Futurama/Tropes I to N: Difference between revisions

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* [[I Ate What?]]: "The Problem with Popplers"
* [[I Banged Your Mom]]: In the episode "A Clockwork Origin":
{{quote| '''Brett Blob''': Hey Cubert! Is that your family mansion?<br />
'''Cubert''': Why don't you ask your mom? She's coming over for a sex visit! }}
* [[I Broke a Nail]]: Played with in "A Clockwork Origin", where Amy complains about having just done her manicure, followed immediately by her losing a finger. [[Chekhov's Gag|Fry later finds it in his soup.]]
* [[I Can Change My Beloved]]: Romanticorp tests pickup lines on women using test dummies. One of the dummies uses the line "My two favorite things are commitment and changing myself." The woman in the test chamber [[Code Word Coitus|immediately falls in love]] with the dummy.
{{quote| '''Leela:''' [[Does He Have a Brother?|Does that dummy have a brother?]]}}
* [[I Comma, Noun]]: "I, Roommate"
* [[If I Can't Have You]]: Melllvar from "Where No Fan has Gone Before".
{{quote| '''Melllvar:''' If I can't have the original cast of ''[[Star Trek]]'', no one will!}}
* [[If You're So Evil Eat This Kitten]]: Bender attempts to dodge this problem during "Bender Gets Made". Averted with Morbo: {{spoiler|kittens give him gas.}}
* [[Ignored Confession]]: Professor Farnsworth occasionally brings up that Fry is his uncle when trying to prove his own sanity.
* [[Ignoring by Singing]]: From "Godfellas":
{{quote| '''Fry:''' You can't lose hope just because it's hopeless. You gotta hope more, then put your fingers in your ears and go "Blah blah blah blah!" }}
* [[I Just Want to Be Normal]]: {{spoiler|Pickles, the oracle from "Law and Oracle" who gives Fry false prophecies relating to Bender so that he could drink some strong malt liquor and suffer brain damage.}}
* [["I Know What We Can Do!" Cut]]: In "Time Keeps On Slipping", so the cut is a [[Time Skip]].
{{quote| '''Hermes:''' "[[Noodle Implements|I don't even know how this was supposed to work!]]"}}
* [[I'll Kill You!]]: Plenty of times.
* [[I'll Take Two Beers, Too!]]: Bender.
* [[I'm Not Afraid of You]]: Won't work on Robot Santa.
* [[I'm a Humanitarian]]: It's implied that ''eating people'' is legal.
{{quote| '''Joseph "Fishy Joe" Gilman''': "After all, the only reason we don't eat people is 'cause they taste lousy."}}
** And, of course, "Fry and the Slurm Factory" combined this with a [[Shout-Out]]:
{{quote| '''Fry''': "Oh my god! What if the secret ingredient is people!"<br />
'''Leela''': "No, there's already a soda like that, [[Soylent Green|Soylent Cola]]."<br />
'''Fry''': "Oh. How is it?"<br />
'''Leela''': "It varies from person to person." }}
** In "My Three Suns," the crew visits a Neptunian butcher shop in New New York.
{{quote| '''Fry''' Wow! You have every type of meat here but human.<br />
'''Shopkeeper''' What, you want human? }}
* [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice]]
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** The entire Earth ends up with an addiction to Poplers. They're so delicious, people even have a hard time stopping eating them when they find out the truth behind what they are. Then again, in a society that has "Soylent Cola", that is not that surprising.
* [[I Need to Go Iron My Dog]]: Parodied in the [[Superhero Episode]]. Three times in a row.
{{quote| '''Leela:''' Oh, I completely forgot, I left my apartment on fire!<br />
'''Bender:''' As for me, I'm late for my L.S.A.T.'s.<br />
'''Fry:''' And I can't take life anymore! ''[Leaps out the window]'' }}
* [[Inherently Funny Words]]: "Pazuzu!" Though it would be unwise to [[Dungeons and& Dragons|repeat it three times fast]].
