History Futurama / TropesIToN

* LicensedGame: An UsefulNotes/XBox / UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 PlatformGame, which was pretty good, very funny with a MindScrew ending. It was written by David X. Cohen.

** "T: The Terrestrial" parodies the scene from ''Film/ETTheExtraterrestrial'' of E.T. picking up and eating Reese's Pieces by revealing the supposed pellets of candy Fry picked up and ate were actually Jrr's poop.
** And in "Murder on the Planet Express", where Leela eats Fry's kidney thinking it was one of Hermes exotic lunches and isn't happy to learn what it really was.

** Technically Leela doesn't do it herself but Fry's crush on Leela is a big motivation for him to try and not be a slacker, even learning to fly the ship and become musically talented in order to impress her. It tends to fail but his intentions are good.

** Fry in Bender's big score. After seeing how crushed Leela was when Lars left her, he decides to bring them back together. He sums it up in a very touching and beautiful scene

* IdiotBall: As a sacrifice to the plot of Bender's Big Score, Fry for once had to pass this around to nearly every last member of the extended cast. From his much savvier crew-mates to the utterly devious (Mom, Nixon), to even the uber-psychotics like Robot Santa, there is no one of significance who does not fall for the Nudarians' transparent scams. Even worse, since all of them have morally absent moments, it never occurs to anyone to just kill the Nudarians before they can take their stuff.
* IfICantHaveYou: Melllvar from "Where No Fan has Gone Before".

** 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.

* InSpiteOfANail: 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.

** In "The Beast With A Billion Backs," Yivo, a massive alien tentacle-creature, mates with every organic thing in the universe.

* IronicEcho: 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? [[spoiler: "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 WhamLine.

* JackieRobinsonStory: Spoofed in "A Leela of Her Own", where Leela, as the first female Blernsball player, is so terrible at Blernsball that she inspires other women to outdo her, leading to the revolution she sought in the first place.

** Fry wants robot hands (so that he can play the Holofonor and woo Leela), but he is given many bad random possible choices. The deal actually backfires on the Robot Devil as Fry ends up receiving RD's hands ("I just put my name on there as a show of good faith!"), and he then repeatedly tries to renege.

** In "Put Your Head On My Shoulders", Bender has shock-absorbing bumpers installed to prevent "catastrophic butt failure", but isn't pleased that the bumpers make him look like he has big blue buttocks. He demands that the mechanic undo this and the mechanic obliges, but not without warning Bender that this increases the risk of his ass eventually exploding.

-->''What the hell kinda plane is that?!''

* KarmaHoudini: 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.

** "Cold Warriors". To stave off a cold epidemic (the common cold was eradicated centuries ago and people no longer had immunity), the Professor needs to get a sample from Fry... by grinding him up into a slurry. Fortunately, Fry remembers that he had a cold sample sent to space when he was a kid, and they decide to spare Fry and get that sample instead, much to the Professor's disappointment.

* KlingonPromotion: To become emperor on Trisol you have to assassinate the previous emperor. This leads to extremely short reigns, with a average length of one week.

* LastNameBasis: Fry's full name is "Phillip J. Fry". This gets a {{lampshade|Hanging}} by Amy in one episode. AndZoidberg (John).

* LivingArk: The Encyclopods are a race of this trope for other creatures, resembling gigantic manta rays with an atmosphere-like dome and eggs that have the appearance of Violet Dwarf Stars. They harvest the Chi and DNA of every endangered species, including Humans which they expect will die off soon, to ensure such races can be reborn again in the future long after their extinction.

** 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.

* LosingYourHead: The heads in jars, Bender, Zoidberg, [[spoiler:Hermes]], Robot Santa (who produced a new one), and technically Fry (his body was damaged so they moved his head to Amy's shoulder).

** Donbot introduces his two henchmen as 'the entire robot mafia'. So the criminal organization consists of the boss Donbot and his goons Clamps and Joey Mousepad.

** Similarly invoked and subverted in "I Second That Emotion." Farnsworth declares that the chip had never been turned on, and everything had come from Bender. A moment later he corrects himself, stating that the chip ''was'' working, and at triple capacity.

* TheMainCharactersDoEverything: While Planet Express is meant to just be a mom-and-pop (emphasis on the pop, competitor of Mom) delivery company, throughout the series the company has been sent on different missions well-beyond a delivery boy's pay grade, including archaeology, politics, illegally smuggling animals from a dying planet, collecting honey from Slspace bees, ending Robot Santa's reign of terror and replacing him, rescuing a team of miner's from the sun's core, replacing New New York's fire-fighters, helping Farnsworth with his various inventions and hobbies and being instrumental in stopping TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt numerous times (ranging from [[ApocalypseHow/Class0 societal]] to [[ApocalypseHow/ClassX4 universe ending]], half the time [[NiceJobBreakingItHero being responsible for it themselves]]).

* MileHighClub: Inverted 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.

