History YMMV / Futurama

* HarsherInHindsight:
** In "[[Recap/Futuramas1E1SpacePilot3000 Space Pilot 3000]]", the line about Stop & Drop Suicide booths being "Americans' favorite suicide booth since 2008" becomes a bit wince-worthy in light of 2008's economic meltdown and the invention of an actual suicide machine in the same year.
** Fry's delighted reaction to realizing that everybody and everything he knew in the 20th century has gone (since he thought they didn't seem to like, care, or even respect him) seems much harsher subsequent episodes such as "[[Recap/FuturamaS3E4TheLuckOfTheFryrish The Luck of the Fryrish]]", "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E24ColdWarriors Cold Warriors]] and "[[Recap/FuturamaS7E23GameOfTones Game of Tones]]" have shown that his family actually did love him and were worried about him when he went missing.
** One of the stations in the New New York tubeway system is given as "J.F.K., Jr. Airport". After the real-life John F. Kennedy, Jr. died when his private plane crashed, the line was replaced with "Radio City Mutant Hall" (though the original line can still be heard on the full-episode animatic that appears on ''Futurama'' volume one DVD).
** In "[[Recap/FuturamaS2E18TheHonking The Honking]]", Bender transforming into a werecar and almost running over Leela became less hilarious after Creator/KateySagal, Leela's voice actor, [[https://www.tmz.com/2021/10/15/katey-sagal-hit-by-car-hospitalized-injuries/ got hit by a car for real]]. Fortunately, Katey survived the whole ordeal.
** Bender expressing a wish for the death penalty in "[[Recap/FuturamaS3E5TheBirdBotOfIceCatraz The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz]]" might just seem like his warped sense of laziness at first, but following "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E6LethalInspection Lethal Inspection]]", we learn that he thought he was immortal at this point in the show's history; Bender may have legitimately assumed that getting the death penalty would have just been another easy way to avoid work, and only learned the truth when it was too late...
** In "[[Recap/FuturamaS3E8ThatsLobstertainment That's Lobstertainment]]", Creator/JoanRivers' head joked she had her face lifted so many times they finally cut it off her body. It becomes a lot less funny after the real Joan Rivers died during plastic surgery.
** The electronics disposal scene in "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E3AttackOfTheKillerApp Attack of the Killer App]]" can be somewhat disquieting for actual New Yorkers. In 2015, It became illegal to submit most electronics for curbside garbage disposal in New York State.
** In "Into the Wild Green Yonder", white rhinoceroses are shown amongst the animals preserved by the Last Encyclopod alongside extinct species. In 2018, the northern white rhinoceros was declared functionally extinct after the death of the last male.
** Mom (who is somewhat of a TakeThat to Disney's monopolistic behavior in spite of its pleasant imagery) almost buying up Planet Express in "Future Stock," given that through its purchase of Fox, Disney now owns the rights to ''Futurama.''
** In "[[Recap/FuturamaS3E15IDatedARobot I Dated A Robot]]" we see a video about how humans dating robots will destroy the world. Then we get "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E4PropositionInfinity Proposition Infinity]]" and discover {{robosexual}}s are both common and repressed. Bonus awkward for the original tape being a high school health class video approved by The Space Pope.