** [[Game Breaker|Unwise?]]
* [[Informed Flaw]]: Calculon tells the protagonists about Project Satan, where the most evil car parts in the world were used to build a car. Among these were the window wipers of the car from [[Knight Rider]]. When Fry countered that KITT wasn't evil, Calculon responds that the window wipers were, it just didn't come up much in the show.
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* [[Innocent Innuendo]]: In "Put Your Head on My Shoulders", Fry and Amy connect while stranded in their car. In the next scene, the recovery truck worker arrives to find Fry and Amy's car windows steamed up. Instead of having sex, however, Fry and Amy are merely playing cards.
* [[In Spite of a Nail]]: In "Roswell That Ends Well", the Professor wants to take every precaution against altering history... right up until Fry sleeps with his own grandmother. At this point he just gives up and launches a full scale, laser blasting assault on the 1950's Roswell military base to get its radar dish while delivering what is probably the best line in the entire episode.
{{quote| '''Professor Farnsworth:''' Choke on that, causality!}}
** In "All the Presidents' Heads", {{spoiler|the Professor horribly maims (possibly even kills) his own ancestor, while Bender conspires to put himself on one of the first American flags. Zoidberg also meets Andy Warhol, who paints a picture of him. Other than that, it appears to have had no meaningful effect on history.}}
* [[Instant Expert]]: When Bender temporarily becomes captain of the Planet Express, much to Fry's annoyance. When Fry lambastes him and accuses him of not knowing the first thing about being a captain, Bender instantly reads the entire manual and then uses the info to chastise Fry. Justified by the fact that he's a robot.
{{quote| '''Fry''': Have you even ''read'' the captain's handbook?<br />
'''Bender''': (flips through entire manual) I have now. And what's Peter Parrot's first rule of captaining?<br />
'''Fry''': (defeated) Always respect the chain-o-command...captain. }}
* [[Instant Home Delivery]]: In "The Route of All Evil," Cubert and Dwight order a pedal-powered spacecraft. The form says "allow four to six seconds for delivery." Cubert says it's more like seven.
* [[Instant Plunder, Just Add Pirates]]: Space pirates.
* [[Interdimensional Travel Device]]: Farnsworth invents the parabox which allows travel to different realities, including one where Fry and Leela are married.
* [[Interspecies Romance]]:
** {{spoiler|Leela and Fry}}, though since {{spoiler|Leela is a mutated human}} they're technically the same species.
** A better example would be Amy and Kif.
** And in the fourth episode of the sixth season {{spoiler|Amy and Bender.}}
** And Bender and Lucy Liu. And Fry and Lucy Liu-bot. [[Robosexual|Robosexuality]] is rampant in the future apparently.
* [[Instrumental Theme Tune]]: Based on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOqfWj0HqNE Psyche Rock] by Pierre Henry.
* [[In the Future We Still Have Roombas]]: Bender lampshades this by complaining about small robots cleaning up the trash at a blernsball game (after he throws some trash), supporting his rant about robots not being in an equal standing with humans in terms of competitions.
* [[Is the Answer to This Question "Yes"?]]: "Is the Space-Pope reptilian?" "Yes".
* [[I Take Offense to That Last One]]: In "Why Must I Be A Crustacean In Love", we get this exchange:
{{quote| '''Leela''': Fry, you've become so lazy you've become a fat sack of crap.<br />
'''Fry''' (indignantly): ''Sack?'' }}
** Similarly, in "When Aliens Attack," Amy puts on a new bikini top:
{{quote| '''Amy:''' How do I look?<br />
'''Farnsworth:''' Like a cheap French harlot.<br />
'''Amy:''' ''French?!'' }}
* [[Island Help Message]]: Bender can barely spell "HELP". Because he had used most of his rocks to explain who he was and how he had come to be on the island.
