Futurama/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• This one actually involved my refrigerator. It's never bothered me that the Planet Express Ship constantly changes its design from episode to episode. I always figured it was the writer's way of messing with the fanbase. In fact I think Word of God confirms this. However, as I was rearranging the shelves in my fridge, it occurred to me that, in the future, most, if not all, structures might be easily rearranged. Most likely, every aspect of the ship can be switched around, or moved with realtive ease. This is reinforced with all the in-universe changes they make to the ship (like altering it to move underwater with paper mache)
• Something just hit me about Bender's personality when I re-watched the first episode. Before and during the climactic chase sequence in the head museum, Bender was nothing more than suicidally depressed and alcoholic who went by his programming (he initially refused to bend the metal bars of the window in the Hall of Criminals because he wasn't a de-bender and Fry's motivational speech was having no effect at all). When Bender walked into a lamp and got short-circuited, his "mind", or programming, was re-altered so that Bender would be able to bend the metal grate and become hooked on bending random objects. Near the end of the episode, he breaks out three beer bottles, drinks them all, and snatches Leela's ring off her finger. Now, this could just be Wild Mass Guessing, but it's possible that the Bender we know and love today could have resulted from that one jolt of electricity. In essence, from that one accident, Bender's total outlook on life was completely altered!
• I just had a Fridge Brilliance moment about Leela. Specifically, why she's gone back and forth on Fry's obviously sincere love for her. Think, for a moment, about on of Leela's first focus episodes. It opened with her going on a date and utterly rejecting the man in question because he had a lizard tongue. Hypocritical, but telling. The episode goes on to show us that Leela's main problem with finding love is that she's very picky. She has standards and she sticks to them. All the men she's dated have been good looking men with high positions in society, or at least a decent income. The Mayor's aide, the doctor that gave her two eyes, even Lars was earning good money at the head museum. Now what does this all mean? Why does Leela need such high standards? Because if she has high standards, she's the one doing the rejecting. Think about it. If she wasn't the one being picky, she would be rejected at every turn by men not interested in dating a cyclops. Somewhere deep inside her mind she's still that little orphan girl hearing "One Eye! One Eye!" over and over again. She needs to find a good man, one who is handsome and successful and talented, or else she has given up and settled for less. She just can't do that. Add that mind-set to a man who works a dead-end delivery job, is childish, and has almost no responsibility to speak of, you get a flat rejection every time, moments of romantic brilliance or no. And even then, at least half of those moments (Saving the world, Proposing with the Stars, writing the Holophoner symphony) were either wiped from her memory or utterly ruined by what happened afterwards.
• A rather minor example but an example nonetheless. During "The Luck of the Fryrish," it is stated that Philip J. Fry was the first man to step foot on Mars. At first it seems quite minor, but if you put some though into it, you'll realize that Yancy had named him after Fry so he could carry on his memory. As such, it's entirely plausible that Yancy had in fact directed him in this course, as it was Fry's dream to travel into space. This only makes the episode all the more heartwarming.
• In "A Clockwork Origin", Farnsworth takes the gang to Odulvai Gorge to search for the "missing, missing link between man and ape." While digging up fossils, Hermes accidentally uncovers a flash-fossilized skeleton of what he states is "another one of Fry's dogs." But wait, if Seymour was established as Fry's only pet, and he had no other known dogs, how is this possible? Well, if you remember "Bender's Big Score", the supposedly "paradox-free" method of time travel that the Scammers uncovered created exact duplicates of the person who used the time sphere, and the time duplicate was always doomed to a horrible fate, you could argue that the Seymour that Lars kept company was a time duplicate as well, and that when Bender flash-fossilized him, that was his fate. Thus, the fossilized remains of the dog Hermes dug up could have been a time duplicate.
  • Or he was just making a joke.
• In 'The Lesser of Two Evils', the crew visit the Past-o-rama show, which showcased the world of the 20th/21st century. However, to the viewer, one can see many anachronisms, including Einstein in a balloon, and cowboys chasing mammoths, so obviously, it is not a... perfect rendition. But why? Because over 1000 years has passed, and the information they would have had on our era - at best - would be incomplete due to 1000 years of erosion, weathering and other factors. Do we know really that much about the dark ages?
  • Although some of the icons used in that commercial did come from that time period. Einstein was reaching the height of his popularity around 1945, the common stereotype that we associate cowboys in media like television and movies were first seen in the early 1900's and 1910's.
