< Futurama

Futurama/Tropes A To D


  • 0% Approval Rating: The ultimate summary of Bender's tenure as pharaoh.
  • 20% More Awesome: When the Planet Express crew see the Beastie Boys (or their heads) in concert, Leela marvels, "They're bustin' mad rhymes with an 80 percent success rate."

Bender: I believe that qualifies as 'Ill', at least from a technical standpoint.

  • Abnormal Ammo: During "Anthology of Interest, Part I"'s first segment, in which Bender asked what life would be like if he were over 500 feet tall, things quickly devolved into a Kaiju battle between a 500-foot-tall Zoidberg and Bender. The weapons they decide to use? Zoidberg decides to use a section of a subway as nunchucks, while Bender takes a section of the highspeed onramp and uses the people in it and around him as blow-darts.
  • Action Girl: Leela.
  • Actor Allusion:
    • The episode in which Leela finds a male cyclops (who turns out to be a polygamist shapeshifter) named Alkazar and begins dating him has an entire sequence that plays out like an episode of Married... with Children (which Katey Sagal was famous for before her stint on Futurama), complete with Leela dressed in Peg's tacky housewife clothes and big red hair (which is dead on), Leela's whiny, "Al...", and the barrage of Double Entendre met with the lewd hoots and hollers of Al's sleazy friends (similar to the way the Married... with Children studio audience reacted to those jokes).
    • Mark Hamill voices Hanukkah Zombie, who flies around in a TIE Fighter with Stars of David on the solar panels. We see it when facing a bunch of solid gold Death Stars.
    • Fry has a few personality traits similar to Billy West's previous character, Doug Funnie. Not to mention Fry's brother's named Yancey, which is also Doug's middle name.
    • In "The Mutants Are Revolting", Hermes is the one who reads the inscription of the green ring that shoots lasers.
    • When Fry visits the deserted remains of Old New York, he shouts, "Howard Stern is overrated!". Billy West was a member of the Howard Stern Show for several years.
    • From "Silence of the Clamps," when Bender's friends are looking for him at a farm, and they find a Bending Unit whom they believe to be Bender:

Fry: Bender, it's us, your friends. You can drop the hillbilly moron act.

Bending Unit: Sorry mister, but I'm no Bender. I'm just a simple farmer. Name's Billy West!

Fry: *laughs* Billy West? That's a stupid phoney made-up name.

  • Adam and Eve Plot: Invoked in "In-A-Gadda-De-Leela."
    • As well as in "A Bicyclops Built for Two."
  • Aerial Canyon Chase: The episode "A Clone of My Own" features an extended parody of the famous Star Wars scene during the escape from the Near-Death Star.
  • Affably Evil: Robot Devil is actually most of the time rather polite as a character, despite being a robot Satan, and the depths to which Bender sinks at times leave even him appalled.
  • Affectionate Parody:
    • Almost anything you can name, especially in the fields of science and science-fiction.
    • An entire episode ("When Aliens Attack") was dedicated to making fun of Ally McBeal and the Viewers are Morons philosophy.
    • On that note, another episode ("Love and Rocket", mentioned below) was dedicated to parodying 2001: A Space Odyssey. It even parodied the sequence of shutting down HAL.
    • Also, the season 6 finale, "Reincarnation", reimaging Futurama in 3 different animation styles (30's Max Fleischer style, pixelated 80's video-games and 70's Anime), while parodying their respectives tropes.
  • Alien Autopsy: Dr. Zoidberg is revealed to have been the alien the autopsy was performed on in the episode "Roswell that Ends Well," but he's still alive and conscious and makes comments like, "Take [my heart], I've got four of them." He seems to find the whole thing bemusing, but not unpleasant.
    • Until..."Don't cut that! I need that to speak!" Cue increase in speed of sawing.
  • Aliens Made Them Do It: The final bit to the Season 6 episode "In-A-Gadda-De-Leela."
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: Amy, which is the main reason she falls for Bender after her breakup with Kif in "Proposition Infinity". Arguably an example of Negative Continuity, since she'd earlier shown that she wasn't particularly affected by the charms of manly/bad boy type and was head over heels for Kif's personality.
    • Then again, she had just broken up with Kif and was saddened by it, so she hooked up with Bender, who has none of Kif's traits.
    • Actually, the real Negative Continuity comes from the failure to Retcon why Robosexuality is forbidden. They actually made a very good explanation of that in a previous episode.
  • All Just a Dream: The episodes The Sting and Obsoletely Fabulous.
  • All Part of the Show: Lrrr (RULER OF THE PLANET OMICRON PERSEI 8!!!) invades Earth. He happens to land on the stage for the Comic Con costume contest. He gives his "You will be conquered" speech. Everyone applauds politely, then he gets ushered off the stage.
  • All Planets Are Earthlike: The only non-Earthlike planets shown so far are a few moons and asteroids without atmospheres, and one high-gravity (but otherwise Earthlike) planet. Even the world with three giant suns, apart from being a bit warm at full noon, was perfectly livable to humans.
  • Almost Out of Oxygen:
    • In "Love and Rocket", the Planet Express ship computer (which has developed a crush on Bender and gone completely insane) cuts off the oxygen supply, so Leela and Fry have to wear spacesuits while they try to switch it off.
    • Also occurs in "The Series Has Landed", when Fry and Leela get lost on the moon.
  • Alternate Universe:
    • One episode implies there are an infinite number.
    • Another one features only one other alternate universe: a Cowboy universe.
      • Wasn't the cowboy universe a parallel universe, rather than an alternate?
    • Professor Farnsworth creates dozens of boxes which act as gateways to parallel universes. Each one of those universes has doorways to all the other universes. That sound was your brain overloading. And it doesn't help that in the end, two of the universes end up with the boxes to their own universe.
    • "The Beast With a Billion Backs" reveals the existence of yet another universe, this one accessible from a tear in the fabric of space-time. It is home to only one sentient being: Yivo, the infinitely huge, love-lorn ball of Naughty Tentacles.