{{quote| "TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: I, BENDER, BID YOU HELLO! YOU DON'T KNOW ME, THOUGH YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF ME, BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT. LONG STORY SHORT... I NEED HELF"}}
* [[It Runs on Nonsensoleum]]: Anything Prof. Farnsworth explains. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in one episode when Fry cuts a Farnsworth explanation short by saying that it's magic. Ironically, ''that'' Farnsworth explanation was one that used real-world science.
** "I've got it! The ship stays still, and the engines move the universe around it!"
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** "In regular fossilization, flesh and bone turns to mineral. Realizing this, it was a simple matter to reverse the process!"
** Also the Central Bureaucracy. An organization that runs full stop on a combination of [[Pirate Code]] and [[Big Book of War]] philosophies, some of which their rules border on [[Calvin Ball]] mentality, all cubicles (or at least the section that we see) are constructed in a hovering Rubik's cube, the lines are ''impossibly'' long, and those who ''have'' managed to go inside and are not bureaucrats go insane within minutes.
* [[It's Been Done]]: [[Word of God|The creators]] have explained that Amy Wong was originally created to be a female character who was always hurting herself, thinking that it's typically only males who get to engage in the slapstick. They evidently didn't realize that there's already [[Dojikko|a trope for that]]. True, that's mostly a [[Japanese Media Tropes|Japanese Media Trope]], but it does have a [[Cute Clumsy Girl|Western counterpart]].
** Although it's arguable that these aren't the same trope, as the [[Dojikko]] and [[Cute Clumsy Girl]] are typically played for [[Moe Moe|moe/endearing]] effect; while Amy's clumsiness is played [[Comedic Sociopathy|strictly for laughs]], which has historically been a predominantly male role.
* [[It's Like I Always Say...]]
* [[It's Up to You]]: The [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|Planet Express crew]] has saved the city/planet/universe from annihilation dozens of times. Sometimes this is justified with Fry's "special" brain.
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* [[Joker Immunity]]: Robot Santa
* [["Jump Off a Bridge" Rebuttal]]: Parodied in the first episode.
{{quote| '''Bender:''' I'll have to check my program... ''(looks away from Fry momentarily)'' Yep!}}
* [[Just Friends]]: Fry and Leela.
* [[Just Like Making Love]]:
** Parodied in "The Series Has Landed", when Amy is trying to retrieve the keys to a spaceship from a claw arcade game.
{{quote| '''Bender''': "Come on, it's just like making love. Y'know: Left, down, rotate 62 degrees, engage rotor." <br />
'''Amy''': I know how to make love! }}
** After Fry first tries a delicious Poppler, he declares "It's like sex, except I'm having it!"
* [[Kangaroo Pouch Ride]]: ''Bender's Game'' had orc spear-throwers riding in giant war-kangaroo pouches.
* [[Karma Houdini]]: Bender sometimes has to face some kind of punishment for his behavior, but as often as not he just does whatever he wants without having to face any real consequences. In fact, there's a surprising amount of episodes where he's directly or indirectly responsible for everything bad that happens to the crew, and he gets away with it.
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** Made fun of in "Hey Leela Leela", where, after the episode ended with {{spoiler|the Rumpldyhumps getting healthcare, plumbing, and electricity, and all of the orphans from the orphanage getting adopted and paying jobs}}, Leela simply cannot understand that {{spoiler|everybody got a happy ending}}, and demands that somebody teaches her a lesson.
* [[Karmic Twist Ending]]: Parodied with the [[Show Within a Show]] ''The Scary Door''. The best example is the one where the bookworm's reading glasses break after doomsday.
{{quote| '''Bookworm''': Finally! Solitude! I can read books for all eternity! (glasses fall off) It's not fair! IT'S NOT... Oh, well, my eyes aren't that bad. I can still read the large print books. (eyes fall out) IT'S NOT... Oh, well, lucky I know Braille. (hands fall off) *screams* (tongue falls out, head falls off) Hey, look at that weird mirror!<br />
'''Bender''': Cursed by his own hubris. }}
* [[Kill All Humans]]: Bender expresses a desire to do this while sleeptalking, Fry hears him and is disturbed. "I was having the most wonderful dream...I think you were in it."