  • And, of course, even if they do have knowledge of the time, at one point, everything flows together in history. Victorian England, for example. If you imagine what it looked like, you are probably thinking of how it looked around 1895, with about 63 years of Victoria squeezed into about an afternoon. Or the Wild West. The Dalton Brothers in gunfights against Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid. Watch out boys, or Hanging Judge Roy Bean will get ya! We imagine everyone hanging out together in the Tombstone saloon, drinking whiskey and playing poker. And in a couple of hundred years, our times will too have flowed together with the last and the next.
• Attack of the Killer App: With the ending of the 3rd movie rendering dark matter inert and the 4th movie reviving extinct animals that presumably include the anchovy, which would be able to shut down her robot oil empire, how exactly does Mom plan on keeping her fortune? By emulating one of the most profitable companies of the twenty-first century and selling shiny gadgets that the population will flock to like sheep that are as overpriced as they are arguably overrated.
• In "Roswell That Ends Well", Zoidberg says he has four hearts. Then later, in "A Taste of Freedom", it suddenly changes to three. Continuity Snarl? Not if you remember that the Roswell scientists took one.
  • By Bender's Game, he only has two.
• In "I Second That Emotion", when the doctor took out Nibbler's fang, Fry noticed that there are rings on it, and the doctor suggested that it probably indicated Nibbler's age. Fry then said that it would take a genius to count all those rings, right before the doctor told him that, according to the rings, Nibbler is five. The joke is probably that Fry was too stupid to count five rings, but later in the series, we found out that Nibbler is older than the universe, and Fry has a "special" brain. It could be that Fry actually saw billions of rings, while the doctor only saw five, because Fry is the only one who are supposed to know that Nibblonians are an ancient race, and therefore only he sees billions of rings.
  • Note that the joke could also be the complete lack of logic in the vet's "If he's anything like a tree" argument.
  • Also note that the doctor had just received a head injury and wasn't thinking clearly.
  • The vet didn't even know what species Nibbler was, what would he know from teeth rings?
• Also, at one point, Bender claimed that his father was killed by a can-opener. Considering that his mother is a robot arm, could it be that his father is a big can containing "material" to build a robot, which his mother "receives" and then assembles?
• I just realized something: you know all the jokes in "All My Circuits" about the various Soap Opera cliches like "Fourth Evil Septuplet". Thing is, Calculon is a robot. He could have 7 identical models that are unusually close enough to consider themselves family.
• Bender's name: not only is representative of his job ("I'm a Bender. I went to Bending college. I majored in Bending.), it's also representative of his character. Bender is seen almost continuously drinking, smoking, gambling and whoring. In other words, he keeps going on benders.
  • Or rather, he is constantly on one big bender.
• In one episode, Fry says that Everybody Loves Hypnotoad has been going downhill since season 3. Fry has immunity to any kind of mental control thanks to his "superior, yet inferior mind", which means he has watched Everybody Loves Hypnotoad without being hypnotized! Which means that h-ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!
• In "The Beast With A Billion Backs", Bender has to trade his first born son to the Robot Devil for an army of robots to conquer the Earth. Why does the Robot Devil ask for Bender's son instead of say his soul? He asked Bender in an earlier episode if he came back to Robot Hell to resume his eternal punishment, meaning Bender's soul (or the robotic equal) is still condemned to Hell and the Robot Devil already has it.
  • According to Conan O'Brien, Bender doesn't have a soul... Or freckles.
• In "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences", the crew build a new statue of liberty. Why was this one not in "the late Phillip J. Fry"? It was a consequence of Fry's doing. Fry didn't exist in that future.
  • Or, the people of New New York got rid of the statue as soon as Ndnd and Lrrr left, because the statue was ugly and reminded them of slave labor.
• In "The Why of Fry" we learn that the reason why he can save the universe is because he is his own grandfather. This wouldn't have happened if he went into the future. Previously, in "Anthology of Interest" the "what if" universe gets destroyed because Fry didn't go into the future.
• Considering how small Nibbler is and how much he eats, all the food that enters his body must be compacted to an incredible density . . . so it makes sense that he poops Dark Matter.
• Why do robots get high off electricity and why do they have a religion? Because they were programmed to develop a moral code and if all the robots of the world ran on electricity we'd run out, so they programmed them to feel bad after they did it.
  • And that argument doesn't apply to beer because......?
