Much like Matt Groening's other show, Futurama isn't afraid to take shots at others.
Show
- The opening of Bender's Big Score features a sequence where Planet Express had its delivery license cancelled two years ago by executives from the Box Network, a load of brainless idiots... who were, as a result fired and badly beaten. Several died from their injuries, and they were then ground into a fine powder, putting Planet Express back in business. Just in case some of the viewers couldn't get it, when the Box Network building is shown, the sign is malfunctioning and flickers between reading "Box" and "Fox." Just to rub it in, the rest of the movie cited increasingly unpleasant uses for this "executive powder" as it went on in fake-ads, such as unclogging one's toilet.
- Bender's Game feature several: First is George Takei's head ramming a ship into one driven by Scott Bakula and tells him "Way to killruining the franchise, Bakula!". Second, there's the gratuitous take that to Robin Williams when they run into "Morks" and kill them while telling them they're not funny and need to shut up. Third, there's when they reach the kingdom of "Wipe Castle", where you can eat lots of burgers without gaining weight because they give you diarrhea.
- In general, Bender's Game vacillates between an Affectionate Parody of Dungeons & Dragons, a mild and still affectionate Take That! against some of the more egregious tropes of the game (such as the very Gygaxian use of multitudes of random-roll tables) and a flat-out Take That against the anti-D&D hysteria of the '80s (with Bender becoming an over-the-top parody of the "steam-tunnel gamer" urban legend — the gamers who supposedly lost their minds and grip on reality playing D&D).
- "As Deepak Chopra taught us, quantum mechanics means that anything can happen at any time for no reason."
- A rather blatant one in "Where No Fan Has Gone Before," given that this was the episode before the show got cancelled.Bender: Another classic science-fiction show cancelled before its time.
- In "I Second That Emotion" they go down into the sewers. The mutants there can only use what people flush down the toilet. What do they have to read? Only crumpled up porn and copies of Atlas Shrugged.
- "Fry and the Slurm Factory" takes a slam at New Coke: when Leela is about to be dunked in royal slurm and turned into a slurm queen, one of the Glurmos points out that as a commoner her Slurm will taste foul. The Slurm Queen says, "Yes. That's why we will market it as New Slurm. Then when everyone hates it, we'll bring back Slurm Classic and make billions!"
- In "The Mutants are Revolting", the mutants in the sewers are given scholarships to Brown University (a real world Ivy League school), which is shown to be there in the sewers with them. Leela questions if it is a legitimate university and not just a sewer cleaning service.
- At one point in "Leela's Homeworld", Leela demands, "Am I a game to you?! Or some kind of even more boring Truman Show?!"
- A subtle one against Family Guy: in 1999 Pizzeria Panucci has a FG calendar with Brian and Stewie on the cover, which says "One laugh a month!".
- Cleverly done in "The Silence of the Clamps" as a form of Self-Deprecation:Farmer: Name's Billy West.Fry: (laughs) Billy West! What a stupid phony made-up name.
- "Saturday Morning Fun Pit" is one massive Take That to 70s and 80s cartoons by emphasizing all the aspects of them that most people forget about due to Nostalgia Filter such as Hanna-Barbera's decline in quality, mediocre writing and animation, shameless merchandising, and excessive Bowdlerisation and censorship by Moral Guardians for violence and lack of educational value.
- In "Near-Death Wish," Fry, Leela and Bender discuss the logistics of the Near-Death Star, where Earth's elderly humans are plugged into a simulated nursing home.Leela: Their bodies are being used to generate electricity. The idea came from an old movie called The Matrix.Bender: But—but wouldn't almost anything make a better battery than a human body? Like a potato? Or a battery?!Leela: I know, I know, it sounds absurd. In fact, when The Matrix first came out, it seemed like the single crummiest, laziest, most awful, dimwitted idea in the entire history of science fiction, but it turned out to be true!Fry: Who knew?Bender: Good work, writer of The Matrix!
- In Law and Oracle, when Fry is promoted to Executive Delivery Boy:Hermes: It's a meaningless title, but it makes insecure people feel better about themselves.
Credits for the executive producers appear on screen
Fry: I feel better about myself! - In "I, Roommate", Fry and Bender find a seemingly perfect apartment during a House-Hunting Montage. Suspicious, Fry asks the realtor what the catch is, to which he responds that the house is in New Jersey. Smash Cut to Fry, Bender, and Leela sitting around a table and complaining that not one of the houses they saw were livable.
Comics
- In issue 16, Fry comments that the abandoned Earth is like the Twilight Zone, then clarifies that he's referring to the original series and not the movie or the two revivals, which he calls "crappy".
- In issue 25, Fry remarks that he's disturbed by Bender's newest recruits to his band of merry men having "merry" chips installed by commenting that they're laughing at everything, including the last few seasons of Saved by the Bell.
- Issue 26 has Leela include Babylon 5 fans as an example of people who aren't meant to fall in love and have families.
- In issue 41, Leela hears Zapp speaking and remarks that she knows who it is because there's only one person's voice that sends chills down her ponytail. Fry asks if Leela is referring to Rosie Perez.
- Issue 66 has Bender respond to Fry mentioning Battleship by telling him that it's been illegal to say that word out loud since they released the horrible movie of the same name.
- In issue 79, Kif is believed to be dying, but later turns out to only be suffering a non-fatal virus that's making him act like a jerk. Fry asks if Kif will have to live with it forever like Donald Trump, who happened to be running for President at the time the issue was originally published.
