Futurama/Tropes A To D: Difference between revisions

* [[20% More Awesome]]: When the Planet Express crew see the [[Beastie Boys]] (or their heads) in concert, Leela marvels, "They're bustin' mad rhymes with an 80 percent success rate."

{{quote|'''Bender''': I believe that qualifies as 'Ill', at least from a technical standpoint.}}

* [[Action Girl]]: Leela.

** The episode in which Leela finds a male cyclops ({{spoiler|who turns out to be a polygamist shapeshifter}}) named Alkazar and begins dating him has an entire sequence that plays out like an episode of ''[[Married... with Children]]'' (which Katey Sagal was famous for before her stint on ''Futurama''), complete with Leela dressed in Peg's tacky housewife clothes and big red hair ([[Shown Their Work|which is dead on]]), Leela's whiny, "''Al''...", and the barrage of [[Double Entendre]] met with the lewd hoots and hollers of Al's sleazy friends (similar to the way the ''[[Married... with Children]]'' studio audience reacted to those jokes).

** Mark Hamill voices Hanukkah Zombie, who flies around in a [[Star Wars|TIE Fighter]] with Stars of David on the solar panels. We see it when facing a bunch of solid gold Death Stars.

** When Fry visits the deserted remains of Old New York, he shouts, "Howard Stern is overrated!". Billy West was a member of the Howard Stern Show for several years.

** From "Silence of the Clamps," when Bender's friends are looking for him at a farm, and they find a Bending Unit whom they believe to be Bender:

* [[Adam and Eve Plot]]: Invoked in "In-A-Gadda-De-Leela."

** As well as in "A Bicyclops Built for Two."

* [[Affably Evil]]: Robot Devil is actually most of the time rather polite as a character, despite being a robot [[Satan]], and the depths to which Bender sinks at times [[Even Evil Has Standards|leave even him appalled]].

* [[Affectionate Parody]]:

* [[All Just a Dream]]: The episodes {{spoiler|''The Sting''}} and {{spoiler|''Obsoletely Fabulous''}}.

* [[All Part of the Show]]: Lrrr (RULER OF THE PLANET OMICRON PERSEI 8!!!) invades Earth. He happens to land on the stage for the Comic Con costume contest. He gives his "You will be conquered" speech. Everyone applauds politely, then he gets ushered off the stage.

* [[Almost Out of Oxygen]]:

** In "Love and Rocket", the Planet Express ship computer (which has [[Yandere|developed a crush on Bender and gone completely insane]]) cuts off the oxygen supply, so Leela and Fry have to wear spacesuits while they try to switch it off.

** Also occurs in "The Series Has Landed", when Fry and Leela get lost on the moon.

** One episode implies there are an infinite number.

** Professor Farnsworth creates dozens of boxes which act as gateways to parallel universes. Each one of those universes has doorways to all the other universes. [[Mind Screw|That sound was your brain overloading.]] And it doesn't help that in the end, two of the universes end up with the boxes to their ''own universe.''

** "The Beast With a Billion Backs" reveals the existence of yet another universe, this one accessible from a tear in the fabric of space-time. It is home to only one sentient being: Yivo, the infinitely huge, love-lorn ball of [[Naughty Tentacles]].

{{quote|''"These aren't tentacles. They're {{spoiler|genticles.}}"'' }}

** Another episode has Farnsworth, Fry, and Bender get into a time machine that only goes forward. They discover that {{spoiler|when the universe ends it is replaced by another, identical universe (except Farnsworth killing [[Adolf Hitler]]). They end up returning to their correct time period in a THIRD identical universe, inadvertently killing that universe's version of themselves as well as Eleanor Roosevelt instead of Hitler.}}

** The gang is at a club, and Bender's built-in gaydar shoots down the girls' hopes when they see good looking men. It might have been interference from a gay weather balloon...

{{quote|''"Just as well; I think he comes from a dimension that's big on musical theatre."''}}

** Also in "The Cyber House Rules" with Leela and her old friend Adlai Atkins when they're at the Municipal Aboretum.

* [[Alternative Number System]]: Robots sometimes use base 2.

* [[Aluminum Christmas Trees]]: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

* [[Amazing Technicolor Population]]: Though they may just be aliens.

