Good news, everyone! We're going to describeFuturamahere!An Animated Series / Fantastic Comedy about a pizza delivery boy named Philip J Fry who is accidentally cryogenically frozen on December 31, 1999 for 1,000 years, emerging on the eve of New Year's Day 3000 to find a world of space travel, robots, aliens, mutants etc. He tracks down a distant relative, a demented old inventor who hires him as a delivery boy, and goes on to have various adventures.Upon its release, many people expected it to be The Simpsonsin SPACE!. However regular viewers soon came to realise that it was very different, having a far better established continuity, more mature plots, and a more adult-oriented style of humor. Even the political stance the show takes is generally more left-wing (insofar as it takes a coherent stance at all).Started as a Fish Out of Temporal Water series, but slowly abandoned the notion of everything being new to Fry (as he became used to everything), and became simply an ensemble comedy set in the future.Futurama has a well-established canon and occasional dramatic moments. Particularly notable episodes include "Roswell That Ends Well", "The Why of Fry", "The Sting", "The Luck of the Fryrish", "Jurassic Bark" (whose bittersweet ending had the producers getting hate mail from viewers who had cried), and "Prisoner of Benda" (which invented a new mathematical theorem).Also notable in that a large portion of the staff were highly educated, leaving all potential Did Not Do the Research moments up to the Rule of Funny and is the cause of many mathematical, engineering or scientific jokes ranging from subtle to extremely obscure.The original run lasted from 1999 to 2003 on Fox. Fox canceled it citing disappointing ratings, though the creative staff cited its poor timeslot. After years of being kept on life support by [adult swim], four DVD movies were released in 2007-09 (later syndicated into 16 episodes of a "fifth season"), before Comedy Central properly Uncanceled the series in 2010 after ratings improved in syndication.For examples from the comic book series by Bongo Comics, go here
20% More Awesome: When the Planet Express crew see The Beastie Boys (or their heads) in concert, Leela marvels, "They're bustin' mad rhymes with an 80 percent sucess rate."
Bender: I believe that qualifies as 'Ill', at least from a technical standpoint.
Abnormal Ammo: During "Anthology of Interest, Part I"'s first segment, in which Bender asked what life would be like if he were over 500 feet tall, things quickly devolved into a Kaijubattle between a 500-foot-tall Zoidberg and Bender. The weapons they decide to use? Zoidberg decides to use a section of a subway as nunchucks, while Bender takes a section of the highspeed onramp and uses the people in it and around him as blow-darts.
One episode becomes a homage to Married... with Children; Leela (voiced by Katey Sagal, who played Peg Bundy on the show) almost marries a lazy guy named "Al", and they are accompanied by a group of sleazy friends laughing at their double entendres, acting in place of a live studio audience.
Mark Hamill voices Hanukkah Zombie, who flies around in a TIE Fighter with Stars of David on the solar panels. We see it when facing a bunch of solid gold Death Stars.
Fry has a few personality traits similar to Billy West's previous character, Doug Funnie. Not to mention Fry's brother's named Yancey, which is also Doug's middle name.
When Fry visits the deserted remains of Old New York, he shouts, "Howard Stern is overrated!". Billy West was a member of the Howard Stern Show for several years.
From "Silence of the Clamps," when Bender's friends are looking for him at a farm, and they find a Bending Unit whom they believe to be Bender:
Affably Evil: Robot Devil is actually most of the time rather polite as a character, despite being a robot Satan, and the depths to which Bender sinks at times leave even him appalled.
Almost anything you can name, especially in the fields of science and science-fiction.
An entire episode ("When Aliens Attack") was dedicated to making fun of Ally McBeal and the Viewers Are Morons philosophy.
On that note, another episode ("Love and Rocket", mentioned below) was dedicated to parodying 2001: A Space Odyssey. It even parodied the sequence of shutting down HAL.
Also, the season 6 finale, "Reincarnation", reimaging Futurama in 3 different animation styles (30's Max Fleischer style, pixelated 80's video-games and 70's Anime), while parodying their respectives tropes.
All Girls Want Bad Boys: Amy, which is the main reason she falls for Bender after her breakup with Kif in "Proposition Infinity". Arguably an example of Negative Continuity, since she'd earlier shown that she wasn't particularly affected by the charms of manly/bad boy type and was head over heels for Kif's personality.
Then again, she had just broken up with Kif and was saddened by it, so she hooked up with Bender, who has none of Kif's traits.
All Just a Dream: The episodes The Sting and Obsoletely Fabulous.
All Part of the Show: Lrrr (RULER OF THE PLANET OMICRON PERSEI 8!!!) invades Earth. He happens to land on the stage for the Comic Con costume contest. He gives his "You will be conquered" speech. Everyone applauds politely, then he gets ushered off the stage.
All Planets Are Earthlike: The only non-Earthlike planets shown so far are a few moons and asteroids without atmospheres, and one high-gravity (but otherwise Earthlike) planet. Even the world with three giant suns, apart from being a bit warm at full noon, was perfectly livable to humans.
In "Love and Rocket", the Planet Express ship computer (which has developed a crush on Bender and gone completely insane) cuts off the oxygen supply, so Leela and Fry have to wear spacesuits while they try to switch it off.
Also occurs in "The Series Has Landed", when Fry and Leela get lost on the moon.
Another one features only one other alternate universe: a Cowboy universe.
Wasn't the cowboy universe a parallel universe, rather than an alternate?
Professor Farnsworth creates a bunch of boxes that act as gateways to universes. Incidentally, each one of those universes that Farnsworth created openings to created all the gateways to other universes. Yes, the show explains that all alternate universes linked to each other. That sound was your brain overloading. And it doesn't help that in the end, two of the universes end up with gateways to their own universe.
"The Beast With a Billion Backs" reveals the existence of yet another universe, this one accessible from a tear in the fabric of space-time. It is home to only one sentient being: Yivo, the infinitely huge, love-lorn ball of naughty tentacles.
"These aren't tentacles. They're genticles."
Another episode has Farnsworth, Fry, and Bender get into a time machine that only goes forward. They discover that when the universe ends it is replaced by another, identical universe (except Farnsworth killing Adolf Hitler). They end up returning to their correct time period in a THIRD identical universe, inadvertently killing that universe's version of themselves as well as Eleanor Roosevelt instead of Hitler.
A Gym Bunny offers Leela a walk on the beach, and immediately claims that he's gay when she says yes. A double whammy. He's actually a professional beach bully who steals women away from their boyfriends so the men can heroically win them back in a fight; Leela invites him on the walk after Fry refuses to pay him for his services, as Leela is not his girlfriend.
The gang is at a club, and Bender's built-in gaydar shoots down the girls' hopes when they see good looking men. It might have been interference from a gay weather balloon...
"Just as well; I think he comes from a dimension that's big on musical theatre."
Despite being set in the future, stereotypes associated with accents still apply, even with respect to alien life forms. Amy comes from a rich family and has a Valley Girl accent (even though her parents have stereotypically Chinese accents), while Zoidberg and his species speak with Yiddish accents and sometimes display Jewish stereotypes.
Amusing Injuries: The bone-crunching sound effects do make you wince, though.
Anachronic Order: The episodes of the back half of season 6 are being aired outside of production order. This leads to jokes that don't make sense, like Hermes saying Scruffy was revived as a zombie despite not dying in the previously aired episode.
And the Adventure Continues: In the fourth film Into the Wild Green Yonder, once many of the hanging romantic plot threads are tied up, the Planet Express crew is on the run from the Earth military. However, they come across a massive wormhole. Professor Farnsworth warns that it could transport them trillions of light years away, with no hope of returning to Earth. Despite this, crew enthusiastically decides to fly into it anyway. It's then completely averted when the series was brought back again.
And The Rest: In the episode Less Than Hero where Fry, Leela and Bender form a crime-fighting trio called Captain Yesterday, Cloberella and Superking. Their theme tune becomes:
Go, go, go, New Justice Team: Fighting justice is their quest: Superking, Clobberella and all the rest.
It also occurs in "Rebirth":
Fry: Hermes Conrad! Amy Wong! Hermes: Dr. Zoidberg! ''(Scruffy, LaBarbara and Kif appear) Fry: And the rest!
And You Were There: Parodied in "Anthology of Interest II," where Leela tells Fry that she had a wonderful dream, "...except you were there, and you were there, and you were there!"
Androids and Detectives: Those Two Guys who are the only cops you regularly see are a human/robot duo, and when Fry joins the police force this seems to be their policy.
Anti-Climax: There are many moments of this in the series.
The ending scene of Into The Wild Green Yonderwhere the main characters are on the run from the law and to escape, they flee into a gigantic wormhole which is to take them light-years away without anyway of knowing if they can return. Originally intended to by the final scene of the series, it is made dramatic by having Leela and Fry kiss for the first time as the ship flies into the wormhole and it morphs into the familiar pattern of lights shown in the opening sequence of each episode. In the first episode of the renewed season, a Snap Back is pulled and the characters find themselves back at Earth as they come out of the wormhole.
Bender: "Yeah, we're back."
In Season 6, Mom's plan to turn people into zombies ends up being this too (and again, bloody hilarious).
Amy shows shades of this at times. Depending on the episode, her readiness to leap into bed with aliens, jerkasses and complete strangers shifts between "party girl" and "college bicycle". At least until she gets together with Kif. (As of ' Proposition Infinity', you can now add robots to that list.)
"Happy Freedom Day, ladies! Come on, show me something. Anything. Seriously, I'd take an armpit." Needless to say Zapp Brannigan isn't picky.
And then there's Yivo, an extra-dimensional being that had sex with every single person in the universe at the same time. Except for Leela.
Bender and Farnsworth sometimes fit this trope.
As well as Hedonism Bot, of course.
Leila doesn't do "anything", but does do Zapp, Alkazar, and Fry-in-Zoidberg's-body of her own free will.
Not really a fair example, since Zapp and Alkazar manipulated Leela's emotions (Zapp by acting pathetic, Al by pretending they were the Last of Their Kind).
Applied Phlebotinum: Naturally almost every episode, especially thanks to Professor Farnsworth having an invention for every occasion.
However, it is beautifully subverted almost as often. For example, in the 2nd-season episode Fry and the Slurm Factory, the Slurm drink manufacturer runs a contest where the grand prize is won by finding one golden bottle cap hidden in a Slurm can. Fry wonders if there could be a way to find the bottlecap without having to buy millions of cans. As expected, he shortly comes into possession of the professor's "F-Ray" (which can see through anything) and uses it on every can of slurm in the city of New New York. But while this wins him lots of "minor" prizes (including a jetski!), he still doesn't find the golden bottlecap. He's so frustrated that he declares he will never look at another can of slurm again. Of course, he immediately goes to the fridge to get another one to drink. It's the winning can.
Arson Murder And Jay Walking: Just like in Matt Groening's other show. For example, in "Neutopia", Leela lists two things she doesn't like about being a man, then inexplictably says, "The food at those strip clubs is terrible," as if it were a third reason.
Author Appeal: Deliberately parodied at numerous points.
While the future doesn't have Fry's "primitive notions of modesty", the only characters who seem to have no sense of modesty are Farnsworth (over 150 years old), Hermes (obese), and Cubert (twelve, overweight, and only really immodest when he's first taken out of his cloning vat).
Also, humans have been genetically engineered to have larger penises, or it's possibly an oblique reference to Fry being circumcised, which according to Arthur C. Clarke, is illegal in the year 3001.
And of course there are the giant Amazon women in Fur Bikinis.
There's a speculative fiction fetish for nearly everyone, and they're all going down.
A Worldwide Punomenon: Invoked in-universe with the "Goofy Gopher Revue" from "The Series Has Landed".
The show has plenty, but possibly none so great as when visiting the President's heads in season 6.
Bender: Anyone seen Ulysses Grant? He owes me a cheroot. Leela: He's over there, pukin' in the Bushes. [Ulysses Grant prepares to vomit in the jars of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush] George H. W. Bush's head and George W. Bush's heads:No!
Axe Crazy: Roberto, the criminally insane, psychotic stab-bot.
The B Grade: The reason that Professor Wernstrom hates Professor Farnsworth is because Farnsworth gave him an "A" minus in college because "Penmanship counts." Wernstrom takes revenge decades later by giving Farnsworth's failed plan the worst grade imaginable!—an "A" minus minus.
Bad Bad Acting: Fry's episode of "Single Female Lawyer", the cast's interference with Calculon's wedding (soap opera style), Bender's audition for "All My Circuits".
Back for the Finale: A single scene of Into the Wild Green Yonder (which was at the time a finale), depicts up to two hundred fifty minor and recurring characters that have appeared in the series.
Battle Tops: Chanukkah Zombie's space fighter shoots dreidels.
Beard of Evil: Invoked by Fry (and later Leela) in "Lesser of Two Evils" as one reason for believing Flexo is Bender's Evil Twin. Subverted in that Bender is the Evil Bender.
Brannigan: And have the boy lay out my formal shorts.
Kif: The boy?
Brannigan: You. You lay out my formal shorts.
Lampshaded in Into the Wild Green Yonder:
Brannigan [after having arrested everyone]: Kif — round 'em up. And spare me the weary sigh this time.
Beneficial Disease: In "Parasites Lost", eating a bad sandwich gives Fry worms that rebuild his body, making him stronger and smarter.
Berserk Button: The three Benders make fun of the ugly alien giant for being ugly which he accepts, but Fry's big mistake when he talks about his mother.
Beta Couple: both parodied and played straight in Kif and Amy.
Big Damn Movie: there are a couple of ordinary episodes that threaten reality, but the movies generally raise the stakes.
Big Eater: Nibbler (and the rest of the Nibblonians). Let the Feast Of A Thousand Hams begin! Also Zoidberg, whenever he's not rummaging through garbage cans. He destroys an entire buffet table in "Roswell That Ends Well" There were hints of Amy of being one throughout the series, but it wasn't until "The Prisoner of Benda" when she switched bodies that she wanted to satisfy her food lust.
Big Little Man: When Bender wonders what it would be like to be 500 feet high, we're shown a towering Bender...who then turns out to be a normal-sized robot constructing the giant Bender.
In Mars University, when Professor Farnsworth realizes his pet monkey wants to be only decently smart and get a degree in business, instead of a being a genius.
Fry cuts loose with one after invading aliens destroy his sand castle.
Large Ham acting unit Calculon has one in one of his movies. The whole clip is just the Big No, and yet he says it needs no context. It's then hilariously lampshaded:
Talk show host-bot: ...And now a scene from All My Circuits. Calculon, care to set this one up? Calculon: No, I think the one speaks for itself. * clip of Calculon belting a Big "NO!" while a pirate, parrot and all, flips burgers on a barbeque in the background.* Calculon: Interesting side note: the script called for me to say "Yes", but I gave it a little twist.
The newest season likes this trope. First Fry did this when the censoring satellite V-Giny refused to censor Leela and Zapp's copulation. Then the Professor did one when he realized he'd lived to see the day when Amy and Bender got engaged. And most recently and more seriously, Bender had this reaction when he learned that he didn't have a back-up unit and will die one day.
