‘Shut Up and Take My Money!’ An Oral History of ‘Futurama’s Biggest Meme

As the Planet Express crew enters the Mom Store to get their new eyePhones after hours of waiting, the clerk warns Fry about the phone’s drawbacks. “It’s $500, you have no choice of carrier, the battery can’t hold a charge and the reception isn’t very–” But before the clerk can even finish his sentence, Fry shoves a wad of $100 bills in his face and shouts, “Shut up and take my money!”

It’s just one of several funny moments in the classic 2010 Futurama episode, “Attack of the Killer App,” but Fry’s line, coupled with his eager, fistful-of-money pose, endeared itself to the internet, and especially Reddit. Now, the “Shut Up and Take My Money” meme is internet shorthand for blind enthusiasm — whether it be for a gaming system, an action figure or new fast-food menu items. 

And since Hulu subscribers are currently telling Disney to shut up and take their money so they can watch Futurama’s latest season, I caught up with those who created the classic Futurama moment to learn about its origin story.

Patric Verrone, writer: “Attack of the Killer App” was the first episode I wrote of the new run of Futurama, which was the first time we came back from the dead. Well, actually, it wasn’t. We had previously come back from the dead to do the DVD movies, then this was the first time we came back to do the show as a series.

I wrote this in 2009, and one of the eternal elements of Futurama was that we’re always trying to be topical, which is something that’s hard to do in animation to begin with. I’ve been an animation writer for almost 30 years now, and the gestation period for that kind of animation is almost a year long. So, we have to be both evergreen and at least meaningful in the moment, as we expect the moment to be in a year or more.

As it relates to Futurama, at that point we had been off the air for six years, and we had some topicality, particularly with tech stuff, to catch up on. The biggest thing was the advent of the cell phone, particularly the iPhone. So, we thought we’d do an episode about that tech development and take advantage of the pervasive cultural phenomenon that was: every time a new iPhone came out, there was a line around the block to get the newest model, even though it probably had very little that was new.

The process of television, in general, is a very collaborative effort, but since “Shut up and take my money” was in my first draft, I do feel comfortable in taking credit for it. That was in the script, as was the description of Fry holding up a wad of money and the Mom Store as a parody of an Apple Store.

Billy West, voice of Fry: “Attack of the Killer App” was sending up the fact that people camp out to get devices so they could be the first. There’s that FOMO permeating the entire culture. I loved that Fry was so jacked to have something that he didn’t give the guy a chance to talk. Fry is just yelling at him to take his money. We all understand that urgency concerning a few things in our lives, but this spelled it out perfectly.

Besides that, this moment didn’t really stand out to me — only because there’s so much funny stuff the writers come up with that it’s impossible to say what’s going to hit. It’s hard for me to say, “Oh, there’s a killer. That one’s going to be on a T-shirt.” I just never know anymore.

Stephen Sandoval, director: “Attack of the Killer App” was the first episode I directed on the series. I worked on the DVD movies, but this was the first time I directed a Futurama episode. As for this particular moment, I remember Aimee Steinberger, the assistant director on this episode, came in with that pose of Fry just jamming the money forward, which was just based on Billy’s delivery. Aimee was great about keying in on acting and getting the most out of the vocal performance. When Billy came in with “Shut up and take my money,” Aimee just followed her heart and there it was.

Aimee Steinberger, assistant director: I think the reason people like it isn’t necessarily the art. I did a good job, okay, but I’m really into the acting. The reason people relate to this moment is the context in the episode and the writing and the acting.

Don Caldwell, editor-in-chief of Know Your Meme: The day after the episode aired, the first version of this meme appeared on a German tech blog site, but it really started to become a meme when it was adopted on Reddit about a year later. Futurama has been a very popular show with Redditors. Reddit now is a little bit different than what Reddit was back then. It’s a bit more mainstream now, but in 2010, Reddit was more like a niche nerd culture site. 

“Shut Up and Take My Money!” soars in 2012 until late 2015, then it started to fall off after 2015. It’s an enduring meme, but I wouldn’t say it’s cool now or anything. It’s definitely seen as an older meme. It still gets used, but it’s used by people that were using it back then.

Steinberger: I’ve been working for a long time at this point, and I don’t think anything else that I’ve done has gone viral like that before. It’s weird that now it’s on merchandise, and at Comic-Con a couple years ago, there was a droid show and it made this image. I’m even wearing a T-shirt of it now.

West: I started to notice it as a meme about 10 or so years ago, and now people ask me to write that when I’m doing autographs. Everybody says, “Can you say ‘Shut up and take my money!?’”

Verrone: I was surprised by its success as a meme. Well, maybe not surprised, but proud, shall we say. Because the other meme that took off first was the Fry squinting meme as well as the Professor saying, “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.” Those, to me, seemed a little more resilient early on, but since then, “Shut Up and Take My Money” has had the most staying power. I’ve seen it on buttons, there’s a Funko Pop and there’s another statue or toy of Fry holding the wad of money. 

About five years ago, Entertainment Weekly did a piece on the 30 most recognizable lines from TV over the last 30 years and, to my surprise, they chose this as one of them. Maybe it’ll be on my gravestone.