Comic Book / Futurama

Like The Simpsons, Futurama ventured into the Comic Book scene thanks to the TV show's success. The comic book series was published by Bongo Comics and was published bi-monthly in the United States since November 2000 (apart from a couple of temporary delays caused by the two comic crossovers with The Simpsons). The comic book series continued its run even after the show's first cancellation by FOX and its second cancellation following its run on Comedy Central before ceasing publication altogether in 2017. The comic lasted 83 issues, with the last two only being available digitally through the Futuramaland app.

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Tropes found in this series include:

• Adam and Eve Plot: After the Professor teleports Earth's population to the dinosaur age, minus Fry, Bender, Leela and Cubert, the Omicronians show up to salvage the uninhabited Earth, unless our heroes can display one hundred Earthlings, proving Earth still has people. This trope may have been Fry's idea, earning him a slap from Leela.
  Fry: Okay, fine. Then you come up with another way for us to repopulate the planet.
• Adaptational Upbringing Change: In issue #74, "What the What If?", the professor's What If? machine explodes, splitting New New York into a variety of different self-contained universes. In one of them, Leela was never given up by her parents to live on the surface, so she was raised in the sewers to be meek and naive. She's also dating Leg Mutant.
• All-Natural Fire Extinguisher: Subverted in issue 53. When Leela sees a fire, she asks Bender to use his built-in fire hose to help put it out. Bender points out that Fry has a "hose" of his own and asks why Fry can't do the job instead, afterwards Leela tells Fry to keep his "hose" holstered as he starts unzipping his pants.
• Amusingly Short List: Bender says in the 37th issue that all he needs is "booze and floozies".
• Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: A somewhat unusual example from #31:
  Professor Farnsworth: Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Hermes?
  Hermes: That depends. Are you wearing your thought-controlling glasses again?
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In the issue #33 Amy accidentally spritzes herself with a less-than-refreshing enlarging spray that turn her gradually in a giantess and starts to destroy New New York.
• Baby Fever Trigger: In "Lost Our Leela," Zapp tricks an amnesiac Leela into acting as his housewife and taking care of three robot teenagers with him. Leela (who, pre-amnesia, had already expressed a belief that she'd be a great mother) enjoys taking care of the robots so much that she propositions Zapp to make a baby with her. This makes him panic as having sex with him may bring back her memory, so he bails. Even after she gets her memory back (and is understandably very mad at Zapp), she does feel fondly for the robot boys and believes the experience convinced her she can be a good mother someday (despite having forgotten to change her own alien pet's diaper for hours).
• The Body Parts That Must Not Be Named: When seeing Leela naked in issue 54, Bender refers to her vulva as her "logic board".
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In issue 37, the leader of Aliens for the Ethical Treatment of Mammals says that the Planet Express crew has made deliveries to the planet of the cannibals, the planet of the lava men and the planet of the lava cannibals.
• Burn the Witch!: Parodied in the "Time Bender Trilogy" arc when Bender gets sent back through time into a Salem-esque area where townsfolk, having run out of witches to burn for their sour milk, spoiled crops and bitter wives, have started hunting robots. Of course, being prejudiced morons, they asked the robots for a list of their weaknesses, and promptly got handed a book of such "facts" such as "robots feel no pain when their hair is cut", "robots are ticklish" and "robots float in water". Once the final test is complete, they try burning the poor sap, only to find ponds aren't easily set aflame. This gets the guy trying to do this some suspicious looks. Bender steps in and tries telling the townsfolk that their deeds are wrong, only to clue them in on the real robots. One Smash Cut later they're both being burnt alive. Of course, being robots, they don't burn at all.
• The Cameo: Quite a few well-known (and less well-known) comic and cartoon characters make background appearances over the course of the comic — but issue #31, "As the Wormhole Turns", takes it up a notch with multiple cameos from such diverse characters as Brak, Soundwave (with Laserbeak), The Great Gazoo, Howard the Duck, Marvin the Martian, Metal Men, Mork from Ork and even DoDo, the Kid From Outer Space, and his robot bird Compy.
