Characters / Futurama: Philip J. Fry

Futurama Main Character Index
The Planet Express Crew (Philip J. Fry, Bender Bending Rodriguez) | Main Recurring Characters | Planet Express Crew Relatives | Antagonists | Other Characters

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Philip J. Fry

"People said I was dumb, but I proved them!"

Voiced in English by: Billy West ^{Other Languages} Alexis Tomassian (French, except Season 5), Laurent Mantel (French, Season 5), Dirk Meyer (German), Iván Muelas (European Spanish), Benjamín Rivera (Latin American Spanish, Seasons 1-4, 8-Present), Edson Matus (Latin American Spanish, Seasons 5-7), Przemyslaw Stippa (Polish)

Debut: "Space Pilot 3000"

"Existing is basically all I do!"

The main character. Fry is a decent, honest and fun-loving guy with a huge heart, but he's also immature, lazy, and not very bright. Once a pizza boy from the 20th century, he accidentally cryonically freezes himself during a delivery run on New Years' Eve, 1999 and wakes up on New Years' Eve 2999. Hilarity Ensues when he gets a job at Planet Express as a delivery boy, working for his closest living relative, distant nephew Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth.

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A-I

• Ace Pilot: Surprisingly proves himself to be one whenever he takes control of a ship. In one notable instance (when Leela is rendered temporarily blind), he's able to simultaneously man the Planet Express Ship's cannons (to fend off the attacking Robot Mafia) while steering the whole thing with strings attached to the wheel. All of his time playing video games paid off.
• All-Loving Hero: He's a pretty compassionate guy and has a tendency to bond with his enemies.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Fry not fitting in so well in his own time is implied to be related to him getting along so well in the future where he's actually satisfied with his life and loved ones.
• Allegedly Dateless: In a sense, before taking many Relationship Upgrades with Leela in later seasons. Before all that, he often complained about why no woman would date him. But, he's clearly not as hopeless as he claims, having successfully picked up and slept with plenty of women over the show's run (still, they all admit he's... "meh" in bed). Still, none of them are repulsed by him.
• Almighty Janitor: Fry is little more than a twentieth century loser stuck in a dead-end delivery boy job even in the thirty-first century, but he's managed to save Earth and the entire universe several times thanks to his missing Delta Brainwave, and has experienced countless amazing events over the course of the series, including the end and rebirth of all existence.
• Amazon Chaser: Fry seems to have a thing for tough women. He is seen flirting with an Amazonian woman in "Brannigan, Begin Again" and is excited at the thought of being snu-snued to death by the Amazonian women. He also falls in love with Leela, who is known for her fighting abilities.
• Ambiguously Bi: Obviously attracted to women, but when Bender (voicing Leela's feelings about Amy) accuses Fry of dressing like a slut to get the attention of guys, Fry doesn't deny this, but replies, "They're just responding to my personality!" Fry also enters a romantic relationship with Yivo, a celestial being of indeterminate gender... though the entire universe eventually does as well.
• Amicable Exes: He briefly dates Amy. They remain close friends after the eventual break up.
• Amusing Injuries: Horrifically painful things happen to him on a regular basis (Bender slashing his throat, Bender strangling him for drinking his beer, Bender (as a Were-Car) trying to run him over...Huh.)
• Angst? What Angst?: Lampshaded in-universe, his reaction upon learning he's woken up a thousand years in the future. Justified in that no one from Fry's time liked or even respected him and he had a miserable life as a delivery boy (though later episodes do show that his family did care about him, and Fry had a dog named Seymour who was loyal to him):
  Fry: My God, it's the future! My parents! My co-workers! My girlfriend! I'll never see any of them again!
  [Beat]
  Fry: YAHOO!
• Ascended Fanboy: He's a big fan of Star Trek: The Original Series and its film sequels, and (as he points out several times) he now gets to be a real space hero just like the main characters of the show.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: In "Neutopia" ("Now when I say stupid things guys all laugh and buy me stuff."). While he's always a pretty decent-looking guy, he's an absolute bombshell as a woman.
• Audience Surrogate: During some of his Fish out of Temporal Water moments, he doesn't know much about the future world, just like the audience.
• Badass Adorable: His (admittedly gross) naivete keeps him from being too much of a hardened badass (and lets him be likeable as just a regular guy) but he has a lot of really heroic and outstanding moments through the show.
• Basement-Dweller: It's only been touched upon in one episode, but Fry actually lives in Bender's (absurdly spacious) closet. Before that, he lived in the Planet Express office.