Farnsworth:"I'm just glad I didn't live to see this day." beat "Wait a minute..." (checks pulse) Noooooo!!!
In "A Flight to Remember", there's one from Bender after losing Countess de la Roca in the black hole while evacuating from the Titanic(also sucked in the black hole), and one from Hermes in his flashback from the 2980 Olympics when one of his fans attempts to limbo the stick, which is very low, causing him to break his back.
Leela gets one in "Yo Leela Leela," after lying about the Rumbledy-Hump planet leads to sweatshop-like jobs for the Humplings and the orphans.
After Leela finishes reminding the Professor not to hurt Bender while he is filling in for Robot Santa during "A Tale of Two Santas", we get this exchange,
Bender: Ho, ho... *Professor shoots him* Owww! Leela: Professor! Don't you remember what I told you? Professor: No!!
The "alien writing" seen in the background of many scenes are actually ciphers. Fans made a game of decoding them, and the messages are often shouts-out. There's actually two versions; one is a simple subsitution cypher — the other is almost maddeningly complicated.
In the global warming episode, the crew goes to Kyoto and passes a "Curious Pussycat" billboard that states "I love you more than your mother."
Whenever Amy gets angry and curses in Chinese, though according to the audio commentary for the second episode, what Lauren Tom yelled in Chinese was harsh and insulting, but not obscene.
Adolf Hitler gets a single line in "The Late Philip J. Fry". In German, it translates to "Look at my moustache!"
In the first Christmas episode, the characters point out that they actually pronounce it X-mas. After Fry buys Leela a parrot, you can see a sign in the background that says 'Cerrado Para Xavidad.' 'Cerrado Para Navidad' means 'Closed for Christmas.'
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mom, who presents a down-to-earth family values image to the world, but in reality is a nasty, ruthless corporate hag who cares about money, power, and nothing else.
The Blank: "The Farnsworth Parabox" - When the group is going through various alternate universes, the alternate Amy stumbles upon a universe where everyone is faceless.
Blind Idiot Translation: The German dub suffers from this - starting even before Fry gets frozen. "Doomsday Prophets cautiously upbeat" - "Weltuntergangspropheten vorsichtig verprügelt" (which translates back to English as 'End of the world prophets beaten up carefully').
Blernsball Episode: "A Leela of Her Own" (though the Lead In for "Fear of a Bot Planet" introduced the sport).
Body Backup Drive: Robots built in Futurama have a wireless backup unit that save a copy of them every day, so if their bodies get killed, they'd just download into another body. With the notable exception of Bender.
Boobs of Steel: Leela is probably the toughest person in the series. She's also among the bustiest.
Book Ends: The final scene in Into the Wild Green Yonder
Boot Camp Episode: Fry and Bender enlist in order to take advantage of a discount for recruits, with the understanding that they can quit unless "War were declared". Three seconds later, "War were declared."
Hermes:(indicating a graph) As you can see, since Bender's death, requests to bite one's shiny metal ass are down 98%. (Scruffy uses Bender's remains to vacuum) Do you mind doing that later? Scruffy: Bite my shiny metal ass. (the graph rises)
Brain in a Jar: Heads, actually, typically involving present-day celebrities (such as the pickled head of Stephen Hawking in a way-cool rocket).
Also parodied, as they have the head of every US president going back to Washington.
Also inverted: as Vice President of Earth, Spiro Agnew is a headless body.
Brainless Beauty: Amy at least some of the time. Somewhat played with in that Amy is an intern going for a masters degree in astro-physics, she's just ditzy. Unfortunately, the bookworm element rarely makes an appearance.
In one of the earliest episodes, Fry's hands get eaten by a T. rex. He's then taken to a "Handcrafters" store to get new hands. He says "I'll break them in tonight."
In "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings", Fry switches hands with the Robot Devil. While the Robot Devil's hands immediately try to choke Fry, the robot devil complains that Fry's hands "keep touching me! In places!". Fry responds: "Yeah, they get around".
When the gang goes to get Bender's brain back from the Central Bureaucracy, the elderly man in front of them states that he's still waiting for his birth certificate. Later in Season 4...
Old Man: I'd like to file for a death certifica— ERK! He falls over dead Teller: Sorry, that's Section C. Next!
That Omicronian-esque "cross-species-dresser" in Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences wants to have Lrrr's Popplers!
Also in the hundredth episode, Barbados Slim is shown dancing with Hermes' wife, LaBarbara Conrad. In "Bender's Big Score", she leaves Hermes for Barbados because Hermes loses his body
In X-mas Story, Leela tells Fry that the word "ask" is now pronounced "axe". It's pronounced this way for the rest of the series!
In the Season 6 episode, The Prisoner of Benda, Professor Farnsworth (who is actually Leela) covers his right eye to see properly, which was done in an earlier episode.
When Fry slams the brakes on the antique car in "Lesser of Two Evils", Bender slams headfirst into the dashboard and complains about receiving ass whiplash. Five seconds later, we see Flexo on the ground, complaining about Ass Whiplash as well, but, from his condition, it seems to be more severe than Bender's.
In A Clockwork Origin, Farnsworth reveals that Zoidberg is Cubert's godfather. This seems like a typical "Zoidberg is a loser" joke, but The Tip of the Zoidberg shows that the two have been close friends for decades, meaning it actually makes sense that Farnsworth asked Zoidberg to be the godfather.
Butt Monkey: Zoidberg and Kif, presumably unrelated to their biology, though Fry falls into the category many times as well.
Call Back: In the episode "The Late Philip J. Fry", at the very end, when Fry, Bender, and Farnsworth return to their own age (well, two universes later), they inadvertently crush the ones already existing in that time, provoking Farnsworth to remark "That takes care of the Time Paradox!" a reference to "Bender's Big Score," where the Time Paradox is a huge plot point.
In the same episode, you can see various scenes from previous Futurama episodes and movies, such as Fry and That Eighties Guy entering the conference table, and Professor Farnsworth attached to Yivo.
In "The Silence of the Clamps", Zoidberg uses his mating head crest.
In "All the Presidents' Heads", we get this exchange in reference to Bender's various claims throughout the 1999-2003 run of the series of the different percentage of materials that he was composed of:
Paul Revere: Ah, I see that the new scrap metal I ordered is here.
Bender: I'm 40% scrap metal, baby. (pounds on chest)
Calvinball: Blernsball, the game that baseball has evolved into by the year 3000. It's as impossible for Fry to follow as it would be for someone from the year 1000 to understand modern baseball. Of course, the writers are actually just making stuff up.
The Professor gives advice to this effect in "War is the H-Word".
Professor: If you kill an enemy, be sure to eat their heart. To gain their courage. Their rich, tasty courage.
Hermes claims to have once swallowed a calculator to gain its power.
Claims nothing. We saw the X-Ray!
Can't Get Away With Nuthin': A very brief example of this occurs when Fry visits the abandoned ruins of Old New York and realizes he can jaywalk without fear of getting a ticket. The moment he crosses the middle of the street, he is run-over by a lizard the size of a bus which appears out of nowhere.
Can't Live Without You: After Fry is critically injured in a car crash, his head is placed on Amy's body to keep him alive until his body is healed.
Casual Interplanetary Travel: Used for a few gags, most notably in the second episode where Fry counts down to the ship launching, only to arrive when he gets to about 3.
Fry: Can I count down? Leela: Huh? Sure. *They take off and rapidly approach the moon as Fry counts* Fry: Ten...nine...eight...seven... Leela: We're here. Fry:*quickly* Sixfivefourthreetwoone blast off!
The Cast Showoff: John DiMaggio's beatboxing skills pop up a few times.
His short lived catchphrase to explain why he lacked motivation to do things: "Although I am already in my pajamas."
Bender:
"Bite my shiny metal ass!"
"Cheese it!"
"Fun on a bun."
"I'm back, baby."
"Neat!" (Takes a photograph)
"Hot diggity daffodil!"
"Oy, this guy."
Scruffy:
"I'm Scruffy...the janitor."
"I'm on break."
Hermes has two which vary somewhat: "Great [animal] of [place or deity that rhymes with animal]!" and euphemisms involving green snakes and sugarcane. The first one is lampshaded in a scene in one episode, where Hermes is so weak from fatigue that he can only say, "Great... something, of... someplace."
"MY MANWICH!"
In Into the Wild Green Yonder, Hermes' wife LeBarbara attempts these a few times, to Hermes' disapproval.
Chekhov's Armoury: Although Fry's lack of a delta wave is the most prominent Chekhov's Gun, there are heaps, with some things returning in the same episode they were introduced to become something significant (e.g. the card for Leela's birthday in 6x05), to returning episodes or even seasons later to become something important (this comes to a head in the movie Bender's Big Score when everything (and everyone) introduced that may seem insignificant early on becomes absolutely essential to the plot later on).
Chekhov's Boomerang: That thing with Fry's head? That comes back more than once.
Chekhov's Gag: Considering the above list and the fact that this show is primarily comedy, what do you think?
The Quantum Gemerald in The Mutants are Revolting; the powerful beam it emits turns out to be very useful when Fry uses it to save the mutants from a tidal wave of sewage. Better still, the Quantum Gemerald was first mentioned in "Less Than Hero" where the supervillain the crew was fighting against wanted to steal it.
In Insane in the Mainframe, Fry (thinking he's a robot) takes a can of oil from Leela and puts it in his inside coat pocket after using it. Later in the episode when Roberto stabs him, the knife penetrates the oil can, making Roberto think that Fry really is a battle robot, causing him to Freak Out and run away, saving the crew.
On a less significant scale, these characters show importance later on (in the form of a Chekhov's Army): Scruffy (the janitor (owns half the company)), Robot Santa (important in the movies), President Nixon (introduced as a throwaway and then proceeds to fuck up the earth royally more than once (no surprise)), the Harlem Globetrotters (... they're all brilliant applied physicists), Amy (turns out she's a brilliant grad student), the Robot Devil (sorta).
Chekhov's Hobby: A few, from Professor's Farnsworth's proclivity for inventions (mainly doomsday machines) right down to Hermes' ability to limbo.
Farnsworth: Doomsday device you say? Ah, now the ball's in Farnsworth's court!
Chekhov's Lecture: a lot. Some are even barely audible said in the corner of the screen!
Chekhov's Skill: Fry learns how to pilot the ship. And how to play the holophoner, a futuristic musical instrument.
In "The Series Has Landed", Amy spends a lot of time playing The Crane Game, in order to get the keys to the ship back. All that practice sure came in handy at the end of the episode, when she needed to save Fry, Leela and Bender using a magnet.
The Chosen One / The Chosen Zero: Fry. Thanks to being his own grandfather (that's time travel for you) Fry is the only sentient being in the universe who lacks a delta brain wave, thus making him immune to various forms of telepathic attack, and earning him the title of "The Mighty One" among the Nibblonians.. In the 30th century, he turns out to be the key to mankind's survival on a number of occasions, to the point that we eventually learn that Nibbler froze him on purpose in the year 2000 so he'd be alive to save the world in the 31st century.
When Fry is told that the fate of the universe depends on him in the fourth movie, he casually replies "Yeah, I get that a lot."
Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Robot 1-X, who is introduced as a new Planet Express staff member in "Obsoletely Fabulous" and is gone without a trace in the next episode.
Clark Kenting: Fry, Bender, and Leela somehow manage to pull this off in the episode "Less Than Hero."
Cleavage Window: Many of the one-shot outfits Leela and Amy wear.
In Leela's case, many of her one-shot outfits feature a bellybutton window instead. Probably a Shout Out to the old prohibition on showing navels on television.
Closer Than They Appear: "Objects may be less sexy than they appear" shows up on a clothes shop mirror.
Cloudcuckoolander: Fry, always. He also doubles as a very strange variation of Genius Ditz, in that sometimes he does things ridiculously well to the point of brilliance (e.g. writing a symphony (once he got the hands to play it), 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).
Comic Trio: The idiotic brothers Walt, Larry and Igner. They're ALL idiots, even Walt; the only reason their plans work is because they perform them on Fry.
Fry's nephew was revealed to have been buried in Orbiting Meadows Cemetery in season 3's "The Luck of the Fryrish". Now, whenever a character that is important to that episode's plot or important to the main cast dies, his or her funeral is always held at Orbiting Meadows.
Cosmic Ray's Pizza was used as a throwaway gag in season one's "A Fishful of Dollars." Now, it's the common place for the Planet Express crew to order or eat out.
All four films that comprise Season 5 contain a number of nods to previous episodes, arguably to the point of Continuity Porn.
The best nod was probably Lucy Liu's brief reappearance in Bender's body cabinet in "Love and Rocket", several episodes after he'd put her there at the end of "I Dated a Robot".
Early in the series Professor Farnsworth mentions that they renamed Uranus "Urectum" to finally put an end to that stupid joke. In "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" when they zoom in on the Death Sphere, the caption on the planet where Uranus is reads Urectum.
Richard Nixon's election as the President of Earth seems like the kind of that would be undone by a Snap Back, but he's still there.
The Harlem Globetrotters were introduced as an alien race that wanted to ruin Earth's reputation by utterly humiliating them in a basketball game and ultimately helping the Planet Express crew solve the episode's major conflict in "Time Keeps On Slippin'". Now, whenever there's a crisis that's too big, even for Farnsworth to solve, the Globetrotters (primarily Ethan "Bubblegum" Tate) step in to save the day. Tate is also seen as a dean at Mars University in "That Darn Katz!"
In "Lethal Inspection", Bender notes he was "in Italy last week", a nod to the previous week's episode.
Poodles were established as extinct, however at least two have appeared in Series 6, a reference to "The Wild Green Yonder" where all extinct species were brought back.
"The Late Philip J. Fry" is full of these, since Fry, Bender, and the Professor, travel through all of recorded history. The best example could be that time is indeed cyclical. Also, it recounts the first millennium that passed when Fry got frozen, including the fall of the original New York City, its reemergence as a medieval kingdom (and its destruction), before the emergence of New New York.
In "The Mutants Are Revolting" As Fry leaves the Land Titanic, you can see a case of anchovies in the bottom right corner, a nod to "A Fishful of Dollars."
A blink and you'll miss it, but every now and then you'll hear people say "axe" instead of "ask".
In "Bender's Big Score," you can briefly see the fossilized remains of Seymour on a shelf over Lars' shoulder. Might also be seen as Foreshadowing of Lars' reveal later in the movie.
Hermes finds another one of Fry's fossilized dogs in "A Clockwork Origin." He throws it into some soup to avoid a repeat of the last one.
In "The Sting", Fry's funeral is attended by every one of his former lovers, including the radiator he made out with.
A couple more in "Ghost in the Machines," both by the Robot Devil, and within a minute of each other. The first is when he mentioned the hand-swap deal he made with Fry in the first Series Fauxnale "The Devils Hands are Idle Playthings." The second reference is when he starts singing the Robot Hell song from "Hell is Other Robots," but Bender interrupts it within the first few seconds.