** Despite being set in the future, [[Eternal English|stereotypes associated with American accents still apply]], even with respect to alien life forms. Amy comes from a rich family and has a [[Valley Girl]] accent (even though her parents have stereotypically Chinese accents), while Zoidberg and his species speak with Yiddish accents and sometimes display Jewish stereotypes.

* [[America Takes Over the World]]: Although only THE world, and not any of the millions of others.

** Don't you mean thoroughly licked?

** No, that was just its inhabitants.

* [[Anal Probing]]: Fry is [[Alien Abduction|abducted by a flying saucer]] whose vanity plate reads "PROBE #1."

** Special mention goes to The Probulator.

* [[And the Adventure Continues...]]: In the fourth film ''Into the Wild Green Yonder'', once many of the hanging romantic plot threads are tied up, {{spoiler|the Planet Express crew is on the run from the Earth military. However, they come across a massive wormhole. Professor Farnsworth warns that it could transport them trillions of light years away, with no hope of returning to Earth. Despite this, crew enthusiastically decides to fly into it anyway.}} It's then completely averted when the series was brought back again.

* [[And the Rest]]: In the episode ''Less Than Hero'' where Fry, Leela and Bender form a crime-fighting trio called Captain Yesterday, Cloberella and Superking. Their theme tune becomes:

** In Season 6, {{spoiler|Mom's plan to turn people into zombies}} ends up being this too (and again, bloody hilarious).

* [[Anti-Gravity Clothing]]: In [[Homage]] to ''[[The Jetsons]]''.

** Amy shows shades of this at times. Depending on the episode, her readiness to leap into bed with aliens, [[jerkass]]es and complete strangers shifts between "party girl" and "college bicycle". At least until she gets together with Kif. (As of ' Proposition Infinity', you can now add [[Robosexual|robots]] to that list.)

** "Happy Freedom Day, ladies! Come on, show me something. Anything. Seriously, I'd take an armpit." Needless to say Zapp Brannigan isn't picky.

** And then there's Yivo, an [[Another Dimension|extra-dimensional]] being that had sex with every single person in the universe ''at the same time''. Except for Leela.

** As well as Hedonism Bot, of course.

** Leela doesn't do "anything", but does do Zapp, Alkazar, and Fry-in-Zoidberg's-body of her own free will.

* [[Beneficial Disease]]: In "Parasites Lost", eating a bad sandwich gives Fry worms that rebuild his body, making him stronger and smarter.

* [[Berserk Button]]: The three Benders make fun of the ugly alien giant for being ugly which he accepts, but Fry's big mistake when he talks about his mother.

* [[Big Applesauce|Big Big Applesauce]].

* [[Big Damn Movie]]: there are a ''couple'' of ordinary episodes that threaten reality, but the movies generally raise the stakes.

* [[Big Eater]]: Nibbler (and the rest of the Nibblonians). Let the Feast Of A Thousand Hams begin! Also Zoidberg, whenever he's not rummaging through garbage cans. He destroys an entire buffet table in "[[Roswell That Ends Well]]" There were hints of Amy of being one throughout the series, but it wasn't until "The Prisoner of Benda" when she switched bodies that she wanted to satisfy her ''food lust''.

* [[Big "Never!"]]

** In Mars University, when Professor Farnsworth realizes his pet monkey wants to be only decently smart and [[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?|get a degree in business]], instead of a being a genius.

** Fry cuts loose with one after invading aliens destroy his sand castle.

** In "A Flight to Remember", there's one from Bender after losing Countess de la Roca in the black hole while evacuating from the Titanic(also sucked in the black hole), and one from Hermes in his flashback from the 2980 Olympics when one of his fans attempts to limbo the stick, which is very low, causing him to break his back.

** Leela gets one in "Yo Leela Leela," after {{spoiler|lying about the Rumbledy-Hump planet leads to sweatshop-like jobs for the Humplings and the orphans.}}

** The "alien writing" seen in the background of many scenes are actually [[Cypher Language|ciphers]]. Fans made a game of decoding them, and the messages are often [[Shout-Out|shouts-out]]. There's actually two versions; one is a simple subsitution cypher—the other is almost maddeningly complicated.

** In the global warming episode, the crew goes to Kyoto and passes a "[[Bland-Name Product|Curious Pussycat]]" billboard that states "I love you more than your mother."