• Best Friend: To Bender, to the point where Bender will intervene if he something will get in the way of their friendship.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He was all mellow and reluctant while he was fighting with Zoidberg to the death. But when Zoidberg cut his arm off, he screamed "You BASTARD!!! I'll kill you! YOU BASTARD!!!" and begins taking the fight seriously, even briefly having Zoidberg on the backfoot before they realized everyone had left. Also he starts choking Nibbler because he doesn't like being used.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He may be a silly, goofy, naive ditz, but make him mad and you're dead meat.
• Blithe Spirit: He has a Positive Friend Influence on the Planet Express crew and basically brightens up everyone's lives.
• Book Dumb: He's a lazy, childish slacker who doesn't have much more knowledge regarding anything else outside of a small sector of nerdy interests. In one episode, he attends Mars University, just so he can drop out. Despite all of this, he does manage to be quite clever at times, as well as pull off some remarkable feats and moments of clarity when given the right motivation.
• Born in the Wrong Century: He loves living in the 31st century, due to always dreaming of going to space and being interested in what the future would look like, and never feeling like he had much going for him back in his own time. He still doesn't have much, but he enjoys his surroundings a lot more.
• Brooklyn Rage: Though he grew up in Midwood, Brooklyn, it takes a lot to get him angry. But when he does get mad...
• Buffy Speak:
  • Occasionally has trouble making a coherent speech.
    Fry: But, but, Bender need brain... for smart making.
  • And in the episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before"...
    Leela: It's not working! He's gaining strength from our weapons!
    Fry: Like a balloon and... something bad happens!
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Played for Laughs. In "Near Death Wish", Fry wins Delivery Boy of the Year! His competition were all children who also happened to have been killed while delivering packages, meaning he was the only candidate left.
• Butt-Monkey: He is the Loser Protagonist and regularly suffers a lot of physical comedy and Amusing Injuries.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "He's dead.", delivered in a blunt, deadpan fashion and a wave between the deceased being's eyes to affirm that they're actually dead.
  • From Season 5 onwards, whenever he gets trapped in some manner that's guaranteed to be his own fault in some way, he'll shout "help, police!", which never happens anywhere near a police officer who could hear him (in a high-rise apartment he lives in, on another planet with no other sentient beings other than the Planet Express crew on it, etc).
• Characterization Marches On: In regards to expressing his sensitivity. Early on in the show, there was actually a plot point in one episode where Fry claimed he was too masculine and dense to cry (despite the dire circumstances requiring it); this is a complete 180 of his personality later in the show, where he practically cries every other episode (usually over Leela). He also celebrates arriving in the future in the pilot, which is inconsistent with later episodes that depict him as missing his family, though he justifies this as having convinced himself that he hated the past just because he knew he could never go back there.
• The Chew Toy: He is often crushed by various objects, has had a metal pipe going through his body, even damaging internal organs and is regularly beaten up.
• Chick Magnet: He has attracted several very good looking women, including Leela and Amy. His dorky nature and Nice Guy attitude probably have something to do with it.
• The Chosen One: His lack of the Delta Brainwave has made him the most important person in the universe, regularly saving it from certain doom.
• The Chosen Zero: Saving the Earth (and the universe) multiple times doesn't change the fact that he's a lowly delivery boy with little intelligence.
• Cloudcuckoolander: It's quickly established that Fry's got quite an... interesting way of thinking, to say the least.
  Fry: Wait, I'm having one of those things... like a headache, with pictures.
  Leela: An idea?
  Fry: [nodding] Mmm hmm...
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Stupidity aside, he's shown to be quite competent when the chips are down.
  • As early as "Why Must I Be A Crustacean In Love?", Fry manages to wrestle Zoidberg into submission in a straight gladiator match, only (temporarily) losing the advantage because he stops and tries to appeal to the Decapodian elder. Granted, Zoidberg is considered a wimp among his species, but he is shown to be able to cut Fry's arm clean off, and Clamps can surely testify to just how much ass Zoidberg can kick when he's mad enough.
  • In "Bender Gets Made", he manages to simultaneously fight off the Robot Mafia and pilot the Planet Express ship via a pulley system. Had Leela not been hugging the Idiot Ball for dear life, they might've gotten away.
  • In "Godfellas", he does pretty well in the battle against the Space Pirates, taking out both of their ships by manning the weapons while Leela drives.
  • In "Law and Oracle", he joins the police force and actually makes Detective... but gets fired because he warns Bender that he's suspected of a future crime.