And now a major one in "Law & Oracle." Let's see what we have here: The episode starts with Fry playing an arcade game, and fails miserably. Someone says "You stink, loser" in response to his failed attempt to play an arcade game. Someone comes in with a pizza and shouts "Hey, Fry, pizza going out. Come on!" Fry takes his (hover)bike out to the Applied Cryogenics building, where he realizes he's been duped once again. These are all taken, almost from context*
The main difference from this and the pilot is that instead of getting dumped and repeatedly saying "I hate my life," Fry simply gets run over by a hoverbus
from Space Pilot 3000. He even Lampshades his tendency to not look at the customer name before making the delivery!
The most recent episode, "All the President's Heads" features a major nod back to the third season episode "Roswell That Ends Well". In the most recent episode, the crew discovers a new method of time travel and goes back to Revolutionary days. Fry removes one of the lanterns from the "one if by land, two if by sea" church, prompting Paul Revere to exclaim "the British are coming! By land!". Upon seeing Fry's error, the Professor exclaims "Fry, you've really screwed the granny this time!".
"All the President's Heads also contains a nod to "Bender's Big Score". The Busty Head Doctor greets Fry at his job as a head feeder by calling him Lars. Fry tells her his real name, to which she replies, "whatever".
"Overclockwise" shows a profile of Bender, including his full name (Bender Bending Rodriguez), serial number, and the fact that he was inspected by Inspector #5.
Also from that episode, a sewer mutant is seen serving on the jury, a nod to them now being able to come to the surface from "The Mutants Are Revolting".
In "A Leela of her Own", the Atlanta Braves' uniform has a trident in place of the familiar tomahawk, a nod to "The Deep South", which showed Atlanta had become an Underwater City.
Continuity Snarl: Averted. A Deleted Scene in "Bender Gets Made" features Bender crudely replacing his serial number with the number 14 to hide himself from the Robot Mafia. However, the serial number depicted was that of his good twin Flexo (2716057), not Bender's (3370318) — the implication to attentive fans being that Flexo has covertly taken over Bender's life. The creators realized this wouldn't go over well with anyone and took the scene out.
The episode Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles shows Bender aging backwards into a smaller and smaller robot, then finally into a CD of blueprints. However he previously showed a picture of himself "just 4 months old" that he was going to send to Mom, which showed him at his current size, contradicting the whole 'robot aging' thing. It is possible to justify this, however. If one is willing to remember the scene where he was built in the factory, he was not 'born/finished' until fully produced. Meaning that the smaller robots and cd and blueprints would effectively be the robot equivalent of being a fetus. By this argument, He could be fully grown at 4 months, as he was effectively born fully grown. This is all probably overthinking the gag a bit, though.
There was an episode of the original run about Bender coming to terms with his mortality, having two funerals for himself. There is an episode of the new run about Bender claiming the be immortal and shocked when he discovers he isn't.
Bender: I never said I wasn't a drama queen!
The most glaring one occurs with the show's treatment of Star Trek; in "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", even mentioning the show's name will send people in the immediate vicinity in a panic and will likely get you arrested, and Leonard Nimoy seems adamant on denying any involvement with it. Yet in episodes before that, not only was Star Trek mentioned without incident, but Nimoy seemed perfectly comfortable talking about being Spock.
Possible Fridge Brilliance, Nimoy first wrote the book I am Not Spock, which dealt with his feelings towards Star Trek and his conflicting identity as himself and as Spock, who was he was often conflated with by fans. Later, he wrote I Am Spock, which detailed his acceptance of the role and how it played into his life from there on out.
If Zoidberg's species dies after having sex, then how could his body survive having sex with Farnsworth's, even if he wasn't mentally present?
Might only apply when both partners are Decapodians, also their method of reproduction is probably different so it wouldn't count.
Contrived Coincidence: In "Godfellas", Bender's return to Earth is only prompted after a very lucky spin of the radio telescope's trackball and then Fry crossing his Despair Event Horizon in earshot of the microphone. Leela Lampshades this:
Leela: This is by a wide margin the least likely thing that has ever happened!
That's more of a subversion if anything. Farnsworth isn't upset about lack of concern for proximity to the lava, but the fact that people are going swimming in it.
Conveniently Cellmates: Bender and Fry get implicated in a bank robbery with Roberto, a maniacal robot. Once they are imprisoned in the robot insane asylum, Fry's cellmate turns out to be... Roberto!
Farnsworth may count too, despite being one of the protagonists. After all, the planet express slogan is "Our crew is expendable, your package is not!"
Couch Gag: The tagline below the logo at the beginning of the theme song and the animation clip at its end. Some taglines:
"Painstakingly Drawn Before A Live Audience"
"Deciphered From Crop Circles"
"You Can't Prove It Won't Happen"
"As Foretold By Nostradamus"
"Psst — Big Party at Your House After the Show"
"Please Rise For The Futurama Theme Song"
"From the Creators of Futurama"
"When You See The Robot, Drink!"
"See you on some other channel!" on the last Fox episode.
Courtroom Episode: Several examples including part of the most recent movie.
Bender: Court's kind of fun when it's not my ass on the line.
Cranial Processing Unit: Bender is shown more than once to be able to completely remove his head and continue to function in any way his head normally would.
Crapsack World: Any place that has insane head of Richard Nixon as president of Earth, Zapp Brannigan as supreme commander of its military, a snooty WASP as a powerful judge, alien invasions being quite frequent, and numerous other awful things... it's no wonder there are Suicide Booths in conveniently placed locations.
Which still cost a quarter and may not work at all.
Crazy Memory: Subverted and parodied, twice. In the episodes "Fry and the Slurm Factory" and "A Clockwork Origin," Professor Farnsworth is declared crazy and everything he has just said has been lunacy. In retaliation, he begins ranting and shouts "and he's my uncle" pointing to the much younger character, Fry. This is actually true, as Fry comes from the distant past and is Farnsworth's great great great great great uncle. However, nobody believes him, writing him off as nuts.
Credits Gag: In Law&Oracle, Fry is being promoted:
Farnsworth: Executive delivery boy!
Fry: Executive?!
Conrad (whispering): It's a meaningless title, but it helps insecure people feel better about themselves.
Zoidberg is developing into one of these, as well. JOHN F*CKING ZOIDBERG!
Crying Indian: Subverted. It looks as though he's crying about the litter, but it's because the Slurm can reminded him of how much he missed someone named Cynthia.
Cryptic Background Reference: A thousand years of history have passed between the time Fry was frozen and let out, characters will often make casual references to events that occurred during that period of time much in the same way people in our time do with our own history.
Zapp: We have only one option. Protocol 62. Nixon: Not possible, we don't have nearly enough piranhas! (later) Zoidberg: They're flying Manhattan into the sun! They mustn't have had enough piranhas!
Cut Apart: "Beast With A Billion Backs" shows Brannigan's ship, the Nimbus, fighting fruitlessly against the tentacled creature while Brannigan narrates. We then find out he's piloting the ship by remote in an Applebees on earth.
Cutaway Gag: In "The Mutants Are Revolting", the series' 100th episode, one of the ways that the mutants plan to take their revenge against the humans is by forcing the West Manhattan Sewer Line back up to the surface, prompting this exchange:
Fry: But who could bend such a huge steel pipe like that?
(scene then cuts to Bender, in a Hugh Hefner-style jacket, wearing sunglasses shaped like the number 100, throwing a wild party with every single minor character in the series)
Cute Giant: The episode Mother's Day reveals that Farnsworth and Mom used to be in a relationship...until she tried to make his latest toy, Cutey McWhiskers, 18 feet tall with lasers, causing him to angrily proclaim, "Eighteen-foot-tall things aren't cute; you don't understand me!" and break up. Later they reconcile, Farnsworth admits they're still cute at 18 feet tall then Mom reveals that there's an even taller model and he gets angry again...at first.
Leela is often a victim of this, even in the presence of animals that are generally not that cute, such as the muck leech on Mars in Into the Wild Green Yonder. A muck leech who turns out to be evil.
This is also a plot device in the episode "That Darn Katz!"
Cypher Language: The alien languages found throughout the show can be decoded to reveal hidden messages.
Darker and Edgier: The movies are definitely edgier, most likely due to the writers being free from network television handicaps. The commentary for Bender's Big Score notes that they now seem to have more dismemberment and butt shots than they did in the original series.
Also the Comedy Central episodes, with more part-nudity and adult jokes.
Deaf Composer: Bender loves cooking, but can't taste food.
Development Gag: One of the crew members justified his six years of graduate school all for the sake of Bender and Flexo's serial numbers joke, i.e. "We're both the sum of two cubes."
Devil but No God: Seems to be one of the driving principals of Robotology; the Robot Devil is even a reoccurring character. Though, Bender did meet God once, or at least "the remains of a space probe that collided with God".
"That seems probable."
Actually, in an interview, Ken Keeler specified: "I took great pains in the script never to say that the Galactic Entity (as we called it) was in fact God, and fought some battles over that point during the rewrite."
This was actually brought up on the DVD Commentary. "If there's a Robot Devil, where's the Robot God?" "There is no Robot God." Yet at a 'bot mitzvah' it's revealed there was a Robot Jesus.
Averted, as of "Ghost in the Machines", where Bender is pulled from Robot Devil in Robot Hell to Robot Heaven. However, the being running Robot Heaven denies being Robot God.
Dirty Old Man: Professor Farnsworth has his moments.
Dirty Commies: It is the primary source of Paranoia Fuel for Yancy Fry, Fry's father. Whenever he is seen with Fry in a flashback in the '80's, he is constantly making sure if "Kremlin Joe has let the nukes fly yet."
Disability Superpower: Fry's lack of the delta brainwave grants him immunity to the evil Brainspawn's powers. It also makes him immune to mind readers as seen in "Into the Wild Green Yonder."
Proposition infinity - infinity looks like an '8' on its side...
In "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings," Bender walks in on Fry practicing his holophoner ... an oddly shaped, multi-coloured pipe which (when played badly) exudes smoke-like whisps of holographic image. When Bender enters Fry's room, Fry frantically waves the "smoke" away and attempts to hide the holophoner.
The Dog Bites Back: The cast hates and mistreats Zoidberg. He gets payback when Fry calls him for help.
Fry: Zoidberg, get in here!
Zoidberg: Screw you!
Dogged Nice Guy: Fry may be an Idiot Hero, but Leela does treat him pretty awfully sometimes. This is actually sort of a Tear Jerker when you consider that Fry regularly risks or outright sacrifices his life to save Leela, yet, up until the conclusion of the last movie, he still can't win the affection of Leela, which is all he wants from her.
Dojikko: Amy, for comedy reasons. The creators wanted to have a female slapstick character that's always getting herself hurt, since they're almost always male (in western animation, at any rate).
Bender's Big Score gave us countless Doomsday Devices, a Platinum Doom-Proof Vest, and the Doom Meter, Which measures exactly how doomed something is measuring the amount of millidooms it's emitting. (A Time Paradox}} duplicate emits doom at 10 times the background level.)
Doomsday Device: Professor Farnsworth may just be the patron saint of Doomsday Devices.
Farnsworth: I suppose I could part with one and still be feared.
Dressed In Layers: Parodied when Leela became a superhero. She wore her costume under her street clothes, and then another set of street clothes under her costume. It was a cold day. Furthermore, neither of her outfits could hide under the other (her superhero outfit has a collar and shoulders that would be visible under her tanktop, and her tanktop covers her navel while her super hero outfit doesn't.)
Yet you don't mention the most glaring part: her normal outfit has a pair of pants, while her Super Hero outfit is just a Leotard.
Driving Stick: The Planet Express ship has a manual transmission whose first gear is notoriously difficult to engage without grinding. Since transmissions are strictly a motorized machines thing, this is purely Rule of Funny. It might also be a shout-out to Red Dwarf, who did this exact gag whenever the crew was driving Blue Midget.
Dude, Not Ironic: A running gag in "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" is Bender correcting the Robot Devil on his abuse of "irony".Culminating in him reading the definition from the dictionary.
Dumb Blonde: Totally Zig Zagged for laughs in Bender's Big Score. There's a sexy blonde female doctor whose entire joke is alternating between being a competent doctor offended by dumb blonde stereotypes to... well... being a dumb blonde.
E-F
Earth All Along: A subtle example appears in "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" when Zapp tricks Leela into thinking that Earth was destroyed and they're the last Earthicans left alive, and stranded on a suspiciously Earthlike planet.
Ear Trumpet: When Fry travels in time and accidentally has sex with his grandmother when she was younger; upon having it spelled out for him she responds to his screams with "What was that dear?" and uses an ear horn.
Easy Road To Hell: There's one robot church that has an easy condemnation to Robot Hell for robots. According to his agreement with his new church, all Bender has to do is sin once to be dragged off to Robot Hell.
Robot Santa's naughty setting kind of falls under Easy Road To Hell. He condemns Scruffy to the naughty/death list just for picking his nose. Apparently Zoidberg is the only one who meets his standards.
Eat Dirt Cheap: After Lrrr accidentally conquers Earth the next thing we see is the main cast sentenced to the mines to supply his wife with gemstones to eat.
The very first episode had a part where Fry is traveling through the transport tubes to "JFK Jr. Airport." Because of JFK Jr.'s mysterious death involving a plane crash, the destination was changed to "Radio City Mutant Hall" (this was even done on the DVD release, except for the animatic seen on the special features).
On two episodes ("The Deep South" and "Bender Gets Made"), the Professor twice yells "Holy (or Sweet) Zombie Jesus!" This line was heard when it aired on FOX (if any viewer managed to see it on that channel) and in the reruns on Comedy Central. However, the former reruns on TBS's short-lived "Too Funny to Sleep" cartoon block and Cartoon Network's [adult swim] line-up mutes out the "Jesus" in "Holy (or Sweet) Zombie Jesus!" due to that hypocritical BS&P rule stating that "Oh my God" and its variants (i.e. "Oh God" or "Oh, dear God!" or even "Oh, Lord" and "Good Lord!") are okay, but "Oh, Jesus!" "Christ!" or "Jesus Christ!" is taboo (unless you're South Park, but that show is pretty much anything goes).
The second new episode of the 2010 run is basically built on a massive and hilariousTake That to this entire concept. The end pulls censorship's leg.
Two examples in the Comedy Central rebroadcast of "When Aliens Attack":
In the original Fox broadcast, Bender says "Bite My Red-Hot Glowing Ass!". This is followed by a Beat, and Bender saying "Wait a minute... Red Hot Glowing Ass?", calmly saying "Excuse me for just a minute" before running off screaming and diving off into the ocean to cool off. In the Comedy Central rebroadcast, the "Excuse me for just a minute" line is completely cut, and it goes from "Wait a minute...Red Hot Glowing Ass?" to him running straight into the ocean.
When Amy uses the can of All-Purpose Clothes Spray to get a new bikini top, Farnsworth (in the Fox broadcast) quietly says "Oh, My!" as she adds the strings. In the Comedy Central rebroadcast, the "Oh, My!" line is completely omitted.
