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Do-Anything Robot - TV Tropes

...And yet he still lacks beer.

cheese grater

No matter what the situation, no matter who the foe, not only did the robot's creators think of it, but the robot has the counter already built in.

Whenever the robot runs into trouble, it has exactly the gadget it needs to get it out. No matter how strange or unlikely the situation, the robot simply has to retract an arm or open a panel, and out comes a gadget that seems to have been added for exactly that purpose. It also probably carries an Everything Sensor, to spot the problem in the first place ("Danger, danger, Will Robinson!") as well as being able to slice, dice and make julienne fries.

Justified in the case of robots that have access to some kind of Shapeshifting or a (usually internal) Matter Replicator. Not so justified when you are simply left to assume that the robot somehow has room for all those gadgets inside of them.

This trope doesn't apply just to robots, but it is most common among them.

See also Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids and Adaptive Armor. Compare to Crazy-Prepared, which is the human equivalent, and Developer's Foresight, which is the video game design equivalent. When it has never been hinted at before it's New Powers as the Plot Demands. The Single-Task Robot is its polar opposite.

May overlap with Swiss-Army Weapon and Telescoping Robot. Has a risk of becoming a Murderous Malfunctioning Machine if it breaks down.

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    Anime and Manga 

• Aquarion: If there's one Humongous Mecha that adheres to this trope, it's Aquarion and its sequel Aquarion EVOL. As a mechanical angel, the things it does are literally a form of divine intervention. Often it seems like the pilots just make attacks up in order to win the day.
• Mazinger Z has weapons to solve nearly any situation it can find (although it helps Mazinger is piloted by a quick-thinking Genius Ditz is able of devising new strategies -or ways to get himself out of trouble- on the fly), and throughout the series it gets upgraded equiped to combat at any enviroment. His sucessors (Great Mazinger and UFO Robo Grendizer) are similarly well-equipped. Great Mazinger has drilling Rocket Fist, swords, boomerangs, heat rays, electric rays, a Freeze Ray, generators of hurricane winds and MORE, and is piloted by a Hot-Blooded Determinator. Grendizer is both a space ship and a Humongous Mecha, is equipped with all kind of beams, missiles and bladed weapons and it can get attached to devices let it fight at all enviroments.
• Shin Getter Robo rivals even Megas XLR in terms of do anything-ness, except it's rarely played for comedy. Need to stop a nuke from harming anything, destroy a bunch of truly humongous mecha, save Earth from an extinction-level event and completely terraform Mars, all in mere minutes? Shin Getter is your tool of choice! To be fair, it expended itself in the effort.
  • Just the original one has three distinct forms with a variety of powerful weapons: Getter-1 has beam attacks, the axes, can fly and is the most maneuverable... and is piloted by Ryoma, who's so insanely awesome he can make it do things that surprise even Dr. Saotome, the Getter Machines' inventor; Getter-2 is the fastest, has a drill which it can actually shoot out, a claw-hand that crushes like a pneumatic vice, can fly (faster than Getter-1, but less maneuverable) and can burrow underground... and is piloted by Hayato, a master of improvisation and cunning; Getter-3 had missiles, extending hands and was the best unit for ground and underwater combat... and was piloted by Musashi, a man fully dedicated to the cause and expert at keeping his more hotheaded teammates in line. Suffice it to say, if Getter Robo can't handle it, it's practically IMPOSSIBLE for ANY robot to manage it.
• And Combattler V has more weapons than probably any other Humongous Mecha.
• This was Doraemon's gimmick, though because it was partly a commentary at the time on people relying too much on technology, nearly every gadget ended up causing more problems.
• In one episode of Voltron (the Lion episodes), the team face off against a robeast that could become invisible and undetectable to seemingly any sensor. Eventually, the situation becomes critical when Princess Allura's lion is caught and the ro-beast was making its getaway. The team chases it while the leader frantically goes through all the possible sensor modes again to find something that can allow the team to target the enemy. Eventually, he finds that his lion somehow has a clairvoyance sensor mode that may be slow to create a clear image, but it still allows them to pinpoint the exact target on the enemy and hit it hard enough to not only make it let its prisoner go, but also knock out its stealth mode long enough for the team to unite into Voltron and take it down.
  • Similarly, another episode had a robot that produced a sparkling light that hypnotized all the pilots, sending them into deep sleep. Princess Allura's helmet happened to have a visor that blocked that form of light, but let her see otherwise perfectly.
• Franky from One Piece is a do anything cyborg, with an absurd variety of weapons systems built into his body. All powered by cola.
• In Gate Keepers, there's an episode where Reiko Asagiri, the gatekeeper whose powers are channeled through her music, uses the Gate Robo. The Robo's secret weapon, GRO5V (a giant piano), is revealed which enabled her to use her powers.
• There's a Hentai about a do-anything sex doll, able to shape-shift to suit whatever fetishes her owner happens to have, called "Cosplay Sex Machine" (the owner of the particular doll the story follows is an Otaku).
• Nano, from Nichijou: A Rocket Punch (and a rocket toe, which doubles as a USB drive), a machine gun (loaded with beans), a digital clock in her wrist (and a cuckoo clock in her head), food storage (and food dispensers), a toaster and a giant wind-up key in her back ("because it's cute!"). The Professor keeps installing weird stuff into Nano, without her consent, mostly for the lulz. The latest addition? A reaction function. Nano is not amused.
• Deconstructed in the manga version of Excel♡Saga. Ropponmatsu I is a Do Anything Robot, but the result of having so many gadgets stuffed into her is that she's extremely heavy (while conversely, Ropponmatsu II is the weight of a normal human, but without all the versatility.) When their creator is urged to combine the two and create a Do Anything Robot that weighs as much as a normal human, he blows off the idea as ridiculous.

