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.

Plot
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. 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 tattoo remover to make all the ink on Zoidberg invisible. This makes Zoidberg invisible as well. After the Robot Mafia looks for Zoidberg in the Planet Express Building, they 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. 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, 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 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.
 * The Binks Armored Express truck at the beginning of the episode is a reference to the Star Wars character from . 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.

Trivia

 * When the vault scans the Donbot's finger, it identifies him as Don "Smith".
 * The opening sequence 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".

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, so he shouldn't have been able to buy eight chips, each worth a million dollars.
 * 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.
 * The deal between the native martians and the Wongs here, is different to the deal mentioned in "Where the Bugallo Roam".
 * 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.

Characters

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