"These aren't tentacles. They're genticles."

    • Another episode has Farnsworth, Fry, and Bender get into a time machine that only goes forward. They discover that when the universe ends it is replaced by another, identical universe (except Farnsworth killing Adolf Hitler). They end up returning to their correct time period in a THIRD identical universe, inadvertently killing that universe's version of themselves as well as Eleanor Roosevelt instead of Hitler.
  • All the Good Men Are Gay:
    • A Gym Bunny offers Leela a walk on the beach, and immediately claims that he's gay when she says yes. A double whammy. He's actually a professional beach bully who steals women away from their boyfriends so the men can heroically win them back in a fight; Leela invites him on the walk after Fry refuses to pay him for his services, as Leela is not his girlfriend.
    • The gang is at a club, and Bender's built-in gaydar shoots down the girls' hopes when they see good looking men. It might have been interference from a gay weather balloon...

"Just as well; I think he comes from a dimension that's big on musical theatre."

  • Almost Kiss:
    • Happens with Fry and Leela twice: Once in "A Flight to Remember" and again in "Xmas Story".
    • Also in "The Cyber House Rules" with Leela and her old friend Adlai Atkins when they're at the Municipal Aboretum.
  • Alternative Number System: Robots sometimes use base 2.
  • Aluminum Christmas Trees: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: Though they may just be aliens.
  • American Accents:
    • Despite being set in the future, stereotypes associated with American accents still apply, even with respect to alien life forms. Amy comes from a rich family and has a Valley Girl accent (even though her parents have stereotypically Chinese accents), while Zoidberg and his species speak with Yiddish accents and sometimes display Jewish stereotypes.
  • America Takes Over the World: Although only THE world, and not any of the millions of others.
    • Spheron 1 was definitely conquered.
    • Don't you mean thoroughly licked?
    • No, that was just its inhabitants.
  • Amusing Alien: Lots, plus Zoidberg.
  • Amusing Injuries: The bone-crunching sound effects do make you wince, though.
  • Anachronic Order: The episodes of the back half of season 6 are being aired outside of production order. This leads to jokes that don't make sense, like Hermes saying Scruffy was revived as a zombie despite not dying in the previously aired episode.
  • Anal Probing: Fry is abducted by a flying saucer whose vanity plate reads "PROBE #1."
    • Special mention goes to The Probulator.
  • And the Adventure Continues...: In the fourth film Into the Wild Green Yonder, once many of the hanging romantic plot threads are tied up, the Planet Express crew is on the run from the Earth military. However, they come across a massive wormhole. Professor Farnsworth warns that it could transport them trillions of light years away, with no hope of returning to Earth. Despite this, crew enthusiastically decides to fly into it anyway. It's then completely averted when the series was brought back again.
  • And the Rest: In the episode Less Than Hero where Fry, Leela and Bender form a crime-fighting trio called Captain Yesterday, Cloberella and Superking. Their theme tune becomes:

Go, go, go, New Justice Team: Fighting justice is their quest: Superking, Clobberella and all the rest.