{{quote|'''Female Fry''': Now when I say stupid things guys all laugh and buy me stuff!}}

* [[Break the Haughty]]: In the "Mars University" episode, Gunther, the professor's arrogant and hyper-intelligent monkey, gets taken down a peg or two when his [[Amazingly Embarrassing Parents]] are unleashed on Parent's Weekend.

** In one of the earliest episodes, Fry's hands get eaten by a T. rex. He's then taken to a "Handcrafters" store to get new hands. He says "I'll break them in tonight."

** In "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings", Fry switches hands with the Robot Devil. While the Robot Devil's hands immediately try to choke Fry, the robot devil complains that Fry's hands "keep touching me! In places!". Fry responds: "Yeah, they get around".

* [[Breakout Character]]: Bender.

* [[Brick Joke]]:

** When the gang goes to get Bender's brain back from the Central Bureaucracy, the elderly man in front of them states that he's still waiting for his birth certificate. Later in Season 6...

{{quote|'''Old Man''': I'd like to file for a death certifica-- ERK!

''He falls over dead''

'''Teller''': Sorry, that's Section C. Next! }}

** Also in the hundredth episode, Barbados Slim is shown dancing with Hermes' wife, LaBarbara Conrad. In "Bender's Big Score", she leaves Hermes for Barbados because {{spoiler|Hermes loses his body}}

** In ''X-mas Story'', Leela tells Fry that the word "ask" is now pronounced "axe". It's pronounced this way for the rest of the series!

** When Fry slams the brakes on the antique car in ''"Lesser of Two Evils"'', Bender slams headfirst into the dashboard and complains about receiving ass whiplash. Five seconds later, we see Flexo on the ground, complaining about Ass Whiplash as well, but, from his condition, it seems to be more severe than Bender's.

** In ''A Clockwork Origin'', Farnsworth reveals that Zoidberg is Cubert's godfather. This seems like a typical "Zoidberg is a loser" joke, but ''The Tip of the Zoidberg'' shows that {{spoiler|the two have been close friends for decades}}, meaning it actually makes sense that Farnsworth asked Zoidberg to be the godfather.

* [[Calvin Ball]]: Blernsball, the game that baseball has evolved into by the year 3000. It's as impossible for Fry to follow as it would be for someone from the year 1000 to understand modern baseball. Of course, the writers are actually just making stuff up.

* [[Can-Crushing Cranium]]: Bender, with [[Exaggerated Trope|a whole keg]].

** The Professor gives advice to this effect in "War is the H-Word".

{{quote|'''Professor''': If you kill an enemy, be sure to eat their heart. To gain their courage. Their rich, tasty courage.}}

* [[Can't Get Away with Nuthin']]: A very brief example of this occurs when Fry visits the abandoned ruins of Old New York and realizes he can jaywalk without fear of getting a ticket. The moment he crosses the middle of the street, he is run-over by a lizard the size of a bus which appears out of nowhere.

* [[Can't Live Without You]]: After Fry is critically injured in a car crash, his head is placed on Amy's body to keep him alive until his body is healed.

** "Bender, on the screen! It's that guy you are!"

** "Bender need brain for smart-making!"

** [[Chekhov's Boomerang]]: That thing with Fry's head? That comes back more than once.

** [[Chekhov's Gag]]: Considering the above list and the fact that this show is primarily comedy, what do ''you'' think?

*** The Quantum Gemerald in ''The Mutants are Revolting''; the powerful beam it emits turns out to be very useful when Fry {{spoiler|uses it to save the mutants from a tidal wave of sewage.}} Better still, the Quantum Gemerald was first mentioned in "Less Than Hero" where the supervillain the crew was fighting against wanted to steal it.

*** In ''Insane in the Mainframe'', Fry (thinking he's a robot) takes a can of oil from Leela and puts it in his inside coat pocket after using it. Later in the episode when [[Ax Crazy|Roberto]] stabs him, the knife penetrates the oil can, making Roberto think that Fry really '''is''' a battle robot, causing him to [[Freak-Out]] and run away, saving the crew.

*** Nibbler. {{spoiler|Starting from the very first episode.}}

*** On a less significant scale, these characters show importance later on (in the form of a [[Chekhov's Army]]): Scruffy (the janitor (owns half the company)), Robot Santa (important in the movies), President Nixon (introduced as a throwaway and then proceeds to fuck up the earth royally more than once (no surprise)), the Harlem Globetrotters (... they're all brilliant applied physicists), Amy (turns out she's a brilliant grad student), the Robot Devil (sorta).