Yivo's something between this and a Genius Loci. It ("Schle"?) is sentient and has enough area to store everyone in the entire universe but Yivo is also very personable and tries to interact with the universe without dragging everyone to itself ("schleself"?) first. Yivo's also for all intents and purposes a living Fluffy Cloud Heaven (but with the added bonus of Naughty Tentacles), which gives Yivo another dimension.
Emergency Presidential Address: This tends to happen in Futurama all the time, which shouldn't be surprising given the number of world/universe ending calamities that need averting.
Endless Daytime: The planet that cats originally came from doesn't turn, so they have perpetual night and day for different sides of the planet. They come to Earth to steal its rotational energy, resulting in the same situation for Earth.
Enemy Mine: Bender's Big Score has everyone forced to evacuate Earth to other planets by the scammer aliens, with the main characters taking up residence on Neptune. Unfortunately, they forget that Robot Santa is based there. It turns out that he's also been scammed, and Leela "convinces" him and his fellow holiday mascots to join forces and take out the scammers.
Enhance Button: Averted and lampshaded in "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela".
Kif: That's all the resolution we have. Making it bigger doesn't make it clearer.
In "Law and Oracle" the MinorityReport-style prediction videos can be enhanced by doing a binocular-focusing hand-gesture.
Even Evil Has Standards: In the second movie, The Beast With a Billion Backs, Bender goes to the Robot Devil to get soldiers for his army of the damned. In exchange for this, the Robot Devil wants Bender's first-born son. Bender finds his long-lost son playing by himself outside of a suburban home. Bender's son looks up and runs towards him, yelling, "Daddy! I knew you'd come back!" The two share a hug and heart-warming music plays. Cut back to the Robot Devil's office where Bender has his long-lost son in his hands and kicks him through the plate-glass window into a lava pit.
Robot Devil: Wow! That was pretty brutal, even by my standards. Bender: No backsies.
T. rexes are inexplicably alive and well in the year 3000 and are used to give children rides in petting zoos. Presumably they were cloned.
T. rexes ("the humblest of God's creatures") actually defeat an alien invasion in a episode of The Scary Door.
A random Stegosaurus also shows up grazing on the White House lawn in one episode.
Cute Kitten: Not to Amy. She's allergic. And kittens give Morbo gas.
Evil Feels Good: Bender does this a lot. He seems aware that stealing is bad but he sure enjoys it.
Evil Foreigner: When Bender joins the "Ultimate Robot Fighting League", he's shown as an All American Face squaring off against a montage of stock Heel characters. One such is named "The Foreigner." His antagonizing of the crowd?
"I'm not from here! I have my own customs!! Look at my crazy passport!!!"
Evil Old Folks: Mom. Professor Farnsworth had a tendency to fall in love with her and leave her (again) when he discovered she was evil. This happened several times.
Evil Twin: In "Lesser of Two Evils", Flexo is considered Bender's Evil Twin (he has a goatee!). The trope is subverted is at the end of the episode, when it turns out that Bender is the Evil Bender.
Fry:You mean Bender is the evil Bender? I'm shocked! Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
Executive Meddling: As noted above, it had an often pre-empted timeslot on Fox.
To reiterate, the show aired for 3 seasons, was cancelled and had re-runs played for 5 years, then brought back with a bunch of TV movies, and cancelled yet again before being brought back a second time. And now, the series still doesn't have a secure spot for another season.
Exotic Entree: Just to show how messed up the future is, some animals not considered food today, are eaten regularly, like parrots. Not dolphins though, since they're apparently sapient. Unless they blow all their money on lottery tickets, then it's OK.
Fry: Listen, Leela. Thanks for rescuing me last night. Leela: Anytime. I actually enjoyed hanging out with you. Bender: Yep, everything worked out great thanks to good old Bender. Leela: Come on! It's not like you intentionally set us up with bad dates so we'd spend Valentine's Day together. Bender: Didn't I, Leela? Didn't I? (winks) (Iris Out) Leela:No, you didn't!
The ancient Professor and fat Hermes often get naked or dressed in skimpy clothes for little to no reason, aside from the future having left behind such primitive concepts as "modesty". Also, we really didn't need to see Brannigan as the Adam figure in the second 2010 episode. Augh. Also, Mom and the Professor on "Mother's Day."
Fry: "Nothing in here but a couple of elephant skin rugs. (beat) Eeew!"
Leela and Fry making out in the bodies of Zoidberg and Professor Farnsworth on "Prisoner of Benda." Good God!.
The second part of the Girly Calendar on "Neutopia". It starts out nice, then rapidly becomes very disturbing.
The Nudist aliens. Especially when they exercise the Power Perversion Potential of time travel. Urhuurgh.
Shortly afterward, Leela declares that Bender has been down in the lava too long and she is going in after him. She starts to tear off her skimpy outfit (revealing some underboob) but is stopped by Professor Farnsworth who angrily reminds her that lava is hot. The DVD Commentary says they pushed it as far as they could.
"Why Must I Be A Crustacean In Love?" has Fry accidentally hitting up the women's steam room, where naked Leela and Amy are relaxing. Amy moves the hand covering her chest, but just enough to keep it still covered (according to the DVD commentary, the writers used this scene as a bargaining chip for the FOX censors when they wanted to get away with something that the censors would immediately decline, telling them "You let us get away with this. Why can't you do the same with this scene?").
Amy: Hey, look what life was like before genetic engineering. Leela: Those poor 20th century women.
Fry swings his legs closed.
The straight-to-DVD movies kick it up a notch. The first one begins with a visit to the "Nudie beach planet." In non-sexual fanservice, all the ContinuityNods qualify.
Additionally, a huge part of the first movie's plot revolves around Fry's ass, which is frequently bared.
The third movie has a scene where the whole crew takes a group shower together.
Excluding the Professor, although if he were there, it'd probably qualify as an immediate disservice to most fans.
Amy and Leela hug near the end of the third movie and then make out for a little while for no good reason.
In "Parasites Lost", the one in which Fry is infested with worms that make him smart, there are two fanservice scenes. One is of Fry, buffed up by the worms, ripping his shirt off. Another involves Leela sleeping in a VERY skimpy nightie as she waits for Fry to return.
The scene in "Rebirth" when Amy and Leela are ejected from the Stem Cell Tub may count.
The episode "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" has Leela wearing nothing but leaves to cover her naughty parts, eventually: at first she's covering her boobs with her hands, and not covering her front-parts with anything. Seriously, they might as well have inked in a little purple landing strip.
Leela as Clobberella in "Less Than Hero". Boy, is she sexy in that uniform and domino mask, and with her hair down.
For added points, there's the scene where she tells her parents about being a superhero: she tears off her clothes showing the Clobberella uniform underneath!
In "Neutopia", most of the first calendar shoot. Particularly when Leela is wearing nothing on her upper body except suspenders. HOW DID THEY GET AWAY WITH THAT?
In "All the Presidents' Heads" we see Amy as if the British had won the Revolution. Needless to say, God Save◊ the Queen◊.
Well I'm not sure there's a rule against being a shellfish, and if anything it's even more of a reason not to eat them... Notably, he does eat a sea creature at his old scuttling ground. "Who's laughing NOW Vinnie?" (This was a different kind of crustacean, which is why it was small enough for Zoidberg to pick up, even though it bullied Zoidberg as a kid.)
Another example of this trope is the above mentioned confusion surrounding the the specifics of robot religion. Fry sneaks into the reception for BOT Mitzvah (does this mean robots are circumsized?), while Bender falls under the spell of Preacherbot and the Church of Robotology, which rejects robosexuality.
Fry briefly consulted Father Changstein el-Gamal of the First Amalgamated Church, which features elements of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Atheism, or at least Agnosticism. And when someone asks whether the Space Pope is reptilian, he means "Yes".
"Oh why couldn't he have joined one of the mainstream religions? Like Oprahism?"
Done purposefully by a group of colonists; they modelled the planet after Ancient Egypt. Apparently the ancient Egyptians taught them about space travel.
An in-universe equivalent can be found in Cornwood from the third movie: a literalFantasy Counterpart Culture.
Fearful Symmetry: The "perfectly symmetrical violence" between the two Leelas in "The Farnsworth Parabox".
Feudal Future: One of the futures that flashes by a frozen Fry in "Space Pilot 3000" is a civilization that resembles feudal times... until it's blown up by space aliens.
Fictional Colour: once made mention of a color called Blurple. Oh, and there was also Fry's description of an amazing, indescribable thing he saw that day at the beginning of I Dated A Robot:
Fry: I just saw something incredibly cool. A big floating ball that lit up with every color of the rainbow, plus some new ones that were so beautiful I fell to my knees and cried.
Amy: Was it out in front of Discount Shoe Outlet?
Fry: Yeah.
Amy: They have a college kid wear that to attract customers.
Fictional Political Party: The one world government on Earth is run by a slew of these, most of which are puns based on the names of real parties and lobbyist groups in American politics. These include The Antisocialists, the National Raygun Association, and the Green Party (whose members are, literally, green), among others. Republican and Democratic parties are known as the Fingerlicans and the Tastycrats.
Finish Him: In "Why Must I Be A Crustacean In Love", Fry dramatically refuses to kill his friend, and Zoidberg takes the opportunity to chop off his arm.
Fry: [beat as he stares at the stump of his arm before he flies into a rage and starts slapping Zoidberg with his own severed limb]: You bastard! I'll kill you! You bastard!
First Law of Gender Bending: Appears to occur in the episode "Neutopia" to Scruffy, as he is in the bathroom when everybody else is returned to their normal gender. However, this is actually subverted, as in the next episode "Benderama", Scruffy is seen returned to normal.
Nibbler's eyestalk appears in a dust basket in a flashback to Fry's freezing in the Seymour episode.
You can also see it during the same scene in the very first episode.
Nibbler's shadow also appears for a brief second the moment Fry falls back into the cryo chamber.
Leela's parents can be seen in a crowd shot long before they're introduced.
Fry's brain slug starves to death. This may seem like a regular joke, until you find out that Fry lacks the delta brain wave.
French becoming a dead language was foreshadowed, or possibly a continuity nod, in the very first episode.
Blink and you'll miss it, but in "When Aliens Attack," when the camera zooms through the cosmos from Earth to Omicron Perseii 8, it passes by an Earth space probe engulfed in a blue, somewhat sparkly nebula. This is two and a half seasons before "Godfellas."
Freaky Friday Flip: "A Prisoner of Benda" takes this trope and runs across the border with it, refusing to come back until extradited for its various crimes. They set up a rule that two bodies can only switch minds once, and then proceeded to work out whether they could eventually restore everyone's original bodies via group-theory. The episode contains a 3-second shot of nothing but Farnsworth's laser-blackboard showing the new, completely original theorem proved just for this episode. And they said abstract math doesn't have any real-world applications.
Free Wheel: Parodied — the wheel is coming from an exploding spaceship.
Fun With Flushing: Bender finally gets fed up with (or more accurately, jealous of) Nibbler and flushes him down the toilet. This prompts them to install a chip that forces him to feel Leela's emotions, causing him to flush himself (in pieces) so he can rescue it.
Future Badass: Lars Fillmore in Bender's Big Score. Not actually a Badass, nor technically from the future, but he is a look at a much, much more mature version of a present-day character.
Futuristic Superhighway: All cars are hovercars, so there are skylanes along with regular ground roads. In "Bendin' In The Wind" the Golden Gate Bridge is now a hoverbridge, so it doesn't need an actual road on it... which is a problem, since the gang is on a 20th Century VW Microbus. Intergalactic trucking routes and railroads are also present, and "Rebirth," the first episode after the series was Un Cancelled, features the Panama Wormhole.
G-H
Gaia's Lament: Played for laughs. Pine trees, anchovies, cows, and poodles are extinct. Owls replace pigeons and rats as urban pests. Jungles exist on Mars but not Earth, and global warming was solved by dropping a piece of ice in the ocean every now and then. It was later solved by pushing the Earth away from the sun. In another episode, global warming was said to be solved with the nuclear winter.
Genius Breeding Act: In one episode, a Genius Breeding Act is referenced from a time when aliens landed on Earth and forced the smartest members to mate continuously. Farnsworth was disappointed that the latest alien invasion wasn't going to involve this.
Amy is an ABSOLUTE Ditz. However, as the episode "That Darn Katz" reminds us, she IS an engineering graduate student who designs a machine to harness the rotational energy of the Earth. Also, she officially gains her doctorate at the end of the episode, so she is the ultimate Genius Ditz.
Also Dr. Zoidberg. Even though he's the staff Doctor, he knows absolutely nothing about the Human Anatomy. We later find out that he IS a doctor - of Art History.
What's more impressive is that there were a couple of occasions where Zoidberg actually performed operations successfully. Impressive, considering he doesn't actually have any medical training. He may not know anything about human anatomy but he is a terrific alien Doctor.
Get a Room!: Bender shouts this at an offscreen couple while he, Fry and Leela are climbing up the Watergate hotel. When one of them replies that they're in a room, he tells them to lose some weight.
According to DVD commentary, the background joke on "Why I Must Be a Crustacean in Love" where a woman is shown using a "Kegelcizer" at the gym is considered the dirtiest joke the writers have ever done, but the censors didn't catch it because they had no idea what a kegel exercise is. Here's a link to it from The Other Wiki.
They also got away with showing a bong by referring to it in the script as a "weird bottle", or at least that's what the DVD commentary claims.
Also referred to as "the device which speeds or slows the passage of time". It's kept under the passenger's seat of Fry's VW.
"I took the liberty of fertilising your caviar!" says Zoidberg at a party. Translation "I came on your food!"
From Benderama: "That's right, Linda; water is n-now booze, and everyone's titty much protally fitshaced.
And from All the President's heads: "Pray that you do not fhit your pants, the British attack has begun."
Came from this quote: "That is how we spell our s's, you ftupid fhitheads." For both those quotes, replace the f's with an s.
When in need of an accomplished harpoon shooter, Amy volunteers. Leela responds thusly:
Ms Wong, you have the poon.
The entire "private exhibition" joke in "The Lesser Of Two Evils". Farnsworth just wanted to introduce the atom that would be used on the tiara for the "Miss Universe" pageant, but the way he worded it really squicked everyone out.
In "Raging Bender: "Now quit scratching your ax hole and get out there!"
Gilligan Cut: Used, along with most other cut gags, in "Time Keeps on Skippin'"
Leela: "Fry, stop. I don't wanna hurt you, but there is absolutely positively no way that you and I will ever, ever—" (time skip) Preacher: "—man and wife. You may kiss the bride."
It was used in the new season 6 episode as well, where the crew stumble upon a bus filled with skeletons of dead people. When Zoidberg shoves the bones off of a bed, the Professor scolds Zoidberg for desecrating the bones of the dead people. However, when Amy says that she found a safe, cut to Farnsworth using a skull to break into the safe
Girl on Girl Is Hot: Titanius Anglesmith (Bender) and Greyfarn's (Farnsworth) opinion on Leegola (Leela) and Gynecaladriel (Amy) making out in Bender's Game.