• Canines Gambling in a Card Game: Issue 42 shows some alien dogs playing poker.
• Captain Colorbeard: In one issue where Fry, Leela and Bender are trying to convince the Rigelians that the currently-abandoned Earth is fully inhabited and thus not up for grabs, one of the personas that Bender takes on is No-Beard the software pirate, "scourge of the briny binary deep".
• Comically Small Bribe: When the DOOP president comes to Planet Express, asking them to go find a missing Zapp Brannigan, they're reluctant until she offers them a generous bonus of twice their usual fee. This is enough to convince Bender to hold Leela at gunpoint all the way to Zapp's last location (in case she tries killing them or herself to get away). As Kif reveals, this bonus amounts to a whole twenty dollars.
• Cue the Flying Pigs: Issue #14 has Kif get Mistaken for Cheating, swearing to Amy that the girl he's with is his sister. She replies, "I'll believe that when pigs fly!" Then Zoidberg releases a combined chicken/pig/fish creature, which is able to fly.
• Deadly Game: Who's Dying to be a Millionaire?, a game show where the contestants run the risk of being vaporised after getting far enough in it. Predictably, Momcorp is behind this, and Morbo the host. Fry enters it in order to raise up money to save Planet Express.
• Deity of Human Origin: It is featured briefly an alternate timeline, where Greeks disillusioned with democracy, switched to theocracy and built robot gods to rule them. It ended as you could expect from ancient Greek deities.
• Digital Piracy Is Evil: Played with. At the end of the 33rd issue, Bender gives the reader a list of (fake) sites to illegally download comics from, saying "If you don't see the person you're stealing from, that makes it okay."
• Disneyfication: Mostly averted — while all the comics produced by Bongo are inherently kid-friendly, and the number of adult jokes in the Futurama comic is notably lower than in the TV show, Bender is still allowed to tell people to bite his shiny metal ass.
  • Possibly parodied in the "Time Bender Trilogy" arc — apparently Leela isn't allowed to say "ass," but Bender is:
    Leela: Fry, after I stop screaming in terror, remind me to kick your butt.
    Bender: After you kick his butt, I'm gonna kick his ass!
• Everyone Has Standards: Even Zapp Brannigan - who has no qualms about sending armies of untrained civilians on suicide missions - draws the line at Child Soldiers and is horrified after realizing he was brainwashed into making the camp's children into soldiers in Issue 41.
• Everyone Hates Mimes: In issue 41, Zapp Brannigan lists mimes as one group of people he's willing to train into being expendable soldiers.
• "Everyone Is Gone" Episode: Following on from the previous issue, the first part of the Time Bender Trilogy has Fry, Bender, Leela, and Cubert returning to Earth only to find everyone missing and the planet deserted. It is revealed at the end of the said issue that everyone had actually been sucked into a Time Vortex.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Issue 4 had Captain Zapp Brannigan really enjoying being treated like a deity by a tribe of insect-like aliens. They catered to his every whim and fed him constantly, leading to a huge weight gain. It turned out he had been pumped full of their larvae and was acting as a living incubator. In the end, the crew of the Planet Express Ship managed to rescue him and extract the larvae, which looked like brine shrimp. Bender made a stew out of them and served it as dinner. Only Dr. Zoidberg was willing to eat it.
• Fan Disservice:
  • The Professor and Hermes go almost completely nude at a car-wash in issue five, scaring away all the customers.
  • Issue six features an X-Mas play that ends with the Professor running onstage naked.
• Fantastic Racism: The Timebender triology features a version of the Salem Witch trials... but with robots. Fortunately (for the robots), humans relied on robots to give them their weaknesses, and got played for chumps.
• Feigning Healthiness: Discussed in "A Cure for the Common Clod"— Fry has an alien disease similar to a cold, but his friends wonder if he's Playing Sick. Zoidberg then notes that usually, his patients pretend not to be sick.
• Foot Bath Treatment: In "A Cure For the Common Clod," Fry is seen on the cover unwell with his feet in a bowl of water.