    • Simple, actually. Beer costs money but electricity doesn't. You can't charge a toaster for the electricity it runs on; you charge its owner. Robots need beer to function and electricity to run. It's easier to make them more prone to something more profitable, so a backup program was installed in all robots to have deteriorating effects to electricity abuse so as to not give them leverage over humans, and robots who can't afford beer can't live solely on electricity.
• Earth's position in the universe has never been explicitly stated, but the show has averted Earth Is the Center of the Universe nonetheless. Not only is Planet Eternium at the exact center, Earth must be very, very close to the edge - the Planet Express ship was able to reach the nearest edge of the universe (the one facing the cowboy planet) within an hour. However, it took them two weeks to get to the part of the universe that ended immediately after Dog Doo 8, and they were in danger of going so far away from Earth it would take a lifetime to get back when they went through the Panama Wormhole.
• At first it seems like some parts of the series are subject to Technology Marches On, for example Lucy Liu's data is copied onto a floppy disk in the 3000's...But then you realize that after Earth was successfully invaded twice, technology probably has been left a little...Funky.
  • Confirmed via Word of God.
• A minor example: in "Why must I be a Crustacean in Love?", why does Fry have an Oh Crap look on his face upon hearing the Decapodian anthem? Because he is a massive fan of Star Trek (as seen in "Where No Fan Has Gone Before") - and as such, has seen all of the episodes, including the episode "Amok Time", which includes, amongst other things, Spock fighting Kirk to the same music.
• In The Beast With A Billion Backs, Bender gives a speech about how love is selfish, needy, and greedy. This has a ton of Fridge Brilliance when you think about how during the course of the movie, Bender has been jealous of Fry's lovers and has been trying to spend time with him, unsuccessfully, and Fry's romantic relationships were getting in the way. Bender spends ridiculous amounts of effort to get Fry to spend time with him, and tries to get revenge on humanity as a whole when he doesn't. (even giving his firstborn son to get an army from the robot devil!) So when Bender was talking about love, he was referring to his feelings toward Fry. He loves Fry, though not in a romantic way, even if he won't admit it.
• The End of Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs had this effect on me. At first, I thought they just couldn't think of a satisfying way to end the movie, and felt kind of cheated. Then I realized two facts that made me love the ending: 1) it was a satire - maybe a borderline Deconstruction - of the Christian apocryphal idea of the Rapture, which pointed out all the unfortunate ethical and moral implications inherent in the concept. 2) it showed off the true Crapsack World setting of Futurama. Fry's future is such a dystopia that not even "heaven" is safe from the underlying suckiness of existence. In any other show, it would have been depressing, but it perfectly fits the characters and setting of Futurama, so I found it funny. Make of that what you will. --User:Moogi
  • Especially considering Fry's line "I'm sorry, Bender. Robots don't go to heaven." -- Andyroid
  • Futurama has many moments like this. One particular moment pops out in the second episode. At first, Fry and Leela's adventure on the moon seems like it's contrived. Why would a park make full functional rovers for a ride almost nobody goes on? But thinking about it, it showed me the stupidity of the future world, or alternatively, adaptivity by using rover that built the base. --User:Katana
• In Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles, I was annoyed that they would consider the Professor being really really old worthy of voiding a lifetime discount. But in that episode, he was 161, and a year earlier had been rescued from the Near-Death Star because people are retired (from life) at the age of 160. His lifetime discount really did expire, and it was both a Continuity Nod and showing how things might become less simple now that he's not supposed to be among the living! -User:JET 73 L
  • Nope! It was revealed that The Professor was legally declared dead as a tax dodge (and/or taking a nap in a ditch) in "The Route Of All Evil".
  • At the same time, the Professor might've had to deal with that given his reaction to it, so either or could be the true reason behind that.
• So I'm sitting at my desk, reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and I think, "This would be impossible to adapt to film. How could you transfer the contradictory and bizarre descriptions to a visual medium (e.g. "The ships hung in the air in exactly the way that bricks don't" from Hitchhiker's Guide)? Then I thought of Futurama, specifically when Fry had to jump out of a plane. An exchange like that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Douglas Adams book. To summarize: Futurama is the best adaptation of Douglas Adams' work ever. - User:randomfanboy
• The "Retcon" (most fans will know the one as soon as I mention the episode in conjunction with Bender's Big Score) had to have been planned at least as far back as "Jurassic Bark", since Seymour almost definitely had to have been flash-fossilized while still alive and what are the chances that a dog would die of old age and immediately get flash-fossilized as early as 2012? -User:JET 73 L
  • It does sort of ruin the Tear Jerker -ness of Jurassic Bark's ending however. But it does make the ending overall better. Fry was right in that Seymour lived a long and full life, but he was wrong in that Seymour had Fry, a chrono-duplicate, but still the same Fry, right by him until his death and probably never forgot his master.