    • It also occurs in "Rebirth":

Fry: Hermes Conrad! Amy Wong!
Hermes: Dr. Zoidberg!
(Scruffy, LaBarbara and Kif appear)
 Fry: And the rest!

  • And You Were There: Parodied in "Anthology of Interest II," where Leela tells Fry that she had a wonderful dream, "...except you were there, and you were there, and you were there!"
  • Androids and Detectives: Those Two Guys who are the only cops you regularly see are a human/robot duo, and when Fry joins the police force this seems to be their policy.
  • Animated Series
  • Anticlimax: There are many moments of this in the series.
    • The ending scene of Into The Wild Green Yonder where the main characters are on the run from the law and to escape, they flee into a gigantic wormhole which is to take them light-years away without anyway of knowing if they can return. Originally intended to by the final scene of the series, it is made dramatic by having Leela and Fry kiss for the first time as the ship flies into the wormhole and it morphs into the familiar pattern of lights shown in the opening sequence of each episode. In the first episode of the renewed season, a Snap Back is pulled and the characters find themselves back at Earth as they come out of the wormhole.

Bender: "Yeah, we're back."

    • In Season 6, Mom's plan to turn people into zombies ends up being this too (and again, bloody hilarious).
  • Anti-Gravity Clothing: In Homage to The Jetsons.
  • Anything That Moves:
    • Amy shows shades of this at times. Depending on the episode, her readiness to leap into bed with aliens, jerkasses and complete strangers shifts between "party girl" and "college bicycle". At least until she gets together with Kif. (As of ' Proposition Infinity', you can now add robots to that list.)
    • "Happy Freedom Day, ladies! Come on, show me something. Anything. Seriously, I'd take an armpit." Needless to say Zapp Brannigan isn't picky.
    • And then there's Yivo, an extra-dimensional being that had sex with every single person in the universe at the same time. Except for Leela.
    • Bender and Farnsworth sometimes fit this trope.
    • As well as Hedonism Bot, of course.
    • Leela doesn't do "anything", but does do Zapp, Alkazar, and Fry-in-Zoidberg's-body of her own free will.
      • Not really a fair example, since Zapp and Alkazar manipulated Leela's emotions (Zapp by acting pathetic, Al by pretending they were the Last of Their Kind).
  • Applied Phlebotinum: Naturally almost every episode, especially thanks to Professor Farnsworth having an invention for every occasion.
    • However, it is beautifully subverted almost as often. For example, in the 2nd-season episode Fry and the Slurm Factory, the Slurm drink manufacturer runs a contest where the grand prize is won by finding one golden bottle cap hidden in a Slurm can. Fry wonders if there could be a way to find the bottlecap without having to buy millions of cans. As expected, he shortly comes into possession of the professor's "F-Ray" (which can see through anything) and uses it on every can of slurm in the city of New New York. But while this wins him lots of "minor" prizes (including a jetski!), he still doesn't find the golden bottlecap. He's so frustrated that he declares he will never look at another can of slurm again. Of course, he immediately goes to the fridge to get another one to drink. It's the winning can.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Just like in Matt Groening's other show. For example, in "Neutopia", Leela lists two things she doesn't like about being a man, then inexplictably says, "The food at those strip clubs is terrible," as if it were a third reason.
  • Art Shift: The final episode of season 6 features three acts, each animated in a different style, including Fleischer, early low resolution video games, and anime.
  • Ascended Meme: The "Squinting Fry" image macro showed up in a recent Comedy Central promo for the new 2012 season.
    • As did the "Why Not Zoidberg?" meme. Bonus points for both memes being voiced over by their respective voice actors.
  • Asian Airhead: Amy Wong.
  • Asteroids Monster: A Slurm-slug exhibits this ability after being hit by Leela.
  • Auction
  • Author Appeal: Deliberately parodied at numerous points.
    • While the future doesn't have Fry's "primitive notions of modesty", the only characters who seem to have no sense of modesty are Farnsworth (over 150 years old), Hermes (obese), and Cubert (twelve, overweight, and only really immodest when he's first taken out of his cloning vat).
    • Also, humans have been genetically engineered to have larger penises, or it's possibly an oblique reference to Fry being circumcised, which according to Arthur C. Clarke, is illegal in the year 3001.
    • And of course there are the giant Amazon women in Fur Bikinis.
    • There's a speculative fiction fetish for nearly everyone, and they're all going down.
  • A Worldwide Punomenon: Invoked in-universe with the "Goofy Gopher Revue" from "The Series Has Landed".
    • The show has plenty, but possibly none so great as when visiting the President's heads in season 6.