** In "[[Recap/FuturamaS2E6TheLesserOfTwoEvils The Lesser of Two Evils]]", the main characters visit a theme park modeled on 2000s New York. There's a brief scene where the stock market drops from about 11,000 to 7,200, similar numbers to the real-life 2008 crash. (Fortunately, it jumps right back up to 11,000, and all the stock brokers who jumped to their apparent deaths float back up into the building via jetpack). Considering that the scene was supposed to be a "distorted history" take on the crash that started the Great Depression, that makes this a sort of bizarre case of life imitating art imitating life.
** "[[Recap/FuturamaS2E15TheProblemWithPopplers The Problem With Popplers]]" features an AnimalWrongsGroup protesting meat consumption, with Leela pointing out that animals eat other animals and then shown a lion who was taught to eat tofu... with the lion in a very, very malnourished state. The 2010s brings us the disturbing trend of [[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/kitten-vegan-diet-nearly-dies_n_3644213.html vegan pet owners forcing their pets onto vegan diets]].
** In "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E3AttackOfTheKillerApp Attack of the Killer App]]", Sal's friend Hoschel remarks that the video of Fry diving into alien goat vomit and diarrhea is "disgusting and inspiring, like Jared from Subway". As of 2015, Jared Fogle has been fired by Subway after he confessed to owning child pornography and having sex with minors.
** In "[[Recap/FuturamaS4E13BendHer Bend Her]]," Bender masquerades as female as a means of dominating the fembots at the Olympics and scoring easy medals. In real life, scenarios like the one presented in the episode are [[https://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/transgender-rights/banning-trans-girls-school-sports-neither-feminist-nor-legal often used to justify barring transgender women from participating in sports and disqualifying their achievements]], under the pretense that they are men taking advantage of PoliticalOvercorrectness to score easy wins; this escalated in 2021 when numerous U.S. state legislatures began making these restrictions into formal law. The gender testing that Bender is then forced to go through is also harsher in light of real testosterone testing for athletes, which targets not only trans women but also cisgender women with hyperandrogenism; this trend made it all the way to the real Tokyo 2020 Olympics, when outside commentators attempted to discredit cisgender Namibian runner Christine Mboma's silver medal-winning performance [[https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/08/polish-sprinter-demands-namibian-silver-medalist-tested-see-shes-definitely-woman/ by claiming]] she was actually a man. [[note]]Ironically, the first openly transgender athlete to actually compete at even the Olympic Trials was a trans ''man'', [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Mosier Chris Mosier]]. The first trans woman to qualify for the Olympics, Laurel Hubbard (for weightlifting), only did so in 2021 (nearly two decades after the Olympic Committee began allowing trans people to compete under their identified gender); even still, she was subjected to massive backlash, despite not being favored to win (and, indeed, she did not).[[/note]]