Titanius Anglesmith: Ah, can it wait a couple of minutes?
Greyfarn: Yes, yes it can.
Bender and Fry watching Amy wash the Planet Express Ship, aka Bender's current girlfriend (quite literally Cargo Ship).
God Guise: In "Godfellas", Bender ends up drifting in space, where he becomes God to the Shrimpkins, a race of miniature people who end up settling on his body.
After learning that Nibblonians have been around since the dawn of time, Leila asks them about the creation. After seconds of untranslated Niblonian gibberish, Leila exclaims "That means every religion is wrong!"
In "Overclockwise", Bender temporarily achieves omniscience, and obtains printouts with the answers to life's great questions. He casually throws away "the reason we exist", but does show Fry and Leela an account of their future together.
Leela: Hmm... If we can re-route engine power through the primary weapons and configure them to Melllvar's frequency, that should overload his electro-quantum structure. Bender: Like putting too much air in a balloon! ... Leela: It's not working! He's gaining strength from our weapons! Fry: Like a balloon and... something bad happens!
Good News, Bad News: Whenever the professor says "Good news, everyone!", he's inevitably going to announce something horrible. Parodied in one episode when he's announcing something even worse than normal and simply says "News, everyone!" in exactly the same tone of voice as normal and lampshaded in "The Sting" when he says (in exactly the same tone of voice as normal) "Bad news everyone! Now normally when I say "Good news" it's usually bad news. So you can imagine how bad this news actually is." Also, in another episode, the Professor purchases some IKEA πKEA science instruments which... go exactly how you'd expect them to. He is blown through the wall in to the next room. As he stands up, he says "Bad news, no one."
In the Freaky Friday Flip, he and Amy try to switch to their original bodies. When they fail, he says "Bad news, me."
Good Night Sweet Prince: Mentioned twice on the "Anthology of Interest" episodes (both at the end of an act one story where Bender ends up dead — in Anthology of Interest 1, Bender gets impaled on a skyscraper. In Anthology of Interest 2, Bender [who has been turned human] kills himself with excess eating, drinking, and partying).
Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: The Planet Express crew rarely smoke... except for Bender. Also, Mom and her cigarettes.
Grand Finale: They really tried with the ending of Into the Wild Green Yonder, but just got blasted back to Earth when the series restarted on Comedy Central.
Grand Romantic Gesture: Fry pulls off one so big Leela decides to marry him. Unfortunately, due to time slips, they both forget what the gesture is. It turns out to be a love note... written with about thirty suns Fry rearranged in space.
Granola Girl: Done to death in Into the Wild Green Yonder.
Grey and Grey Morality: "Benderama", interestingly enough. The giant starts smashing up everything, only because he has some self-esteem and anger issues and everyone is insulting him. Everyone except Bender is entirely drunk and so can't really be held accountable, and while Bender stops the giant, he really was the only sober one and isn't any better than everyone else drunk:
Bender: Let this be a lesson about attacking those more handsome than oneself.
Grey Goo: Done with the infinitely replicating Benders, which even drop the trope name. They only thing saving the world was the Benders' collective laziness. The do leave behind significant damage before leaving to avoid doing even a minisulce fraction of a thing.
Hachiko: Seymour, the dog, in Jurassic Bark. Fry knew him from when he was 2-3, and he was flash fossilized at 13. From the Exit Medley, we learn that all 10 of those years were spent waiting.
...which is technically the correct (the best kind of correct!) pronunciation of that word as a proper name.
Heroic BSOD: Bender enters this combined with Roaring Rampage of Revenge, of all things, after realizing he was built without a backup unit, and therefore is both imperfect and mortal.
Heroic Fire Rescue: Fry (whose consumption of 100 cups of coffee has momentarily given him superpowers) rescues the patrons of a burning art exhibit (one at a time, using super - speed).
Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Double subverted in "The Late Philip J. Fry." Professor Farnsworth succeeds in assassinating Hitler, but they're forced to travel through time a second time and he ends up assassinating Eleanor Roosevelt instead.
Hollywood Density: Parodied as starship fuel (dark matter) is so dense that "a single pound of it weighs ten thousand pounds." In one case, Fry refers to a ball of this fuel, which has previously been shown on rare occasions to be liftable by a human, as "weighing as much as a thousand suns."
"The Game" throws the dark matter's weight out the window by having the characters pushing wheelbarrows filled with it. On the sun.
A lampshade gets hung on this when Fry and Leela are going to have a fiddle contest with the Robot Devil where the prizes are Bender's soul and a solid gold fiddle. When Fry (of all people) asks "Wouldn't a solid gold fiddle weigh hundreds of pounds and sound crummy?" the Robot Devil admits that it's mostly for show, then (being a robot) takes it and plays a complicated piece on it.
Then Bender grabs some wings and begins to fly out of Robot Hell carrying Fry and Leela. When Leela tells him he needs to fly faster he says he could if she would drop the solid gold fiddle she was carrying (dented from hitting the Robot Devil over the head with it).
Hollywood Tone Deaf: In "Spanish Fry," Leela sings a warbly and off-key bit of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You." Katey Sagal is of course a very talented singer, and manages to convincingly sing badly.
Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Literally: in "Hell is Other Robots" there's a robot hooker who has an actual heart of solid gold.
Scientist: I have combined the DNA of the world's most evil animals to make the most evil creature of them all! (A naked man walks out of the chamber) Naked Man: Turns out it's man.
Humans Are Morons: The 20th Century is known as "The Stupid Age" to historians. However, that doesn't make humans of the 31st Century any less stupid than us.
Hurl It into the Sun: Hermes and the box in "The Farnsworth Parabox". Also done with a shipment of popcorn kernels in "A Bicyclops Built for Two" and a shipment of candy hearts in "Love and Rocket", although in that episode it was a quasar instead of the sun.
Hurricane of Puns: Numerous examples, but the one that really takes the cake is the Lead In to "The Luck of the Fryrish", containing every joke imaginable about horse racing, and, Just for Pun, a joke about Quantum Physics.
Hyperspace Lanes: The Panama Wormhole, Earth's central shipping channel.
In Bender's Game, following a particularly brutal Take That to Robin Williams (in form of a horde of Morks, a combination of orcs and, well, Mork who can only repeat his catchphrases and are messily slain in great numbers for being annoying) for supposedly not being funny, we are subjected to The Eviscerator, which seems like the exact kinda joke Williams would make in his stand-up routine.
"That Darn Katz" has Nibbler claiming that nothing acts cute without an ulterior motive. Even keeping in mind his actions through the entire series, he follows this up by acting cute to trick Amy into changing his diaper.
"Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!"
"I hereby promote you to executive delivery boy!" "It's a meaningless title, but it helps insecure people feel better about themself"...Executive Producers: Matt Groening, David C. Cohen.
Brett Blob: Hey Cubert! Is that your family mansion?
Cubert: Why don't you ask your mom? She's coming over for a sex visit!
I Broke A Nail: Played with in "A Clockwork Origin", where Amy complains about having just done her manicure, followed immediately by her losing a finger. Fry later finds it in his soup.
I Can Change My Beloved: Romanticorp tests pickup lines on women using test dummies. One of the dummies uses the line "My two favorite things are commitment and changing myself." The woman in the test chamber immediately falls in love with the dummy.
Idiot Hero: Fry. You don't need to have any kind of intelligence to be a hero, and this guy proves it.
Ignored Confession: Professor Farnsworth occasionally brings up that Fry is his uncle when trying to prove his own sanity.
I Just Want to Be Normal: Pickles, the oracle from "Law and Oracle" who gives Fry false prophecies relating to Bender so that he could drink some strong malt liquor and suffer brain damage.
Joseph "Fishy Joe" Gilman: "After all, the only reason we don't eat people is 'cause they taste lousy."
And, of course, "Fry and the Slurm Factory" combined this with a Shout Out:
Fry: "Oh my god! What if the secret ingredient is people!" Leela: "No, there's already a soda like that, Soylent Cola." Fry: "Oh. How is it?" Leela: "It varies from person to person."
In "My Three Suns the crew visit a Neptunian butcher shop in New New York
Fry Wow! You have every type of meat here but human.
Impossibly Delicious Food: In Fry And The Slurm Factory, Fry is put in a death trap to drink concentrated slurm until his stomach bursts. He can't stop eating it, even long enough to save his friends. When Leela frees him from it by dumping it down the sewer, Fry tries to chew his own arms off to follow it.
The entire Earth ends up with an addiction to Poplers. They're so delicious, people even have a hard time stopping eating them when they find out the truth behind what they are. Then again, in a society that has "Soylent Cola", that is not that surprising.
Leela: Oh, I completely forgot, I left my apartment on fire! Bender: As for me, I'm late for my L.S.A.T.'s. Fry: And I can't take life anymore! [Leaps out the window]
Informed Flaw: Calculon tells the protagonists about Project Satan, where the most evil car parts in the world were used to build a car. Among these were the window wipers of the car from Knight Rider. When Fry countered that KITT wasn't evil, Calculon responds that the window wipers were, it just didn't come up much in the show.
Innocent Aliens: Dr. Zoidberg, who thinks most doctors are poor.
Innocent Innuendo: In "Put Your Head on My Shoulders", Fry and Amy connect while stranded in their car. In the next scene, the recovery truck worker arrives to find Fry and Amy's car windows steamed up. Instead of having sex, however, Fry and Amy are merely playing cards.
In Spite of a Nail: In "Roswell That Ends Well", the Professor wants to take every precaution against altering history... right up until Fry sleeps with his own grandmother. At this point he just gives up and launches a full scale, laser blasting assault on the 1950's Roswell military base to get its radar dish while delivering what is probably the best line in the entire episode.
Professor Farnsworth: Choke on that, causality!
In "All the Presidents' Heads", the Professor horribly maims (possibly even kills) his own ancestor, while Bender conspires to put himself on one of the first American flags. Zoidberg also meets Andy Warhol, who paints a picture of him. Other than that, it appears to have had no meaningful effect on history.
Instant Expert: When Bender temporarily becomes captain of the Planet Express, much to Fry's annoyance. When Fry lambastes him and accuses him of not knowing the first thing about being a captain, Bender instantly reads the entire manual and then uses the info to chastise Fry. Justified by the fact that he's a robot.
Fry: Have you even read the captain's handbook?
Bender: (flips through entire manual) I have now. And what's Peter Parrot's first rule of captaining?
Fry: (defeated) Always respect the chain-o-command...captain.
Instant Home Delivery: In "The Route of All Evil," Cubert and Dwight order a pedal-powered spacecraft. The form says "allow four to six seconds for delivery." Cubert says it's more like seven.
Interdimensional Travel Device: Farnsworth invents the parabox which allows travel to different realities, including one where Fry and Leela are married.
In The Future We Still Have Roombas: Bender lampshades this by complaining about small robots cleaning up the trash at a blernsball game (after he throws some trash), supporting his rant about robots not being in an equal standing with humans in terms of competitions.
Leela: Fry, you've become so lazy you've become a fat sack of crap.
Fry (indignantly): Sack?
Island Help Message: Bender can barely spell "HELP". Because he had used most of his rocks to explain who he was and how he had come to be on the island.
"TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: I, BENDER, BID YOU HELLO! YOU DON'T KNOW ME, THOUGH YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF ME, BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT. LONG STORY SHORT... I NEED HELF"
It Runs On Nonsensoleum: Anything Prof. Farnsworth explains. Lampshaded in one episode when Fry cuts a Farnsworth explanation short by saying that it's magic. Ironically, that Farnsworth explanation was one that used real-world science.
"I've got it! The ship stays still, and the engines move the universe around it!"
In case you're unfamiliar that was based off of the so-called "The Alcubierre drive". Which could, in theory, work just fine with faster-than-light travel. The show also has quite a few other examples of actually basing plot points off of real science.
"In regular fossilization, flesh and bone turns to mineral. Realizing this, it was a simple matter to reverse the process!"
Also the Central Bureaucracy. An organization that runs full stop on a combination of Pirate Code and Big Book of War philosophies, some of which their rules border on Calvinball mentality, all cubicles (or at least the section that we see) are constructed in a hovering Rubik's cube, the lines are impossibly long, and those who have managed to go inside and are not bureaucrats go insane within minutes.
It's Been Done: The creators have explained that Amy Wong was originally created to be a female character who was always hurting herself, thinking that it's typically only males who get to engage in the slapstick. They evidently didn't realize that there's already a trope for that. True, that's mostly a Japanese Media Trope, but it does have a Western counterpart.
Although it's arguable that these aren't the same trope, as the Dojikko and Cute Clumsy Girl are typically played for moe/endearing effect; while Amy's clumsiness is played strictly for laughs, which has historically been a predominantly male role.
It's Up to You: The Planet Express crew has saved the city/planet/universe from annihilation dozens of times. Sometimes this is justified with Fry's "special" brain.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Bender to Flexo's not-quite-divorced robot wife who remembers she remembers she loves Flexo after all.
I Will Wait For You: "Jurassic Bark", which even makes use of the song that named the trope in the ending, which makes the ending even more heart-wrenching.
Ironic Echo: Several examples, but a very prominent use occurs in "A Head In The Polls" when Fry realizes just how much of a bastard Nixon truly is and vows never to vote for him. Nixon's response? "Like one vote ever really mattered", a harmless phrase that was used as a minor gag earlier in the episode. This also crosses over with Wham Line.
Jerkass: Bender on a good day. Zapp Brannigan is even worse, and far more smug, and far more sexist.
Parodied in "The Series Has Landed", when Amy is trying to retrieve the keys to a spaceship from a claw arcade game.
Bender: "Come on, it's just like making love. Y'know: Left, down, rotate 62 degrees, engage rotor." Amy: I know how to make love!
After Fry first tries a delicious Poppler, he declares "It's like sex, except I'm having it!"
K-L
Kangaroo Pouch Ride: Bender's Game had orc spear-throwers riding in giant war-kangaroo pouches.
Karma Houdini: Bender sometimes has to face some kind of punishment for his behavior, but as often as not he just does whatever he wants without having to face any real consequences. In fact, there's a surprising amount of episodes where he's directly or indirectly responsible for everything bad that happens to the crew, and he gets away with it.
Lampshaded and subverted in "Three Hundred Big Ones", where Bender has stolen an expensive cigar and flaunted it at a fancy party; at the episode's end he notes "My story kinda petered out without me learning a lesson," at which point two cops recognize him from security footage and begin to beat Bender senseless while he enjoys this closure.
Made fun of in "Hey Leela Leela", where, after the episode ended with the Rumpldyhumps getting healthcare, plumbing, and electricity, and all of the orphans from the orphanage getting adopted and paying jobs, Leela simply cannot understand that everybody got a happy ending, and demands that somebody teaches her a lesson.