    Comic Books 

• The Authority: The Engineer's blood is replaced by nanomachines that can become anything or scavenge material from the surrounding environment to build larger constructions, all controlled by mental commands.
• Blue Beetle: The Scarab that empowers the Blue Beetles can sprout energy weapons out of the armor's forearms, or turn the entire arms from the elbows down into energy weapons if Blue Beetle needs something of a higher caliber. Also saw blades, gripping claws, a giant drill, and smaller extra arms when he needs to grasp more than two things at a time. He can fly with wings, with a rocket mounted on his back, or, in a heavy storm, with a surfboard attached to his feet.
• The engine of the titular Clean Room is a featureless white orb. It powers the room's ability to interact with memories but is capable of creating a BFG, killer robot, prison cell, or any other physical construction on demand.
• Amazo from Justice League of America is an android that can copy any superpower of any superpowered being it comes in contact with, and thus becomes incredibly versatile and capable of doing just about anything. Considering Superman himself can do an inordinate amount of things with his array of superpowers, Amazo is a nightmare.
• Aaron Stack, the Machine Man, was always sort of like this, but it's taken to its extreme and played for laughs in Nextwave. The page image is when, in the belly of the alien dragon Fin Fang Foom, Machine Man's chest opens up, causing improbably large Swiss army knife components to pop out, including a giant corkscrew and a giant forceps.

  Aaron: I could make you pregnant.
  Elsa: Not unless you could do it from over there, Clanky.
  Aaron: I am full of very useful devices.

• Wonder Woman (Vol 1 & Sensation Comics): In The Golden Age of Comic Books, Paula's Space Transformer was at first presented as a Hard Light Chronoscope, before being used as an outright time machine and interplanetary teleporter. It could also be used to appear invisible and get new outfits. Unlike most examples this robot had no AI, but it had a wide array of uses which often had never been mentioned before they were used in the stories, though Paula was also always tinkering with it.
• Many late-model Sentinels, Killer Robots made for hunting Mutants in the X-Men series, can alter themselves to produce any weapons needed to fight a particular power, especially those models from the Bad Future.
• Both versions of X-O Manowar are effectively this. The original X-O is a sentient alien power armor that responds to the desires and needs of its wearer and can adapt defenses and weapons in response to his needs. The second version is referred to as a multi-purpose omni-tool (and is bonded to a scientific and engineering genius) capable of producing pretty much anything required by its partner. It is only used as a weapon/power armor because the aliens who originally possessed it used it as such and everyone else since then simply thought that was all it was for until the end of the series.

