I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers

1999catchphraseclassic

Published August 31, 2026

When Bender the robot got kicked out of a lunar amusement park in a 1999 Futurama episode, he stormed off shouting 'I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers.' The line turned into a widely quoted Futurama catchphrase on the early web, spawning a phrasal template used across forums, subreddits, and image macros for years.

catchphrase memessnowclone memesmovie quote memeslate 1990s memesforum era memes

Overview

'I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers' works as a fill-in-the-blank template: someone gets rejected from a group, tool, or platform, then declares they will make their own version 'with blackjack and hookers... in fact, forget the [X].' Urban Dictionary logged that exact structure in November 20033. Programming forums, gaming boards, and mobile-OS blogs plugged their own gripes into it through the late 2000s2.

By late 2011, the phrase attached to a specific image: Bender in a white fur coat and gold rings from the February 27, 2000 Futurama episode 'Raging Bender'6. That image became the base for two Meme Generator pages that held over 10,000 captioned submissions combined by 20137.

Origin & Background

Platform
Futurama (TV) / Reddit and forums (viral spread)
Key People
Futurama
Date
1999

The line first aired on April 4, 1999, in the second episode of Futurama's first season, 'The Series Has Landed'8. During a trip to a moon-based amusement park, Bender reaches into an arcade claw machine to grab lost keys, gets caught, and gets ejected onto the lunar surface. He yells, 'I am going to build my own theme park, with blackjack and hookers!' then delivers the line again when he thinks the Planet Express crew is leaving without him, this time promising to build his own lunar lander.

How It Spread

The earliest tracked online use is an April 2003 Prince.org forum thread, where a poster shortened it to 'In fact forget the park'1. Urban Dictionary documented the template that November3. In October 2007, graphics programmer Arseny Kapoulkine titled a blog post 'My Own Lighting Shader (With Blackjack and Hookers)' after being told a certain pixel shader was impossible2. A January 2008 Reddit post from a Ron Paul opponent joking about a Ron-Paul-free version of Reddit marked the site's earliest known use8.

The subreddit r/BlackjackAndHookers launched in January 2010 and reached almost 400 subscribers4. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days shipped that year with an Xbox achievement titled 'Blackjack and Hookers'5. Between 2010 and 2011, users deployed the template for imagined mobile operating systems, forum art threads, and Minecraft taverns built from scratch8.

How to Use This Meme

Pick something you got rejected from or something that annoys you: a subreddit, an app, a company, a group chat. Frame the response as 'Fine, I'll build my own [X], with blackjack and hookers... in fact, forget the [X].' The Bender-in-fur-coat image is the common visual pairing, but the pure text version still shows up on its own6.

Frequently Asked Questions

I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers

1999catchphraseclassic

Published August 31, 2026

When Bender the robot got kicked out of a lunar amusement park in a 1999 Futurama episode, he stormed off shouting 'I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers.' The line turned into a widely quoted Futurama catchphrase on the early web, spawning a phrasal template used across forums, subreddits, and image macros for years.

catchphrase memes snowclone memes movie quote memes late 1990s memes forum era memes

Overview

'I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers' works as a fill-in-the-blank template: someone gets rejected from a group, tool, or platform, then declares they will make their own version 'with blackjack and hookers... in fact, forget the [X].' Urban Dictionary logged that exact structure in November 20033. Programming forums, gaming boards, and mobile-OS blogs plugged their own gripes into it through the late 2000s2.

By late 2011, the phrase attached to a specific image: Bender in a white fur coat and gold rings from the February 27, 2000 Futurama episode 'Raging Bender'6. That image became the base for two Meme Generator pages that held over 10,000 captioned submissions combined by 20137.

Origin & Background

Platform
Futurama (TV) / Reddit and forums (viral spread)
Key People
Futurama
Date
1999

The line first aired on April 4, 1999, in the second episode of Futurama's first season, 'The Series Has Landed'8. During a trip to a moon-based amusement park, Bender reaches into an arcade claw machine to grab lost keys, gets caught, and gets ejected onto the lunar surface. He yells, 'I am going to build my own theme park, with blackjack and hookers!' then delivers the line again when he thinks the Planet Express crew is leaving without him, this time promising to build his own lunar lander.

How It Spread

The earliest tracked online use is an April 2003 Prince.org forum thread, where a poster shortened it to 'In fact forget the park'1. Urban Dictionary documented the template that November3. In October 2007, graphics programmer Arseny Kapoulkine titled a blog post 'My Own Lighting Shader (With Blackjack and Hookers)' after being told a certain pixel shader was impossible2. A January 2008 Reddit post from a Ron Paul opponent joking about a Ron-Paul-free version of Reddit marked the site's earliest known use8.

The subreddit r/BlackjackAndHookers launched in January 2010 and reached almost 400 subscribers4. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days shipped that year with an Xbox achievement titled 'Blackjack and Hookers'5. Between 2010 and 2011, users deployed the template for imagined mobile operating systems, forum art threads, and Minecraft taverns built from scratch8.

How to Use This Meme

Pick something you got rejected from or something that annoys you: a subreddit, an app, a company, a group chat. Frame the response as 'Fine, I'll build my own [X], with blackjack and hookers... in fact, forget the [X].' The Bender-in-fur-coat image is the common visual pairing, but the pure text version still shows up on its own6.

Frequently Asked Questions