Referenced By / Futurama

References to Futurama in other media.

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Comic Books

• Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes: In Action Comics #863, Zoidberg makes a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo as an alien arrested by the Science Police. This is a rather fitting cameo, seeing how this issue takes place in the 31st century (much like Futurama).

Comic Strips

• Off the Mark:
  • This strip has Leela, Fry and Bender in a bar, where Leela meets Mike Wazowski.
  • This strip has Leela among the cartoon characters that are at "The Betty Rubble Center For Recovering Toons".
  • This strip shows that Fry is also there.

Film — Animation

• Escape from Planet Earth: At one point, a floor is seen with the names of various sci-fi characters from pop culture etched into it. Among the names is "Bender".
• The Mitchells vs. the Machines: During the demonstration of the Pal Max robots, an audience member is seen texting "Shut up and take my money".

Live-Action TV

• In the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver segment on housing discrimination, John Oliver references this show's spoof of Richard Nixon when he discusses how Nixon opposed a plan which would have withheld federal grants from communities that opposed integration.
  John: It is worth reminding yourself once in a while just how deeply weird Nixon was. He’s been rendered so silly by a lifetime of cartoonish impressions, it's genuinely unsettling to watch him make unyielding eye contact while saying "I believe that forced integration of the suburbs is not in the national interest" like a cold robot powered by racism. All I'm saying is, it really says something that the most human version of Nixon is the one where he’s a cartoon head in a jar.

Podcasts

• In The Adventures of Huck Finn episode of Escape from Vault Disney!, Tony mocks Tom Sawyer's overly complicated plan to rescue Jim by saying "My ridiculously circuitous plan is one quarter complete!"

Video Games

• In Bitcoin Billionaire, the Futuretopia furniture includes a Dolomite Doggy, Head in a Jar, Hypnofrog, and Zoidbed.
• Enter the Gungeon: Professor Goopton speaks entirely in a fictional language seen on Futurama. There's also a gun that's a direct reference to the wind-up laser gun shown in "War Is The H-Word", and one of the items is a seven-leaf clover that also makes the former weapon a lot more powerful if both of them are held at the same time.
• The Simpsons Game: During Matt Groening's boss fight, he summons endless copies of Bender and Zoidberg to fight Homer and Bart.
• The Simpsons: Night of the Living Treehouse of Horror: In the fifth level, "If I Only Had a Body", Homer's robot body resembles Bender's body.
• Stellaris: The placeholder personality for glitched AI empires that have no ethics is "Despicable Neutrals". Their personality description quotes Zapp Brannigan directly.
  "What makes a species turn neutral... Lust for gold? Power? Or were they just born with hearts full of neutrality?"
• World of Warcraft: Professor Putricide in Icecrown Citadel channels Professor Farnsworth in a few lines:
  (Festergut is engaged after Rotface is killed) Terrible news, everyone, Rotface is dead!
  (On pull) Good news, everyone! I think I've perfected a plague that will destroy all life on Azeroth!
  (On death) Bad news, everyone, I don't think I'm going to make it...
• One of the Old Gods in World of Horror, Ygothaeg, is an amphibian (in this case an axolotl) with a hypnotic gaze, much like the Hypnotoad.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick: In the strip "Area of Affect", Minrah casts calm emotions on a fearful Belkar, suddenly turning him into The Stoic. Later, the halfling quotes the Neutrals after informing Elan he's not worried about the bard trying to save a poisoned Vaarsuvius:
  Belkar: [completely calm] I have no strong feelings one way or the other.
• Square Root of Minus Garfield: "I could tell at once that you were a bender" takes the popular strip where Jon glues a blender to his face◊ and has Jon instead gluing Bender to his face.
  • "Donut Wars... and Zoidberg" is an edit of this◊ also very popular strip and, inspired by the episode "The 30% Iron Chef", has Zoidberg eating Professor Farnsworth's donut and blaming it on Fry.