** [[Chekhov's Hobby]]: A few, from Professor's Farnsworth's proclivity for inventions (mainly doomsday machines) right down to Hermes' ability to limbo.

{{quote|'''Farnsworth''': Doomsday device you say? Ah, now the ball's in Farnsworth's court!}}

** [[Chekhov's Skill]]: Fry learns how to pilot the ship. And how to play the holophoner, a futuristic musical instrument.

*** In "The Series Has Landed", Amy spends a lot of time playing The Crane Game, in order to get the keys to the ship back. {{spoiler|All that practice sure came in handy at the end of the episode, when she needed to save Fry, Leela and Bender using a magnet.}}

* [[Chirping Crickets]]

 

When Fry is told that the fate of the universe depends on him in the fourth movie, he casually replies "Yeah, I get that a lot."

** In Leela's case, many of her one-shot outfits feature a bellybutton window instead. Probably a [[Shout-Out]] to the old prohibition on showing navels on television.

* [[Cliffhanger Copout]]: The cliffhanger of the fourth movie, in which the ship dives into a wormhole, with potential for [[Nothing Is the Same Anymore]], was completely ruined by the [[Uncancelled]] season premiere taking the characters back to Earth immediately. [[Lampshade Hanging]] and [[Rule of Funny]] mostly make up for it.

* [[Clockwork Creature]]: Animatronio in "The Duh-Vinci Code"

* [[Closer Than They Appear]]: "Objects may be less sexy than they appear" shows up on a clothes shop mirror.

* [[Coattail-Riding Relative]]: Fry's initial plan in the pilot is to avoid work entirely by mooching from the Professor. He settles for low-grade employment via [[Nepotism]] instead.

* [[Comatose Canary]]

* [[Conspicuously Public Assassination]]: The end of Bender's reign in "A Pharaoh to Remember".

* [[Context Sensitive Button]]: The antennae on Bender's head seems to do everything from cooking popcorn to interrupting TV signals ''and'' it's [[Freud Was Right|a metaphor for a penis]] on top of all that.

** Fry's {{spoiler|nephew}} was revealed to have been buried in Orbiting Meadows Cemetery in season 3's "The Luck of the Fryrish". Now, whenever a character that is important to that episode's plot or important to the main cast dies, his or her funeral is always held at Orbiting Meadows.

** Cosmic Ray's Pizza was used as a throwaway gag in season one's "A Fishful of Dollars." Now, it's the common place for the Planet Express crew to order or eat out.

** And now a '''major''' one in "Law & Oracle." Let's see what we have here: The episode starts with Fry playing an arcade game, and fails miserably. Someone says "You stink, loser" in response to his failed attempt to play an arcade game. Someone comes in with a pizza and shouts "Hey, Fry, pizza going out. Come on!" Fry takes his (hover)bike out to the Applied Cryogenics building, where he realizes he's been duped once again. These are all taken, almost from context<ref>The main difference from this and the pilot is that instead of getting dumped and repeatedly saying "I hate my life," Fry simply gets run over by a hoverbus</ref> from [[Pilot Episode|Space Pilot 3000]]. He even [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshades]] his tendency to not look at the customer name before making the delivery!

** The most recent episode, "All the President's Heads" features a major nod back to the third season episode "Roswell That Ends Well". In the most recent episode, the crew discovers a new method of time travel and goes back to Revolutionary days. Fry {{spoiler|removes one of the lanterns from the "one if by land, two if by sea" church, prompting Paul Revere to exclaim "the British are coming! By land!"}}. Upon seeing Fry's error, the Professor exclaims "Fry, you've really {{spoiler|screwed the granny this time!}}".

** "Overclockwise" shows a profile of Bender, including his full name (Bender Bending Rodriguez), serial number, and the fact that he was inspected by Inspector #5.

** Also from that episode, a sewer mutant is seen serving on the jury, a nod to them now being able to come to the surface from "The Mutants Are Revolting".

* [[Contrived Coincidence]]: In "Godfellas", Bender's return to Earth is only prompted after a ''very'' lucky spin of the radio telescope's trackball and then Fry crossing his [[Despair Event Horizon]] in earshot of the microphone. Leela [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshades]] this:

{{quote|'''Leela''': This is by a wide margin the least likely thing that has ever happened!}}

** That's more of a subversion if anything. Farnsworth isn't upset about lack of concern for proximity to the lava, but the fact that people are going swimming in it.

