15 Trivia Tidbits About ‘Futurama’

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15 Trivia Tidbits About ‘Futurama’

TV executives spent most of the 1990s begging The Simpsons creator Matt Groening to create another animated show. Once he delivered Futurama, the executives switched to spending decades trying to kill it. And yet, despite having four season finales so far, this heartwarming show about a bunch of alcoholic, grandma-boinking freaks going on suicide missions perseveres, along with the odd tales that come from making it... 

The Shows Lost Episode Was Recorded on an Xbox

 

Although it failed to win any Game of the Year awards, the 2003 Futurama video game is noteworthy for including 28 minutes of new animation featuring most of the original cast. Fortunately, those scenes were included as a lost episode in one of the DVDs. Unfortunately, since the games developers had gone under by then, the crew had to play through the game in an original Xbox and record the footage directly from there, according to the audio commentary. 

In other words, what you see on the DVD is a YouTube Lets Play minus most of the gameplay.

Leela Is Named After a Symphony

 

The name Turanga Leela is taken from the Turangalîla-Symphonie, a symphony by French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) that has nothing to do with one-eyed mutants working for interplanetary delivery companies. Its based on the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde, a tragic saga of forbidden love that might resemble Fry and Leelas romance if you squint and have terrible depth perception due to having only one giant eye. 

Benders Voice Is Based on Someone Called Charlie the Sausage Lover

 

According to Benders inimitable voice actor, John DiMaggio, Benders voice is a combination of the drunk in every bar, old-school western actor Slim Pickens and a character his college buddy used to do called Charlie the Sausage Lover. Literally, a guy called Charlie who loved sausages too much. Good thing DiMaggio agreed to join the revival cast after all or Hulu would have been forced to find some drunken sausage enthusiast cowboy to replace him.

The Futurama Comic Ran for 17 Years

 

While the show was going on and off the air and the console game failed to produce any sequels, the Futurama comic book ran strong for 17 years (2000-2017), albeit with an increasingly irregular schedule. It also produced specials like The Futurama/Simpsons Infinitely Secret Crossover Crisis, which was vastly superior to the crossover episode we got in 2014. Speaking of that other show... 

The Simpsons Are Still on the Air in the 30th Century

 

According to Matt GroeningThe Simpsons was on its 1,010th season when Fry was unfrozen in 2999. The show was only in its 10th year when Groening made that joke, so he had no idea how increasingly realistic it would become. Incidentally, the storyboard for the pilot episode includes a shot of Fry watching The Simpsons as a teenager and saying, God, theyre ugly, but it was cut for unknown reasons. Maybe Groening didnt sign over the rights to himself?

Coolio (RIP) Will Continue Voicing Kwaanza-bot

 

Despite Coolios untimely passing last year, Futuramas producers have confirmed that he finished recording dialogue for his character, Kwaanza-bot, and a rapped version of the theme song a few weeks before his passing. May he live forever in robot paradise.

Groening Called Getting the Show Approved the Worst Experience of His Adult Life

 

Although Fox enthusiastically approved Futurama in 1998, Groening says that the executives quickly decided this was a mistake and that getting the show on the air was by far the worst experience of (his) grown-up life. The executives were freaked out by elements like the suicide booths or Benders overall personality and did everything possible to change them, causing numerous headaches to Groening and co-creator David X. Cohen. This probably explains... 

They Ran a Fake Ad Making Fun of Foxs Executives

 

When the first post-Fox cancelation episode ran on Comedy Central, Futurama ran a fake ad for a product called Torgos Executive Powder, which is made out of ground-up executives from Box Network and is shown being dumped into a toilet. Another Torgos Powder ad simply showed someones naked posterior and said, Apply directly to buttocks. What could it all mean?

Bender Was Supposed to Be Replaced by His Twin Brother

 

In the episode Bender Gets Made, Bender replaces his serial number with 14 to hide from the mob. In the finished episode, we see Benders established serial, 3370318, but according to the DVD commentary, it was originally going to be 2716057 as an in-joke to the nerds in the audience who would have instantly recognized that as the number belonging to his identical brother, Flexo. The idea was that Flexo had replaced Bender in his previous appearance, kinda like Jerry in Rick and Morty, but this was scrapped since it would have annoyed die-hard fans and made future Flexo episodes confusing.

Hermes Was Supposed to Be a Mind Slave for Half a Season

 

In Raging Bender, Hermes brain is hijacked by a Brain Slug who proposes going to the Brain Slug planet and just walk around not wearing a helmet. We never see Hermes get free of the slug in this episode because, according to the commentary, the idea was for him to keep it on his head for the rest of the season. So what saved Hermes from being puppeteered by an alien creature for a dozen episodes? The fact that the writers just sort of forgot about it.

The Show Was NEVER Going to Do Time Travel, But Then They Did

 

According to the Season Three DVD commentary, one of Groening and Cohens early rules for the show was that they was NEVER going to be any time-travel in Futurama because they didnt want people to wonder why they didnt just go back in time after every inconvenience. The classic Roswell That Ends Well episode was initially conceived as a what if type segment for one of the Anthology of Interest episodes, except everyone liked the idea of Fry becoming his own grandpa so much that they broke the rule and gave it its own episode. And once that door was open, it led to... 

Bender Is the Oldest Character in the Show — By Far

 

Casual viewers might reasonably assume that Professor Farnsworth is the oldest character in the Futurama cast because, well, look at him. But no, taking this shows various time-travel shenanigans into account, the Professor is only the fourth oldest character at 165, followed by Fry at 2,039 (if we count the two times he got frozen for 1,000 and 1,007.95 years), Nibbler at 3,274 or 10,013 depending on how youre counting and Bender at least 1,000,000 due to traveling back in time and waiting in a cavern under the Planet Express building thousands of times in Benders Big Score. He must have had some pretty good booze reserves in his body to survive for that long.

The X In David X. Cohen Means...

 

Nothing. He just couldnt use David S. Cohen due to Writers Guild rules, so he picked X because it sounded sci-fi-ish.

The Number 9 Man Was Supposed to Represent a Caste System

 

When creating Futuramas future, Groening and Cohen came up with the idea that people on the lowest rungs of society would wear shirts with a big 9 on them, indicating that they were the 9th most important sector of society (so, bums and slaves). Number ones would be kings and rich people and so on. They dropped the idea before the show got on the air, but it led to a guy with a 9 on his shirt appearing in multiple crowd scenes early on, leading to intense fan speculation about his origin. Eventually, the writers made a new origin up for Into the Wild Green Yonder

Leelas Parents Had a Cameo Years Before Being Revealed

 

Although Leelas origin as an Earth mutant and not an alien was only revealed in Season Fours Leelas Homeworld, the Season Two episode I Second That Emotion included two sewer mutants who strangely resembled her in a crowd shot. The same mutants (slightly redesigned) were later confirmed to be her mother and father. Presumably, she didnt see them because, again, not the best depth-perception.

Follow Maxwell Yezpitelok's heroic effort to read and comment on every '90s Superman comic at Superman86to99.tumblr.com. 

Thumbnail: 20th Television 

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