Bender: Anyone seen Ulysses Grant? He owes me a cheroot.
Leela: He's over there, pukin' in the Bushes.
[Ulysses Grant prepares to vomit in the jars of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush]
George H. W. Bush's head and George W. Bush's heads: No!

  • Axe Crazy: Roberto, the criminally insane, psychotic stab-bot.

"I was built by a team of engineers tryin' to create an insane robot. But it seems... they failed!"

Brannigan: And have the boy lay out my formal shorts.
Kif: The boy?
Brannigan: You. You lay out my formal shorts.

    • Lampshaded in Into the Wild Green Yonder:

Brannigan [after having arrested everyone]: Kif -- round 'em up. And spare me the weary sigh this time.

  • Beneficial Disease: In "Parasites Lost", eating a bad sandwich gives Fry worms that rebuild his body, making him stronger and smarter.
  • Berserk Button: The three Benders make fun of the ugly alien giant for being ugly which he accepts, but Fry's big mistake when he talks about his mother.
  • Beta Couple: both parodied and played straight in Kif and Amy.
  • Big Big Applesauce.
  • Big Damn Movie: there are a couple of ordinary episodes that threaten reality, but the movies generally raise the stakes.
  • Big Eater: Nibbler (and the rest of the Nibblonians). Let the Feast Of A Thousand Hams begin! Also Zoidberg, whenever he's not rummaging through garbage cans. He destroys an entire buffet table in "Roswell That Ends Well" There were hints of Amy of being one throughout the series, but it wasn't until "The Prisoner of Benda" when she switched bodies that she wanted to satisfy her food lust.
  • Big Little Man: When Bender wonders what it would be like to be 500 feet high, we're shown a towering Bender...who then turns out to be a normal-sized robot constructing the giant Bender.
  • Big "Never!"
  • Big No:
    • In Mars University, when Professor Farnsworth realizes his pet monkey wants to be only decently smart and get a degree in business, instead of a being a genius.
    • Fry cuts loose with one after invading aliens destroy his sand castle.
    • Large Ham acting unit Calculon has one in one of his movies. The whole clip is just the Big No, and yet he says it needs no context. It's then hilariously lampshaded:

Talk show host-bot: ...And now a scene from All My Circuits. Calculon, care to set this one up?
Calculon: No, I think the one speaks for itself.

  • clip of Calculon belting a Big No while a pirate, parrot and all, flips burgers on a barbeque in the background.*

Calculon: Interesting side note: the script called for me to say "Yes", but I gave it a little twist.

    • The newest season likes this trope. First Fry did this when the censoring satellite V-Giny refused to censor Leela and Zapp's copulation. Then the Professor did one when he realized he'd lived to see the day when Amy and Bender got engaged. And most recently and more seriously, Bender had this reaction when he learned that he didn't have a back-up unit and will die one day.

Farnsworth:"I'm just glad I didn't live to see this day."
Beat "Wait a minute..." (checks pulse)
Noooooo!!!

    • In "A Flight to Remember", there's one from Bender after losing Countess de la Roca in the black hole while evacuating from the Titanic(also sucked in the black hole), and one from Hermes in his flashback from the 2980 Olympics when one of his fans attempts to limbo the stick, which is very low, causing him to break his back.
    • Leela gets one in "Yo Leela Leela," after lying about the Rumbledy-Hump planet leads to sweatshop-like jobs for the Humplings and the orphans.
  • Bilingual Bonus:
    • The "alien writing" seen in the background of many scenes are actually ciphers. Fans made a game of decoding them, and the messages are often shouts-out. There's actually two versions; one is a simple subsitution cypher—the other is almost maddeningly complicated.
    • In the global warming episode, the crew goes to Kyoto and passes a "Curious Pussycat" billboard that states "I love you more than your mother."
    • Whenever Amy gets angry and curses in Chinese, though according to the audio commentary for the second episode, what Lauren Tom yelled in Chinese was harsh and insulting, but not obscene.
    • Adolf Hitler gets a single line in "The Late Philip J. Fry". In German, it translates to "Look at my moustache!"
    • In the first Christmas episode, the characters point out that they actually pronounce it X-mas. After Fry buys Leela a parrot, you can see a sign in the background that says 'Cerrado Para Xavidad.' 'Cerrado Para Navidad' means 'Closed for Christmas.'
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mom, who presents a down-to-earth family values image to the world, but in reality is a nasty, ruthless corporate hag who cares about money, power, and nothing else.
  • Bizarrchitecture:
    • When Fry and Bender are looking for a new apartment, and get a tour of Relativity.