{{quote| "Hey, sexy mama. Wanna kill all humans?"}}
** {{spoiler|Whenever I said "Kill All Humans" I always whispered "except one." Fry was that one.}} (That one has its impact lessened by the revelation that {{spoiler|it was just a hallucination of Leela's.}})
* [[Kill'Em All]]: Every short story in the Christmas special ends like this.
* [[Killer Rabbit]]: Nibbler, and arguably the rest of the Nibblonians. They're tiny and adorable...and capable of destroying much larger opponents {{spoiler|(including the seemingly invincible Brainspawn)}}, running a [[Secret Society]], and excreting Dark Matter. Though for some reason, they're utterly useless against the Nudists.
{{quote| '''Nibber''': Alas, our kitten class attack ships were no match for their mighty chairs. The universe is Doomed.}}
* [[Kill the Poor]]: In the future, the unemployment problem was "solved" by making it illegal to be unemployed.
** Also, poverty was declared a mental illness.
* [[Knife Nut]]: Roberto
{{quote| '''Roberto''': I was designed by a team of engineers attempting to build an insane robot but it seems, they failed!<br />
'''Vending Machine''': Um, actually *Roberto stabs him* }}
* [[Knight Templar]]: Robot Santa.
* [[Ladyella]]: Leela calls herself "Clobberella" when she gets superpowers.
* [[Lampshade Hanging]]: In the ''Futurama'' video game, when Fry turns on the TV:
{{quote| '''Bender:''' Has anyone ever noticed how Fry always seems [[Coincidental Broadcast|to turn on the TV at just the right moment]]?}}
* [[Large Ham]]:
** Hellooooo, Calculon. His hamming is ramped up to dangerous levels in "That's Lobstertainment!", when director Harold Zoid tells him he isn't emoting enough. His hamminess is on display off the stage as well in "The Devil's Hands":
{{quote| '''Calculon:''' Well, I do owe you for giving me this... ''unholy'' '''[[Milking the Giant Cow|ACTING TALENT!]]'''}}
** Zapp Brannigan. He's not an actor, but he'll steal the scene anyway.
** How '''dare''' you not mention Lrrr... [[Insistent Terminology|'''RULER OF THE PLANET OMICRON PERSEI 8!''']]
** Puny tropers would do well to list Morbo as well!!!!!
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* [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall]]:
** In "Fear of a Bot Planet", immediately before a commercial break:
{{quote| '''Leela:''' This is a difficult decision! If only I had 2 to 3 minutes to think it over! }}
** The entire opening to ''Bender's Big Score''.
** And in the first episode of the newest season, "It's some kind of new, comedy-central channel! And we're on it now!"
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* [[Lie Detector]]: The truthoscope used during the presidential debate in the episode "A Head in the Polls".
* [[Limited Wardrobe]]: [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Bender in regards to Fry:
{{quote| '''Bender''': "You own one pair of clothes and you're not taking them off while I'm around."}}
* [[Linked-List Clue Methodology]]: Parodied in "The Duh Vinci Code" with Leela [[Lampshade Hanging|questioning the Professor's clue deductions]], only to be angrily shouted down.
* [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]]: Deconstructed in "Yo Leela Leela".
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* [[Locked Into Strangeness]]: Parodied with Zoidberg and the space whale. He's so terrified that he grows hair just so it can turn white. Lucky for him, the third time around he stops at the "grow hair" part.
* [[Logic Bomb]]
{{quote| '''Zap Brannigan''': "I am the man with no name - Zap Brannigan, at your service!"}}
** More traditionally, Leela attempts this on Robot Santa. His head explodes; however, he was built with "paradox-absorbing crumple zones", so a new head simply springs up to replace the old one.