• Four-Fingered Hands: One episode takes place in a freak show. Exhibits include Zoidberg's uncle, a bearded lady, and a five-fingered man.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: Issue #14 has the Planet Express crew discover some of Farnsworth's rejected inventions and each mess around with one. The story splits into six different stories following how Fry, Bender, Leela, Hermes, Amy, and Zoidberg muck around with their inventions. While the stories do intersect, the issue is structured so the reader can follow every story at once or simply follow one story at a time by viewing the corresponding panel on each page, barring the larger panels that cover multiple plot points.
• Fourth Wall Psych: The comic did this in issue 46, Follow the Reader; it starts with the Professor talking directly to the reader to explain how the Gamebook format works. It then appears that he was babbling because Bender spiked his drink.
• Fur Bikini: Leela wears one in issue 38 (using the fur of a leopard defeated by her before).
• The Future: Like the TV show, the future is the setting for the comic series.
• Future Me Scares Me: Issue 26 issue has an old, bitter Leela from the future appear thanks to one of the Professor's inventions. Leela is unnerved by her. On the contrary, teenaged Leela, on the other hand, sees the current Leela as the "old and bitter" Leela; a heartfelt talk between the two at the end helps clear up some of her anxiety about her future.
• Gamebooks: Invoked and parodied in issue #46, Follow The Reader, where the reader is every so often given choices on whether to skip forward or backward in the comic — but the reader's choices don't actually affect the story in any way, they just decide how much of it you actually read (and sometimes alter the context of a scene a little by making different set-ups or payoffs for jokes).
  • Some of the alternate paths offered are even complete jokes in and of themselves, such as the part where Fry wishes he still had the reality-warping die from Bender's Game, and the reader is told to "cut this panel out, then cut the shape out, tape it together, and you have a die! Number it, roll it and go to that page! Unless you've gone stupid, then just read on."
  • One of the paths even leads to a story that was covered in an earlier issue, and if picking his path, the reader is told to go read that issue.
  • And the ending leads to a final path telling the reader to go back to the beginning of the issue, and it's implied several times during the story itself that the story is actually a Stable Time Loop where the same things happen over and over.
• Getting Sick Deliberately: The strip "Night of the Automated Dead" has Bender infect himself with a robo-cold so that he can get sick days off work. However, his attempts fail even after being fully exposed so he files a complaint with Planet Express. As it turns, the virus has started to mutate within him, turning it into a virus that creates Robotic Undead.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: In the backup story for issue 52, Zapp Brannigan is praised for saving a soldier's life and coasts on being seen as a hero for it. After hearing that the soldier in question has recovered from his coma, he has an Angel Zapp inform him that he must tell the truth (that he personally knocked out the soldier and used him as a Human Shield) and a Devil Zapp who insists that Zapp should continue taking advantage of his unearned fame.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: In issue 67, Zoidberg accidentally eats the Professor's newest invention and ends up travelling between the past, present and future a la The Time Traveler's Wife. During the process, he learns that Mom and Richard Nixon will marry and declare war on each other, causing an apocalypse. With nobody else aware of this (and thinking he's crazy), he's forced to save the day by himself.
• HA HA HA—No: Subverted in issue 13:
  Bender: So we're free to go?
  Robot Devil: Free to go? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA! I'm sorry, I just remembered a joke Robot Hitler told me this afternoon. Oh, and yes, you're free to go! Bye now! Don't forget to sin!
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: Issue 68 begins with the Planet Express crew naked. Aside from their nudity being obscured by conveniently placed objects, the characters also cover their privates using their hands and one panel has Fry holding a clock over his crotch.
• Hidden Depths: In "The Cure For the Common Clod," Fry passes the thought-to-be-extinct common cold to the rest of New New York City, which mutates in their 30th century bodies, causing them to revert to their most primal selves.
• Honorable Marriage Proposal: Bender after impregnating Ned Flanders' jukebox.