Fry: I don't know if I want to pay for a dimension we're not going to use.

Bender: I prefer the term "extortion"! The "X" makes it sound cool.

  • The Blank: "The Farnsworth Parabox" - When the group is going through various alternate universes, the alternate Amy stumbles upon a universe where everyone is faceless.

Hermes: We didn't see anything...Ever!

  • Blatant Lies: "Good news, everyone!"
  • Blind Idiot Translation: The German dub suffers from this - starting even before Fry gets frozen. "Doomsday Prophets cautiously upbeat" - "Weltuntergangspropheten vorsichtig verprügelt" (which translates back to English as 'End of the world prophets beaten up carefully').
  • Blernsball Episode: "A Leela of Her Own" (though the Lead In for "Fear of a Bot Planet" introduced the sport).
  • Body Backup Drive: Robots built in Futurama have a wireless backup unit that save a copy of them every day, so if their bodies get killed, they'd just download into another body. With the notable exception of Bender.
  • Body Horror: the Bone-itis death of That Guy.
  • Boobs of Steel: Leela is probably the toughest person in the series. She's also among the bustiest.
  • Book Ends: The final scene in Into the Wild Green Yonder
  • Boot Camp Episode: Fry and Bender enlist in order to take advantage of a discount for recruits, with the understanding that they can quit unless "War were declared". Three seconds later, "War were declared."
  • Borrowed Catchphrase:

Hermes: (indicating a graph) As you can see, since Bender's death, requests to bite one's shiny metal ass are down 98%. (Scruffy uses Bender's remains to vacuum) Do you mind doing that later?
Scruffy: Bite my shiny metal ass. (the graph rises)

  • Brain In a Jar: Heads, actually, typically involving present-day celebrities (such as the pickled head of Stephen Hawking in a way-cool rocket).
    • Also parodied, as they have the head of every US president going back to Washington.
    • Also inverted: as Vice President of Earth, Spiro Agnew is a headless body.
  • Brainless Beauty: Amy at least some of the time. Somewhat played with in that Amy is an intern going for a masters degree in astro-physics, she's just ditzy. Unfortunately, the bookworm element rarely makes an appearance.
    • The sixth season makes a concerted effort to show her assisting more with Farnsworth's experiments, and finally getting her doctorate after interning with him for 12 years.
    • Fry becomes one in 'Neutopia' after being turned into a woman

Female Fry: Now when I say stupid things guys all laugh and buy me stuff!

  • Break the Haughty: In the "Mars University" episode, Gunther, the professor's arrogant and hyper-intelligent monkey, gets taken down a peg or two when his Amazingly Embarrassing Parents are unleashed on Parent's Weekend.
  • Breaking in Old Habits:
    • In one of the earliest episodes, Fry's hands get eaten by a T. rex. He's then taken to a "Handcrafters" store to get new hands. He says "I'll break them in tonight."
    • In "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings", Fry switches hands with the Robot Devil. While the Robot Devil's hands immediately try to choke Fry, the robot devil complains that Fry's hands "keep touching me! In places!". Fry responds: "Yeah, they get around".
  • Breakout Character: Bender.
  • Brick Joke:
    • The "fresh-ground executive" joke was used repeatedly in Bender's Big Score.
    • When the gang goes to get Bender's brain back from the Central Bureaucracy, the elderly man in front of them states that he's still waiting for his birth certificate. Later in Season 6...

Old Man: I'd like to file for a death certifica-- ERK!
He falls over dead
Teller: Sorry, that's Section C. Next!

