Futurama/Trivia

Trivia tropes

• Hey, It's That Sound!: Plenty.
  • The episode "A Clone of My Own" features the sound of the Scout Speeders from Return of the Jedi used in a chase scene.
• Hey, It's That Voice!:
  • The Robot Devil is Homer Simpson.
  • Nibbler is Megatron (and a whooole bunch of other people)
  • Fry is the voice of the bee from the Honey Nut Cheerios commercials, the red M&M, Doug Funnie (who, like Fry, is a fish out of water who has a crush on a girl with weird colored hair [Patti Mayonnaise is a Darkskinned Blonde, while Leela has to have purple hair]), Ren and Stimpys Stimpy (and Ren when the original voice of Ren [John Kricfalusi] was fired). Hell, name a cartoon, Billy West has probably been in it.
  • And if he missed any, John Dimaggio was in them. The voice of Bender is Shnitzel from Chowder, Wakka and Kimahri from Final Fantasy X, Gilgamesh in Final Fantasy XII (though he uses the "Robot Santa" voice. Check it out here), Marcus Fenix from Gears of War, Chris Creely, one of the announcers in MadWorld, Gonza in Princess Mononoke, Jake in Adventure Time, Dr. Drakken and Motor Ed from Kim Possible, Brother Blood from Teen Titans, and Rico from The Penguins of Madagascar.
    • Bender's French actor is the official voice of Chuck Norris; in Italian, he's Hannibal Lecter.
  • Amy is Kuki "#3" Sanban and Connie "Kahn Jr." Souphanousinphone (and, like Numbuh 3 and Connie, Lauren Tom also plays her own mother on Futurama)
  • Kif is The Brain. And The Real Ghostbusters's Egon Spengler. (There's a Crowning Moment of Awesome in one of the commentary tracks, when the head writer asks Maurice Lamarche to do the Brain Voice from episode. Instead, he does the other Brain voice.)
    • And... Father from Codename: Kids Next Door. Seriously. Considering Lauren Tom also plays Numbuh 3, try not to get any mental images about them together.
  • Along with voicing Spinelli's mom on the Disney cartoon, Recess, and playing Gemma Teller from Sons of Anarchy, Leela is probably best known as an obnoxious, deadpan-snarking, lazy redhead who wears cheap tight 1960s housewife clothes, watches Oprah, and berates her pathetic former high school football star husband who works as a women's shoesalesman.
  • Hermes is many, many characters, among them Vamp, Static Shock, Samurai Jack, Wilt the imaginary friend, and Marvin...who was shot in the face.
  • The Planet Express Ship is Sigourney Weaver in one episode.
  • The Sinatra-esque singer of the Into the Wild Green Yonder opening song is none other than Matt Groening's professional rival Seth MacFarlane.
  • Cubert is Lola Bunny (the Space Jam version, not the one from The Looney Tunes Show) and Phil and Lil to name a few. Like Billy West, Tress MacNeille, and John Dimaggio, she was in a lot of animated shows (mostly those meant for children).
  • Mom, like Fry and Bender, has played tons of characters in children's cartoons (such as Rescue Rangers, Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, etc) as well as adult cartoons (particularly Matt Groening's other, more popular animated sitcom.
• Life Imitates Art: Remember Amy's spray-on bikini? They're working on that.
• Shout-Out: There are way too many to list.
  • Just to give you an idea, they do a Shout-Out to Star Trek every time someone opens a door; in fact 99% of the SFX are from Trek, which is funny when you realize that the 3000s have pretty much banned any mention of Star Trek
  • The Curiosity Company Vanity Plate is an extremely obscure throwback to "A Study in Wet", a trippy experimental short film by Matt Groening's late father Homer.
  • In the episode "Proposition Infinity", you can see Gay Robot from Nick Swardson's Pretend Time dancing in the crowd.
  • The episode "Love and Rocket" is a series of shout-outs to 2001: A Space Odyssey from Bender singing "Daisy Bell" while on a date with the Planet Express ship's new sentient persona to them visiting the zoo and seeing tapirs.
  • "Lethal Inspector" does an impressive one without ever outright explaining the joke. Hermes has a cubicle next to the "center square", a sassy gay man who eventually has a large red "X" appear on his desk. It's Paul Lynde, of course, but neither his name nor Hollywood Squares are ever mentioned.
• Reciprocal Fiction Paradox: The Simpsons and Futurama play with this in the TV show, with Matt Groening's cameos on each being the creator of the other.
  • Also, in the Simpsons episode Mayored to the Mob, Üter wears a Futurama shirt (this was long before anyone had heard anything about Futurama in the real world.) In an episode of Futurama, Bender eats the shorts off of a Bart Simpsons doll.
  • Also, thanks in part to certain trope-naming episodes of South Park, and innumerable references to each other, South Park, Family Guy, and The Simpsons are all fictional within each other's Universes.
  • The episode "The Sting" seems to be a giant shout-out to a famous internet creepypast- PLEASE WAKE UP

Other stuff

• The Movie Bender's Game practically canonises Walt, Larry and Igner's ages when Nibbler says "It was 36 years ago... now" when Mom started drilling for Dark Matter with the intention of selling it. With their ages being only a couple of years apart and Igner being unborn and only just concieved at the time (Mom didn't appear pregnant in flashbacks)...
  • She had to have been pregnant (but not showing) in the scene where she leaves Farnsworth, because we know who Igner's father is.
  • Walt is approximately 39
  • Larry is approximately 37
  • Igner is approximately 35