• HULK MASH!-Up: Issue 76 features a Hulk stand-in in the form of a yellow brute with hair like Homer Simpson's named the Bulk.
• I Ate WHAT?!:
  • In issue 42, Bender takes a sip from what he thinks is a barrel of brandy tied around an alien St. Bernard's neck. He spits in disgust when the dog tells him that he's drinking from his bladder.
  • Issue 55 has a joke where Bender mistakenly put black licorice balls into the ship's fuel tank instead of dark matter and Fry has apparently eaten dark matter. The mixup understandably disgusts Fry, since dark matter is Nibblonian poop after all.
• I Call Him "Mister Happy": In issue 68, Fry refers to his genitals as "Colonel Cuckoo and the Clackers".
• Jerkass Gods: During the Timebender trilogy story, Leela encounters a version of Ancient Greece ruled by robot gods, who routinely abuse the locals, and demand the sacrifice of kittens. It turns out they were built to govern justly, but almost immediately became corrupt and mad. Later on, the robot Hermes tries to blow up the world.
  Leela: Why would you do that?
  Robo-Hermes: It's the sort of thing gods do when we're bored!
• "Kick Me" Prank: In issue 41, Bender demonstrates a prank to the members of Epsilon Rho Rho by kicking Fatbot after putting a "Kick Me" sign on his back.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Statements by the characters that have a secondary meaning acknowledging they're in a work of fiction are frequent, especially in "Futurama Returns" (a comic released at Comic Con 2007 that served to promote the four direct-to-DVD films that led to the Comedy Central run), which is an Overly Long Gag about the series cancellation and revival similar to the opening of the subsequent movie Bender's Big Score. Elsewhere there are plenty of references to the comic format, such as in the 50th issue's story "Your Mother Wears Pilot Boots".
  Fry: Maybe this is for us!
  Bender: It better be. There's only six pages left!
  Fry: What?
  Bender: I have six pages in this Calculon coloring book left, then I've got nothing else to do!
• Lethal Chef: Bender's god-awful cooking ends up with him becoming Nixon's official health guru. He quickly uses the opportunity to turn New New York into a sweatshop. It also drives Hermes to eat Fry's pants.
• Lighter and Softer: For the most part, this series doesn't have the dramatic, emotional moments the TV show had, and while there's still plenty of adult humor it's not quite as dark. It's still a very funny, well written, and overall deserving tie-in to the television series, though.
• Malicious Misnaming: Bender at one point refers to Zapp Brannigan as "Crap Flabbigan" in issue 41.
• Mistaken for Undead: Played With. In issue 23, Professor Farnsworth meets his old crew who he thought had died in a vortex but really they survived. He thinks they're zombies but they confirm they are not. However, it turns out that three of them (Sheila, Sly, and Dr. Zoidberg the Second) were killed afterwards and replaced by holograms. Mender the robot, however, is real; in fact he's the one who killed them.
• Naked People Are Funny:
  • Issue 11 has Leela strip and wander around naked when under the effects of the virus. For unexplained reasons, she's fully clothed after she sneezes out the germ and recovers from the infection.
  • Issue 34 has some jokes based on the clones of Fry's ex-girlfriend Michelle being naked, such as Fry lying to the first Michelle clone that Farnsworth is blind while Farnsworth goes along with the lie for obvious reasons and the army of Michelle clones marching out of the Planet Express ship later in the story eventually emerging nude because there aren't any more spare sweatsuits from Amy's dry cleaning that was onboard, with Bender remarking that the nudity of the later Michelle clones is an upside.
  • Issue 35 has a previously unseen adventure from Fry, Leela and Bender's time as the New Justice Team where they went to the sun to confront a villain called the Son of the Sun (so named because his father was a villain the New Justice Team previously fought called the Human Sun). At one point, Fry/Captain Yesterday foolishly gets out of the protective air-conditioning device Farnsworth provided and is immediately burned to ashes. He is able to regenerate thanks to the properties of the Miracle Cream, but is briefly naked because of his Captain Yesterday costume burning into nothing.