** "Leela and the Genestalk" is apparently intended as a warning against genetically modified organisms. However, Mom is shown making very convincing arguments showing that [=GMOs=] have large tangible benefits, while Leela provides no real evidence of any harms and just alludes to the possibility of "long-term effects" which she insists are somehow still unknowable despite the technology being thousands of years old. In addition, Leela instantly gives up on the opposition as soon as she realizes [=GMOs=] can cure ''her'' disease too. As a result, it's not hard to read the message as "genetic modification is a good thing, and its opponents are just willfully blind to the massive amount of suffering that [=GMOs=] have the capacity to prevent."

* DiagnosedByTheAudience: While canon implies that Fry's ditziness and social awkwardness are side effects of Fry lacking a delta brainwave, it's common for fans to read him as having ADHD and/or autism, taking into consideration his impulsivity, his poor motor skills, his self esteem issues, and how he's skilled in very specific areas (i.e. video games, the arts, and certain pop culture knowledge) but struggles to pay attention to most anything else. It's worth noting that his [[Creator/BillyWest voice actor]] opened up about having ADHD and autism in 2019, and has drawn parallels between Fry and his own younger self.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: In the mid 2000s, there were passionate child fans of the show who were in the 7-12 range. Even though it may look like a cool animated sitcom about outer space (and is overall much tamer compared to shows such as, say, ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''), at times it can be [[DarkerAndEdgier darker, edgier]], and racier than Matt Groening's other animated sitcom, ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. This didn't stop the Arabic kids station [[Creator/Spacetoon] from airing a heavily {{Bowdlerized}} dub of the first two seasons. All the more baffling is that Spacetoon did have a separate channel and later block for animation aimed at teens and young adults called Space Power, meaning it could have gone there with less edits.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: In the mid 2000s, there were passionate child fans of the show who were in the 7-12 range. Even though it may look like a cool animated sitcom about outer space (and is overall much tamer compared to shows such as, say, ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''), at times it can be [[DarkerAndEdgier darker, edgier]], and racier than Matt Groening's other animated sitcom, ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. This didn't stop the Arabic kids station ''Creator/Spacetoon'') from airing a heavily {{Bowdlerized}} dub of the first two seasons. All the more baffling is that Spacetoon did have a separate channel and later block for animation aimed at teens and young adults called Space Power, meaning it could have gone there with less edits.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: In the mid 2000s, there were passionate child fans of the show who were in the 7-12 range. Even though it may look like a cool animated sitcom about outer space (and is overall much tamer compared to shows such as, say, ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''), at times it can be [[DarkerAndEdgier darker, edgier]], and racier than Matt Groening's other animated sitcom, ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. This didn't stop the Arabic kids station Creator/Spacetoon from airing a heavily {{Bowdlerized}} dub of the first two seasons. All the more baffling is that Spacetoon did have a separate channel and later block for animation aimed at teens and young adults called Space Power, meaning it could have gone there with less edits.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: In the mid 2000s, there were passionate child fans of the show who were in the 7-12 range. Even though it may look like a cool animated sitcom about outer space (and is overall much tamer compared to shows such as, say, ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''), at times it can be [[DarkerAndEdgier darker, edgier]], and racier than Matt Groening's other animated sitcom, ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. This didn't stop the Arabic kids station Spacetoon from airing a heavily {{Bowdlerized}} dub of the first two seasons. All the more baffling is that Spacetoon did have a separate channel and later block for animation aimed at teens and young adults called Space Power, meaning it could have gone there with less edits.

* UnpopularPopularCharacter: Zoidberg is the InUniverse Scrappy to the other characters, but he's very popular amongst fans.

** Fry and Leela don't seem too bothered by the idea that [[spoiler:everything in the universe is frozen in place besides them]] in the series finale. [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments Well, they did have each other.]]

* ArcFatigue: Fry and Leela's relationship is popular with fans, but the WillTheyOrWontThey approach to their story grows tiresome by the time of the Comedy Central run, especially because the fourth movie moved towards a RelationshipUpgrade, but whether they're actually together after that varies from episode to episode. Only in the final season are they allowed to consistently exist as an unambiguous couple.

** In the second episode, one reason Fry lists for why he couldn't become an astronaut is that nobody liked spending a week with him. [[DeadpanSnarker Leela]] agrees, "A week would be a little much." Contrast this with the finale, where [[spoiler:not only do the two get married and explore the world while everything in the universe is frozen in time, eventually growing old together, Leela is the one to say she was never lonely during all those decades alone with Fry.]] It really shows how their relationship has strengthened throughout the show.
** The last episode's opening has the caption "Avenge Us!" before it's cancellation. Hulu listened.

** [[SantaClaus Robot Santa]], the terrifying monster of Xmas, sees almost everyone on the Naughty List and conducts a terrifying yearly raid that leaves many dead or maimed. Upon judging Fry and friends naughty--save Dr. Zoidberg, [[PetTheDog who gets a pogo stick]])--Santa is driven back but vows to return the next Xmas. Seemingly bested in favor of Bender, Santa frees Bender and ropes him in for the rampage before revealing a threat to Bender to never play Santa ever again. Even after being dethroned, Santa is able to launch a [[BestServedCold plot of revenge]] after enjoying a rap with the Hanukkah Zombie and Kwanzaa Bot.

** Fry's delighted reaction to realizing that everybody and everything he knew in the 20th century has gone (since he thought they didn't seem to like, care, or even respect him) seems much harsher subsequent episodes such as "[[Recap/Futuramas3E4LuckOfTheFryish Luck of the Fryish]]", "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E24ColdWarriors Cold Warriors]] and "[[Recap/FuturamaS7E23GameOfTones Game of Tones]]" have shown that his family actually did love him and were worried about him when he went missing.