    • I just want to point out, Seymour's fossil in "Jurassic Bark" is standing up and the last shot we have of him is laying down.
• In Bender's Game, Bender creates a Dungeons & Dragons character. The character's name? "Titanius Anglesmith". 'Titanius' is an obvious reference to metal, but it takes a second to notice the nuance of the surname - Angle-smith -> maker of angles -> bender. -User:Anomaly
• When Leela was a baby, she was left with a note penned by her mother in order to convince the orphanarium that she was an alien, not a mutant. But a note written in Alienese, a language seemingly understood by many people on Earth, is untranslatable by Professor Farnsworth's translation machine? Leela's mother's exolinguistics skills meant that she could write complete nonsense on the note in a made-up language that looks deceptively like Alienese to a lay-person, but without actually meaning anything in Alienese. This would be like arranging Cyrillic characters randomly on paper and passing it off as Russian text to someone who is unfamiliar with the language and its script. The reason for this is so that no-one will discover that Leela is not an alien, the lack of backstory adding further credence. That way, when an abandoned Leela and the note are found outside Cookieville Minimum-Security Orphanarium, Mr. Vogel has no reason to doubt that Leela is an alien, and so won't attempt to translate the faux-Alienese. This is also why Professor Farnsworth is unable to translate the note: it doesn't actually mean anything in a real language. -User:kryz
  • Actually, the note can be translated. It says: "Your parents love you very much."
    • It's possible to combine both: the note is literally nonsense, but Leela's mother is being poetic or metaphorical or whatever when she says the note meant that they loved her.
      • Or it's a language she designed, and without any reference anywhere, means complete gibberish to anyone not Leela's mom.
        • Actually, it can be translated just like any other alien-language sign throughout the whole show, and it literally says "Your parents love you very much." if you translate it. This means that it couldn't be a language she designed, because it's the same common alien language, it's not gibberish, because it actually means something, and Leela's mom wasn't being metaphorical or anything! My guess is that the common alien language is not so common, and there are people who couldn't read it, like Farnsworth. Also, Farnsworth's machine probably doesn't work properly.
      • Maybe it's French, an incomprehensible dead language
• In the preview of the first 90 seconds of the new season airing on Comedy Central was a joke where Fry asks Professor Farnsworth why he's suddenly covered in severe burns. The sight gag reveal was funny, but the extreme extent of the injuries left you wondering why Fry isn't in agonizing pain. When the premiere episode "Rebirth" aired, you learn at the end that the Fry with the burns, whom the viewers watched the entire episode was actually a robot Leela made out of grief because she thought the real Fry was dead. It then turns out the real Fry was still undergoing the rebirth process in the Professor's vat of stem cells. It explains why the Fry in the beginning didn't feel any pain from the burns. He was a robot! -User:Fastbak
• I only just this instant realized that Zoidberg's accent, and, indeed, name, are supposed to be Yiddish. I know, I know... I know.- User:Tal 9922
  • Speaking of Zoidberg, the second X Mas episode when he came in after everybody claimed they were Santa Claus while dressed as Jesus became much funnier when I realized that Jesus himself was originally Jewish so for the lone Jewish (or something) character to say that is more hilarious.
• Anyone got any good Fridge Brilliance theories as to why there's "Just the one" alternate universe in "I Dated a Robot", but then the Professors manage to accidentally create gateways to a bunch of different universes in "The Farnsworth Parabox"? I feel like that's one that could benefit from some good fan-crackpot-theories. ~ User:United Shoes 37
  • I believe Word of God has it that "I Dated a Robot" features a parallel universe while "The Farnsworth Parabox" featured "perpendicular universes". Sounds good to me.
  • On that note, at first it sounds like David X. Cohen trying to be an ass, but it does make sense that those universes are not parallel universes, as the boxes are effectively intersection points, something parallel lines do not have with one another, so neither would parallel universes.