  • In issue 54, Leela is stripped when she is made a pet by the Westminsterians, meaning that she is naked when Fry, Bender and Nibbler find her. By the time everyone goes home, she has to cover up wearing Fry's jacket.
  • The 68th issue begins with the Planet Express crew naked and no memory as to why. By checking the footage recorded by Bender's eye, they find out that they got their clothes soiled by Zoidberg's ink and stripped to put their clothes into Farnsworth's memory-erasing machine due to mistaking it for a washing machine.
• No Longer with Us: Issue 79 begins with Farnsworth stating that Scruffy is no longer with them, which turns out to mean that Scruffy is on vacation.
• Oddly Specific Greeting Card: In "Freaky Fry-Day," the 31st century has a Great Nephew Day, and Fry comes across a greeting card for the specific relationship.
• Opening Shout-Out: In issue #47, Bender flies off due to an exploding jet propulsion in his ass, and passes through the billboard like the ship does in the theme sequence.
• Other Me Annoys Me: In "A Whole Lotta Leela," Leela gets stuck with three time duplicates of herself as a baby, a teen, and an old woman. She's not happy with this setup as the baby cries endlessly, the teen is a rebellious brat, and the old lady is smug. However, by the end of the comic, she admits that she does like her other selves, and thus likes herself.
• Positive Friend Influence: When Bender's adoptive parents ban Fry as a perceived Toxic Friend Influence in issue 58, Bender is quick to set them straight.
  Bender: He's not a bad influence! He's good! He's so good, some of it accidentally rubs off on me sometimes!
• Phlebotinum-Proof Robot: Zigzagged in "A Cure for the Common Clod". A virus spreads around New New York that causes cold-like symptoms in Fry, but causes everyone else to revert to a primal state. Since Bender is a robot, he is immune, yet according to Linda, other robots managed to somehow catch the virus. It's never revealed why some robots were immune and others weren't.
• Precocious Crush: In "A Whole Lotta Leela," teenage Leela has a crush on Fry, who's over a decade her senior. Naturally he's weirded out by it.
• Reference Overdosed: It's rare to find an issue that doesn't have a reference to movies, comic book, video games, etc.
• The Reveal: One comic reveals why Zapp remains a high position in spite of being blatantly incompetent. In the past he used to be the physical and psychological equivalent of Captain America, the perfect human super soldier. Nixon wanted to clone him into an army to take over the galaxy but, when Wernstrom was chosen to run the project, Farnsworth sabotaged it out of envy. Not only were the clones ruined, the process backlashed onto Zapp, scrambling his DNA turning him into the hedonistic, womanizing idiot he is today. After disposing of him failed, Zapp blackmailed Nixon and DOOP into giving him his position, because attempting to clone him for galactic domination is illegal. It also explains Kif and Zapp's relationship. Kif remains loyal to Zapp in honor of the once-brilliant soldier he was friends with and out of guilt for his involvement in the cover-up, and Zapp treats Kif like garbage because despite protecting and mentoring Kif during boot camp and their many adventures together afterwards, Kif still helped with the attempted cover-up by dumping Zapp's frozen body into the depths of space and leaving him to die.
• Revolting Rescue: In "A Cure for the Common Clod", once the citizens of New New York recover from a cold-like alien disease, they sneeze up Monstrous Germs, which coalesce into one germ that attacks the city. To save the day, the Planet Express crew infects the mutants, who sneeze up antibodies, which form another blob, that fights off the germ. It works, however, the blobs explode into snot, leaving the entire city and everyone in it Covered in Gunge.
• Robo Family: In the 58th issue, Bender is adopted by two "parent" robots, who quickly forbid him from hanging out with Fry.
• Robotic Undead: One strip of the comic book ("Night of the Automated Dead") has a pile of deceased robots buried under the Planet Express become exposed to a mutated version of a virus that Bender was carrying in an attempt to get out of work, leading them to reanimate and start looking for "boards". Farnsworth is eventually able to find an anti-virus for the zombieism and turn the zombie robots back to normal.