Karmic Twist Ending: Parodied with the Show Within a ShowThe Scary Door. The best example is the one where the bookworm's reading glasses break after doomsday.
Bookworm: Finally! Solitude! I can read books for all eternity! (glasses fall off) It's not fair! IT'S NOT... Oh, well, my eyes aren't that bad. I can still read the large print books. (eyes fall out) IT'S NOT... Oh, well, lucky I know Braille. (hands fall off) *screams* (tongue falls out, head falls off) Hey, look at that weird mirror! Bender: Cursed by his own hubris.
Kill All Humans: Bender expresses a desire to do this while sleeptalking, Fry hears him and is disturbed. "I was having the most wonderful dream...I think you were in it."
"Hey, sexy mama. Wanna kill all humans?"
Whenever I said "Kill All Humans" I always whispered "except one." Fry was that one. (That one has its impact lessened by the revelation that it was just a hallucination of Leela's.)
Kill 'Em All: Every short story in the Christmas special ends like this.
Killer Rabbit: Nibbler, and arguably the rest of the Nibblonians. They're tiny and adorable...and capable of destroying much larger opponents (including the seemingly invincible Brainspawn), running a Secret Society, and excreting Dark Matter. Though for some reason, they're utterly useless against the Nudists.
Nibber: Alas, our kitten class attack ships were no match for their mighty chairs. The universe is Doomed.
Kill the Poor: In the future, the unemployment problem was "solved" by making it illegal to be unemployed.
Hellooooo, Calculon. His hamming is ramped up to dangerous levels in "That's Lobstertainment!", when director Harold Zoid tells him he isn't emoting enough. His hamminess is on display off the stage as well in "The Devil's Hands":
Calculon: Well, I do owe you for giving me this... unholyACTING TALENT!
Zapp Brannigan. He's not an actor, but he'll steal the scene anyway.
Apparently this with Turanga Leela; but eventually subverted when we discover in that Leela's parents are "Turanga Morris" and "Turanga Munda", indicating that mutants arrange their names Asian style, with the family name first.
Latin Land: The Tijuana from "Lethal Inspection" is a textbook example.
And in the first episode of the newest season, "It's some kind of new, comedy-central channel! And we're on it now!"
Robot Devil has a couple in the ex-series finale:
[after his own name is selected for Fry's hands] "What an appallingly ironic outcome!"
"Ah, my ridiculously circuitous plan is one quarter complete!"
Upon completion of the Fon Fon-Rubok ceremony in "The Beast With A Billion Backs", Amy joyously declares "Oh, Kif, this is just like a movie with this happening in it!"
LEGO Genetics: The Decopodians contain parts of every known marine animal on earth, as well as every Yiddish stereotype imaginable, all wrapped up in the body of a six-foot-tall humanoid lobster.
Least Common Pizza Topping: Causes a Logic Bomb to go off and make the robot waiter self-destruct when Fry tries to order it at Cosmic Ray's Pizzeria.
Lethal Chef: Bender is a literal one, since he has a limited knowledge of organic biology.
Though to be fair he did make one good dish and the rest of the time he's at least trying.
If he's following a recipe, he can cook as well as anyone, but he tries to improvise. Without a sense of taste, he has no basis on which to improvise from beyond "throw it into the pot," which doesn't work so well.
Lie Detector: The truthoscope used during the presidential debate in the episode "A Head in the Polls".
The Countess de la Roca (A Flight To Remember) did also, when she fell through the deck of the Titanic, but a family broke her fall. Since she weighs at least two metric tons according to Leela, things probably did not end well for them.
Locked into Strangeness: Parodied with Zoidberg and the space whale. He's so terrified that he grows hair just so it can turn white. Lucky for him, the third time around he stops at the "grow hair" part.
Zap Brannigan: "I am the man with no name - Zap Brannigan, at your service!"
More traditionally, Leela attempts this on Robot Santa. His head explodes; however, he was built with "paradox-absorbing crumple zones", so a new head simply springs up to replace the old one.
An even earlier example a Logic Bomb proof robot in "Mother's Day": There's a wax robot janitor taking a nap in the hall of wax robot replicas of famous robots Mom ever built. When Fry tries to figure why the robot would do this, it just ticks him off, prompting an even more bizarre explanation that does nothing but advance Fry's confusion and even frightens him a little.
Losing Your Head: The heads in jars, Bender, Zoidberg, Hermes, Robot Santa (who produced a new one), and technically Fry (his body was damaged so they moved his head to Amy's shoulder).
Low Speed Chase: There's a chase scene at the Central Bureaucracy on "slowmobiles", hover-scooters that travel at slightly less than walking pace.
Made of Explodium: One of the bees crashes into the walls of the hive and explodes in "The Sting". As of the 2010 Christmas special episode, it appears ALL space bees are made of explodium.
One of Fry's fellow inmates in the robot insane asylum, Malfunctioning Eddie, tends to blow up at the slightest provocation.
Matryoshka Object: At the end of "The Farnsworth Parabox", the Professors from both universes grab the other universe's box and end up with boxes containing their own universe.
Philip J. Fry himself, named for the dearly departed Phil Hartman.
Leela's full name (Turanga Leela) is a direct reference to Olivier Messiaen's famous Turangalîla Symphony.
Zapp Brannigan's name shares resonance with the semi-obscure term "brannigan", meaning an embarrassing drunken bender.
Bender... in more ways than one.
And of course, Professor Farnsworth, named after the inventor Philo Farnsworth, who invented the television.
And revealed in "All the Presidents' Heads" to actually be a descendant of Philo Farnsworth.
Mechanical Evolution: In the episode "A Clockwork Origin", Professor Farnsworth releases some Nanomachines to purify water on an uninhabited planet. Subsequent generations of nanites are more complex, and the situation very quickly gets far out of hand. In one day they become trilobites, the next day there's robot dinosaurs, the next cave-bots, then human-bots, and finally energy beings.
Metaphorgotten: A lot. Zapp Brannigan and Fry being the more notable offenders.
Fry: Bender! You can't date the ship! It would be like me dating a really fat lady, and then living inside her! And she'd be all (makes space travel motions with his hands) Vrrrroooom vrwooo bweeee zooom!
Zapp: "If we hit that bullseye, the rest of those dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."
In the Season 6 episode "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences":
Scary Door intro You're taking a vacation from normalcy. The setting; a weird motel with a bed that is stained with mystery. And there's also some mystery floating in the pool. Your key card may not open the exercise room because someone smeared mystery on the lock.
Mile-High Club: An inversion in "The Duh-Vinci Code". While searching for a tomb underneath Rome, Fry asks Leela if she wants to join the "Mile Deep Club". She consents but they're interrupted by the Professor.
"Obsoletely Fabulous" ventures here too but more mildly. The bulk of the episode is just a long string of fictitious events in Bender's head to make him appreciate the 1-X robots.
Misfit Mobilization Moment: In Bender's big score, this happens in the climactic battle against the scammers when Hermes' head is plugged directly into the battlegrid. Cue Theme Music Power-Up and much ass-kicking.
Mistaken For Exhibit: In "Mother's Day", Fry justly mistakes the janitor (who happens to be a robot made out of wax) for one of the wax robot sculptures in a museum.
Mr. Seahorse: Kif Kroker's species has "males" who become pregnant by absorbing genetic material from other lifeforms via skin contact. In another episode, Bender allows Fry and Leela to homebrew beer inside his torso and it's treated like a case of pregnancy. In one of the spin-off comics, Zapp Brannigan basically gets this with the intent of using him as a human weapon.
Modesty Bedsheet: Morgan Proctor, when she and Fry got caught having sex in Bender's closet, and then running out to catch a taxi with the bedsheet covering her when Bender figures out the truth about her.
Multi Armed Multitasking: Elzar. The DVD commentary mentions that the animators went out of their way to have each arm work independently rather than have each arm on either side move in the same way.
Mushroom Samba: In the episode "Hell is Other Robots", Bender injects himself with electricity causing him to go on a mind trip.
Fry also undergoes one in "A Fishful of Dollars" after being whacked on the head by Igner, robbed of his money, and dumped in front of his apartment. This Mushroom Samba is also responsible for being the Trope Namer for Stuffy Old Songs About The Buttocks.
Must Make Amends: Fry finds his old dog from the 20th century fossilized in a construction site. Feeling bad for abandoning it (despite not meaning to) he arranges for the professor to actually revive it. With Science!
In that same episode, Bender, in a fit of jealousy, literally kicked said dog's fossil into hot lava, but after realizing what he did, he went in to save him and recovered him.
Mythology Gag: During Bender's Big Score, we see Bender fleeing after stealing an award. The chase scene involves the city being destroyed...cue the scene from the pilot of ships destroying the city outside the cryogenics lab's window.
Nausea Dissonance: In "Parasites Lost", after learning there are worms inside Fry's body:
Hermes: (eating popcorn) It's nauseating, mon! (eats more popcorn) Is there no way to get rid of the disgusting maggots?
Negative Continuity: Strongly subverted between the 1st and 2nd direct-to-TV movies.
Never Trust a Trailer: The commercials for "Neutopia" made it appear that the cast being Gender Bent would be the focus of the episode. It doesn't happen until the last five minutes, and most of the jokes in those five minutes were shown in the commercials.
Elzar is a clear parody of tv chef Emeril Lagasse.
Noodle Implement / Chekhov's Gun: And this is from the very first episode. Professor Farnsworth introduces a drawer full of "assorted lengths of wire" to distract Fry, Leela and Bender from the fact that he has a spaceship in "Space Pilot 3000". In "The Farnsworth Parabox", a full 4 seasons later, they are used as tools to help the gang and their Universe-1 counterparts find the missing box with Universe-A.
Not Rare Over There: In "Time Keeps On Slippin'", a character mentions that they'll need "some sort of doomsday device" to solve the problem of the week. Quoth Prof. Farnsworth;
Farnsworth:Doomsday device? Well now the ball's in Farnsworth's court!
[The professor presses a button on a remote, causing several different stereotypically "mad scientist" style machines to come up through a trap door]
Farnsworth: I suppose I could part with one and still be feared.
Fry: And what if I don't want to be a delivery boy?
Leela: Then you'll be fired.
Fry: Fine!
Leela: ...out of a cannon, into the Sun.
Not That Kind of Doctor: What happens when Zoidberg's ignorance of human biology is taken to its logical conclusion: his doctorate is in Art History.
Not What It Looks Like: Happens in the episode "Why Must I Be A Crustacean in Love" with Fry when Zoidberg walks in on both Fry and Edna who is kissing him on her sofa.
Zoidberg: Edna, I couldn't stand it any longer. I— Gasp! Fry!
Fry: Dr. Zoidberg, it's not how it looks!
Zoidberg: Her caviar is on your neck!
O-P
Obfuscating Stupidity: It's hinted that Amy might be doing this. She is an engineering student (though in one DVD commentary, the writers admitted that they'd completely forgotten that), so maybe she's a Genius Ditz? Also Nibber, to great extents apparently.
Confirmed in "That Darn Katz". Amy came up with an idea to use the Earth's rotation to generate energy for her thesis so she could finally get her doctorate.
The Genius Ditz part, not the Obfuscating Stupidity part. She had spent the night before drinking and having sex with Kif and went into the exam in her underwear.
Also Nibbler, who hides his hyper-intelligence with a mask of ultra-stupidity and a tendency towards doing cute things.
Obstacle Ski Course: Prof. Farnsworth is seen skiing while fast asleep. By the time he arrives at the ski lodge and wakes up, he has apparently entered a skiing competition, and won.
Official Couple: Deconstructed (as per Futurama) in Fry and Leela. Especially in season 6 (see The Late Philip J Fry)
Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Zoidberg, as he was introduced in "The Series Has Landed", was shown to be nothing more than an aloof, semi-incompetent staff physician who was desperately poor. In "That's Lobstertainment!", it was revealed that he moonlighted as a (very poor) stand-up comedian. Come season 7's "The Duh-Vinci Code", he was shown to have an extensive background in art. According to him, that is because his actual P.H.D. is in art history. This reaches its peak in season 8's "The Tip Of The Zoidberg", when, just prior to working at Planet Express, he was a surprisingly competent military surgeon under employment in Mom's Friendly Robot Company, and the reason for his Cloud Cuckoo Lander behavior is that he contracted hypermalaria during a top-secret mission.
Once for Yes, Twice for No: Brannigan entirely fails to correctly interpret a paralyzed Leela when she does this.
One-Hour Work Week: The crew is rarely actually seen performing deliveries. When it is shown, it's usually just after they've made it. Lampshaded in the sixth season episode 'The Duh-Vinci Code'.
The Other Marty: Zap was originally created to be voiced by Phil Hartman, but he died after only recording a few lines, so the part went to Billy West.
Literally, by the Neptunians in "A Big Piece of Garbage."
The numerous Shout Out diseases that Zoidberg causes Fry to go through in "The Tip of the Zoidberg." For reference, Fry starts out with Simpsons jaundice, then progresses to Garfield syndrome, to Muppet Ganggreen, and, finally, an unnamed Smurfs disease, exhibiting characteristics of the main characters of each respective series.
Bender: We're Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo- [stops to inhale] -oooooooooooooooooooooooooomed!
Pac Man Fever: In "Rebirth", Fry is seen complaining about how the ship's Gameboy isn't working while holding a NES controller. Complete with sounds from the original Donkey Kong!
Also, "Anthology Of Interest Part II" has Mario as the ambassador of Italy, Donkey Kong and Lrrr launching an attack on Planet Earth in spaceships designed like Space Invaders, and the Secretary of Defense is Pac-Man.
Parallel Porn Titles: When the death satellite is on course for Earth, Bender mentions two TV shows that might make Earth a target, The Pimpsons and Assarama.
Parental Abandonment: Fry's parents went to get his dog pal at the cryogenics plant and didn't even realize he was frozen there. To be fair, they were hungover... and bad parents.
Fry's dad grew up without a father. Since Fry's dad's father turned out to be Fry himself, that's probably just as well.
Possibly averted in a later episode. Bender's Big Score shows a back-from-the-future Fry happily reuniting with his family. Until that moment, all the information showing the horrible neglect Fry grew up with came from an early, immature Fry and his even less mature girlfriend. Why would it be a waste of taxpayer money to have the police search for Fry? Because Fry's family had probably just seen him, and didn't feel like giving his horrible ex the time of day. Regardless, some evidence exists that Fry's feelings about his family are skewed, right down to his hatred for his older brother, who "always stole everything from him". Yancy Jr. and Fry just experienced normal sibling rivalry. Upon having a son, Yancy Jr. names the boy "Philip" for Fry; his wife treats the choice as a foregone conclusion, knowing how much Yancy Jr. loves his little brother.
Parody Sue: Barbados Slim. He's the only person to have Olympic Gold Medals in both Limboing and Sex!
The Password Is Always Swordfish: When a bomb that cannot be deactivated is installed into Bender, the Professor programs in a password that Bender would never use in everyday conversation. Bender, of course, immediately tries (and succeeds) to guess "antiquing."
