Your casino...give it to us."
After Zoidberg tells them that he lost all of the money to the casino, they try to kill them, but Zoidberg escapes by triggering his ink defense, which covers him in ink. He goes to the Planet Express building, where Professor Farnsworth accidentally uses a ink remover to make all the ink on Zoidberg invisible. This makes Zoidberg invisible as well, and then the Robot Mafia break into the PE bulding and look for Zoidberg. Because Zoidberg is invisible, he cannot be found by them. The mafia decide to get their money back by taking over the casino. In the process, they take away all of Leo and Inez Wong's property, including their mansion, which reduces them to living in the area they set aside for their employees. However, Amy comes up with a plan to get the money back, with a little help from Zoidberg.

Act III: "He STINKS like the inside of a Ton-ton."
Using a smelly shrimp cart to hide Zoidberg's stench, the crew goes upstairs to the area with the safe. Leela, Amy, and Fry, who are pushing the cart, pretend to have a broken wheel so that they have a reason to stay up there, while Professor Farnsworth, Hermes, and Bender distract Donbot to keep him from closing the safe door prematurely. Meanwhile, Zoidberg gets into the safe and eats all of the money, except a few bills he coughs up, making it just as invisible as he is. He also eats a black box. However, after eating all of this, he becomes too heavy to move, so the Professor, Hermes, and Farnsworth have to carry him out until they can get him on the shrimp cart. They had intended to escape through the roof, but Zoidberg's weight made the elevator fall to the first floor, forcing them to escape through the main lobby. Zoidberg starts coughing up money as they go. Despite this, they almost make it to the exit, until a blind guard, Blind Joe catches them. He tries to force them to give him the money, but Amy tries to make a deal with him. Because the guard is a Native Martian, he doesn't like making deals with the Wong Family. Amy says that this is because he doesn't know about the original deal, which only gave the Wong family the right to occupy the land for 100 years before they gave the land back to the Native Martians. Because of this, the Native Martians own the casino, and they kick the Robot Mafia out. Fortunately for the Wong family, the Native Martians give back the Wong's mansion and their other casino. Professor Farnsworth tells Zoidberg that he'll become visible again as soon as he takes a bath, and he goes with Amy to the other casino.

Production
On 29 February 2012, CGEF revealed the episode's title, its writer to be Josh Weinstein and its director to be Frank Marino. On 10 July, updated their Futurama episode guide, revealing the episode's plot and air date. The same day, released a TV listing of Futurama which showed the same information about the episode, with slight variation from the plot published by MSN.

On 12 July, following the broadcast of the episode "Zapp Dingbat", the public were given the opportunity to participate in a live chat with the Futurama cast and crew. Several clips of "Viva Mars Vegas" during the live stream.

Continuity

 * Sir Reginald Wong is mentioned again.

Allusions

 * The episode's title is a reference to the 1964 Elvis Presley film .
 * The song played through the montage of Zoidberg spending his cash and sung by Zoidberg himself at the end of the episode is a parody of the song from 1966 musical.
 * The Binks Armored Express truck at the beginning of the episode is a reference to the Star Wars character from , and the  armored trucks. The truck is also piloted by two aliens that bear a striking resemblance to the s, Jar Jar's species, and they also speak like him.
 * The Donbot refers to the stolen money as "De Niros", in reference to actor, who starred as in , a hugely successful movie about the mafia in New York and whom the Donbot is heavily inspired by. De Niro was also in a film called  focusing on the mob and Vegas.
 * The Professor says "Dude, where's my ship?", in reference to the 2000 stoner comedy film 
 * The ball that the croupier uses in the roulette game flaps its "wings" and flies around the roulette wheel, making it very similar to a from . It does not behave this way during the final spin that Zoidberg looses, though.

Trivia

 * When the vault scans the Donbot's finger, it identifies him as Don "Smith".
 * This is the second episode to deviate entirely from the standard opening sequence, the first being Into the Wild Green Yonder.
 * The sequence for this episode is a live-action recreation, which was also used to promote the new season through ads on Comedy Central.
 * Zoidberg reads a newspaper called "The Daily Bum Blanket".
 * This is the second episode (in production order) of season 7 to be aired out of order, as the broadcast order of both this episode and "31st Century Fox" were swapped.
 * The Professor says that he is a young internet billionaire, in reference to, who created Facebook whilst at University.
 * Arriving at the parking lot of the casino, Planet Express Ship crushes what appears to be Mars, although it appears larger than the real life robot compared to the size of the ship.

Goofs

 * Native martians are seen here, but they all left Mars back in "Where the Bugallo Roam".
 * That doesn't mean some few would not return possibly out of a sense of attachment to their ancestral lands.
 * Zoidberg spends a lot of money before he gets to the table, so he couldn't have had eight million left. Because of this, he shouldn't have been able to buy eight chips, each worth a million dollars.
 * At the beginning of the episode Donbot said "It's over eight million bucks". So Zoidberg could only spend the "over" part.
 * If the Wongs had two casinos, then why not just go there when the mafia take their first casino and their house?
 * Furthermore, if this is New Mars Vegas as in Into the Wild Green Yonder, wouldn't the Wong family have many business holdings over the entire planet?
 * None of the mafia, or the native martians seemed to question, why the old shrimp carriers, and all those people turned up (the crew in disguise) in the money counting room, despite the fact its supposed to be the most secure area.
 * This may have been done intentionally as a joke.
 * The deal between the native martians and the Wongs here, is different to the deal mentioned in "Where the Bugallo Roam".
 * There could be two or more different deals (for different parts of the land), or the land of the casino could be located on the Eastern hemisphere of Mars.
 * Zoidberg doesn't eat the two 100 dollar bills that fall out of his mouth.
 * The ink on Zoidberg's mouth is wiped off, exposing it. When Amy escorts Zoidberg to Wong Island, the ink on Zoidberg's mouth has returned, as the pink of his skin would have been able to see from the back of him.
 * It's possible that it doesn't show because the ink in the back covers it, which would be why we can't see inside of him.
 * As a robot, Bender doesn't possess a sent, so how could Blind Joe smell, he was stealing money?
 * Bender could have the scent of the booze he consumes so much.
 * Why didn't the ink come off, on the money or Amy when Zoidberg touched them?
 * Mars was sent into the sun yet it is clearly intact.
 * Mars was not sent into the sun, only pushed closer to the sun.
 * Zoidberg buys a drink that seems to contain a sardine at the casino for a few thousand dollars, but in "A Fishful of Dollars" a tin of sardines goes for many millions and stated to be the last of its kind.

Characters

 * 21st Century Girl
 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Debut:Blind Joe
 * Clamps
 * Donbot
 * Farnsworth
 * Fry
 * Hermes
 * Hypnotoad
 * Inez Wong
 * Joey Mousepad
 * Leela
 * Leo Wong
 * Masked Unit (cameo)
 * Morbo (cameo)
 * Petunia
 * Randy
 * Sir Reginald Wong (mentioned)
 * Zoidberg