• I never had a problem with the "Luck of the Fryrish" episode's ending, but it just suddenly became more meaningful to me. It is revealed at the end that the tombstone of one 'Philip J. Fry,' whom Fry thought was his spiteful brother Yancy after taking his name, contained a heartfelt engravement on it saying that this Fry had been "named for his uncle." It was Yancy's son. Anyway, this becomes more meaningful when you think of how the name "Philip J. Fry" for the Fry we know was itself a real-life tribute to the late Phil Hartman.- User:Invader 897
• Bender is named "Bender" because he "bends" things; girders, bars, people, right? Maybe, but, if he has to stay drunk to function correctly isn't he on a constant beer "bender"? --User:Misery Business 519
• In "A Pharaoh to Remember" the people of Osiris IV claim to have been taught Pyramid building, Space Travel, and How to Prepare their dead to scare Abbot and Costello. Initially this looks like a reversal of ancient astronaut hypothesis and highly comical, then in the new series episode "That Darn Katz" it's revealed the cat people of Thuban 9 visited ancient Egypt. Obviously one of the things the Egyptians would have picked up from the cats is Space Travel. Still no clue who told them about Abbot and Costello though. --User:Just Rad
• In "Bender's Big Score", why would the Robot Devil perform at Leela and Lars' wedding, even though he's their enemy? Because he knows how devastated Fry would be after Leela and Lars is married.
• Bender has a thing for Asian human women. Both humans he's ever had a romantic relationship with (Lucy Liu and Amy) are Asian.
• In "Time Keeps On Slipping", why is Fry so confident about his Basketball skills even though he obviously sucks? Two possibilities; either he's that much of an idiot, or that it's been a while since he's played Basketball without his Seven-Leaf Clover.

Fridge Horror

• I recently watched the episode God Fellas and an interesting notion occured. When Fry uses the radio telescope to communicate with the God Galaxy, it would take thousands (if not millions) of years for the radio waves to get all the way out there. So that would mean no matter how fast God chucked Bender back to Earth he'd still get there in the future right? Except, the God Galaxy has access to those little time bubbles from Bender's Big Score. This means that he could pop Bender back on Earth at the exact moment when Fry and Leela leave the monestary. What makes this horror is that Bender was essentially stuck in space from anywhere between a few thousand to several billion years. (And potentially all of that time was not spent with the God Galaxy) So Bender's age is (Time between creation and Roswell That Ends Well) + (Time spent buried in New Mexico) + (Time spent in limestone cavern waiting to return to the future) + (One trip to the end of the universe) + (One trip through the entire lifespan of the universe) + (one trip back to the future) + (Time spent waiting for Fry's message to get to the God Galaxy) = Bender is, by far, the oldest creature in the universe.
• Is it really not Nibbler's fault he's a killing machine, Leela?...
  • Though, In "The Why of Fry" it was shown that the Nibblonians are naturally big eaters, as they had a feast of full animals, all of which were devoured in seconds, except Fry's, which he didn't eat and was asked by another if he was going to eat it.
• The crew went into the Wormhole around February, 3009. They came out at Earth in "Rebirth" in June, 3010. THEY SPENT MORE THAN A YEAR FLYING THROUGH THE WORMHOLE.
  • Or it sent them a year into the future.
    • Wouldn't be very practical for use as a cargo transport system then, would it? Imagine if you shipped something, jumped into the Panama Wormhole, then popped out it of a year PAST the due date of the item you were shipping.
    • Actually, thinking about that there's an extra bit of Fridge Brilliance. They traveled one year into the future through the wormhole, but to everyone on the ship the jump in time was instantaneous. This is a giant reflection on Futurama's cancellation. We waited the entire time for the 5th season to return, but as far as the series is concerned, no such time has passed for the characters. It makes perfect sense and is even lampshaded by the Professor.
• Scientists raised the speed of light. How can you change a fundamental constant like the speed of light? It would be possible if our universe was a false vacuum: that is, if the apparent minimum energy state that can exist in our universe was not actually the minimum and if it was possible to go lower by the creation of sufficiently energetic particles. If this was true, the creation of such particles would cause the energy state of the entire universe to decay to one where physical laws, including physical constants, are different. The Fridge Horror comes in when you realize that, in order for the new universe to exist, the current one would have to be destroyed.
• Proposition Infinity supports the theory that gays can't marry due to their promiscuity. Think about it.
  • What?
  • I think it mostly supports the theory that Bender can't marry due to his own personal promiscuity.
  • Less his promiscuity and more that he's just a Jerkass.
  • Vertical infinity, anyone?
• The insignificant world.