Web Video

• The 8-Bit Guy: David often references Futurama when discussing retro technology in pop culture.
  • When discussing how cassette drives work, David shows Bender putting up a poster of a reel-to-reel tape unit as a pin-up.
  • In the following episode covering how floppy drives work, David shows Fry using an 8" floppy as a security tape and Bender's brain being transferred to a 3.5" floppy disk.
  • In "Basics of BASIC", David points out Bender and Fry's "Home Sweet Home" sign as being written in BASIC as well as the founding principles of the Church of Robotology, and how Kif wrote his hologram for Amy with four million lines of BASIC code. Also shown is Bender's CPU being a MOS 6502, the same processor used in many home computers and video game consoles of the late 70s and early 80s such as the Commodore VIC-20, the Apple ][, the Atari 8-Bit Computers, and the Nintendo Entertainment System.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd: In his review of The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man, the Nerd notes Dr. Julius Crab's resemblance to Zoidberg.
• In The Nostalgia Critic's review of The Iron Giant, during the titular character's first scene, the Critic plays a clip of Bender saying "Bite my colossal metal ass!" from "Anthology of Interest".
• PhantomStrider: In "The 10 Most Hated Junk Foods", when Strider brings up Fry's Turkish Delights, he uses a clip of Phillip J. Fry as a visual gag, before clarifying he's talking about a different Fry.
• Stopmotion Chess uses Futurama sound effects in the remixed version.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: In "Breakout Star", Anne mentions that her newfound fans call themselves "Fa'Annes." Polly reacts with "I don't want to live on this planet anymore."
• In Disenchantment (which is a show also created by Matt Groening), the episode "Dreamland Falls" has cameos from Fry, Bender and Professor Farnsworth.
• Logorama: The Slurm logo can be seen as one of the menu options at the KFC restaurant earlier in the film.
• Looney Tunes: In the 2004 Daffy Duck short "Attack of the Drones", Zoidberg makes a cameo as a member of the council that Daffy is a part of. Incidentally, this short was animated by Rough Draft Studios which also animates Futurama.
• Family Guy:
  • In "The Splendid Source", Peter, Quagmire, and Joe try to find the source of a joke so funny, it always makes Peter poop in his pants. During a montage narrated by Peter, they are shown asking to various people who told them that joke. When they ask Tom Tucker about it, he says that he heard the joke from "Bender on Futurama", cutting to Peter and his friends asking Bender about it while they are inside the Planet Express ship.
  • In "Throw It Away", Lois tries hauling Stewie's time machine down the stairs and causes everything to change into different time periods; in a scene taking place in the future, Chris briefly turns into Bender.
• MAD: In the "Real Veal" sketch, Bender is seen in a robot boxing championship losing to "Real Veal", a robot-cow hybrid.
• The PJs: An image of Fry appears on a missing poster on the back of a milk carton in "Cliffhangin' with Mr. Super", as a response to Futurama featuring an image of Thurgood on the sewer manhole cover in "I Second That Emotion" and "The Luck of the Fryrish".
• Given that both shows have been created by Matt Groening, The Simpsons features many references to Futurama:
  • In "Treehouse of Horror IX", executive producer David X. Cohen is credited as David "Watch Futurama" Cohen.
  • In "Mayored to the Mob", Uter wears a Futurama t-shirt at the Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con.
  • At the end of "Missionary: Impossible", Bender appears as a caller on the FOX telethon.
  • The Couch Gag for "HOMR" has the Simpsons dropping onto the couch through a tube system. Fry lands in Bart's place before being sucked back up and replaced by Bart.
  • In "Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade", Bart imagines his classmates turning into various TV characters, including Bender.
  • In "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-bot" , Homer and Bart watch videotapes of robot fights featuring Killhammad Aieee, with one of them labeled "Killhammad Aieee vs. Bender".
  • In "My Big Fat Geek Wedding", Matt Groening makes a cameo As Himself, with Lenny referring to him as "the creator of Futurama". When Milhouse asks Groening to autograph his Bender doll, he agrees and, while talking to all the fans surrounding him, he quickly produces a sketch of Fry.
  • In "Catch 'Em If You Can", a poster for the Volume 1 DVD of Futurama can be seen behind Marge during the scene at the rental store.
  • In "Fraudcast News", the Squeaky-Voiced Teen tries to commit suicide by jumping off the cliff known as Geezer Rock after yelling "Why did they cancel Futurama!?", only to survive after landing in a car where two teenagers were making out and crushing the male teenager.
  • The title for the episode "Future-Drama" is a pun on Futurama. Also, when Homer and Bart are riding an hovercar and go through a quantum tunnel, Bender shows up alongside them on the other side of the tunnel, leading to this exchange:
    Bender: All right! You guys are my new best friends!
    Homer: You wish, loser! (grabs Bender and throws him out of the car, the robot breaking into pieces while Homer is laughing at his expense)
  • In "That '90s Show", Homer begins the flashback by describing The '90s as a wonderful time, including the fact that "a struggling Matt Groening created Futurama".
  • In "Love Is A Many Strangled Thing", the title screen features a cameo of the Planet Express ship, with the Futurama theme being briefly played.
  • In "Replaceable You", Bender appears on the cover of a magazine titled Popular Robotics.
  • Fry and Leela have a cameo during the Gainax Ending of "Beware My Cheating Bart". Also, Stranded (the Show Within a Show Homer watches that is also a parody of Lost) has a scene where Futurama's Alien Language 1 appears on a rock, where it reads "Watch Futurama Thursdays at 10".
  • In Guillermo del Toro's opening to "Treehouse of Horror XXIV", the Hypnotoad makes an appearance.
  • The episode "Simpsorama" is, of course, a crossover with the show.
  • In "My Fare Lady", Homer has a dream that parodies The Jetsons' intro. It ends with Homer being seen by some robots as a reason "why humans failed". One of the robots in that dream is Bender.
  • The couch gag to "Mathlete's Feat" is a crossover with Rick and Morty. During that couch gag, Morty goes to some place which features appearances from the Planet Express ship, a Slurm vending machine, and a guy with a Brain Slug on his head.
  • Following the events of "Simpsorama", Bender has made several non-speaking cameos in the Simpsons' basement, waiting 1,000 years to go back to the 31st century. This includes the episode "Cue Detective", where it's revealed that Marge uses Bender as a safe for money.
  • During the live segment of "Simprovised", Bender walks by with a sign reading "Bring Back Futurama (Again)".
  • In "Treehouse of Horror XXXIII", one of the theme parks at the end of the "SimpsonsWorld" segment is Futurama-rama. The dome is in the shape of Bender's head.
• Sonic Boom: In "Eggman: The Video Game: Part 1", when Tommy Thunder's new video game comes out, Wild Cat says, "Shut up and take my money!".

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