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During the finale of The Incredibles when Syndrome has his robot attack the city he poses to fight it, but actually controlling it with his remote on his arm. But then the robot suddenly shoots at the remote, blowing it off Syndrome's arm.

But why did the robot do that? I didn't exactly understand why the robot suddenly decided to turn against its master. Immediately before it did that, it was looking at its arm that Syndrome supposedly "shot" off, but I'm not entirely sure what was implied there.

  • Did the robot just acquire a conciousness of its own suddenly and genuinely turned against him?
  • Or was it just smarter than Syndrome realized and went for the remote to not get controlled?
  • Or did it just draw the wrong conclusions from what happened (maybe immitating Syndrome)?
  • Or did it maybe not even conciously aim for the remote?

Is this explained further in the movie and I just missed to get it or is it really a little unclear?

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The Omnidroids were robots with AI designed to learn from every battle, adapt and defeat it's enemies. The typical villain hubris trope, his own creation turned against him when Syndrome "attacked" it. The Omnidroid V.10 was just doing what it was made to do. And that was to intentionally go for the remote when it detected that it was a threat to itself and it's mission to destroy everything.

As Mirage says:

MIRAGE: I've got to warn you, it's a learning robot. Every moment you spend fighting it only increases its knowledge of how to beat you.

MR. INCREDIBLE: Shut it down. Do it quickly. Don't destroy it.

Looking again, they even foreshadow the Omnidroid's mutiny earlier in the film, when Syndrome and Mirage trick Bob into fighting the Omnidroid 8:

MIRAGE: The Omnidroid 9000 is a top secret prototype battle robot. Its artificial intelligence enables it to solve any problem it's confronted with. And, unfortunately...

BOB: Let me guess. It got smart enough to wonder why it had to take orders.

MIRAGE: We lost control. And now it's loose in the jungle, threatening our facility. We've had to evacuate all personnel from the island for their own safety.

Syndrome claims to be so genre savvy, yet he ignored all the warning signs. Typical Villain Schmuck.

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    To @cde: I would assume that when Mirage tells Bob 'We lost control', she is actually lying to Bob - Syndrome would still have the Omnidroid under control via his remote. Neither that Omnidroid nor its upgrade would have a problem with that - right up until Syndrome attacked the final Omnidroid himself. And since Syndrome still had the Omnidroids under control via remote, being arrogant he wouldn't have thought it necessary to add special programming to the Omnidroids to make them identify and obey Syndrome - in fact, that would make his planned battle with them less realistic. Assuming
    – user38179
    Jul 22, 2016 at 20:45
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    Yes, they are lying. It's still literary foreshadowing.
    – cde
    Jul 22, 2016 at 22:10
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Further to the accepted answer, there is a visual cue to the Omnidroid AI's thought process during the scene. It's clearly been programmed to destroy the city and anyone who gets in its way - and tries to attack Syndome, suggesting that (apart from the effect of the remote) the Omnidroid doesn't recognise Syndrome as "master" - just as another person to be killed. Syndrome's remote prevents it from carrying out the attack, and then ejects the robot's arm.

Just after Syndrome removes the arm, there's a brief shot from the Omnidroid's perspective as it identifies and solves the problem of its missing appendage:

Control stolen

Control stolen by external signal

This is followed by the 'droid searching for...

Searching

Locating source / external signal

.. and then identifying and deciding to destroy the external signal:

enter image description here

Signal source remote control / DESTROY REMOTE

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