Futurama/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Anvilicious / Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: Proposition Infinity.
  • Artistic License: Biology: Fry apparently survives a temperature of 109 degrees - normally, people die if their body temperature reaches 108 degrees.
  • Base Breaker: A few characters, but mostly Kif and Bender.
    • Bender definitely became the biggest offender, as the movies and returned-to-the-air show inflate his role (half of the movies have his name in the title) while having his Crosses the Line Twice behavior cross the line a third time and become much less funny for it. Because his style of humor was so easy to write and also satisfied the "edgier" tone allowed by being on Comedy Central, Futurama essentially became The Bender Show... a concept the show itself mocked when Bender became the star of All My Circuits. Of course, for some, that was exactly what they were looking for, since it basically meant he was Jerkass Homer as a robot.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: All "The Scary Door" (Twilight Zone segments) tend to be this.
    • When Zapp Brannigan's corpse randomly says "Over my dead body!" in "Rebirth."
    • Reincarnation.
    • Most of Scruffy's first few appearances qualify as this.
  • Broken Base: Are the movies any good? Is the reboot?
  • Cargo Ship: Scruffy owns a robotic Washbucket with a female voice. In one episode Amy gets her brain switched with the Washbucket, and Washbucket declares her love for Scruffy. Scruffy declares his love back, but turns her down because she's a robot even in Amy's body. She leaves the room, and he curls up and cries.
  • Crack Pairing: Yivo/The Universe. Literally, if you count the crack in the space-time continuum.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Many, many times.
    • The Professor's attempt to wake up a comatose Leela is hilariously awful.

Fry: Oh....I didn't need to hear that.
The Professor: No, and you don't need to see this!

    • Zapp's treatment of Leela in the second new episode.
    • Bender in almost everything he does.
    • One of the new season episodes has the crew deliver old electronics to a waste planet where children search the melted debris for valuable metal.

Leela: Do children do all the work around here?
Foreman: Not the whipping! *whip snap*