** An even earlier example a [[Logic Bomb]] proof robot in "Mother's Day": There's a wax robot janitor taking a nap in the hall of wax robot replicas of famous robots Mom ever built. When Fry tries to figure why the robot would do this, it just ticks him off, prompting an even more bizarre explanation that does nothing but advance Fry's confusion and even frightens him a little.
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* [[Matrix Raining Code]]: How robots "interface".
* [[May Contain Evil]]:
** Slurm, a soda advertised with the slogan "It's highly addictive!"
** The Popplers, which turn out to be the offspring of an alien race.
** The Slurm episode also parodies this with Soylent Cola, the taste of which "varies from person to person".
** Also Soylent Green. Yes, [[Soylent Green|that]] Soylent Green. Everyone is quite aware of [[I'm a Humanitarian|what it's made of]], no one cares though.
* [[Meaningful Name]]: A number of the cast's names are [[Shout-Out|ShoutOuts]] or [[Genius Bonus|Genius Bonuses]] to some degree.
** Philip J. Fry himself, named for the dearly departed [[Phil Hartman]].
** Leela's full name (Turanga Leela) is a direct reference to Olivier Messiaen's famous ''Turangalîla Symphony''.
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*** And revealed in "All the Presidents' Heads" to actually be a descendant of Philo Farnsworth.
* [[Mechanical Evolution]]: In the episode "A Clockwork Origin", Professor Farnsworth releases some [[Nanomachines]] to purify water on an uninhabited planet. Subsequent generations of nanites are more complex, and the situation very quickly gets far out of hand. In one day they become trilobites, the next day there's robot dinosaurs, the next cave-bots, then human-bots, and finally [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|energy beings]].
* [[Mess On a Plate]]: Bender's final presentation in the episode "The 30% Iron Chef."
{{quote| '''Morbo:''' The challenger's ugly food has shown us that even hideous things can be sweet on the inside. [Begins to cry]}}
* [[Metaphor Is My Middle Name]]: Bending is Bender's middle name. His full name is Bender Bending Rodriguez.
* [[Metaphorgotten]]: A lot. Zapp Brannigan and Fry being the more notable offenders.
{{quote| '''Fry''': Bender! You can't date the ship! It would be like me dating a really fat lady, and then living inside her! And she'd be all (makes space travel motions with his hands) Vrrrroooom vrwooo bweeee zooom!<br />
'''Fry''': [[Lampshade Hanging|Like a balloon! And then something bad happens]]!<br />
'''Zapp''': "If we hit that bullseye, the rest of those dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate." }}
** In the Season 6 episode "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences":
{{quote| '''''Scary Door'' intro''' You're taking a vacation from normalcy. The setting; a weird motel with a bed that is stained with mystery. And there's also some mystery floating in the pool. Your key card may not open the exercise room because someone smeared mystery on the lock.}}
* [[Mermaid Problem]]
* [[Mile-High Club]]: An inversion in "The Duh-Vinci Code". While searching for a tomb underneath Rome, Fry asks Leela if she wants to join the "Mile Deep Club". She consents but they're interrupted by the Professor.
* [[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds]]: In one "What if" story, Fry destroys the entire universe with a time paradox.
* [[Mind Screw]]: "The Sting". And how!
** "Obsoletely Fabulous" ventures here too but more mildly. The bulk of the episode is just a long string of {{spoiler|fictitious events in Bender's head to make him appreciate the 1-X robots.}}
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* [[Modesty Bedsheet]]: Morgan Proctor, when she and Fry got caught having sex in Bender's closet, and then running out to catch a taxi with the bedsheet covering her when Bender figures out the truth about her.
* [[Mood Whiplash]]: Coma-coma-coma-coma-coma-[[Culture Club|chameleon...]]
* [[Multi -Armed Multitasking]]: Elzar. The DVD commentary mentions that the animators went out of their way to have each arm work independently rather than have each arm on either side move in the same way.
* [[Mushroom Samba]]: In the episode "Hell is Other Robots", Bender injects himself with electricity causing him to go on a mind trip.