    Fan Fiction 

• The MTM from Calvin & Hobbes: The Series can fire lasers, blast fire, read books, play movies, and (as of "An MTM Episode") speak, among other things.
• In Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, Cortana takes this role from EDI (who is listed on this page). Just like the former incumbent, there's no such thing as uncrackable security with this character around—not even alien systems. Given that the AI in question was specifically designed by the UNSC to infiltrate, manipulate, and subvert Covenant computers that were vastly different than their own, this makes a lot of sense even if some of it falls into Hollywood Hacking.
• In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Ash's Pokédex constantly reveals more and more useful functions as the story progresses, to the point it's easier to count the things it can't do, like firing lasers.

    Films — Animation 

• The Wild Robot (2024): Roz’s model seems to be a multi-task robot designed for any task imaginable, such as taking care of a family, farming, assistance, etc.

    Films — Live-Action 

• Robbie the Robot, from Forbidden Planet is one of the earliest examples of this trope. Robby contains a Matter Replicator, so he does all the cooking for his master and can synthesize any substance after analyzing it. He drives a ground vehicle at insane speeds (and is careful to make sure any passengers fasten their seat belts). He can effortlessly lift 10 tons of lead sheeting with one hand. He can de-activate any weapon aimed at him, and use the same energy ray to shoo away curious monkeys. And he can sew. Just about the only thing he can't do is harm a sentient being.
• R2-D2 of Star Wars is the epitome of this trope, as he apparently has every tool in existence (except a voice synthesizer), and apparently can swim or fly (at least in his early years) as necessary.
  • Played with as early as Empire when 3PO tells R2 he can plug in to a computer to crack the Empire's security codes only for R2 to discover it's actually a power outlet.
• V.I.N.CENT. from The Black Hole is an Expy of R2-D2 with C-3PO's personality. The spheres that serve as his "feet" have both antigravity and magnetic capabilities, and he's equipped with two lasers, four arms, a magnetic grappling line, a drill, and an oscilloscope on his chest.
• Jet Jaguar in Godzilla vs. Megalon, which was mocked by Mystery Science Theater 3000 for the line, "He's programming himself to grow bigger!"
• The T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the T-X from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines can do everything a human can and a lot more, although that 'more' differs.
• Johnny Five from Short Circuit contains a third arm multitool, a computer hacking radio, parachute, and in the sequel a toolbox as well.
• From the '80s movie Eliminators, Mandroid is a laser-toting, war robot (well...near full-body cyborg) mounted on tank treads, who has a gadget for all occasions .

    Jokes 

• Bob, an inventor, is showing his latest invention to his wife, Alice. It's a human-sized robot with extendable arms, a motion sensor, and as Bob boasts, a lie detector with a 100% accuracy rate. Just then, their teenage son, Charlie, comes home. "Cool robot, dad! What does it do?"
  "You'll find out shortly," Bob said. "But first of all... son, where have you been?"
  "I'm at my friend David's place." Charlie replies. Cue the robot making a thumb-up signal.
  "And what are you doing at David's?" Bob asks.
  "We're studying." Charlie said, untruthfully - cue the robot suddenly extending its arm and slapping Charlie across the face, to his surprise.
  "My son, this robot is a super lie-detector," Bob tells Charlie. "Nothing can bypass it. Nothing. Now tell the truth, what are you really doing at David's?"
  "We watched a DVD." Charlie answered. The robot then gives a thumbs-up.
  "What did you watch?" Bob asks.
  "... Toy Story." Charlie lied, again. And was quickly slapped a second time by the robot.
  "... okay, okay! We watched The Ultimate Sex Queen - Volume 5. Totally Exposed Unrated Special Edition with 15 extra minutes of Boobs." a terrified Charlie stammers. Cue the robot making a thumbs up.
  "My son, I'm most disappointed in you." Bob said. "When I was your age, I never came home late, never lied to my parents... and most of all, I was NEVER addicted to pornography!"... the moment Bob finished, cue the robot extending an arm and giving Bob three consecutive slaps.
  Alice, finding the whole scene amusing, ends up laughing. "Oh Bob dear, you shouldn't be surprised. After all, Charlie is your son!"
  … aaaand cue the robot slapping Alice across her face.