• In the parallell universe story, they get a box in which their own universe is in. And only they know of it. What happens when Earth is destroyed? Shouldn't the universe end?
  • It's stated that it's needed a power like "sun itself" to be able to destroy it. Even if earth is destroyed, i doubt the box could be destroyed too.
• Fry once attempts to swallow a softball, and apparently succeeds, leaving him with one explainable, softball-sized lump on his abdomen... and another, completely unexplained softball-sized lump nearby. Except the softball would almost certainly have been dissolved in his stomach before entering his intestinal tracts... meaning he has two unexplained, softball-sized lumps on his abdomen.
• In "The Tip of Zoidberg" near the end where They're using the Rupe Goldberg machine to kill the Professor Bender chops the salad with the Cyanide axes... Which the professor later eats...
  • The salad was chopped by three of the axes, and since there were six axes total and two of them had been poisoned, there's a 40% chance that the salad wasn't poisoned. Sure, that was totally irresponsible of Bender, but it wasn't necessarily going to kill the Professor. Especially considering that he's alive in the next episode.
• The writers have said that the Futurama universe is basically our world, except sci-fi and with more stuff. Futurama is a Crapsack World. Make that if you will.
• In The Late Philip J. Fry, Future!Amy is with Future!Cubert. Where is Kif?
• In Futurama, there is Nibbler, whose role as Leela's small brainless pet is in fact all a charade to hide his undercover work watching over the planet. Keeping in mind some of the stuff he has done while acting Leela's supposedly unknowing pet (repeatedly hindered or outright endangered the crew's lives, eaten an entire preservation of animals and thus dooming an entire planets worth of species to extinction, stolen a Christmas dinner from a starving orphan, ripped off and stolen Amy's bikini, literally bitten Bender's shiny metal ass) come off as far less cute when you realize he's been doing all of it on purpose.

Leela: It's not his fault he's a killing machine.

• • At the end of "The Beast With A Billion Backs", we learn that Yivo has Gonorrhea. And for a good chunk of the movie, Yivo was having (unprotected) sex with the entire universe.
    • Yivo contracting Gonorrhea and the ability to have sex with the entire universe means that shklee is in some way biologically compatible with humans and possibly the rest of the universe. Since shklee lives in an alternate universe where shklee is the only living organism, shklee must have picked up the disease from someone in this universe. Meaning shklee probably contracted a lot of other illnesses as well, and since gonorrhea is still around, some other well known STD's may have made to the future as well. Also, since Yivo is the only natural organism in shklis universe, shklee may not have ever developed an immune system. So all the diseases shklee contracted are likely to kill shklim and shklee has no way to fight them off. Also, why has gonorrhea not been cured. Laziness (working on dog make-up), greed (but think how much we make in treatment), inability (somethings can't be done), or necessity (people have to die somehow)?
    • One more thing: Yivo was explicitly mating with the entire Universe. Everybody in the Futurama Universe might be pregnant with an Eldritch Abomination.
  • In the episode "The Cyber House Rules", Leela gets a synthetic eye surgically attached to her face so she can live a normal life, and subsequently starts going out with a childhood crush named Adlai. Later on in the episode, she and Adlai consider adopting a child from the orphanarium they both grew up in and have trouble deciding between the children, until Leela sees a little girl with a third ear on her forehead being taunted by the other kids in an all-too-familiar way. When Leela suggests they adopt the three-eared girl, Adlai is alarmed but warms up to the idea when he realizes the ear could be surgically removed, but Leela indignantly tells him the little girl is fine the way she is. She then forces Adlai to restore her cyclops eye, wrapping everything up in a neat little Aesop... until you realize that the little three-eared girl still doesn't have a family and probably never will. As important as it is to know how to value yourself for who you are, rotting in an orphanarium is probably a less effective way to learn that lesson than having a family that actually loves you. The odds of adoption are substantially lower for an orphan past infancy; add a vestigial ear to that unhappy formula and you have a little girl who's probably doomed to a life of misery, poverty, alienation and bitterness.
    • Just like a certain cyclops.