** Fry also undergoes one in "A Fishful of Dollars" after being whacked on the head by Igner, robbed of his money, and dumped in front of his apartment. This [[Mushroom Samba]] is also responsible for being the [[Trope Namer]] for [[Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks]].
* [[Must Make Amends]]: Fry finds his old dog from the 20th century fossilized in a construction site. Feeling bad for abandoning it (despite not meaning to) he arranges for the professor to actually revive it. With Science!
** In that same episode, Bender, in a fit of jealousy, literally kicked said dog's fossil into hot lava, but after realizing what he did, he went in to save him and recovered him.
* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: "I just told you, you've killed me!"
** "What have I [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|will have done]]?!"
* [[Name's the Same]]: Mike Rowe and Josh Weinstein are members of the production crew. However, they aren't [[Dirty Jobs|that Mike Rowe]] or [[Mystery Science Theater 3000|that Josh Weinstein]].
* [[Nausea Dissonance]]: In "Parasites Lost", after learning there are worms inside Fry's body:
{{quote| '''Hermes:''' (''eating popcorn'') It's nauseating, mon! (''eats more popcorn'') Is there no way to get rid of the disgusting maggots?}}
* [[Negative Continuity]]: Subverted between the 1st and 2nd direct-to-TV movies.
* [[Never Trust a Trailer]]: The commercials for "Neutopia" made it appear that the cast being [[Gender Bender|Gender Bent]] would be the focus of the episode. It doesn't happen until the last five minutes, and most of the jokes in those five minutes were shown in the commercials.
* [[New Powers as the Plot Demands]]: Bender's robotic abilities, Leela's armband, Kif and Zoidberg's [[Bizarre Alien Biology]].
* [[Nigh Invulnerable]]: Lampshaded by Bender.
{{quote| '''Bender:''' Geez, what does it take to kill me?}}
* [[Nightmarish Factory]]
* [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]]: Zapp Brannigan. The original concept for the character was "What if [[William Shatner]] was the captain of the ''[[Star Trek|Enterprise]]'' instead of James Kirk?"
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* [[No Romantic Resolution]]: Not for Fry and Leela, anyway.
* [[Not Me This Time]]: In ''Futurama: The Game'', Bender says this when they find the ship badly damaged. It turns out that {{spoiler|[[Stable Time Loop|he (as well as Fry and Leela) ''did'' do it]].}}
* [[Not Rare Over There]]: In "Time Keeps On Slippin'", a character mentions that they'll need "some sort of doomsday device" to solve the problem of the week. Quoth [[Mad Scientist|Prof. Farnsworth]];
{{quote| '''Farnsworth:''' ''Doomsday device?'' Well now the ball's in Farnsworth's court!<br />
''[The professor presses a button on a remote, causing several different stereotypically "mad scientist" style machines to come up through a trap door]'' <br />
'''Farnsworth:''' I suppose I could part with one and still be feared. }}
* [[The Not-So-Harmless Punishment]]: From "Space Pilot 3000,"
{{quote| '''Fry:''' And what if I don't want to be a delivery boy?<br />
'''Leela:''' Then you'll be fired.<br />
'''Fry:''' Fine!<br />
'''Leela:''' ...out of a cannon, into the Sun. }}
* [[Not That Kind of Doctor]]: What happens when Zoidberg's ignorance of human biology is taken to its logical conclusion: his doctorate is in [[Art Major Biology|Art History]].
* [[Not What It Looks Like]]: Happens in the episode "Why Must I Be A Crustacean in Love" with Fry when Zoidberg walks in on both Fry and Edna who is kissing him on her sofa.
{{quote| '''Zoidberg''': Edna, I couldn't stand it any longer. I-- Gasp! Fry!<br />
'''Fry''': Dr. Zoidberg, it's not how it looks!<br />
'''Zoidberg''': Her caviar is on your neck!
}}
 
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Futurama]]
[[Category:Split Trope Lists]]
[[Category:Futurama{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]]