• Running Gag: A Waterfall (Free Waterfall the Third, to be precise) shows up on a lethal game show. The predictable quickly happens, much to Bender's happiness.
  Bender: I swear, I would weld myself to this couch if I thought I could see a hippie die on TV each night.
• Sarcasm-Blind: One B-Plot involved Hermes, Amy and Zoidberg being forced into the sub-sewers, where they find an idyllic society of handsome and beautiful humans. They keep offering the group things such as new clothes and prestigious positions within their society, and only at the end, when they believe they are about to be made rulers, do they discover why these people live underneath the sewer mutants; they are supremely arrogant and haughty, to the point they now can only communicate in biting sarcasm, meaning they were actually being mocked since the second they arrived.
• Schizo Tech: Bender is an advance robot capable of recording things, but he only plays Betamax. He refuses to take the upgrade on the grounds that he prefers Betamax.
• Scenery Censor:
  • When Leela is found naked in a tree in issue 54, she has a branch obscuring her groin as well as her buttocks.
  • In issue 68, conveniently located objects are used to obscure the nudity of the Planet Express crew when they're not using their hands, with Bender's arm obscuring Farnsworth's groin, Farnsworth's head covering both Amy and Hermes and Farnsworth's memory-erasing machine obscuring Amy's front and Leela's butt.
• Screw Yourself: Issue 43 at one point has Zapp Brannigan dream that he hooks up with a female version of himself.
• Self Botched Catchphrase: During the opening for Issue #2, the Professor bungles his own Character Catchphrase.
  Professor: Excellent happenings, people! [the crew doesn't react] Whuh? Oh, now, that's not right — let's see... ah, yes... [shouting] GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE!
• Sleep Cute: In an issue where the crew have to sleep at the Planet Express office, Bender sleeps standing up per usual with Fry curled up in his extended arms.
• Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness: Most often, the comic follows the tone and style of the TV show, but some issues play around with the medium and takes full advantage of this being a comic.
  • Professor Farnsworth sometimes plays the part of Fourth-Wall Observer, acknowledging that he's in a comic and directly addressing the reader, though the other characters tend to just write this off as senile ramblings. Cubert, being a clone of the Professor, also seems aware of his status as a comic book character, but tends to be ignored by the others when bringing it up. Other characters, like Bender and Zoidberg, also seem to be addressing the reader at times, but most often this is a Fourth Wall Psych.
    • In issue #46, Follow The Reader, the Fourth Wall Psych is even parodied:
    Professor Farnsworth: Here at Planet Express, we approve of free will. In fact, in this story, you can choose from several alternative paths. So, if you want to know what happens next, read on, but if you'd rather follow Bender, go to page 9.
    Hermes: Who are you talking to?
    Professor Farnsworth: Why, the reader, of course. But to keep up our facade, I'll tell you I was talking to Scruffy, who was reviewing the human resources manual.
    Scruffy: Scruffy uses it to conceal Etch-A-Sketch porn.
  • A few issues Paint The Medium to an almost ludicrous degree, such as Issue #20, Bender Breaks Out, where Bender accidentally tears through the comic page and spends some time "on the other side of the page," before invading the (fake) back-up feature, Backstage at Bongo, and talking to Bill Morrison and other members of the staff at Bongo before getting bored and leaving when they tell him they don't have any beer. Consequently, the Professor requests the help of the reader, basically telling them to fold certain pages of the comic in half so they'll tell a different story and Bender's escape never happens in the first place. It works.
• Something Only They Would Say: In "Freaky Fry-Day," Fry tries to prove he's stuck in the Professor's body, rather than the Professor going insane, by revealing embarrassing secrets about his friends that only he knows. To avoid getting caught, they wave it off as him being the crazy Professor.
  Fry: Hermes lists me on his tax return as his "adopted child" so he can get a bigger write-off! Amy's secret dream is to drop out of Mars University and go to clown college! And Leela told me on a delivery mission the other day that she hasn't had sex since—
  Leela: Ho, ho! You sure are sick, professor!
  Amy: And how!
  Hermes: That's one jerked brain there!
• Stripperific: In issue 43, we see Amy dreams of being a superheroine called Cute Girl and she wears a very revealing, leather, superhero outfit, along with a black mask.
• Subverted Catchphrase: For some reason, the characters' standard catch phrases tend to be subverted and parodied more often than in the TV show. Bender's "Bite my shiny metal ass!" is the most common parody target, but Professor Farnsworth's "Good news, everyone!" gets a few as well.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Bender sings to himself in issue 51.
  Bender: Bender is great, Bender is swell, that glory hog Fry can go straight to...
• Super Gullible: One issue parodies the Planet of Hats trope as codified by Star Trek's gangster planet with a race of people that believe whatever their told. Eventually revealed to be called the Naive in a parody of Avatar, they kick the crew off their planet because they couldn't survive following any more advice from them.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: In one issue, Leela, Fry and Bender are revealed to be both this and Always Second Best to one of the earlier Planet Express crews; a one-eyed woman named "Sheila," a slacker guy named "Sly" and a robot named "Mender." The Always Second Best part is subverted by the end of the issue, when it's revealed that Mender killed Sly and Sheila when they didn't live up to his standards, and replaced them with holographic simulations. ("I'm a mender robot. That's what I do. I mend things. Make them better.")
• Take Over the World: Bender actually accomplishes this in an altered timeline. He eventually got bored and handed Earth back to humanity for a few bucks, then got a job as a shoe-shiner.
• Take That, Audience!: There are a lot of gags here about how comic books are pointless, stupid, and without any kind of merit, and how anyone who reads them is a total loser. Fry, of course, is consistently portrayed as a big fan of comics.
• Talking to the Dead: In Issue 38, after the ship crash-lands on a planet inhabited by "primitive" computer nerds, Fry finds Bender's lifeless, hollowed-out body, which has been scrapped for parts, and drags it around while he seeks revenge on Bender's murderers, chatting one-sidedly with it the whole time. Somewhat Played for Laughs since Fry's usual Too Dumb to Live nature causes him to tip off the enemy to his location ("They'll never find us in this cave, Bender!")
• Terminator Twosome: "New Year's Rockin' Evil" presents an alternate universe story in which Fry writes a sci-fi story in 1999 that serves as a doctrine on human culture in the distant future, guiding humans through a human-robot war. Bender and Leela arrive on New Year's Eve 1999 to take Fry with him, both claiming to save him from the evil "Bendernator" who wants to destroy Fry and his story. Turns out Leela is the Bendernator in disguise, with Bender saving Fry from its wrath so they can someday fight side-by-side in the future war.
• Uncle Sam Wants You: The cover of the 80th issue depicts Bender dressed as Uncle Sam pointing at the reader with a caption stating that Bender wants the reader to buy the comic.
• Unprovoked Pervert Payback: In issue 26, Leela has been split into her baby, teen, and elderly selves. Her teen form gains a crush on Fry, and starts flirting with him, causing Leela to hit him even though he's clearly uncomfortable with a teen flirting with him.
• Voices Are Not Mental: Unlike the actual show's "Freaky Friday" Flip episode, which did employ Voices Are Mental, "Freaky Fry-day" has Farnsworth wake up in Fry's body and remark that his voice does sound different, assuming it's a cold before he realizes what actually happened. Justified, as it's a comic where the reader can imagine the voice as whatever they want.
• Whole-Plot Reference: "Planet X-Press Men" is an homage to X-Men, with the Planet Express crew in their place.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Issue 32 has Fry, Bender and Leela promise that they'll treat Zoidberg better and hold a feast in his honor after he saves the day, only for their short-term memory to be erased upon returning to the Planet Express building and the Decapodian doctor being subjected to more abuse shortly afterwards.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Near the end of "A Whole Lotta Leela," Leela assures her teenage self that, even though she's insecure and scared about her future, she has a good life ahead of her. It doubles as a motivational speech for Leela to love herself.

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