    • That Omicronian-esque "cross-species-dresser" in Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences wants to have Lrrr's Popplers!
    • Also in the hundredth episode, Barbados Slim is shown dancing with Hermes' wife, LaBarbara Conrad. In "Bender's Big Score", she leaves Hermes for Barbados because Hermes loses his body
    • In X-mas Story, Leela tells Fry that the word "ask" is now pronounced "axe". It's pronounced this way for the rest of the series!
    • In the Season 6 episode, The Prisoner of Benda, Professor Farnsworth (who is actually Leela) covers his right eye to see properly, which was done in an earlier episode.
    • When Fry slams the brakes on the antique car in "Lesser of Two Evils", Bender slams headfirst into the dashboard and complains about receiving ass whiplash. Five seconds later, we see Flexo on the ground, complaining about Ass Whiplash as well, but, from his condition, it seems to be more severe than Bender's.
    • In A Clockwork Origin, Farnsworth reveals that Zoidberg is Cubert's godfather. This seems like a typical "Zoidberg is a loser" joke, but The Tip of the Zoidberg shows that the two have been close friends for decades, meaning it actually makes sense that Farnsworth asked Zoidberg to be the godfather.
    • In "Anthology of Interest I", the Finglonger turns out to be key. It later shows up occasionally, when Farnsworth has to poke Lrrr awake.
  • Butt Monkey: Zoidberg and Kif, presumably unrelated to their biology, though Fry falls into the category many times as well.
  • Caffeine Bullet Time: Fry, in the episode Three Hundred Big Boys
  • Call a Human a Meatbag: Bender's favourite insult for humans is "meatbag".
  • Call Back: In the episode "The Late Philip J. Fry", at the very end, when Fry, Bender, and Farnsworth return to their own age (well, two universes later), they inadvertently crush the ones already existing in that time, provoking Farnsworth to remark "That takes care of the Time Paradox!" a reference to "Bender's Big Score," where the Time Paradox is a huge plot point.
    • In the same episode, you can see various scenes from previous Futurama episodes and movies, such as Fry and That Eighties Guy entering the conference table, and Professor Farnsworth attached to Yivo.
    • In "The Silence of the Clamps", Zoidberg uses his mating head crest.
    • In "All the Presidents' Heads", we get this exchange in reference to Bender's various claims throughout the 1999-2003 run of the series of the different percentage of materials that he was composed of:

Paul Revere: Ah, I see that the new scrap metal I ordered is here.
Bender: I'm 40% scrap metal, baby. (pounds on chest)

  • Calvin Ball: Blernsball, the game that baseball has evolved into by the year 3000. It's as impossible for Fry to follow as it would be for someone from the year 1000 to understand modern baseball. Of course, the writers are actually just making stuff up.
  • Can-Crushing Cranium: Bender, with a whole keg.
  • Cannibalism Superpower:
    • The Professor gives advice to this effect in "War is the H-Word".

Professor: If you kill an enemy, be sure to eat their heart. To gain their courage. Their rich, tasty courage.

    • Hermes claims to have once swallowed a calculator to gain its power.
      • Claims nothing. We saw the X-Ray!
  • Can't Get Away with Nuthin': A very brief example of this occurs when Fry visits the abandoned ruins of Old New York and realizes he can jaywalk without fear of getting a ticket. The moment he crosses the middle of the street, he is run-over by a lizard the size of a bus which appears out of nowhere.
  • Can't Live Without You: After Fry is critically injured in a car crash, his head is placed on Amy's body to keep him alive until his body is healed.
  • Captain Obvious:
    • "Bender, on the screen! It's that guy you are!"
    • "Bender need brain for smart-making!"
    • "Ow! Fire hot!"
    • "Ow! Fire indeed hot!"
    • "I'm a gigantic brain!"
    • Lampshaded in The Honking, when Bender, Leela, and Fry follow some tire tracks, which lead directly under a garage door.

Leela: The tracks lead here.
Fry: Thanks, eagle eye.

Jack Johnson: It's time that someone had the courage to stand up and say: "I'm against those things that everybody hates!"
John Jackson: I respect my opponent. He's a good man. But frankly, I agree with everything he just said!

Fry: Can I count down?
Leela: Huh? Sure.
*They take off and rapidly approach the moon as Fry counts*
Fry: Ten...nine...eight...seven...
Leela: We're here.
Fry: *quickly* Sixfivefourthreetwoone blast off!

"Good news, everyone!"
"Sweet Zombie Jesus!"

"Eh-Wha?"

"WERNSTROM!"

    • His short lived catchphrase to explain why he lacked motivation to do things: "Although I am already in my pajamas."
    • Bender:

"Bite my shiny metal ass!"
"Cheese it!"
"Fun on a bun."
"I'm back, baby."
"Neat!" (Takes a photograph)
"Hot diggity daffodil!"
"Oy, this guy."
"I'm X% <material under discussion>!"