    Literature 

• In the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks, drones have a variety of forcefields that they can fold into all manner of shapes in order to accomplish different tasks. For example, they can make a field around themselves and others to operate as a protective shield, fold a field into a tube to channel liquid or produce an atom-thin shield that can be oscillated in order to cut through virtually any material like a knife through butter (plus lasers and a variety of surveillance abilities). They are so adaptable they can even perform emergency brain surgery in the field on short notice. Do not piss off a drone.
  • The advanced combat/assassination droids are literally swarms of nanobots that have all the above abilities plus they can make themselves into any kind of physical weapon imaginable (and with a "brain" that extends into hyperspace for raw data storage, they can imagine quite a bit)
• Averted in "Bill the Galactic Hero". His Swiss Army foot rarely worked right, like when he wanted a laser and it shot a condom out.
• The fasrad in the Philip K. Dick short story "Sales Pitch" is this. It even serves as its own salesman. And it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you buy it.
• The Monoliths (which the Soviets call zagadka, or "enigma") in The Space Odyssey Series. Walter Curnow says this about them in 2010: Odyssey Two:

  "We're talking about these things as if they're persons—intelligent entities. They're not—they're

  tools.

  But general-purpose tools—able to do anything they have to. The one on the Moon was a signaling device—or a spy, if you like. The one that Bowman met—our original

  Zagadka

  —was some kind of transportation system. Now it's doing something else, though God knows what. And there may be others all over the Universe.

  "I had just such a gadget when I was a kid. Do you know what Zagadka really is? Just the cosmic equivalent of the good old Swiss Army knife!"

    Live Action Television 

• Kryten in Red Dwarf, to some extent. Described as "a robot designed purely to clean lavatories," he nevertheless has a translation mode, an egg whisk, a vacuum cleaner, radio reception, the ability to display videos, eyes with split-screen, zoom and quantel modes and, in a deleted scene, a cigarette lighter. Sadly, much of this is attached to his groinal socket. This is before we've got on to abilities he's picked up as a result of breaking his programming. And it's stated in a few episodes that he's pretty clunky.
• S.A.M. the Robot from Sesame Street was designed to be a machine that could do anything, having such attachments as a camera, a clock, a faucet, a gumball machine, and a telephone. However, a lot of S.A.M.'s humor came from him boasting that machines were superior to humans despite providing evidence to the contrary, as his gadgets wouldn't work the way they were meant to.
• Vicki from Small Wonder.
• Averted pretty hard by K-9 in Doctor Who, who had a do-anything scanner, a dinky blaster built into his nose and a printer output for a tongue, but other than that seemed pretty useless. Among his "features" were a keyboard on his back that nobody ever used, a screen on his side that never showed anything, let alone anything useful, and tiny, tiny wheels that required a perfectly smooth surface to work. Most of this was related to the cheapness and unreliability of the prop.
  • Played straight by the ubiquitous sonic screwdriver, though... unless you're dealing with wood.
• Star Trek
  • Star Trek: Voyager: Although not a robot, Seven of Nine's nanoprobes or cyborg implants were often used to solve the crisis-of-the-week.
  • Seven's predecessor Data was a Do-Anything Android. At one point he served as a flotation device. The same series gives us exocomps, robot drones designed with both powerful processors and internal miniaturized replicators. The latter is not only used to develop relevant tools on the fly, but are also used to build new circuit paths so it's capable of learning. This eventually leads to exocomps developing sentience and a sense of self-preservation.
• Parodied in an episode of Even Stevens where Louis hyped up his newest invention, the Eco-Bot 3000, as being one of these, when in reality all it could do was smash things. However, it was quite good at it. At least, until it short-circuited and went on a rampage.