* [[Conveniently Cellmates]]: Bender and Fry get implicated in a bank robbery with Roberto, a maniacal robot. Once they are imprisoned in the robot insane asylum, Fry's cellmate turns out to be... Roberto!

* [[Courtroom Episode]]: Several examples including part of the most recent movie.

{{quote|'''Bender''': Court's kind of fun when it's not '''my''' ass on the line.}}

* [[Cranial Processing Unit]]: Bender is shown more than once to be able to completely remove his head and continue to function in any way his head normally would.

* [[Crapsack World]]: Any place that has insane head of [[President Evil|Richard Nixon as president of Earth]], [[Miles Gloriosus|Zapp Brannigan]] as supreme commander of its military, a snooty WASP as a powerful judge, alien invasions being quite frequent, and numerous other awful things... it's no wonder there are Suicide Booths in conveniently placed locations.

'''Fry''': ''I feel better about myself!'' }}

* [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]]: Arguably, {{spoiler|Nibbler, of all people. Despite his overwhelming cuteness, he is a soldier...}}

* [[Crying Indian]]: Subverted. It looks as though he's crying about the litter, but it's because the Slurm can reminded him of how much he missed someone named Cynthia.

* [[Cryptic Background Reference]]: A thousand years of history have passed between the time Fry was frozen and let out, characters will often make casual references to events that occurred during that period of time much in the same way people in our time do with our own history.

* [[Deaf Composer]]: Bender loves cooking, but can't taste food.

* [[Death by Sex]]: Death by [[Unusual Euphemism|"snu-snu."]]

** "A Head In The Polls"

** "Future Stock" - Farnsworth is replaced as the CEO of Planet Express by one shareholder vote.

* [[Dogged Nice Guy]]: Fry may be an [[Idiot Hero]], but Leela does treat him pretty awfully sometimes. This is actually sort of a [[Tear Jerker]] when you consider that Fry ''regularly'' risks or outright sacrifices his life to save Leela, yet, {{spoiler|up until the conclusion of the last movie}}, he still can't win the affection of Leela, which is all he wants from her.

* [[Dojikko]]: Amy, for comedy reasons. The creators wanted to have a female slapstick character that's always getting herself hurt, since they're almost always male (in western animation, at any rate).

{{quote|'''Professor Farnsworth:''' Dear Lord, they're back!

'''Amy:''' We're doomed!

{{quote|Tonight at Eleven: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}DMSHvgaUWc8 DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!]}}

** ''Bender's Big Score'' gave us countless [[Doomsday Device]]s, a {{spoiler|Platinum Doom-Proof Vest}}, and the Doom Meter, Which measures exactly how doomed something is measuring the amount of millidooms it's emitting. (A [[Time Paradox]]}} duplicate emits doom at 10 times the background level.)

{{quote|'''Farnsworth:''' I suppose I could part with ''one'' and still be feared.}}

* [[Downer Ending]]:

** "Jurassic Bark", among others.

* [[Double Entendre]]: The episode title "The Mutants Are Revolting".<ref>[[Chicken Run|"Finally, something we agree on."]]</ref>

* [[Double Standard]]: The episode "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch" gets a lot of humor out of reversing the "woman gets pregnant, man is nervous about it" trope, but Amy is still treated a ''lot'' more sympathetically than a man would be in the same position.

* [[Dressed in Layers]]: Parodied when Leela became a superhero. She wore her costume under her street clothes, and then another set of street clothes under her costume. It was a cold day. Furthermore, neither of her outfits could hide under the other (her superhero outfit has a collar and shoulders that would be visible under her tanktop, and her tanktop covers her navel while her super hero outfit doesn't.)

* [[Dumb Blonde]]: Totally [[Zig Zagged]] for laughs in ''Bender's Big Score''. There's a sexy blonde female doctor whose entire joke is alternating between being a competent doctor offended by dumb blonde stereotypes to... well... being a dumb blonde.

* [[Dutch Angle]]: Crops up in the series from time to time. For classic examples, look at the episodes "I, Roomate" and "All The Presidents' Heads".

 

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[[Category:Split Trope Lists]]