As a movie with more than its fair share of outlandish scenes, Rocky IV is widely considered to be the most surreal Rocky movie in the series—and not the least because of the “Happy Birthday Paulie” robot. As it turns out, though, that robot was initially invented not to shepherd beers to Paulie, but to help treat autism in children. 
Invented by International Robotics founder Robert Doornick, the robot—dubbed Sico—was designed to give us more insight into autism, which in the 1980s was extremely under-researched. As we know now, Sylvester Stallone’s son, Seargeoh Stallone, is autistic, which is what brought Sico to the Rocky IV set in the first place.