    Radio 

    Tabletop Games 

• In Godbound, an Artificial Intelligence with the Improved Armature gift has a toolkit that can function as any tool commonly available on the legit or black markets.
• Paranoia has various kinds of "Do Anything Except What I Need At The Moment" robots. For example, a sentient Grappling Gun that likes to discuss philosophy and doesn't feel like grappling anything at the moment.
• Although most robots in Rocket Age are usually specialized, their sheer flexibility in how they can be built means that some robomen can do a little bit of everything.

    Video Games 

• Subverted with the Claptrap units in the Borderlands franchise. They're designed to be extremely flexible, capable of anything from engaging in combat to maintenance work to hacking...unfortunately, because their AI is very badly designed, they are terrible at all of those things. This is particularly the case for the Fragtrap unit in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, which has an absurd number of possible effects for using its action skill, vaulthunter.exe - cloaking, hurling rains of grenades, firing massive cannons, summoning a variety of minions, running around with a giant bomb - but because vaulthunter.exe is essentially malware, the Fragtrap has no control over what happens, and some of them are impressively self-destructive (knocking itself to the edge of death to heal teammates) or flagrant attempts at a Total Party Kill (Vault Hunters caught in that rain of grenades, including the Fragtrap, are not Friendly Fireproof).
• Huitzil (Phobos in Japan), of the Darkstalkers series.
• Thursday, the multi-purpose robot from Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, is chock full of weapons, sensors, and handy functions, plus a sassy personality and electronic voice. He was built by a kid genius, too. The Defenders of Earth are pretty much a 60's Raygun Gothic pastiche, so it fits.
• The Guilty Gear series has Robo-Ky, an android who flaunts his do-anything capacity with style. His body contains an endless supply of gadgets, such as: a sword, a gun, a table, a rocket launcher, two extra sets of arms, helicopter blades, a chair, a hammer, a unicycle, explosive mini-robo-Kys, and a throne for him to slouch on when he's bored.
  • Guilty Gear Isuka has Robo-Ky II, a Palette Swap of the original that can be configured to mimic most of the other characters' attacks in a seperate toybox mode.
• T3-M4 in Knights of the Old Republic is an obvious Artoo expy.
• EDI in Mass Effect 2. Though, actually, she's a "Do-Anything AI". Try taking a drink every time Shepard says, "EDI, do something!" and she infallibly solves the current problem. ...Or better yet, don't. TV Tropes does not want to be responsible for homicides.
• Mega Man's robo-canine Rush has had quite a few different modes since his debut in Mega Man 3. He initially started off with the Rush Jet, the Rush Marine, and the Rush Coil. When Mega Man 6 came around, he was able to turn into two different armor suits for Mega: a suit for powerful punches (Power), and the other (Jet), providing a jet-powered Double Jump. Mega Man 7 fused the two armors of its predecessor into one. The driving game spinoff Battle & Chase has Rush turn into a car so Mega Man can go go-karting with Wily (or maybe it was just a car that looks Rush).
• Clank, the Robot Buddy of Ratchet & Clank. When Ratchet finds him, he's already equipped with a robotic ignition system, allowing him to start Ratchet's homemade ship for him, and he's capable of interfacing with Gadgebots, which are small but vicious attack robots (or Megacorp's equivalent model, the Microbot). By visiting a few vendors, Clank can be upgraded with a helipack that allows longer and higher jumps, a jetpack that functions much like the helipack with an added Ground Pound for smashing stubborn switches, and a hydropack that facilitates swimming much faster and against stronger currents. Later games further enhance him with several different packs that enable varying degrees of full-fledged flight, a shock pulse weapon, a mining laser, a flashlight, the ability to communicate with Zoni, the ability to travel through dimensional rifts, and a scepter that allows him to control time. Not bad for a factory "mistake"!