  • "Fun on a Bun" takes this trope to a new level where, after a freak accident, Fry loses his memories, is found by a secret society of Neanderthals (and is mistaken for one of them), leads them in a war against the far more technologically advanced human civilization... and brings them an easy victory!
  • He challenges Leela to hand-to-hand combat and holds his own quite well. This feat clearly takes the cake in Badass!
  • Fry is amazing at anything related to or involving video games. He's an excellent gunman on the Planet Express Ship and he completely owns the entire crew at a video game.
• Decoy Backstory: In "Luck of the Fryish", Fry goes looking for a lucky seven-leaf clover he had as a kid. Flashbacks show that Fry had an older brother named Yancy who was jealous of his luck, so when Fry discovers a statue for a Phillip J. Fry with his clover, he (and the audience) assume that Yancy took the clover, assumed his identity, and lived the life Fry should have had. He goes to his grave with the intent of recovering his clover, but then he discovers that Phillip was actually Yancy's son. One last flashback shows that Yancy named him after Fry, "whom I miss every day", and gave him the clover so that he may continue his legacy.
• Depending on the Writer: Fry is often accused of Flanderization, but his intelligence actually fluctuates depending on the episode, with the second episode already making him act like an idiot. Whether women find him attractive or not also tends to vary with whatever is most convenient for the plot.
• Determinator: When Fry really sets his mind on something, he'll never give up no matter how bad his odds are. Summarized when Bender gets lost in space in "Godfellas" and Fry tries everything he can think of to find him, even as the rest of the Planet Express crew gives up.
  Leela: Look, I miss Bender almost half as much as you do, but you can't bring him back this way. It's hopeless.
  Fry: You can't give up hope just because it's hopeless. You gotta hope even more. And cover your ears and go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah."
• Dirty Coward: In general, he's more of a Cowardly Lion, but he's had a couple moments of this, even if he's bound to make up for it in the end. In "The Series Has Landed" Fry gets a moon rover caught in a lunar dust pool, then declares "It's every man for himself!" and bails out, only to sink up to his neck in the very same dust. He immediately calls for Leela to save him. He gets called this in "War is the H-Word" when he, wielding the only charged phaser, blasts himself a hole to hide in. Though at the end of that episode, he does ride a bouncing ball to the peace meeting to save the life of his best friend.
• Disability Immunity: Due to his past-nastyification which caused Fry to become his own grandfather, he's unique as the only sapient being in the universe without the Delta Brainwave, thus making him immune to the Brain Spawn's mental attacks, at the cost of making him rather dumb. The Nibblonians refer to this as his "superior, but inferior mind". This later proves even more efficient when he faces the Brain Spawn for a second time and saves a primordial, unborn creature from "the Dark One". It's implied that he also has immunity to the Hypnotoad's powers for the same reason, as he's the only person who notices the quality of Hypnotoad's show going downhill.
• Disney Death:
  • He has way too many to count. Arguably, the first is when he was frozen in the year 2000, and his family assumed him to be dead. Averted in "Fun on a Bun", when he is presumed dead after falling into a meat chopper. Granted, he didn't die, but the implications before this revelation are quite macabre.
  • Double Subverted in "Meanwhile." He — yes, Fry himself and not a clone or something of the sort — finally dies for real via falling to his death from hundreds of stories. But, thankfully, Time Travel saves the day before it's too late.
• The Ditz: Partly because he's a Fish out of Temporal Water and partly because of that whole Delta Brainwave thing. In either case, he always seems to be a little slow on the draw.
  • Here's an example from "All the Presidents' Heads":
    Fry: Guess I better head over to my night job.
    Leela: You have a night job?
    Fry: Yup. It's exhausting, but I need the extra money to buy coffee so I can stay awake for my night job.
    Leela: But—
    Fry: Gotta go!
• Dogged Nice Guy: He chases comically after Leela for the first few seasons. As time goes on Leela returns more and more of his affection.
• Dream-Crushing Handicap: "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" demonstrates that Fry easily has the potential to be an astounding holophoner composer and player, were it not for his acute medical condition known as "Stupid Fingers", which renders him barely able to master a belt buckle.
• Drunk with Power: During "Bender's Game", he becomes too obsessed with Momon's dice after using its power by accident. Though it's less about being powerful than actually being stupidly fascinated with it ala Gollum.
• Dumb Is Good: For the most part. Sometimes his lack of intelligence causes him to be rather insensitive, but he's generally one of the nicest people you could ever meet. He's also one of the most dim.
• Endearingly Dorky: Mostly due to his childish nature and his kooky mannerisms, and he's a Trekkie. He's not seen as particularly attractive in-universe, but he manages to date some fairly hot women at times.