    • Scruffy:

"I'm Scruffy...the janitor."
"I'm on break."

    • Hermes has two which vary somewhat: "Great [animal] of [place or deity that rhymes with animal]!" and euphemisms involving green snakes and sugarcane. The first one is lampshaded in a scene in one episode, where Hermes is so weak from fatigue that he can only say, "Great... something, of... someplace."

"MY MANWICH!"

    • In Into the Wild Green Yonder, Hermes' wife LeBarbara attempts these a few times, to Hermes' disapproval.

Not your strong suit, woman!

    • Zoidberg:

"WOOB-WOOB-WOOB-WOOB-WOOB-WOOB-WOOB-WOOB-WOOB-WOOB-WOOB-WOOB!"

    • Leela:

"We're boned." (Shared with Fry.)
"Heeeee-YAH!"
"Oh, Lord."

    • Elzar:

"Let's knock it up a notch."
"Bam!"

    • Kif's exasperated sigh.
    • "I am Lrrr, ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8!"
    • "I'm feeling lucky!" (Used by everyone, with occasional variations)
  • Channel Hop: Twice over, only once over as it concerns original episodes.
  • Charity Ball: "The Mutants Are Revolting" features a charity ball for a mutant scholarship program.
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: In the episode "Fry And The Slurm Factory".
  • Chekhov's Armoury: Although Fry's lack of a delta wave is the most prominent Chekhov's Gun, there are heaps, with some things returning in the same episode they were introduced to become something significant (e.g. the card for Leela's birthday in 6x05), to returning episodes or even seasons later to become something important (this comes to a head in the movie Bender's Big Score when everything (and everyone) introduced that may seem insignificant early on becomes absolutely essential to the plot later on).
    • Chekhov's Boomerang: That thing with Fry's head? That comes back more than once.
    • Chekhov's Gag: Considering the above list and the fact that this show is primarily comedy, what do you think?
    • Chekhov's Gun:
      • The Quantum Gemerald in The Mutants are Revolting; the powerful beam it emits turns out to be very useful when Fry uses it to save the mutants from a tidal wave of sewage. Better still, the Quantum Gemerald was first mentioned in "Less Than Hero" where the supervillain the crew was fighting against wanted to steal it.
      • In Insane in the Mainframe, Fry (thinking he's a robot) takes a can of oil from Leela and puts it in his inside coat pocket after using it. Later in the episode when Roberto stabs him, the knife penetrates the oil can, making Roberto think that Fry really is a battle robot, causing him to Freak-Out and run away, saving the crew.
    • Chekhov's Gunman:
      • Nibbler. Starting from the very first episode.
      • On a less significant scale, these characters show importance later on (in the form of a Chekhov's Army): Scruffy (the janitor (owns half the company)), Robot Santa (important in the movies), President Nixon (introduced as a throwaway and then proceeds to fuck up the earth royally more than once (no surprise)), the Harlem Globetrotters (... they're all brilliant applied physicists), Amy (turns out she's a brilliant grad student), the Robot Devil (sorta).
    • Chekhov's Gift: they're a delivery service... *hint*
    • Chekhov's Hobby: A few, from Professor's Farnsworth's proclivity for inventions (mainly doomsday machines) right down to Hermes' ability to limbo.

Farnsworth: Doomsday device you say? Ah, now the ball's in Farnsworth's court!

    • Chekhov's Skill: Fry learns how to pilot the ship. And how to play the holophoner, a futuristic musical instrument.
      • In "The Series Has Landed", Amy spends a lot of time playing The Crane Game, in order to get the keys to the ship back. All that practice sure came in handy at the end of the episode, when she needed to save Fry, Leela and Bender using a magnet.
    • Chekhov MIA: ... I'm not even going to bother.
    • Chekhov's Development Team: Because if it's introduced, it is going to come back at some point, even if just to lampshade itself!
  • Chirping Crickets
  • The Chosen One / The Chosen Zero: Fry. Thanks to being his own grandfather (that's Time Travel for you) Fry is the only sentient being in the universe who lacks a delta brain wave, thus making him immune to various forms of telepathic attack, and earning him the title of "The Mighty One" among the Nibblonians.. In the 30th century, he turns out to be the key to mankind's survival on a number of occasions, to the point that we eventually learn that Nibbler froze him on purpose in the year 2000 so he'd be alive to save the world in the 31st century.