    • The Prisoner of Benda. All of it.
  • Dude, Not Funny: The sexist jokes.
    • The ending of Benderama in which a flock of mini Benders devour the poor Ugly Cute giant.
  • Ear Worm:
    • "Weeeee're whalers on the Moon..." Repeated many times within the episode, and the characters are clearly sick of it.
    • "Call Robo-Rooter when you flush a towel! And we can also help with an impacted bowel. Robo-Rooter!"
    • "Pop a Poppler in your mouth when come to Fishy Joes!/What they're made of is a mystery where they come from no one knows..."
    • Also the Robot Hell song.
    • "In the year 252525, / the backwards time machine still won't have arrived / in all the world there's one technology / a rusty sword for practicing proctology"
    • The theme song doesn't count?
      • Especially the remix for the movies, with the synth solo.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Fridge Horror: Probably the majority of episodes in one way or another. The Late Phillip J. Fry is a pretty solid example, where Fry, Farnsworth, and Bender warp forward in time so much that they watch the universe collapse, start over, collapse again, start over again, and then stop where they "left off", except everyone from universe 0 goes the rest of their lives without seeing the three of them ever again. Also, the Fry, Farnsworth, and Bender from Universe 2 get killed so the ones from Universe 0 can take their place, and that kind of thing happens all the time.
    • Nibbler has been revealed to have been Obfuscating Stupidity to watch over the human world and is actually a super intelligent being pretending to be a dumb pet. This would mean anytime he has hindered or even endangered the crew was completely on purpose. It's not his fault he's a killing machine?
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: In the episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", there is a brief scene in which the history of why Star Trek the Original Series was banned from the planet Earth forever. After Walter Koenig finishes his sentence, Bender follows up with a quip along the lines of "And yet another classic science fiction TV show is cancelled before its time." It is only until the show was cancelled after its fifth season and picked up by various networks, first by Cartoon Network for reruns, until settling down at Comedy Central for brand new seasons, does the joke sink in when watching the episode again as a rerun.
    • In I Dated A Robot we see a video about how humans dating robots will destroy the world. Then we get Proposition Infinity and discover robosexuals are both common and repressed. Bonus awkward for the original tape being a high school health class video.
    • One episode showed Bender joining the cast of All My Circuits and growing to dominate the entire show, turning it into nothing but a lot of crude jokes and cruel antics deliberately aimed at the lowest common denominator. This is essentially what happened to Futurama itself during the movies and after its move to Comedy Central.
  • Genius Bonus: All the jokes, references, and continuity errors are more understandable if you know anything about college-level math and science.
    • The series has a number of particularly extreme examples in which complicated jokes (possibly made in a fictional language) are hidden in the background and can only be seen for a split-second, requiring a very devoted fan to pause and get the absolute most out of episodes.
    • Everything's playing at the Aleph-Null-Plex!
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In The Beast With A Billion Backs, Fry's polygamous girlfriend, Colleen, joins him when everyone goes to Heaven with Yivo. Not so easy to watch now when you realize that the voice of Colleen is Brittany Murphy, in her final voiceover role [excluding her usual role as Luanne Platter on King of the Hill] before her sudden death in 2009.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The unnamed couple's clear, plastic tarps with strategically-placed black tape from the first episode ("Space Pilot 3000"), the futuristic club clothes everyone wears at The Hip Joint on "Love Labor's Lost in Space" and Leela's costume on "Bend Her" can now be identified as something from Lady Gaga's wardrobe.
    • The Couch Gag from the final original series episode? "See you on some other channel." Doubly hilarious, considering that Futurama made two Channel Hops—once from FOX to Cartoon Network (even though CN just aired reruns) and again from CN to Comedy Central (on Comedy Central, not only were the reruns aired, but also the made-for-DVD movies and some new episodes made exclusively for Comedy Central).
    • In "Luck of the Fryrish", Fry's dad, voiced by John DiMaggio, says "Well you better keep your brother away from these bananas. Gonna need em when the radiation turns us all into Monkeys". He went on to voice BoBo in Generator Rex; a genetically mutated Monkey after a cataclysmic event.
    • In "Mobius Dick", Leela off-handedly refers to Amy as "Sailor Moon" for some reason. A few episodes later comes the anime-parody in "Reincarnation", in which Amy is dressed as, you guessed it...
    • In "The Farnsworth Parabox" the alternate Leela is sent to Universe A to infiltrate and subdue our heroes. This would not be the first time a red-haired, alternate dimension version of a female character would cross dimensions as a spy on a Fox series.
    • Since the airing of the episode "The Deep South", Atlanta has added a new major tourism draw: The Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world. And completely useless to an underwater culture...
  • Jerkass Woobie: Bender has shades of this in "Lethal Inspection". Despite his acting like a jerk for most of the episode, his breakdown at the end is still strangely moving.

Bender "I deserve better than this! I'm Bender damn it! (sobs) I'm Bender..."

    • Guenter the monkey in the "Mars University" episode also qualifies.
  • Jumping the Shark: Yo Leela Leela is probably the closest that this series has gotten, considering that it really does not feel like a Futurama episode whatsoever.
  • Mary Sue: Phillip Fry, son of Yancy Fry and nephew of Phillip J. Fry.
  • Memetic Mutation: A few notable ones are listed below; Futurama's Memetic Mutation page has a more comprehensive list of Futurama memes.

"X does not work that way! [Goodnight!]" -- Morbo
"Your X is bad and you should feel bad!" -- Zoidberg
"ALL GLORY TO The Hypnotoad."
Fry sees what you did there.
"I'll make my own X! With Blackjack! And hookers! Y'know what; forget the X!" -- Bender
"Good news, everyone!" -- Farnsworth
"You've watched it! You can't unwatch it!" -- Tales of Interest narrator
"Death by snu snu!" -- Femputer
"Are you going to Scarborough Fair? PARSLEY-SAGE-ROSEMARY-AND-THYYYYYYME" -- Cyclon and Garfunkel
"I Waited For You, Fry."
"Shut up and take my money!" -- Fry
"Approved for all audiences!"
"Tonight at 11: DOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
"I don't want to live on this planet anymore." -- Farnsworth
"Good news, everyone! I've invented a device which makes you read this in your head, in my voice!"

  • Moral Event Horizon: Zapp's come dangerously close to crossing this a few times, such as the episode where he trapped Leela by pinning a tree on her legs and deliberately withholding water from her so she'd eventually become dehydrated and delirious enough to like him. In the commentary, the writers even mention changing the end of the episode because the original ending made Zapp too much of a Karma Houdini.
    • The Robot Devil asks Bender for his first-born son. Bender immediately, without hesitation, goes to find said son (which he had apparently abandoned years ago), picks him up, carries him back to Robot Hell and, while humming cheerfully, throws the robot child to his death in a vat of molten metal. Where was there even left to go with the whole "Bender is evil" joke, after that?
  • Never Live It Down: Leela's one night stand with Zapp. Mostly because he references it every single time they share a scene.
    • And of course, this says a lot more about his sex life than about hers.
  • Player Punch: (of a sort) The "Jurassic Bark" episode will have you hating Bender until the end, only to be punched again during the end credits reveal.
    • Many episodes would begin with Farnsworth telling the crew they were going to a Planet of Hats ("Tomorrow you'll be making a delivery").
  • The Scrappy: Cubert, the thing is the writers had the intention to make him a Scrappy from the beginning.
    • Zapp Brannigan to some.
    • Bender, when his jerkassness gets out of hand.
  • Seasonal Rot: the Comedy Central episodes are this to some viewers.
  • Shallow Parody: The "Action Delivery Force" segment apparently thinks Voltron, and stilted Japanese accents are representative of anime. Aired in 2011.
    • However given that the other two shorts were based on a 50s Disney cartoon and an 80s Video Games its quite obvious that those shorts were not indicative of current trends from those three genres.
  • Squick: The crunchy noises when the crew (frequently) get injured. Also, the splatty noises in the shower scene mentioned above.
    • Don't forget Fry being his own grandfather.
    • BONE-ITIS
    • Taken to Up to Eleven levels in "A Prisoner of Benda". Leela and Fry have sex... in the bodies of the Professor and Zoidberg, respectively. The sound Fry makes when he first sees Leela in Farnsworth's body mirrors the popular reaction to this scene quite well.
  • Tear Jerker: The show is famous for it, and it has it's own page.
    • There's one in "A Prisoner of Benda" involving Scruffy and a Washbucket.
  • There Is Another: Fry is able to go past detection from the brainspawn because of his being his own grandfather through his father|son, but that would mean that his father also had that same brainwave, being his own grandfather.
    • Not necessarily - Fry himself is a literal paradox, by virtue of being two things at once (both himself and his grandfather). Even if that doesn't specially apply, the reason he needed to be sent into the future was also so that he could conceive his father in the first place. Though you might wonder whether Philip Jnr. (his nephew) had any children...
      • Of course Phillip Jr. had children. Professor Farnsworth had to come from somewhere.
  • Unfortunate Implications:
    • You might think that "Proposition Infinity" that the real opponents to the robosexuals (and not the Professor with his personal grudge) may have been right. From the examples we've seen in the show, Fry & robot!Lucy Liu, Bender & Lucy Liu, Bender & Amy, Leela & robot!Fry, Professor & Unit, Humans and Robots have very different expectations when it comes to relationships and all end up failing. Maybe this marriage ban was just society's safeguard so no one would accidentally cause an army of Lucy Liu robots to run amok.
    • Also in "Proposition Infinity," when Bender is naming off the types of couples who have rights (man and woman, fembot and robot, man and man, interracial, intergalactic, and ghost and horse), they leave off woman and woman.
      • Well, you can argue that it's covered under 'man and man'. Alternatively, you can get a good Fridge Logic joke out of the idea that it's so widely supported that it's not a controversial issue in the least.
      • Earlier in the series, we hear Fry talk about conventional families, one of which is the lesbian coven across the street, so, presumably, the Futurama universe has no problem with lesbians.
      • Also, to be fair, he also never mentioned "Manbot and Manbot" or "Fembot and Fembot", so...
        • Morbo expresses his distaste for same-sex robot marriage after announcing the passing of Proposition Infinity, so it looks like Manbot-Manbot/Fembot-Fembot marriages are not yet legal.