• The Everyman: While he's frequently made to be ridiculously stupid, Fry is generally an average and relatable guy.
• Exotic Extended Marriage: Fry once embarked on a polyamorous relationship with a woman named Colleen and four other guys. As hard as he tried to accept it, however, he couldn't stand the thought of sharing Colleen's attention with other men.
• Extreme Omnivore: Fry has eaten a variety of non edible things such as a heaping bowl of salt, a jigsaw puzzle, silverware and a softball.
• First Friend: To Bender.
  Bender: You know, Fry, of all the friends I've had you're the first.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: At first, but he quickly adapts. In fact, 'The Cryonic Woman' makes light of the fact that he adjusted very quickly and well to the future, and that he fits in better there than in his native time.

• Fling a Light into the Future: For the Nibblonians. He’s the only person throughout all of time and space with the power to confront the Brain Spawn directly. Unfortunately for them, he was born a thousand years before he’d be needed, creating the necessity to preserve him in the first place.
• Fluffy Tamer: A bone vampire with acidic spit and urine, razor sharp talons, enormous strength and an insatiable lust for bones, that loved him to bits and acted like a puppy around him.
• Fool for Love: Fry does genuinely love Leela, but his childishness puts her off, regardless of how hard Fry tries. Not helping matters is that Fry's attempts to impress her are equally childish, or poorly thought out.
• Freakiness Shame: He considers Leela to be the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, including and especially because of her one giant eye.
• Freaky Is Cool: When one of Fry's friends gets singled out for being different, Fry will inevitably stand up for them and defend them for being unique because that is what makes them special to him. This probably has a lot to do with him being from the 20th century. Everything in the 31st century is new and cool to him, even things most people of the future consider abnormal or unappealing. His attitude is perhaps best exemplified in the very first conversation he has with Bender:
  Bender: You really want a robot for a friend?
  Fry: Yeah. Ever since I was six.
• Friend to All Living Things: Has been shown to inspire an amazing loyalty and connection with all of his pets, ranging from his old dog, Seymour, who waited for him to get back for 12 years, to his hamster that was still loyal to him after he put it through astronaut training, to a narwhal that he taught to eat and live again, to...
• Future Badass: Lars Filmore was a time sphere-created duplicate of Fry who spent several years in the past and became older, wiser and more competent as a result.
• Genius Ditz: While normally not all that bright, sometimes Fry will display a moment of brilliance such as driving the ship and shooting at a chasing car of robot mafia at the same time and re-arranging an entire galaxy with a gravitational array to write Leela a love message. He's even extremely talented at composing music but lacks the manual dexterity to actually play it on his instrument of choice.
• Guy in Back: Fulfills this role on the rare occasions when the Planet Express ship is involved in combat. Leela pilots the ship, while Fry serves in the gunner position.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: Fry's outfit choices are usually limited to his usual red jacket and jeans but when he does dress up, he actually looks pretty snazzy.
• The Heart: He's pretty much single-handedly responsible for keeping the Planet Express crew together. In an episode where he quits to become a police officer, the rest of the crew learn the hard way that his absence makes the company dull and the crew more prone to snapping at each other.
• The Hero: Being an impulsive Cloudcuckoolander and Idiot Hero has not stopped him. He tends to have the most focus, often saves the day (even if accidentally) and most importantly of all, is the one who drew the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits together.
• Heroic Sacrifice: A lot, every one to protect Leela but the only time that killed him was in Rebirth. And technically the time it killed him in Bender's Big Score.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Bender, the two are best friends and very close, but it's clearly not romantic.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Despite being The Ditz, and having a superior/inferior brain, and often doing very stupid/suicidal things, when given the opportunity, he's pretty darn capable. This is perhaps best demonstrated in "Bender's Big Score", when he spends years working his way up to assistant director of an aquarium back in the year 2000ish before returning to the year 3000ish as the suave, competent, charming Lars.
  • He also show that looks don't matter to him in regards to attraction, having the remarkably mature mindset that looks will invariably change. It's been shown on multiple occasions that regardless of what Leela looks like, his feelings for her remain unchanged.
  • "Parasites Lost" mentions that very few people in the universe can play a holophoner at all, and even the ones who can aren't very good at it. With the worms fixing up his Stupid Fingers, Fry's able to compose a beautiful piece (while he's unsure whether he deserves all the credit, the episode shows the worms have no concept of love, and therefore no need to express it artistically).
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood:
  • Whenever we get a flashback to Fry's parents, they are usually shown being ludicrously neglectful towards their son (although they didn't exceptionally favor his brother either). In "The Cryonic Woman", we even learn that when Fry went missing due to being frozen, his parents didn't even want the police investigating the case due to them believing it would be a waste of taxpayers' money. However, in "Bender's Big Score", Fry went back in time and reunited with his parents, in whose perspective he didn't stay absent long enough to justify calling the authorities.
  • This trope is gradually subverted later in the series. Each member of Fry's family has an episode dedicated to exploring his relationships with them. These episodes all portray his family in a much more loving manner than their initial appearances in flashbacks and Fry's own reaction to them being gone in the pilot, though they all still have their flaws. In the episode that focuses on his mother near the end of the series, Fry even admits that he may have tried to exaggerate his family's faults to himself in order not think about how the family he loved very much has been gone for over a thousand years.