  • The episode "The Late Phillip J Fry" has the Professor build a one-way time machine. Fry, the Professor, and Bender test it just before Fry and Leela have a date. The crew goes forward through time and finds that time is utterly cyclic, winding up two universes ahead of their own. The only difference is that the universe is ten feet below and five feet to the right of the old universe, so the Professor's time machine arrives in a nearly identical universe. It falls on the alternate Bender, Fry, and Professor, killing them. Fry happily goes on the date with Leela. Except, you know, he has been involved in the deaths of three people, wordlessly stepped into his alternate self's life, and the Leela he loved aged and died alone two universes ago. Not only that, she wound up in a loveless marriage to Cubert as a Fry surrogate before an ugly divorce. Leela, in her old age, actually blasted a love note to form small stalagmites from water dripping into the "Cavern on the Green" for Fry to find many years in the future.
    • Fry isn't picky when it comes to Leela(s), which is evidenced in "Rebirth". His robot duplicate said he loves Leela, "any Leela". So we can assume this is picked up from the real Fry's mentality. He probably is well aware that the woman he actually fell in love with is lost to the ether two universes back but he's here now and doesn't really care since he can make the Leela of this universe happy as much as he had intended for the one that he had a relationship with in the original universe. The bit about him shamelessly assuming his paradox double's identity is still solid, though. That is a bit creepy and underhanded.
    • Actually, it does make perfect sense for the characters involved. Think about it. They just discovered that the universe is in a constant repeat. When they return, they kill their counterparts, albeit accidentally. Fry wouldn't assume blame and resume his lifestyle because there was nothing else he could've done (it wasn't his fault the universe was off by a couple of feet), and after he had just learned to cope with moving on from a life he felt he'd never get back and losing the woman he loved, this second chance is something he'd more than gladly return to. The Professor is used to fucked up science shit like this from a long line of unrelated deaths, and Bender... well, the ending says enough for him.
  • "The Why of Fry" with Fry being trapped by the crappy escape pod with the flying brains, in another universe. If the "Time Travel cause another universe" theory holds up in the show, it means that there's a universe where Fry never returned. Does that mean Nibbler stopped his masquerade and told the crew what transpired? Would he keep it up and leave a fake suicide note?.
  • Most (if not all) robots in Futurama were built for a certain function. Some robots (such as Roberto) become even creepier if you think about that.
  • In the movie "Bender's Game", Mom tells Walt and Larry that when Ignor was born, she flipped a coin whether to keep him or the afterbirth. ... In the episode "Farnsworth's Parabox", the primary difference of the main parallel universe is that coin flips have opposite outcomes...
• In "Into the Wild Green Yonder", the Encyclopod decides to preserve the DNA of homo sapiens. Fry points out that the Encyclopod only preserves the DNA of endangered species.
  • Only the Waterfall family is endangered. They die almost every time they appear.
    • The Waterfall family is not a species. And the comedic subtext makes it clear that the Encyclopod means humanity in general. Not sure it's fridge horror though since it's lampshaded.
• In How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back, we see an old man waiting in line at the Central Bureaucracy for his birth certificate. Cut to Lethal Inspection, aired 10 years later, the old man finally gets to Central Bureaucracy, only to have a heart attack right there. So this really old man has been standing in line SINCE HIS BIRTH only for him to DIE the moment he gets to the front of the line!
• In Fry Am the Egg Man, the bone vampire was born from a random egg that Leela bought from the the Farmer's Market. I am unsure if all of the eggs being sold were from the bone vampire, but imagine what would happen to the family or anyone who bought the eggs would react when they hatched into bone vampires. There is also the fact the planet the farming family gets the eggs from must be populated with them because how they reproduce. It's only a matter of time before any of them become a potential victim from one of those untamed creatures. Worse if one keeps an egg too long in the fridge and finds it hatch to shoot acid in their face.

Fridge Logic

• In Bendin' In The Wind, the group crash their Old-world Combi bus because they can't drive over the San Francisco Bay Bridge, it having converted into a hover bridge. Except they follow Beck's tour bus over the same bridge into SF just minutes before.
  • This Troper is a San Francisco native, they got into SF by crossing the (lesser known) Bay Bridge.
  • Or assuming that it was also converted to a hover bridge, they could have just looped around to the south, as SF is on a peninsula, not an island.
• Bender's body composition: In 30% Iron Chef, he claims his body is 30% Iron. In Jurassic Bark, he claims his body is 40% Dolomite. And in A Head in the Polls, his body had 40% Titanium. 40+40+30=110. With all of the research, work, and math the writers do on everything, how did they miss this?
  • He had to be repaired at least one time, it's possible that the new parts had a different composition.
  • Not to mention, Bender is a notorious braggart for a master criminal who once pounded a guy into the ground like a stake with a shovel. Are we to treat this one differently because it has numbers in it?