* MomentKiller: It's very common for the genre, but "Fry and Leela's Big Fling" is particularly filled of those. Fry and Leela want to have a romantic moment for themselves, and stay in Planet Express after everybody else left. [[spoiler:Scruffy is cleaning, as always]]. They try to have a romantic date in Elzar's. [[spoiler:Zoidberg works there as well]]. They try to be alone at Leela's apartment. [[spoiler:Nibbler is there, and he behaves like a pet but he's an intelligent creature, so they are not "alone"]]. Finally, they take a vacation to a place where they may be completely alone. [[spoiler:Fry meets Leela's former boyfriend, who was there with his wife and couldn't leave; and it was later revealed that the vacation resort was actually a "human habitat" in the zoo of the planet of the apes]]

* MundaneMadeAwesome: Hermes is a master of tedious office work. He is sometimes called upon to display his superhuman ability to fill out paperwork, balance accounts and so forth. Also limbo.
* MurderIsTheBestSolution: Al Gore and his Vice Presidential Action Rangers appear to have only one method for resolving time-space paradoxes.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: "I just told you, you've killed me!"

** "Time Keeps On Slippin'" has Hermes suggest a solution to the time skips and the next scene showing him playing steel drums while the rest of the main cast are forming a nude conga line. Hermes admits that he has no idea why he thought this would be of any help.

-->'''Enis:''' Well, t'ain't as bad as gettin' killed.

* NephariousPharaoh: Bender in "A Pharaoh To Remember" forges an inscription on a Egypt-like planet making him the pharaoh. He immediately goes about devising new ways to terrorize his slaves and designing his own monument so that he will always be remembered.

* NoCanOpener: {{Subverted}} in [[Recap/FuturamaS2E14MothersDay "Mother's Day"]]. After all electrical appliances rebel, Fry boasts that he can still open cans with his pocket knife. It's only when he can't that he starts to despair. Dr. Zoidberg then uses his claws to open the can.

** Larvae Slevin in "Thief Of Baghead" is an obvious parody of TMZ head honcho/ex-lawyer Harvey Levin.

* NoChallengeEqualsNoSatisfaction: In the episode "Free Will Hunting", Bender is acquitted in court because, as a robot, all decisions are dictated by his programming and he is thus not responsible for his actions. This depresses Bender, since it means he has no choice in how he acts, and he goes on a spiritual journey (which he hates doing).

** In "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch", Zapp remarks that the last time the Nimbus's holo-shed broke and the holograms turned real, he got slapped with three paternity suits.

* NotAllowedToGrowUp: The show makes it pretty clear that several years do go by during the seasons (the pilot episode is set on New Year's Eve 2999, while as of season 7 it is already 3012), but none of the characters ever seem to age. This can be justified for the adult characters since some of them are aliens (who could believably age at a slower rate than humans) or robots (who don't age in the first place), and the average life expectancy for humans has drastically increased in the 31th century, but it's very noticeable with the child characters. Cubert, Dwight, and the Cookieville Orphans constantly remain at the same age as they were upon their introduction.

--->'''Amy:''' Please Fry, If I don't do it right she punishes me!

* NotRareOverThere: 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 [[MadScientist Prof. Farnsworth]];

** In the episode "War is the H-Word", it turns out Kif can be just as much of a MeanBoss as Zapp is to him. This seems more to do with blowing off steam from years of abuse he has taken from Zapp, rather than simply being spiteful. He seems to be fine with Fry other times.

* MicrowaveMisuse: Fry stupidly puts a metal pack of popcorn into a microwave. This somehow combines with a supernova to send the Planet Express ship and crew back to the 1950s. [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome It also destroys the microwave]]. This is a problem, because making a return trip to the future requires a functional microwave.

** The most notable example is Bender's {{Catchphrase}} of "Bite my shiny metal ass!"

** In the episode "Bender Should Not Be Allowed On Television", the president of the network says "Bite my shiny metal ass could be a CatchPhrase" when explaining why Bender would be a great star for All My Circuits. Also Bender's PublicServiceAnnouncement that ''Futurama'' doesn't condone the "cool crime of stealing" seconds after Dwight and Cubert decide to commit a robbery.

* MadeOfIron: Pretty much the entire Planet Express crew, excluding the robotic Bender (who may or may not be [[CatchPhrase 40% iron]]) and the lobster-esque alien Zoidberg (who's species might just be resilient; he can easily remove most of his organs with no issue). They've all ''died'' or suffered otherwise horribly fatal injuries that should've killed them multiple times, yet always get saved by the Professor's emergency fixer-uppers... usually only after surviving for ''several hours'', when they clearly shouldn't have. Examples include; Fry and Leela having their arms torn off, Fry and Hermes surviving [[OffWithHisHead decapitation]], Leela having her torso severed from her lower body, Zoidberg taking Amy's kidney, Bender taking Fry's kidney, Fry being stabbed by a giant bee, and once, they were all reduced to bones in a space ship explosion. Yet, they still live.