• Human Popsicle: Spent 1000 years as one (i.e. in suspended animation), even longer after time travel screws with things in The Movie.
• I Call Him "Mister Happy":
  • The 68th issue of the tie-in comic has him refer to his genitals as "Colonel Cuckoo and the Clackers" when the Planet Express crew decide to take off their clothes that had been stained by Zoidberg's ink and proceed to put them in what they think is a washing machine.
  • In "Fry and Leela's Big Fling", he responds to Leela's suggestion that they go skinny dipping by expressing his concern of someone seeing "Wingus and the Ping Pong boys".
• I Just Want to Be Special: Before finding out he was to be the savior of the universe. (Funny — he has a dead end job, sorta, but he still managed to rack up a list of one-of-a-kind adventures.) Oddly, he continues to have this mindset even after saving the world about a half a dozen times.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Somewhat useful even outside the What If? episode where they're being invaded by Nintendians. (That one time he blew up a Space Pirate ship with an arcade console-style targeting mechanism, for example, in 'Godfellas'.) Ironically, if the first episode is any indication, he actually kinda sucks at videogames, an idea reinforced by the fact that he apparently never got the last ship in Space Invaders when he was a kid.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Many, but especially in the first movie. When you stack it up, that example becomes Fry wanting Leela to be happy on top of Lars wanting Leela to be happy. It's super-confusing when you work it out.
• Identical Grandson: A literal example. He actually is his own grandfather. He also bears a strong resemblance to Professor Farnsworth, despite being a thousand years of generations apart.
• Idiot Hero: Well-meaning and heroic as he is, Fry is a prime example of this trope, if the numerous other tropes mentioning his slowness didn't make it obvious enough. To his credit, he shows some awareness of this, and tends to move forward in spite of it. As he himself says in "The Duh-Vinci Code", "There's always going to someone smarter than you, so the only way you can be happy is to make the most of what you've got!"
• Immune to Mind Control: Due to his lack of a Delta Brainwave, Fry is immune to any and all forms of mind control. This includes the Hypnotoad, the Brainspawn and the Dark One.
• Informed Flaw: From all the comments about Fry's physique over the years, and all the injuries he's taken at Planet Express, he should really be a physical wreck, and badly out of shape. You'd never tell from looking at him: the worst thing you could say about him is that he has a flabby gut.
• Innocently Insensitive: He has on a couple occasions unintentionally hurt one of his companions' feelings.
• Interspecies Romance: Many of his love interests have been of different species like a mermaid or a robot. And then of course he gets together with Leela who's a mutant.
• Iron Butt Monkey: He's very resistant to the huge amounts of Amusing Injuries he receives. He's gotten slammed into a wall at full speed by those transport tubes, surviving a fall from a helicopter without deploying his parachute, eating a big heaping bowl of salt, three cola induced heart attacks in high school. And those are the ones that don't involve super-advanced medicine or symbiotic worms.

J-Z

• Jumped at the Call: He's overjoyed at the concept of working for Planet Express, despite having spent the last several hours trying to avoid being a delivery boy. He also tells Nibbler he'll willingly help if the Nibblonians ever need him again.
• Just Friends: With Leela for the first several seasons, before their Relationship Upgrade.
• Kavorka Man: Fry is usually portrayed as an unattractive loser, but is still pretty successful with women when it's convenient for the plot. Throughout the series he's been involved with Amy, a heartless bureaucrat, a mermaid, his time displaced ex-girlfriend, a robot replica of Lucy Liu, and finally Leela.
• Kindhearted Simpleton: As mentioned by Fry himself: "I may not be clever, but I have a good heart. That's what my mom used to say."

• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Whenever explaining to his friends about his own time, Fry either explains to them wrongly or is just as clueless as them.
• Last-Name Basis: From everyone, including his own great-great-[...]-great-grand-nephew. Lampshaded in one episode, when the TV mentions "Turanga Leela":
  Fry: "Turanga"?
  Amy: That's her name, Philip!
  Bender: "Phillip"?!
• Lazy Bum: Fry often slacks off, takes naps, and refuses to get off the couch. He even says, in one comic, "I take my laziness seriously".
• Leitmotif: For some reason, Katrina and the Waves' "Walkin' on Sunshine". Even played at his funeral. On bagpipes. And it's his ringtone. And yet he can never get beyond the first verse (because it blows out Billy West's vocal chords).
• Like a Duck Takes to Water: Literally unfrozen in 3000, he adapts readily to his new environment and picks up a few skills; and his (rather spotty) knowledge of how things worked in the past helps out the crew quite a few times. He does get to do everything he ever wanted to do in the future such as go to space.
  Professor: Tell us of this 'the wheel'!
• Limited Wardrobe: Almost always wears his combination of red jacket, T-Shirt, and jeans, which is a tribute to James Dean. It's a bit out of style in the 31st century. More impressive is the fact that his outfit has been destroyed or otherwise unrecoverable at the ends of some episodes, so he might be getting replacements somewhere. He evidently only owns one outfit at a time.
• Living Distant Ancestor: Professor Farnsworth's great-great-[...]-great-grand-uncle, and thanks to the "past Nastyfication" a slightly more distant direct ancestor as well.
• Living Emotional Crutch: He's often this to Bender, who has been known to go off his alcoholic fuel source when Fry brushes him off.
• Loser Protagonist: The opening alone has him get ridiculed by children, yelled at by his boss and dumped by his girlfriend. While he's still not much in the year 3000, he's at least content with his life and has found several friends... and Zoidberg!
• Love at First Sight: Fry says that he fell in love with Leela the first time he met her. He doesn't admit it until the third season (because he wasn't able to articulate his thoughts) and it becomes a regular theme in the show from then on.
• Man of Kryptonite: Fry's lack of a delta brainwave means he's Immune to Mind Control, which means he's the only character who can actually fight back against the stupefying abilities of the Brainspawn.
• Manchild: He's not exactly what you'd call mature, even though he's biologically around his late twenties; he's prone to ditzy behavior, tends to speak like a childish buffoon, and regularly needs things such as futuristic concepts and even IDEAS explained to him. Leela herself admits that she likes Fry's boyish charm, but hates his childishness.
  Fry: At last, war has made me into a man. Wheeee!
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Feminine Boy to Leela's Masculine Girl, although it's usually downplayed. Leela is a strong-willed, tough-as-nails Action Girl, and Fry is laid back, awkward, emotional, and usually a Non-Action Guy, but their interests are still fairly conventionally gendered. A few of the pulp poster parodies put Leela in the more powerful "masculine" pose◊ and Fry in the more submissive "feminine" pose.◊
• Meaningful Name: After Phil Hartman (the original intended voice of Zapp) was murdered, production gave Fry his first name in his honor.
• Morality Pet: Is the only human that Bender doesn't want to kill, and one of the only creatures Bender will treat with any sort of kindness. Applies literally too — in "Jurassic Bark," Bender says he loves Fry similar to how a human loves a dog.
  Bender: All those times I said, "Kill all humans", I'd always whisper, "except one". Fry was that one. And I never told him so!
• Must Have Caffeine: Generally doesn't try to chug down 100 cups a day, except for that one time, but he does like his coffee. He is also constantly drinking Slurm Soda (enough to turn green when a soda machine was installed) and in high school, used to drink a hundred cans of Cola a week, which lead to three coca-cola related heart-attacks.
• 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!
• My Own Grampa: Fry unwittingly becomes his own grandfather by the direct expedient of doing, as he later puts it, "the nasty in the past-y". Surprisingly, this actually became a major plot point in some later episodes. And in a previous episode, it turned out.
• Naïve Newcomer: He starts out as clueless about the future due to being a Fish out of Water from the past. He quickly adapts to the 31st century.
• Nice Guy: While it varies somewhat Depending on the Writer, Fry is generally a very considerate and kindhearted person. He can just be very lazy, immature and dimwitted. He befriends Bender quickly because he sees no problems with befriending a robot and supports Bender going beyond his programming, and goes out of his way to make Leela less lonely even before their strong Ship Tease begins. Billy West even called him one during an interview.