• The inhabitants of the faceless dimension shown in "The Farnsworth Parabox" claim they haven't seen anything ever...but they're aware of what sight is?
  • Have you ever seen oxygen? Hope? But you know what they are.
• January 1, year 2000, 00:00 and seconds, Fry falls into the cryogenic tube for 1000 years. But he wakes up on December 31, 2999, sometime in the afternoon. Then he was not frozen for 1000 years, but for 999 years, 11 months and 30 and a half days.
  • Leap years. We have leap years because the year is not 365 days long
  • A 99.99986% accuracy on that timer is pretty solid, too
  • I imagine that the people working at the lab likes to wake people up during regular business-hours. It doesn't appear that anyone is working nights, at least not New Year's Eve.
• In "Benderama" All of the world's water turns to alcohol. Within mere days the entire world is completely drunk, apparently having been forced to drink said "water". Unless the mini-Benders converted everything within bottles and cans to alcohol as well, there should at least be bottled water, or Fry's favorite, Slurm.
  • Considering the health factors, I think other drinks were available as six days of drinking pure alcohol would be incredibly lethal. It's also possible, since Bender reached sub-atomic scale, that any canned liquids once opened would have immediately been converted.
• Alright, so in Bender's Big Score, when Bender is searching for Fry, he goes to Yancy's house. After claiming he's searching for Philip J. Fry. Yancy calls Philip, however it is revealed that it's just a little kid. Anybody who's seen Luck of The Fryrish will know Yancy named his son Fry in memory of his brother. Think about it for a little, and you can pretty much conclude this as Fridge Brilliance, as it's pretty obvious it was intentional - But wait, if Fry actually traveled back to the year 2000, then why is Yancy's son still named Fry?
  • They were already that close, they just had a normal sibling rivalry as kids
  • Also, let's take into account that Fry went on an overseas mission that probably took years. Therefore, whether it's "Bender's Big Score" or "Luck of the Fryish" the scene where Yancy names his son after Fry and claims he misses him everyday could tie into either canon. He could be missing him because he got frozen or because he's on an overseas trip and might not come back. They never explicitly say whether they believe Fry to be dead or simply gone at the time.
• In the series, it is often stated that New New York was built on top of all the old buildings of Old New York. In fact, on more than one occasion, we see the gang descend into Old New York, often to find something nostalgic for Fry. Fry himself was frozen in a building which existed in 2000, therefore, Old New York. Yet somehow, when he wakes up in the year 3000, he is not underground, but above ground and yet somehow in the same tube in the same room in the same building. How did the whole facility get there?
  • If you check the backgrounds of the scenes in questions, you'll notice that the room in question is on the 64th floor (the number is on the wall when Fry exits the elevator), and the building has clearly been refurbished and redecorated/rebuilt, as it doesn't look quite the same -- and when Fry first exits the building to step out onto the streets of New New York, he very clearly does not exit through the same door he entered the building through. The building miraculously survived the destruction of Old New York, and was tall enough that most of it remained above-ground when New New York was built -- but now it's not as impressively tall and has a lot more basement levels.
• Fry's brain is 'special' because he is his own grandfather--that is to say, he fathered his own father. Yancy is descended from that same father as Fry, so Fry is also Yancy's grandfather. Professor Farnsworth is descended from Yancy. So why is Farnsworth not also immune to the brains and receiving other such bonuses from the paradox of his ancestry? Fry is both his distant uncle and distant grandfather across generations.
  • Key word: Distant. After 1000 years, whatever genetic advantage Fry had would have been considerably diluted.
  • Maybe Fry's father, and Yancy, and even Phillip J. Fry the Second did have that special brain... but none of them was around for the Brainspawn, or indeed any of the dangers that Fry's 'special' mind could stop.
• Fry being his own grandfather... That means that Fry's bloodline is self-contained. He has no ancestors; he's come from nowhere and his existence is practically an afterthought of the universe thanks to a microwave accident, like the universe was made and he was added later. He's kinda like Jesus, in fact.
  • He still has ancestors--he's only his own grandfather on his father's side.
• In When Aliens Attack it takes 1000 years for earth television shows to reach Omicron Persei 8. What did they do for entertainment in the early 30th century before TV?
  • Conquer planets and wear the faces of those conquered. Looking at it that way, it's entirely possible that TV is what brought Lrr, Ruler of the Planet Omicron Percei 8, into the lazy state of being his wife complains about today.