After having guessed "please," "thank you," "your welcome," and "I'm sorry."
Peace & Love Incorporated: Mom Corp plays this to the hilt, so much so that both "Mom" and "love" are registered trademarks in its name. The latest season has taken to portraying Mom Corp as the 31st Century's version of Apple. Considering they are very much a Truth in Television example of this trope, it's not too much of a stretch. No one would be surprised if they eventually revealed Mom to be a direct descendant of Steve Jobs (see the Wild Mass Guessing entry)
Perfectly Cromulent Word: "Intragnisent" Yup, he mispronounced intransigent, which leads to the Mob boss's quip: "From the context it is clear what you meant".
Fry as the encarnation of the Known Universe could be this for the Parasites.
Bender is this to the Shrimpkins in Godfellas.
And then he knows the Galactic Entity, a real physical god
Yivo must be this, along being some sort of Eldritch Abomination.
And, of course, the mighty Encyclopods.
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The whalers on the moon lampshade this. Bender does very little bending. Farnsworth doesn't really teach...also, at times Planet Express:
Planet of Copyhats: Dr. Zoidberg's Yiddish accent turns out to be his entire species' accent.
Planet of Hats: Virtually a Running Gag — except for Earth, every planet has one (1) characteristic, as well as being named after it. Farnsworth's "good news, everyone!" Catch Phrase was originally used to refer to the planet he was sending them to next.
Farnsworth: Tomorrow you'll be making a delivery to Ebola 9 — the Virus Planet!
This also showed up as Noodle Incidents before the start of episodes, with the crew coming back dishevelled after making a delivery to Cannibalon (At least the food was good, according to Bender), and the crew coming back from the Planet of the Moochers, with Fry not wearing any pants.
Fry:They take you out for a drink, but when the check comes, their wallet's always in their other pants - which they borrowed from me!
The Neutral planet, robots, ancient Egyptians, and an entire cowboy universe.
Later, other parallelperpendicular universes are found, each with its own distinctive quirk—a world of hippies, Romans, bobbleheads, robots, people who never had eyes who nevertheless know what "seeing" is, etc.
Don't forget the planet of spheres, the planet of mathematical geniuses, the nude beach planet and the Harlem Globetrotter planet...
What, no mention of the yarn people of Nylar 4?
Pluralses: Sal does this to emphasize his lower-classness.
Potty Dance: Bender does it briefly in Bender's Big Score after drinking a bunch of beers, and then hangs a lampshade on the lunacy of a robot having to go to the bathroom.
Power Trio: The three dominant characters who appear in every episode, Fry, Bender, and Leela. They usually represent the ego, the id, and the super ego respectively.
The Pratfall: Amy in her klutzy mode would often perform these.
Precision F-Strike: Zoidberg at the end of the episode "The Silence Of The Clamps."
Bender: "I'll just cut that—"
Zoidberg: "You do and I'll *beep*ing gut you like a fish!"
Also another earlier in the episode, when he says "My name's Zoidberg. JOHN *beep*INGZOIDBERG!!
In "Where No Fan Has Gone Before":
Zapp: This court will now hear some very sensual testimony from this court's ex-lover, Turanga Leela. Leela:(sitting in a device that resembles Captain Pike's wheelchair) Go *beep* yourself.
Present Day Past: Fry was frozen on January 1, 2000, but in later episodes makes early 21st-century pop culture references that are current to the episode's air date, but that he would never have personally experienced. Of course, many of the other characters also make such references....
When Bender is a fembot, and dating Calculon, the TV star, he gets a fur coat as one of many extravagant gifts.
In the fourth movie, Fanny is the wife of the leader of the Robot Mafia, and he held up Burlington Coat Factory to get her a white fur jacket. Bender had been having an affair with her and says, "Man, this is great! I always wanted to nail a dame in a fur coat, and now's my chance."
Psycho for Hire: Clamps, the Robot Mafia's clamp-happy enforcer.
Farnsworth: Miss McNeal, I'm afraid I must decline your offer of marriage. For, you see, I'm dying. Cough, then fall over dead.
Also Hermes when Zoidberg celebrates his 10th year at Planet Express:
Hermes: I will now read the mandatory speech. "Dear employee: Has it really been five, 10 or 15 years? If not, please disregard this and get back to work. Distribute token of appreciation and applaud."
Reclining Reigner: Hedonism Bot takes this trope to its logical conclusion.
Refusing Paradise: In one episode Bender dies and spends most of the episode as a Virtual Ghost. At the end he's offered the opportunity to go to Robot Heaven, but says "screw this!" and comes back to "life".
This trope is taken Beyond the Impossible in "Rebirth" when Leela constructs a robot version of Fry after the original Fry's presumed death, who goes on to construct a robot version of Leela after her presumed death.It all works out, somehow.
Leela sees Cubert as this in "The Late Philip J. Fry".
Reset Button: Double Subverted on more than one occasion. In one episode, aliens cause untold devastation, and Fry comments that "At the end of a sitcom episode,everything is back to normal"... only to have the last shot be of all the devastation... which is promptly back to normal the next. Another one: Fry is fired from his job (for ruining Dr. Farnsworth's... everything), but Farnsworth was willing to forgive him because he couldn't even remember why he fired him. Then Bender reminds him exactly why, and Farnsworth tells him to get lost. He's back to working the next episode.
Retcon: No one can really decide if the first movie did this or not. More generally the depiction of Fry's life in the 20th century has changed from a thoroughly miserable one to one that wasn't all that bad - he had a beloved pet dog, a brother who genuinely loved him (even if they fought a lot) and even his boss was pretty friendly despite his initial portrayal as abusive. He was 25 years old, lived with his parents, had a girlfriend that used him excessively when she wasn't dumping him, and had no prospects, but it wasn't the dank craphole the first episode portrayed.
It's really explained by this being a Time Travel clone of Fry who returned, and having learnt a few things from the future (like how Yancy really did care about him), turned his life around after getting back to the past in the first flick.
The best retcon of the movie - And the Fandom Rejoiced for which - was that Fry's dog DIDN'T actually live alone for thirteen years waiting for him; he lived happily with Time-Travel-Clone Fry for all those years, until he was flash-fossilized in the explosion in TTC-Fry's apparent assassination. Still sucks that the little guy died, but they found a way to rescind the earlier Tear Jerker moment into an odd Crowning Moment of Heartwarming when the audience realized the change.
However, another thing WAS retconned. In the first episode featuring the sewer mutants, the way the characters talk before entering the sewer, it seems that mutants have not yet been confirmed to live down there, and the crew were making a discovery by finding them. It was established in later episodes that they've been a known society for quite some time, and that there have been discriminatory laws set against them by New New York.
In "X-Mas Story", Leela says that nuclear winter cancelled out global warming, although in "Crimes of the Hot," global warming is a problem again, and has apparently been for centuries. Don't you just love it when writers don't pay attention to the shows they create?
The problem is in the fact that in Futurama the show has been cancelled switched stations, and had many different problems. It's hard to keep focused on the show when putting the show back on the air is the first priority.
Similarly, Los Angeles is depicted as a decrepit city in one episode and a normal city in a future episode.
Retirony: In one of the Tales of Interest, General Colin Pac-Man was only one day from retirement when he was tragically gunned down by a space invader.
Played with with Smitty and URL in a later episode when Fry replaces Smitty as URL's partner.
URL: (morosely) He was just a few days away from retirement.
Rhetorical Question Blunder: Inverted in "Love's Labors Lost in Space" when Zapp delivers his captain's log at the end of the episode:
Zapp: I did make it with a hot alien babe, and in the end, is that not what man has dreamt of since first he looked up at the stars? (beat) Kif, I'm asking you a question!
Played straight in "Obsoletely Fabulous":
Bender: If that stuff wasn't real, how can I be sure anything is real? Is it not possible, nay, probable, that my entire existence is nothing but a figment of my or someone else's imagination?
Technician: No, get out.
And in "The Beast With a Billion Backs":
Farnsworth: I know the anomaly is scary, but as scientists, is it not our sworn duty to seek out knowledge, even if it means risking our very lives?
Stephen Hawking: No.
And in "Attack of the Killer App":
Fry: Since when is the Internet about robbing people of their privacy?
Robosexual: The legalization of which being the plot of "Proposition Infinity". Fry and Bender were robosexuals already. (Not together: With a robot Lucy Liu and the original Lucy Liu.)
Really 700 Years Old: The professor is in his 170's, Zoidberg had already passed all his larval stages 80 years ago, which means he's centuries of age, and Nibbler is over a milennium of age.
Relationship Upgrade: In the closing moments of Into The Wild Green Yonder when Leela officially returned Fry's feelings and kissed him. Appears to have stuck with the premiere of the new season, although time will tell if it stays like that.
Rubber Forehead Aliens: Despite frequently averting this trope with great ingenuity, most of the cast are either human or humanoid - Zoidberg and Kif's species both have different stages of physical make-up, but for most of the time they're humanoid.
Rule Of Cool / Rule of Funny: Since the writers are keen to show their work (considering that most of them studied math and science in college), any unrealistic instances are most likely these tropes.
Running Gag: Bender yelling "ABANDON SHIP!" in "Parasites Lost"
In the original run of the show, every time Zap Brannigan appears Bender goes out of his way to remind Leela that she had sex with him.
Sapient Ship: episode "Love and Rocket": the Planet Express Ship gets a new AI, which quickly falls in love with Bender.
Lampshaded is made in a recent episode. Matt Groening unveils Futurella at comic con. Opening music starts, title appears, CANCELLED. Groening then comments on how Fox has streamlined the process.
Seasonal Rot: In-universe, the episode "Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV" had All My Circuits replaced with Everybody Loves Hypnotoad after the child robot actor has a literal break-down on-set. According to Fry, Everybody Loves Hypnotoad has been going downhill since season three.
Second Face Smoke: In "Three Hundred Big Boys", Bender steals a fabulously expensive cigar expressly for the purpose of blowing its smoke into the faces of the "fantsy-pantses" at an upscale art gallery.
Bender Zubans? They're the most expensive cigars in the universe! I could stink up a whole maternity ward with one of those!"
Secret Ingredient: In "The 30% Iron Chef", after Bender wins a cooking competition using drops from a crystal flask filled with "the essence of pure flavor", Professor Farnsworth runs a chemical analysis and announces the mystery liquid is "Water! Ordinary water!" Immediately after Fry concludes that all Bender needed to cook well was confidence, the professor adds, "Yes, ordinary water, laced with nothing more than a few spoonfuls of LSD."
"Put Your Head On My Shoulder": Played with. After Amy's car runs out of gas on Mercury, she and Fry talk a bit, then look at each other seductively. Hours later (judging by the sunset), a tow driver wipes some condensation off the glass of Amy's car, revealing them... playing cards inside. Then, while the car is being towed:
Amy: So while they're towing us, want to do it?
Fry: Yeah! *they start making out, then duck out of view*
"Amazon Women in the Mood": The "Snu-Snu" scenes with Fry, Zapp and Kif.
"A Flight To Remember": One scene with Bender and the Countess parodies the sex scene from James Cameron'sTitanic.
"A Biclops Built For Two": Happens between Leela and Alcazar after he tells her the history about their heritage.
"How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back": Happens between Fry and Morgan Proctor in Bender's closet. Morgan sees Fry as she unbuttons her blouse before proceding to have sex with him. Cut to Bender walking with a candle he made for Fry, and then walking in on both Fry and Morgan naked under the sheets.
"Mother's Day": Happens between Professor Farnsworth and Mom when attempting to seduce her to get the robot controls from her bra only for Farnsworth to throw away the bra blinded by his lust for Mom. Later, the rest of the Planet Express crew barged in the house and after Fry opens the bedroom door, we see both Farnsworth and Mom in bed naked.
Used humorously (perhaps was even meant as a Lampshade of sorts) at the end of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela". The V-GINY says it will spare Earth but only if Zapp and Leela have sex. Leela forces Zapp into it and the deed is done offscreen. Unfortunately Fry has to watch and begs for the V-GINY to censor it (it doesn't).
Loads of shout-outs to all science fiction, ever, but especially Star Trek. Just from the new series, "V-Giny" in "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" is a parody of V-Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Not to mention Janeway's Guide). And in "Proposition Infinity", the interracial couple are from the planet in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", which was destroyed by racial hatred.
The Singularity: Mentioned and seen in "Overclockwise". Bender starts upgrading himself, and before anyone knows it, he's hop-scotched his way up to the level of Physical God. Of course, Mom sets him back to factory specs. But, he manages to write down Fry and Leela's future before-hand.
Solar Powered Magnifying Glass: Prof. Wernstrom's plan to stop global warming is a giant mirror that reflects excess light away from the Earth. Then a small piece of space debris knocks it askew, and a beam of concentrated light slices through the city.
Soldiers At The Rear: Fry and Bender join the military purely for the benefits. Unfortunately for them, shortly afterwards, war were declared and they are shipped to the front lines.
Solid Gold Poop: Nibbler's crap is the crew's starship fuel. Also there's Zoidberg's snot-pearl things.
Space Is an Ocean+ 2-D Space: Subverted. In one episode, protestors make a "peace ring" around an oil tanker-spaceship, planning to trap it. The spaceship moves 20 feet vertically, and then zooms off.
Leela: "When you were designing this peace ring, did you realize spaceships could move in three dimensions?" Head Protestor: "No, I did not."
Spiritual Successor: Averted with extreme prejudice. Since the show is from the same creator as The Simpsons, many cynical critics expected Futurama to be "The Simpsons IN SPACE!," but the show has instead developed its own very distinct form of humor and storytelling, which in some ways is different from anything else on TV. There is certainly some overlap in style, but Greoning was very deliberate in making sure Futurama had its own distinct identity and did not simply ride the coattails of his other show.
Matt is very big on making sure each of his creations has its own vibe. Futurama's use of story arcs and absurdity is as different from The Simpsons as that show's style is from the nihilistic cynicism of Life in Hell.
Spoof Aesop: The Beast with a Billion Backs: Bender explains that love cannot be shared and it's not truly love if you're not jealous.
Sports Preemption: Occurred so often on Fox from about season 3 onward that it was actually a pleasant surprise when you got to see a new episode.
Squee: Done (rather disturbingly) by the Professor in "The Duh-Vinci Code".
Fry travelling back in time to become his own grandfather, the origin of the time code in Bender's Big Score.
In a stranger example, a recent episode indicates that time itself loops around naturally, with the end of the universe leading back to the Big Bang.
Status Quo is God: The first post-revival episode had a somewhat...odd way of tying up the end of Into The Wild Green Yonder and bringing everyone's lives back to normal (except for Fry and Leela obviously), but they did...somehow.
To elaborate: The Professor and Leela survived. Fry was reduced to a pile of dust saving Leela. Everyone else was dead from the neck down. Leela built a robot and loaded Fry's memories on it but then he electrocuted her and he lost his short term memory thinking he was the real Fry. Leela and the others are "reborn" but she is in a coma, causing Fry to make a robot version of her. Eventually she wakes up resulting in 2 Leelas before Robo-Fry realizes who he is before the real Fry is reborn. The two robots shed their human skins and leave the rest to move on with their lives. And then the less said about Bender's part of the story, the better.