  Billy West: Fry's not a masher, he's a gentleman. Not a very bright gentleman, but nonetheless.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Fry is usually responsible for almost every episode's crisis as a result of his stupidity, poor attention span or both.
  • He ruined Heaven for EVERYONE, all just so he could tell Bender that he's happy where he is. There was nothing actually wrong with wanting to contact his best friend, but he clearly didn't expect Yivo to be such a Crazy Jealous Guy and evict everyone for "cheating on him" with another universe or for Bender to use the letters he sent through the rift to create hypermatter weapons with which to attack Yivo and attempt to destroy heaven.
  • His attempt at a Heroic Sacrifice ends up kickstarting the plot of "The Sting" because by using his body as a shield, the bee stinger winds up having to go through two bodies and Leela gets pierced by the tip, injecting her with all the venom. Had he not got in the way, she would just have been impaled like he was, which could be fixed with surgery. Of course, he had no way of knowing that would happen so it was still noble.
  • In the episode "Future Stock", his speech cost the crew from becoming millionaires by causing Planet Express stock prices to fall hard.
  • In most time traveling episodes, Fry is sure to cause problems such as sleeping with his own grandmother and causing Paul Revere to fail to alert the colonies.
• Non-Action Guy: While he certainly has his moments (only person who can defeat the Brainspawn?), in most stand-up fights he's cowering behind Leela.
• Odd Friendship: Fry seems to be able to befriend just about anyone. His first and most prominent example is his friendship with Bender, especially as robot-human friendships seem to be uncommon even in the future. Bender is an amoral robot who dreams of killing all humans and Fry is a well-intentioned idiot, and yet they're essentially best friends.
• Official Couple: He and Leela start dating in the Comedy Central seasons, though their exact relationship status can vary from episode to episode.
• Older Than They Look: While Fry looks to be in his mid-twenties at the start of the series, he's actually over a thousand years old as a result of becoming a Human Popsicle. The events of Bender's Big Score add another thousand years to his count, and "The Late Phillip J. Fry" has him live through the death and rebirth of the universe twice over, essentially making him millions of years old by the end of the series.
• Only Friend: He's the only person Bender considers a friend. Whenever he chants, "Destroy all humans" in his sleep, he always whispers, "Except Fry." under his breath. Similarly, if anyone shows a notable degree of sympathy for Zoidberg, it's often him.
  Zoidberg: (on Fry) HE WAS THE ONLY ONE OF YOU WHO NEVER STRUCK ME!
• Only Sane Man: His idiocy aside, he's still an Audience Surrogate, and often seems more normal than most of the future characters.
• Other Me Annoys Me:
  • Gets annoyed at his Universe 1 self, and is jealous that he's married to Leela.
  • More seriously, he's jealous of Lars Fillmore, his own older time duplicate, due to Leela falling for him (though he didn't know they're the same until after Lars dies).
• Out of Focus: Despite being the main focus character for the majority of the series, Fry gets noticeably less focus and screentime in Season 8, with many episodes having him act primarily as comic relief or only getting incidental subplots while other characters move the plot along.
• Paradox Person: He's a temporal anomaly due to becoming his own grandfather, making him the only person in creation without a Delta Brain Wave. Taken literally with his duplicate Lars Fillmore, who was created via Temporal Paradox.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: Spends his free time indulging in popular media of the 20th century and frequently quotes and references stuff from said media. His indulging of entertainment actually comes useful throughout the series, inspiring him to heroic resolve and making him find solutions outside the box inspired by the shows he loved.
• Really Gets Around: Not nearly as much as Amy, but there's a pretty good-sized list of wom— er, females he's gotten with. Some of them weren't even human! Like the radiator girl from the Radiator Planet... which turned out to just be a radiator. But who later showed up to his funeral in "The Sting".
• Red Is Heroic: Wears a red jacket and is The Hero of the series, saving Earth on several occasions.
• Relationship Upgrade: At the end of Into The Wild Green Yonder, Leela finally reciprocates his feelings, and from then on out the show is relatively consistent at depicting them as a couple.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: He's surrounded by aliens, mad scientists and robots. And he's just a working-class guy from Brooklyn.
• Robosexuals Are Creeps: The Planet Express crew is disgusted with Fry dating a Lucy Liu-bot, and they show him a propaganda film to try (and fail) to make him stop.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Sensitive Guy to Bender's Manly Man. He's the Socially Awkward Hero while Bender is the boisterous Hedonist.
• The Slacker: Even after coming to the future, he spends much of his time sitting on the couch and drinking beer.