    • The problem with looking at robot/human relationships in the series is that so many of them involve Bender, who's pretty much incapable of having a healthy relationship with anybody, including other Robots. He's a special case, like Hedonism-Bot and Jambi. Fry and Lucy Liu-Bot didn't fail, she loved him so much she sacrificed herself for him. Robot Fry thought he was a human, and his relationship with Robot Leela was fine until the real Leela woke up. Those two showed that a Robosexual relationship can work. As for the downfall of civilization, that was from a Scare'Em Straight TV special. It's about the same level as saying that a single beer will make you an alcoholic.
    • The entire episode Bend Her. What makes the episode Unfortunate is the (age-old) implication that transgendered people are deceptive about their status. Not to mention how women are more emotional than men. Or how every man really DOES want a tramp.
      • Bender was only deceptive about his transgendered status because he was using it solely to take advantage of people and had planned from the start to change himself back, so that accusation doesn't really pan out. It's also pretty hard to take the alleged Be a Whore to Get Your Man implication seriously when Bender is the one giving it; Calculon seems to indicate that his attraction to Coilette is more because of her Tomboy attitude than her trampy look.
    • Following on from above, for a show set a thousand years in the future Futurama gets a lot of mileage from "men are horny slobs and women are frivolous and shrewish" humor. This has been evident right up to season 6's Neutopia. It seems governed by Rule of Funny rather than outright chauvinism, but it's depressing that the creators seem to find these concepts endlessly hilarious.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: Zoidberg.
  • We're Still Relevant, Dammit!: The revived series carries far more modern pop culture refrences than the old series.
  • The Woobie: Kif originally, but later he marries the series' most attractive billionaire, grows a spine (no pun intended), and manages to finally get some catharsis by punching Zap in the gut. Epic win for woobies everywhere.
    • Arguably EVERY MAIN CAST MEMBER:
      • Fry's loved ones are dead and gone, including his dog who was waiting for him to return until the day it died, and he keeps screwing up his chances with happiness with the woman he loves. It's especially hard not to feel sorry for him at the end of "Time Keeps On Slippin'".
      • Leela is a mutant, and while they now have rights, people still view them as genetic scum. For over 30 years she went through life as an orphan, being raised to believe she was the last of her species, and later finds out her mother and father had to give her up because due to her only mutation being a cyclops eye, she had a chance at a normal life. On top of the guilt and angst, she's so jaded she has to constantly shield her emotions because she's afraid of being hurt.
      • The Professor is senile and reaching the end of his lifespan, and he's terrified his legacy won't live on. He's made several mistakes in his life he regrets(Hating robosexuals because he himself was one, making the robots pollute, etc), and he's had to see several crew members die in horrible ways.
      • Bender is one of the few robots that are mortal, which is hard to deal with when you're supposed to be designed to not die and you've spent your entire existence believing you could live forever. The only Fembot he ever loved was sucked into a black hole, he's known to go on the wagon(By not drinking) when something in his life screws up, and he has a God complex. Taken literately in "Godfellas".
      • Amy is a rich girl with brains who has parents that torment her, making her driving force in life to prove to them how amazing she is, only for them to belittle her more. Her husband's children aren't hers, and though she loves them and will raise them anyways, she'll have to deal with the fact that she's not their mother even though she was supposed to be.
      • Hermes is restricted in life by his bureaucracy and is obsessed with his job title, to the point he can't even kill himself because he'll be posthumously demoted.
      • Zoidberg's family was never supportive of him in his childhood, and he all he wanted was to make them proud. He lies to people about what a good doctor is, when in reality he knows little about medicine and is so poor he'll eat toe nail clippings. To top it all off, the people he thinks are his friends can't stand him.
      • Kif has an inferiority complex and feels the need to constantly impress people, and feels unworthy of the fact he's in love with someone who loves him.
      • Zapp also qualifies as one. He's a sex crazed and the only girl he's possibly ever genuinely cared about hates him. He can't express his feelings for her without making an ass out of himself, as he's a manchild who has no idea what is or isn't appropriate.
    • The Ugly Cute monster that Bender kills in Benderama.
  • Uncanny Valley: Leela with two eyes. Brr...
    • Fry without his nose.