** "[[Recap/FuturamaS7E3Decision3012 Decision 3012]]" has a victorious President Nixon build a wall around the Solar System to keep space aliens out. Come 2016, and Donald Trump becomes President promising to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep illegal aliens out.

** Despite how narcissistic he is, Zapp is shown to be one of the few people not disgusted by Leela's eye, seemed to be okay with dating a very masculine cross-dresser (though he seemed to be unaware) in ''Put Your Head On My Shoulders,'' and pursued a relationship with Leela's mother. Is Zapp not as shallow as he seems? Or is he just so desperate that he'll sleep with AnythingThatMoves?

* DiagnosedByTheAudience:
** While canon implies that Fry's ditziness and social awkwardness are side effects of Fry lacking a delta brainwave, it's also common to read him as having ADHD and/or autism, taking into consideration his impulsivity, his poor motor skills, his self esteem issues, and how he's skilled in very specific areas (i.e. video games, the arts, and certain pop culture knowledge) but struggles to pay attention to most anything else. It's worth noting that his [[Creator/BillyWest voice actor]] opened up about having ADHD and autism in 2019, and has drawn parallels between Fry and his own younger self. A couple of one-off lines have alluded to Fry having a "learning disability" but it's mostly relegated to jokes and in-universe assumptions.
** In "Brannigan Begin Again", Kif comes across as less of an annoyed sidekick and more like a person who's legitimately struggling with depression. The way he says "I'm actually laughing!" implies that his job has sucked almost all of the joy out of him and that moments of genuine happiness are a rarity for him. Meeting Amy seems to have given him a more meaningful life (most evidently in "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch").

** The Comedy Central episodes: Some think they're just as good as the original run, but others hate them for Flanderizing the characters (Fry and Bender getting the worst of it), [[WereStillRelevantDammit making their plots more topical]] ([[UnintentionalPeriodPiece you know, despite being set in the future]]) [[{{Anvilicious}} and preachy]], and for the jokes feeling more forced.

* WereStillRelevantDammit: The Comedy Central series is a lot more prone to referencing topical events that end up being yesterday's news not long after the episode airs. "[[Recap/FuturamaS6E3AttackOfTheKillerApp Attack of the Killer App]]" alone has [=iPhones=], Twitter, Susan Boyle, and references to Jared from the Subway adverts at the same time.

** While canon implies that Fry's ditziness and social awkwardness are side effects of Fry lacking a delta brainwave, it's also common to read him as having ADHD and/or autism, taking into consideration his impulsivity, his poor motor skills, his self esteem issues, and how he's skilled in very specific areas (i.e. video games, the arts, and certain pop culture knowledge) but struggles to pay attention to most anything else. It's worth noting that his [[Creator/BillyWest voice actor]] opened up about having ADHD and autism in 2019, and has drawn parallels between Fry and his own younger self. A couple of one-off lines have alluded to Fry having a "learning disability" but it's mostly relegated to jokes and in-universe assumptions.

* DiagnosedByTheAudience: In "Brannigan Begin Again", Kif comes across as less of an annoyed sidekick and more like a person who's legitimately struggling with depression. The way he says "I'm actually laughing!" implies that his job has sucked almost all of the joy out of him and that moments of genuine happiness are a rarity for him. Meeting Amy seems to have given him a more meaningful life (most evidently in "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch").

* HeartwarmingInHindsight: In the second episode, one reason Fry lists for why he couldn't become an astronaut is that nobody liked spending a week with him. [[DeadpanSnarker Leela]] agrees, "A week would be a little much." Contrast this with the finale, where [[spoiler:not only do the two get married and explore the world while everything in the universe is frozen in time, eventually growing old together, Leela is the one to say she was never lonely during all those decades alone with Fry.]] It really shows how their relationship has strengthened throughout the show.
** The last episode's opening has the caption "Avengers Us!" before it's cancellation. Hulu listened.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Fry in "[[Recap/FuturamaS7E23GameOfTones Game of Tones]]". His desire to spend time with a dream simulation of his deceased mother is totally understandable... except that by doing so, he's willfully ignoring his mission and jeopardizing every actual living person on Earth.