• Stable Time Loop: His immediate family tree becomes this once he sleeps with his own grandmother.
• Surprise Incest: Since the man he thought was his grandfather died before having children, but Fry isn't erased from existence, he assumes neither his supposed grandfather nor the man's fiancee who's coming onto Fry are his relatives. He's half-right.
• Taking the Bullet: Multiple episodes have him jump in front of a threat to protect Leela. "The Sting" has him take the brunt of a deadly space bee stinger (though she gets most of the poison and is thus in worse condition), and "Lrreconciliable Ndndifferences" has him shield her from a ray gun (which luckily turns out to be a teleporter).
• Temporal Paradox:
  • In a what-if scenario, Fry not getting frozen causes this, which eventually leads to that timeline collapsing in on itself. This is because if he's never frozen, he'd not be able to go back and be his own grandfather.
  • Lars Fillmore's existence in a nutshell-Fry ended up interfering with his own past self for pizza, resulting in the two becoming separate beings. This is only achieved through a literal Timey-Wimey Ball, and it means Lars is doomed to die in order to correct the paradox.
• Teeny Weenie: According to Amy and Leela, due to selective genetic engineering being rampant by the 31st century, Fry's normal "equipment" apparently doesn't stand the test of time. Played for Laughs by Bender, who occasionally makes "small" jokes at Fry's expense (who, of course, insists it's "huge"). So he might just be small by the future's standards or maybe Bender was just being a jerk.
• This Loser Is You: A lazy, dimwitted everyman who serves as Audience Surrogate.
• Time Abyss: He has been frozen for a period of 2000+ years, and with the events of The Late Phillip J. Fry, he may be one of the oldest living beings (chronologically).
• Took a Level in Dumbass: In the earliest episodes, where he was supposed to be a Fish out of Temporal Water and stories would mostly focus around him adapting to life in the 31st century, he was a fairly average guy with a dash of Cloudcuckoolander and a few moments of genuine cleverness. As the show progressed, he adapted to his surroundings much faster than the writers intended, and so he devolved into a gibbering manchild unless the writers needed him to say something profound.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Pineapples. He also loves anchovies on his pizza^note but not pineapples, interestingly. Too bad they went extinct while he was frozen.
• True Companions: If his friends are in trouble, he'll stop at nothing to save them, even when that friend is Bender, and Fry openly acknowledges he is both evil and a terrible friend.
• Understanding Boyfriend: Fry has always liked Leela and never had a problem with her appearance. He's the only one who objects when she wants phaser eye surgery to get two eyes. Later, when he actually is her boyfriend, he shows this further in "Leela and the Genestalk" where he refuses to break up with her despite her having fully undergone squidification and promises her he'll always love her no matter what. She's touched and thanks him.
• Unfazed Everyman: It takes him a while to cope with the weirdness. Once he does, he realizes that he probably never really belonged in the 21st Century anyway. Although the fact that he was conceived as his own grandfather giving him no delta brainwaves, and deliberately sent into the future by Nibbler specifically because of this may disqualify him.
• Unlucky Everydude: Played with. In his youth, Fry had bursts of luck after finding his seven-leaf clover, but since he lost it in the future, he constantly runs into bad luck scenarios. Some are the result of his stupidity, but others are just pure happenstance screwing him over (like the wind blowing his dollar into a power line).
  Fry: I've run over black cats who were luckier than me.
• Unreliable Narrator: Fry's jaundiced views of his 20th century life are gradually revealed to be signs of his own immaturity. Notably, "The Why of Fry" and "Bender's Big Score" show how much his family really loved him, and an early script of The Cryonic Woman had Fry's mother, not his girlfriend, follow him to the future.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Bender; the two may insult and occasionally mutilate each other (or at least Bender would tell you that it's something both of them do equally), but they care for each other and will always have the other's back.
• Vocal Evolution:
  • In the first season, Fry's voice was a bit higher, and he spoke faster. As the series went on, his voice gradually hewed closer to Billy West's natural speaking voice by becoming slightly lower and slower.
  • As of the Hulu seasons, Fry's voice has become noticeably raspy in the years since West last voiced him.
• The Watson: Fry is generally the one to ask questions, ranging from Techno Babble to questions about someone's Back Story.
  "At the risk of sounding stupid: does any of this actually work?"
• Whole Costume Reference: He is dressed like Jim Stark from Rebel Without a Cause. Which puts him in the same company as Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury...