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Fry brings back a disease to the 31st century that was thought to have died out long ago — the common cold. It doesn't take long for New New York to get the sniffles, but its salvation could be found in a science fair Fry was involved in during his high school days in the 20th century.
Tropes
- Artistic Licence – Biology:
- Professor Farnsworth declares that mankind lost immunity to the ravages of the common cold. Nobody is immune to the common cold, its mutation rate sees to that. He also is able to make a vaccine for it, also impossible for the same reasons (unfortunately).
- In a flashback, Fry is having his temperature taken, and the thermometer reads 109°F (42.8°C). Unless the thermometer was defective, Fry would have to be exceptionally lucky to be alive at such a temperature; organs begin to fail at around 107°F (41.7°C).
- Artistic License – History: Barack Obama was not living in New York during the winter of 1988, he was living in Chicago.
- Brick Joke: When discussing the plans to deal with the cold, Nixon declares that Protocol 62 can't be implemented as they "don't have enough piranhas." Later, when the Planet Express building is quarantined under Protocol 63, Zoidberg comments that they "must have ran out of piranhas."
- Catch Your Death of Cold: Fry gets a cold as a child in 1988 when he falls into freezing water while ice fishing. It happens again in 3010, a time where the common cold has been eradicated, and Fry's dormant strain threatens to contaminate the whole world.
- Celebrity Cameo: Buzz Aldrin plays himself as the judge of the science contest.
- Contamination Situation: Fry has a dormant 20th Century strain of the common cold, which had been eradicated centuries earlier. It leads to the entire island of Manhattan being quarantined and then launched to the sun for good measure.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- Josh Gedgie's virus sample not only beats Fry's display for the science fair, but managed to survive being shot into space, crashing onto a lifeless moon, and being frozen for nearly a millennium without being any worse for the wear. Had that seemingly innocent event not happened, the cold could've risked the entire world and New New York could've been completely eradicated. It's such an exact coincidence that, even if he wasn't in the episode, one has to wonder if Nibbler wasn't a Spanner in the Works somewhere in that time just to make sure nothing went wrong.
- If that wasn't enough, the crew lands in the exact spot the Nerd Search '88 rocket was at, and the ice was thin enough they fell right through it. If they had spent any more time looking, or if the ice was thick enough not to penetrate, NNY would've been burned up, or Fry would've been ground to bits.
- Flashback B-Plot: The A-plot follows an outbreak of the formerly-eradicated common cold in New New York, while a B-plot flashes back to Fry entering a science fair planning to send an infected guinea pig to space to preserve the common cold. The plots come together when they need a sample of the cold for a vaccine, and they retrieve a sample created by... the kid Fry lost to.
- Hurl It into the Sun: To deal with the outbreak of the common cold, Zapp Brannigan decides that all of Manhattan Isle should be thrown into the sun.
- Insufferable Genius: Josh Gedgie, to the point of ordering pizza with the most complicated math possible and then mocking Mr. Panucci when he can't make heads or tails of it.
- Jerkass: Gedgie unabashedly stole Fry's experiment idea, knowing that his nerd brains have a better chance at getting it through than Fry's dumbness would.
- Karma Houdini: Bender never gets any retribution for spreading the common cold around in New New York. Fry gets to take his punishment instead by getting beat up by the rest of the Planet Express crew.
- Killing for a Tissue Sample: Farnsworth plans to grind up Fry in order to create a cold vaccine. Fry soon figures out where they can get another cold virus, saving himself and disappointing Farnsworth.
- Misplaced Retribution: After news breaks out of the cold spreading to the rest of New New York, the rest of the Planet Express crew beat up Fry for being patient zero, even though it was Bender who spread the virus outside of the Planet Express headquarters by escaping and handshaking the quarantine workers with his mucus covered hands.
- Noodle Implements: One of the plans to rid Manhattan of the common cold is a plan called "Protocol 62," and, for some reason, at least one element of it involves a bunch of piranhas (but, according to Nixon, they don't have nearly enough piranhas to be able to execute Protocol 62).
- Plague Episode: With nobody left immune to it, the common cold spreads very quickly in the 31st century. The sickness itself is no more serious than it is today (though it does seem to now cross over to infect otherworldly victims), but the reactions to it...
- Properly Paranoid: While sealing off the town and shooting it into the sun was a bit extreme, considering both Amy and Zoidberg, the alien members of the crew, are seen getting particularly sick from it (thus showing the virus could still infect people regardless of the planet they came from- and as Zoidberg shows, could suffer worse effects than the humans), the worry about the effects of the virus (particularly a millennium-old variant) is wholly justifiable. Farnsworth himself outright admitted he was living in mortal terror of some eventuality like this.
- Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice: First by covering Planet Express with plastic wrap, then the whole city, then throwing the city into the sun. To be fair, however, they do have no idea how the one thousand year old virus could affect them now (especially as since it was eradicated, humans had lost all immunity to it). The crew succeeds in escaping with some unintentional help from Zapp.
- Red Herring: The audience is led to believe that Fry's guinea pig (who also had the cold) was sent to space in the Nerd Search satellite. Turns out it was Josh Gedgie's cold virus culture.Fry: It's a good thing Gedgie won. My dumb experiment wouldn't have lasted an hour in space, let alone 1000 years. Also, Buzz Aldrin ran over my Guinea pig in the parking lot.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: When Fry gets sick, it not only quickly spreads to everyone else (particularly as humanity had lost all immunity to it in the millenium's span), but as it spreads it quickly becomes a matter of public concern- regardless of the effects of the virus, the biological risks, particularly of a millennium-old variant, would be nothing to take lightly.
- Take That!: After Hermes gets sick, he remarks, "I've got a hankerin' for a useless remedy created by a schoolteacher," and takes some "Airbunk" tablets. This is a reference to the Airborne brand of dietary supplements, which are advertised as boosting the immune system despite little research backing up these claims.
- Tough Love: At the end of the episode, Fry's dad tells him that he's only so hard on Fry because he wants him to grow up strong and resilient.
- Young Future Famous People: Mr. Panucci's delivery boy in the '80s is a black kid named Barack.Barack: Man, I have got to go back to law school.
Fry: I'm not gonna wind up a loser like that guy.