Fry: It was just a matter of knowing the secret of all television. At the end of the episode, everything's always right back to normal (*as New New York crumbles and burns*).
Two examples in "Law and Oracle":
After Scruffy dies in the previous episode, his revival is lampshaded when Hermes states that "There'll be no promotions unless somebody dies. And even then, only if we can't bring them back as a zombie like Scruffy"
It seems Fry did a great job as a policeman without getting Bender in trouble, but of course he has to return to being a delivery boy. "I got my [detective's] shield for stopping Bender... But then I got fired for tipping off Bender." (Even though Bender wasn't the primary criminal and Fry's secret plan worked completely.
Fry: I may not know much about horses, but I know a lot about doing anything for one dollar.
(Fry struggles to reach for the dollar, leaning over the telephone pole)
(Fry climbs back down the pole, climbing back up with a metal rake)
Fry: If you think bad luck can defeat me, than you don't know my name is Phillip J.— (As the rake makes contact with the wire, Fry is electrocuted, and survives, with a trail of smoke billowing off of him)
This moment from the third episode:
Calculon: I've been processing this for quite sometime, Monique, will you marry me? Monique: Oh, Calculon! Yes! (Calculon fits the ring on her finger) It fits! Then you must know I'm... Calculon: Metric? I've always known, but for you I'm willing to convert.
In "Benderama" a whole bunch of tiny Benders put so much alcohol in the water system that everyone on Earth experiences a huge...bender.
The show uses the exact same scream every time Amy falls over.
The opening of "Brannigan, Begin Again" uses a recording of the judge calmly saying "I'm going to allow this" several times, in increasingly odd circumstances.
Stolen Good, Returned Better: Bender steals Leela's engagment ring and replaces it with a better one. This is his wedding gift. Because he's Bender.
Straight Gay: Implied with Fry's grandfather Enos. In "Roswell That Ends Well," Enos asks Fry "You ever think you date girls only 'cause you're supposed ta?" and expresses interest in a photo of a big burly male model on a calendar.Turns out, he's not Fry's grandfather.
Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Bender seems to have much more gadgetry than would be useful or even practical for a robot whose only purpose is to bend girders. It could be justified as he works for Professor Farnsworth, who would be more than likely to experiment on the robot.
Zap Brannigan: "That young man fills me with hope! Plus some other emotions which are weird and deeply confusing."
T-U
Take That: In "I Second that Emotion", Fry, Leela and Bender visit the Sewer Mutants underneath New New York, whose entire civilisation is built out of things people have flushed down their toilets. Eventually they get to their library:
Bender: Nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand! [He holds up Atlas Shrugged]
Apple and Twitter in Attack of the Killer App. Includes subtle references to the Foxconn suicide controversy and portrays Mom as a much more (or possibly less) evil caricature of Steve Jobs.
An almost heroically extended one after Planet Express is "back on the air" (Farnsworth: "Yes, flying through the air in our spaceship,") after renewing their contract with the "Box Network".
In "Yo Leela Leela", Leela warns everyone not to get to excited about the premiere of her kids' show, because "we all know every good show gets canceled. Sometimes twice."
In Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences, the gang visits Comic Con. The entire sequence is strewn with subtle Take Thats, but the part where the pilot of a new show— Futurella— is shown off by its' creators takes the cake, as the show is canceled five seconds into the intro.
Matt Groening: Wow. Fox has really streamlined the process.
Talking to Himself: Most of the main cast play multiple characters, though Billy West, Maurice LaMarche, and Tress MacNeille are the most frequent. In fact, the only voice actress who plays one character is Katey Sagal, who only plays Leela. She only counts if you include alternate universe Leelas in "The Farnsworth Parabox" and the robot Leela in "Rebirth".
Tangled Family Tree: The Fry-Farnsworth-Mom family tree is surprisingly complex when you sit down and draw it.
Techno Babble: subverted multiple times by many of the main cast. Scenes requiring a pseudo-scientific explanation often invoke the use of gibberish in the place of more traditional, partially plausible Applied Phlebotinum.
Bubblegum Tate: Looks like what we got here is a chronoton mass in the sub-atomic inferencees.
Prof. Farnsworth: Yes, something involving that many BIG words could easily destabilise time itself!
Bender: ...What? Hermes: This place is crawling with yous! Bender: So there's more Benders around. As far as I'm concerned, that's good news! Farnsworth: Bad news, everyone!
That Liar Lies: Bender responds with the accusation that he is being used as a beer distiller with "Lies! Lies and slander!"... right before he burps up a bit of foam.
That Man Is Dead: Made humorously literal in "The Late Phillip J. Fry". When Fry shows up on time for Leela's birthday dinner, she admits she didn't think he'd actually do so. Fry tells her that the Phillip J. Fry that stood her up before is dead... because through the use of the Professor's forward-only time machine, the Professor, Fry, and Bender have cycled all the way through their universe and an additional one to get back to their relative present, killing the Professor, Fry, and Bender of the latest iteration of the universe upon arrival.
Throw It In: The Hypnotoad's trademark droning sound was originally a placeholder, but it sounded so bizarrely wrong that they kept it.
Time Abyss: The Nibblonians were 17 years old at the time of the Big Bang, and the Brainspawn came into existence 1 millisecond after.
Time Passes Montage: In "Space Pilot 3000", we have this type of montage while Fry is frozen. It wouldn't be the last time this trope is utilized.
Used to soul crushing effect in "Jurassic Bark", where Seymour is seen waiting for him on the curb outside his old workplace for 15 or so years, until he lies down and dies.
Both of these were among the things nodded to in Bender's Big Score. Both times, a time-traveling Bender was responsible. It also shows that the dog was being watched after by an alternate Fry, somewhat lessening the impact of the preceding episode in hindsight.
It's also used breathtakingly in the climax of The Late Philip J. Fry when Fry, Bender and the professor witness the end and beginning of the universe.
Time Travel: At one point, the Professor builds a time machine that can only go forward. He has Bender and Fry help him test it, but they end up in the year 10,000.
In "All the President's Heads", Farnsworth discovers that licking the heads in the Head Museum causes one to travel briefly to the time period that head lived in.
Mr. Fry: What's that, Seymour? You walking on sunshine?
Title Drop: At one point after seeing the bad influence he's caused, Bender says, "Bender Should Not Be Allowed On Television."
The Robot Devil hands Bender a pamphlet entitled "Hell Is Other Robots" during the episode that he first premiers in.
Token Evil Teammate: Bender. The number of times he's sold out his closest friends is astounding. After a heartwarming moment, he puts Hermes on his "do not kill" list. They had worked together for 10 years before that.
Took a Level in Badass: Zoidberg took a large one in 'The Silence Of The Clamps' when he fights Clamps in claw-to-clamp combat.
He also seemed to have gained a lot of self-confidence by the end of the episode.
Tom Hanks Syndrome: In-universe example with Harold Zoid, once a famous silent comedian, turned drama director.
Top Ten List: Zapp Brannigan reveals Bender's ten most frequently used words in this manner during "War is the 'H' Word". For the record, the words are:
#10: Chump
#9: Chumpette
#8: Yours
#7: Up
#6: Pimpmobile
#5: Bite
#4: My
#3: Shiny
#2: Daffodil (as in "Hot diggety daffodil!")
#1: Ass
Trademark Favorite Food: Bender and all other robots love alcohol, as it is their power source.
Hermes and Manwich.
Fry seems to like pineapples, as shown in "The Why of Fry" and "Ghost in the Machines".
Trigger Happy: The machine gun robots from "Lethal Inspection".
Troperiffic: this show is pretty much the embodiment of this trope. It celebrates in every single cliche and trope, and often uses Rule Of Cool just because it is so freaking awesome.
Trouser Space: While thinking he is a robot, Fry takes some sandwiches from his pants and offers them to his friends. They are not interested.
True Companions: The Planet Express crew, no matter what they go through, will always pull together for each other in the end.
Sure, Robot Santa Claus is evil now, but as originally designed he shouldn't be that scary.
One episode has a robot nanny who not only looks frightening, but speaks in a loud, angry voice and claims to have replaced the baby's mother before feeding it with a bottle from its toothy maw. Leela thinks it's cute. Notably, the baby doesn't seem to mind either.
Un Paused: In the pilot, Fry pushes Leela into a stasis pod mid-lecture, and sets the release time for later that day. When she comes out she's still yelling at him.
Unusual Euphemism: Amy uses "Gleesh" for "Sheesh", words that rhyme with "duh" for "duh".
As though!
Snu-Snu.
Let me axe you something...
Useless Accessory: Bender and many other robots have antenna that serve no apparent purpose, which gets a Lampshade Hanging several times. First when the thing turned out to be interfering with the satellite transmission in his new apartment, and Fry says he should just cut it off since it doesn't do anything, after which it's treated as a robot equivalent of his penis. Again when it's suggested he has a toilet somewhere in his body and pushing down on it flushes.
Subverted again when Mom says most people think she puts antenna on her robots just to make them "more science-fictiony" but they really let her take control of everything with a remote control.
The antennae also allow DOOP to take military control of the robots.
Uranus Is Showing: According to Professor, astronomers changed the name of the planet Uranus to stop that stupid joke once and for all. It's now named "Urectum".
V-W
Vetinari Job Security: Hermes apparently has this at Planet Express. During the events of "Lethal Inspection," he leaves Leela in charge for a few days. During that time things fall apart completely: he returns to find that the ship has been repossessed, unexplained alarms are going off, the Professor is trapped in a giant beaker, Leela has been reduced to a gibbering mess, and the crew is preparing to cook and eat Zoidberg. It only takes him an hour to get things back to normal.
Virgin Sacrifice: In 'I Second That Emotion', Leela is a virgin sacrifice to lure out sewer monster El Chupanibre, despite the fact that the sewer mutants have seen Zapp Brannigan's website.
Viewers Are Geniuses: there are a lot of complex jokes on science, science-fiction, and engineering and mathematical principles that may have just been accidental... but considering that this development team literally thinks of everything, I seriously doubt it.
Violent Glaswegian: Parodied in "Yo Leela Leela" with Extreme Toddler Wrestling held in Glasgow, Scotland.
Vocal Evolution: Many examples, but the ones that stand out the most are Hermes, Morbo, Bender, and Professor Farnsworth. Hermes had a much deeper voice, his accent slightly more prominent. Likewise, Morbo had a more prominent guttural tone to his voice, but now, it only shows when he coughs.
Voodoo Shark: Parodied. Often. Hell, the most prominent example is the page quote.
Weaponized Landmark: Done as a variation with 20th Century Fox's iconic searchlight logo, which is an actual building in Hollywood. The tour guide explains that the searchlights are designed to blind pilots so Fox can film the resulting crashes.
"Well Done, Son" Guy: Apparently Lrrr's reason for entering the Universal Poker Championship during the events of "Into the Wild Green Yonder" was to win his Father's approval.
We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: Subverted on a few counts. The Professor's back, memory, and mental stability are often called into question; Leela is put in danger by giant space bees, Zapp Brannigan claims to suffer from the "very sexy learning disability" of Sexlexia—even the robots get sick!
On the other hand, the average human lifespan has been extended to the point where robots collect people when they turn 160, then process them a la The Matrix.
Certain conditions that used to be fatal, such as decapitation, can be recovered from pretty easily. On a related note, it seems blood has also been totally replaced by medication and nanobots.
Even Americans that have been taken over by Britons in an Alternate Universe are not immune to this, as proved by "All The President's Heads". Given a brilliant lampshade by a Cockney version of Bender.
"Oy, 'ow come we Brits got unionized healthcare, but our teeth still look like this?"
What Could Have Been: Originally the newest season was to take place in another universe, but Matt Groening wanted to do the rebirth episode instead.
The role of Zap Brannigan was written for the late, great Phil Hartman.
What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Just because it was made by the guy who made The Simpsons, some people assumed Futurama was going to be adorably family-friendly. It involves a LOT of sexual humour with hooker-bots and hooker-aliens, and there's a lot of crime addressed in it. Bender is a regular Karma Houdini, and rape has been implied on more than one occasion. Apart from that there's all the socio-political issues The Simpsons addresses, only re-written to make sense with aliens and robots, and a lot of physics-based jokes that kids won't get at all. Piled on top of that, the show actively makes fun of how modesty is an out-of-date idea, resulting in many scenes of near-nudity and clothes being considerably more revealing than in The Simpsons.
What Is One Man's Life In Comparison?: In The Why Of Fry, it's revealed that Fry was frozen by Nibbler so he could live long enough to fight the Brain Spawn. While explaining himself and trying to convince Fry to go through it all over again, Nibbler asks the all important question of "what is one man's life weighed against the entire universe?"
Wham Episode: The last few minutes of Luck of the Fryrish. It doesn't get any less shocking or impacting on further re-watches, either.
What We Now Know to Be True: According to Farnsworth, genetic engineering is preposterous science-fiction mumbo-jumbo.
Who Even Needs A Brain: The episode "Roswell That Ends Well" has Bender's brain (a collection of computer chips) being mistaken for food and eaten. Bender isn't happy but he suffers no ill effects.
Fry: All I know is I've got a ghost that needs busting. (dials a phone) Hermes: Who you gonna call? Fry:Gho— Phone:(BEEP!) The number you have dialled has been lamesince 1989.
Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Sal, the morbidly obese redneck, is always seen in a different low-level job, primarily one that involves heavy lifting.
Likewise, "Fishy Joe" Gillman will always open a new fast-food resturaunt after the previous one fails.
Will They or Won't They?: Fry loves Leela despite her mutation. Leela rarely reciprocated, until the end of the fourth movie, and it's stuck. The new season has them together, but it's done subtle enough in most of the new episodes that you wouldn't know it if you didn't look for it (For example, Leela instantly agreeing to join the "mile deep club" in "The Duh-Vinci Code"), but some make it obvious (All of "The Late Philip J. Fry").
Write Back to the Future: Leela uses this trope to send a message to Fry a billion years in the future.
Writing Around Trademarks: Lampshaded and used to point out how things have changed in the course of 1000 years. Examples include "Admiral Crunch."
Wrote The Book: Spoofed in "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back":
Number 1.0: Don't quote me regulations! I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to change the color of the book that regulation's in. We kept it gray.
In one episode a sign counts the days since the last time a certain planet invaded Earth.
In another episode there's one in a working ground for slaves counting the days since the last accident (and Fry accidentally nails his own hand to the sign while changing the number).
When Fry enters the cryogenics lab, the sign says "No power failures since 1997," with the "7" being handwritten and taped on.
You Wouldn't Hit A Guy With Glasses: In "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", Bender is caught cheating in a game of poker using X-ray glasses. When he's cornered, he nervously states, "Hey...you wouldn't hit a guy wearing X-ray glasses, would ya?" Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work.
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