    Webcomics 

• The various incarnations of Hob from Dresden Codak fit this trope, until eventually reaching Deus est Machina levels.
• Ourox from Monsterful, Michelle's golem Bodyguard, he's a machine capable of shifting into almost anything and generating any kind of weapons, he even as the ability to fuse himself with Michelle for ultimate protection.
  • He can even fuse entirely with Michelle to transform her into a Cyborg.
• Cirbozoids from Starslip Crisis are a Do Anything Species, with a biological function to suit any need. This includes, but is not limited to, secreting Ritalin, anaesthetic saliva, and the ability to spontaneously bud off any number of biological devices, or another Cirbozoid when they need a quick meal.
  • This may not be all it's cracked up to be, however, because they have about seventy hojillion different waste elimination processes. This includes a "smelting cloaca" from which they excrete waste iron; this one process alone apparently has to be performed often enough to make wearing a uniform a serious hassle, and at least one other involves venting blood from gills in his back. So there are about a million different things Cirbozoids can do; one for every time they have to go to the bathroom every day.
• Ennesby from Schlock Mercenary, he doesn't have hands, instead having to rely on a sort of force-field manipulator that allows him to do everything from picking up a book to firing a Maser (and he doesn't need a gun to do that one).
  • Late in the comic the soldier power-suits have A.I.s and fabricators installed on them. There was some debate as to how much versatility would the fabricators actually need, a debate which was solved by giving them just enough ability to upgrade themselves.
• Girl Genius: Agatha builds what are best described as anthropomorphic pocket watches, which have hands and feet and seem to keep entire toolkits in Hammerspace. Anything you can do with a relatively common toolkit, these can do even if they have to climb on top of one another to reach. Oh, and they are self-replicating.
  • Subverted slightly in the fact that each generation is slightly less sophisticated than its parent generation.
• Forward's Zoa was built with a specific purpose in mind (baby care, though it got a mouth installed and now works as a sexbot) but is stated to fit the category of "general purpose automaton", described by the author as encompassing any robot which could reasonably perform any work a human could do, such as deliver pizza or lift crates.

    Web Original 

• Something Awful: Dungeons & Dragons: Kodrinscheiner becomes this more and more with each session, sporting rocket boots, extendable arms, a hollow shoulder where he keeps a corgi (named Corgischeiner), a roller index in his arm, a prison cell in his torso, millions of secret eyeballs under his helmet, an anti-Minerelle siren, and a radio. At one point, someone comments that he's essentially Bender, in the sense that he has whatever he needs as the plot demands.
• Dreamscape: Dylan's Mechelly has a wide array of powers ranging from swords, forcefields, and electric blasts.