* FanficFuel: One issue of the comic books indicates that foiling [[spoiler: and then assisting]] the Zookeeper was not the only adventure that Fry, Leela, and Bender had as the New Justice Team. Who knows what other adventures they had with their superpowers?

** While canon implies that Fry's ditziness and social awkwardness are side effects of Fry lacking a delta brainwave, it's also common to read him as having ADHD and/or autism, taking into consideration his impulsivity, his poor motor skills, his self esteem issues, and how he's skilled in very specific areas (i.e. video games and certain pop culture knowledge) but struggles to pay attention to most anything else. It's worth noting that his [[Creator/BillyWest voice actor]] admitted to having ADHD and autism in 2019, and has drawn parallels between Fry and his own younger self.

** Fender = [[HoYay Fry/Bender]]
*** The show itself uses "Frender" in "Murder on the Planet Express", when Fry wears Bender to save each other.

* IronWoobie: Leela. She was abandoned as a baby and never knew her family or even her ''species'', and everybody at her orphanage bullied her for being a cyclops, making her feel alone and unlovable. This spurned her to grow up cynical and tough, always trying to prove her superiority and not letting herself be vulnerable, but it's made clear that she's repressing a lot of childhood trauma and abandonment issues. She all but says it herself in "Leela's Homeworld" after Fry catches her crying:

** Yivo, despite being the main antagonist of ''[[Recap/FuturamaM2TheBeastWithABillionBacks The Beast with a Billion Backs]]'' is not really villainous or evil but he is hated for forcing almost everyone in the universe into a relationship with him, meaning that he forcibly put his tentacles into people's necks and was revealed to be "mating" with those people through those tentacles, meaning that Yivo was technically raping them. Despite how serious his crimes where, he [[KarmaHoudini got away with everything]] and was EasilyForgiven for it, and was also an InvincibleVillain due to being entirely composed of electromatter.

* UncannyValley: Leela with two eyes, as seen in "The Cyber House Rules". After getting accustomed to seeing her with [[{{Cyclops}} one big eye]] throughout the series, she looks incredibly ''off'' with two smaller eyes.

** In "[[Recap/FuturamaS4E13BendHer Bend Her]]," Bender masquerades as female as a means of dominating the fembots at the Olympics and scoring easy medals. In real life, scenarios like the one presented in the episode are [[https://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/transgender-rights/banning-trans-girls-school-sports-neither-feminist-nor-legal often used to justify barring transgender women from participating in sports and disqualifying their achievements]], under the pretense that they are men taking advantage of PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad to score easy wins; this escalated in 2021 when numerous U.S. state legislatures began making these restrictions into formal law. The gender testing that Bender is then forced to go through is also harsher in light of real testosterone testing for athletes, which targets not only trans women but also cisgender women with hyperandrogenism; this trend made it all the way to the real Tokyo 2020 Olympics, when outside commentators attempted to discredit cisgender Namibian runner Christine Mboma's silver medal-winning performance [[https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/08/polish-sprinter-demands-namibian-silver-medalist-tested-see-shes-definitely-woman/ by claiming]] she was actually a man. [[note]]Ironically, the first openly transgender athlete to actually compete at even the Olympic Trials was a trans ''man'', [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Mosier Chris Mosier]]. The first trans woman to qualify for the Olympics, Laurel Hubbard (for weightlifting), only did so in 2021 (nearly two decades after the Olympic Committee began allowing trans people to compete under their identified gender); even still, she was subjected to massive backlash, despite not being favored to win (and, indeed, she did not).[[/note]]