    Western Animation 

• Adventure Time: Downplayed with BMO, who seems to be capable of anything computer-related needed for the plot, from playing video games to editing videos to recovering files from an ancient pre-Mushroom War thumb drive. This gets subverted in "The Creeps", when BMO offers to scan the other party guests to see if they're possessed by a ghost, then admits "I don't have ghost-detecting equipment, I just like taking nice pictures."
• Megas XLR always had the right gadget for the problem at hand, and it was always slaved to Coop's Big Red Button.
  • Sometimes he had too many buttons. In one episode Jamie and Kiva argue over whether he should hit the "Break Cocoon" or "Kill Giant Insect" button. In another, he had three buttons to destroy the world ("Destroy the World," "Smite the World," and "Destroy the World WORSE"), but the desperately-needed "Save the World" button was out of order.
  • There was even a button that was labeled "Five minutes till end of episode."
    • Naturally, this Big Red Button is the Plot-Sensitive Button that the MEGAS XLR's battle computer runs. The computer is apparently a Deadpan Snarker, given that it at one point reads "Do something really stupid, Coop." and in another instance "You heard the man kids, super destructor mode."
• An older example would be the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Frankenstein Jr. Franky, as the robot was called, always had a specific gadget to get him out of every enemy trap, Including a built-in smokescreen maker that also conveniently melts ice. Of course, Franky occasionally got into trouble that he couldn't get out of, at which point his young sidekick would use his own do-anything gadget to get the robot out.
• Other examples from Hanna-Barbera are Speed Buggy, Dynomutt, Dog Wonder and The Robonic Stooges.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: Jenny Wakeman, the eponymous teenage robot, has a weapon or sensor for every occasion. They don't always work, but when they fail she can just go on to the next gadget.
• The entire premise of Inspector Gadget: Building RoboCop out of a mortally wounded Inspector Clouseau instead of Alex Murphy, and arming him with... well.. everything except a gun.
• XR in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has gadgets all over the place, most sprouting from his chest, but also coming from his hands and back. Examples of these gadgets include: satellite equipment, a blender, a cigarette lighter hidden in his thumb, a safe, an electric drill, basically anything you can think of. He also stores several non-electric things like pens, an aloha shirt, the closest thing Disney has to porn magazines, pancake batter... the less sense it makes, the better.
  • This is more-or-less explained in the prequel movie, where XR was originally a serious, near-indestructible (able to be repaired from ridiculous levels of damage) combat robot but was put back together when the LGMs were in a state of disarray, resulting in a massive amount of random stuff being thrown in there. Some of it is actually useful, like all those guns.
• The Transformers: Several of the eponymous Transforming Mecha have gadgets and gizmos that pop out whenever needed, but none more than Ironhide, who has been shown with a large variety of tools and gadgets throughout the series, including a water gun, sonar scanner and a grappling hook.
• Bender, the foul-mouthed, sarcastic, alcoholic robot from Futurama, is a hilarious send-up of this trope. His chest cavity is a seemingly bottomless pit of storage capacity. Despite explicitly being designed for the sole purpose of bending metal, his other known features include: a camera, a card-shuffler, a lantern, a shredder, a spray-paint can, a lighter, a saw, a toilet, an answering machine, a corn popper, an audio recorder, a pepper grinder, a vacuum, an amplifier, a tazer, an easy-bake oven, a grill, a lighthouse, a fancy-looking laser show, a nuclear pile, a water heater, a wrench, "extentio-matic" limbs and, apparently, an infinite supply of spare parts for himself. This is a quality apparently shared by the bulk of the robot community within the series.
  • Bender himself was astonished to find out he could be used as a cannon.
  • Note that Bender has been X-rayed in the series, and been shown to have nothing but a couple of gears in his torso. Scans have also shown that other parts are running on ancient 20th century hardware, such as the 6502 processor (the one used to run the original Nintendo).
  • And if Bender can't do it, Leela's "Wristlojackameter" can. Its uses are so poorly defined, she eventually just calls it "this thing I wear on my wrist". This device can be used as a homing beacon and a poison detector, and also seems to gain the sentience to do whatever else it wants after receiving an order from Mom to rebel against humans.
• Lampshade Hanging in Ozzy & Drix, with Drix [a cold pill] who is about the closest thing the setting has to a robot:

  Maria: Why does a pill need a blender?
  Drix: Y'know, I've often wondered about that.

• Not exactly a robot, but the keytools from ReBoot could transform into or summon just about anything.
  • There was an episode where Bob orders his keytool to do just that, as Big Bad Megabyte is lunging towards him: "Glitch! Anything!" Glitch turns into a lamp-post, and Megabyte runs face-first into it.
  • When Dot was falling to her apparent death, he yelled "Glitch! Anything!", and got a spring-based fall-cushioning device on the ground to catch her. (Not quite a trampoline, but the same basic premise.)
• DuckTales (1987) has GizmoDuck, whose suit is supposed to be able to do anything, but he didn't have time to read the instruction manual. This is played for laughs later, when he's more familiar with the suit, with him being prepared for more trivial and minor things (such as having a satellite dish so his mother can watch TV on his display panel) than for the more important things.
• DuckTales (2017) Has this in the form of Lil' Bulb. He's an all-purpose robot designed by Gyro Gearloose. Unfortunately, he turns evil if given a bulb above fifty watts. Gryo: (pitching his invention to the Board of Directors)

  The tiny, all-purpose robot that does it all!

  
  Bradford:

  Wait...what does it do?

  
  Gyro: (facepalms)

  "

  ...It all.

  "

• The Modifyers: As Xero's robot sidekick, Mole is designed to with the ability to shapeshift in order to suit any of her needs. Including changing into a knapsack for her to stash items in.
• Goddard from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius is an excellent example of this trope - even the glitches in his programming, such as his ability to "play dead" (AKA spontaneously reassemble after a main core implosion), regularly come in handy. Jimmy's dad Hugh even comments in one episode that Goddard can do eleven million and four things, with the only talent he lacks being the ability to clean up after himself (that's Hugh's job/hobby).
  • Jimmy later realizes that the implosion is not fun for Goddard and promises not to abuse that aspect of his talents.
• Jailbot, the Warden's loyal robotic sidekick from Superjail!!, seems to have an endless arsenal of deadly and improbable weapons hidden in his side compartments, and often deploys one after another in rapid fire fashion a dozen at once, usually when one (or none) would suffice, while performing his duties.
  • He makes ice cream, too!
• A bit of a subversion occurs in Static Shock. Gear and Static are on a plane that has been hijacked and they need scissors to cut the duct tape off the captain. Static turns to Gear, who got his name because he has a large amount of stuff to do his derring-do, and asks whether he has any scissors: Backpack, Gear's Empathic Weapon, springs out a dozen different tools. Gear runs down the entire catalogue, and reports: "No."
• Digit, the friendly neighborhood cyboid from Cyberchase, carries measuring cups, various tools, a smaller version of himself, and freshly baked scones (among other things), all inside his chest.
  • Ironically in the case of the measuring cups, at least once he's been missing the cup they actually needed and they had to improvise.
• Recess: Gretchen's hand held computer Galileo can do things most super computers would be envious of.
• Bot from Team Umizoomi, who has stretching limbs, a see-anything viewscreen, various Hammerspace compartments, and as much strength as the plot demands.
• Grounder from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is meant to be this and a Swiss-Army Weapon, but all he lacks is the brains to competently catch Sonic.
• In Guardian Fairy Michel, while the Honeybee is a plane, it has whatever powers are required for the plot, including a drill mode.
• More like "Do Anything Cyborg", but RoboCop got turned into one during the short-lived RoboCop: Alpha Commando cartoon, having several more weapons than just a laser version of his classic gun and including some that makes no sense for Murphy to have whatsoever (the hostage situation as the start of "Doppelganger" and "Francesca's Quest"'s climax were resolved with a ping-pong paddle and a self-heating ice cream scoop respectively)..
• Kaeloo: Olaf's robot, Serguei, serves as a majordomo, mode of transport, and performs several other functions and also has built in weapons like a gun.
• Destructo from Bump in the Night is a toy robot who is equipped with a lot of gadgets and weaponry that he uses whenever he chases after Mr. Bumpy for breaking the rules. In "Destructo's Flipside", it is shown that he even has the equipment needed to make strawberry milkshakes!
• In Ready Jet Go!, Sydney's mom programs Jet's robot clone, Jet 2, to a robot that can do practically anything, (like play music, and get you a glass of water), in the season 1 finale. He is renamed to Jet 3.
• Komodo of Animal Mechanicals has this as a superpower; he can summon any tool needed on any mission. Of course, he does have a lot of other silly things stashed in there, including flowers, peanuts, and a pair of boxers.

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