When Fry is told that the fate of the universe depends on him in the fourth movie, he casually replies "Yeah, I get that a lot."

  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Robot 1-X, who is introduced as a new Planet Express staff member in "Obsoletely Fabulous" and is gone without a trace in the next episode.
  • Clark Kenting: Fry, Bender, and Leela somehow manage to pull this off in the episode "Less Than Hero."
  • Cleavage Window: Many of the one-shot outfits Leela and Amy wear.
    • In Leela's case, many of her one-shot outfits feature a bellybutton window instead. Probably a Shout-Out to the old prohibition on showing navels on television.
  • Cliffhanger Copout: The cliffhanger of the fourth movie, in which the ship dives into a wormhole, with potential for Nothing Is the Same Anymore, was completely ruined by the Uncancelled season premiere taking the characters back to Earth immediately. Lampshade Hanging and Rule of Funny mostly make up for it.
  • Clock Punk: Leonardo Da Vinci's workshop and the entire planet Vinci in the "The Duh-Vinci Code"
  • Clockwork Creature: Animatronio in "The Duh-Vinci Code"
  • Closer Than They Appear: "Objects may be less sexy than they appear" shows up on a clothes shop mirror.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Fry, always. He also doubles as a very strange variation of Genius Ditz, in that sometimes he does things ridiculously well to the point of brilliance (e.g. writing a symphony (once he got the hands to play it), driving the ship and shooting at a chasing car of robot mafia at the same time, and re-arranging an entire galaxy with a gravitational array to write Leela a love message).
  • Coattail-Riding Relative: Fry's initial plan in the pilot is to avoid work entirely by mooching from the Professor. He settles for low-grade employment via Nepotism instead.
  • Comatose Canary
  • Combat Pragmatist: Pretty much everyone, but especially Leela and Bender. Although, it is often Played for Laughs.
  • Come Back to Bed, Honey: Fry hears this from his grandmother-to-be in "Roswell That Ends Well".
  • Comic Trio: The idiotic brothers Walt, Larry and Igner. They're ALL idiots, even Walt; the only reason their plans work is because they perform them on Fry.
  • Compliment Backfire
  • Concealing Canvas: In Bender's Big Score
  • Conspicuously Public Assassination: The end of Bender's reign in "A Pharaoh to Remember".
  • Context Sensitive Button: The antennae on Bender's head seems to do everything from cooking popcorn to interrupting TV signals and it's a metaphor for a penis on top of all that.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • Fry's nephew was revealed to have been buried in Orbiting Meadows Cemetery in season 3's "The Luck of the Fryrish". Now, whenever a character that is important to that episode's plot or important to the main cast dies, his or her funeral is always held at Orbiting Meadows.
    • Cosmic Ray's Pizza was used as a throwaway gag in season one's "A Fishful of Dollars." Now, it's the common place for the Planet Express crew to order or eat out.
    • All four films that comprise Season 5 contain a number of nods to previous episodes, arguably to the point of Continuity Porn.
    • The best nod was probably Lucy Liu's brief reappearance in Bender's body cabinet in "Love and Rocket", several episodes after he'd put her there at the end of "I Dated a Robot".
    • Early in the series Professor Farnsworth mentions that they renamed Uranus "Urectum" to finally put an end to that stupid joke. In "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" when they zoom in on the Death Sphere, the caption on the planet where Uranus is reads Urectum.
    • Richard Nixon's election as the President of Earth seems like the kind of that would be undone by a Snap Back, but he's still there.
    • The Harlem Globetrotters were introduced as an alien race that wanted to ruin Earth's reputation by utterly humiliating them in a basketball game and ultimately helping the Planet Express crew solve the episode's major conflict in "Time Keeps On Slippin'". Now, whenever there's a crisis that's too big, even for Farnsworth to solve, the Globetrotters (primarily Ethan "Bubblegum" Tate) step in to save the day. Tate is also seen as a dean at Mars University in "That Darn Katz!"
    • In "Lethal Inspection", Bender notes he was "in Italy last week", a nod to the previous week's episode.
    • Poodles were established as extinct, however at least two have appeared in Series 6, a reference to "The Wild Green Yonder" where all extinct species were brought back.
    • "The Late Philip J. Fry" is full of these, since Fry, Bender, and the Professor, travel through all of recorded history. The best example could be that time is indeed cyclical. Also, it recounts the first millennium that passed when Fry got frozen, including the fall of the original New York City, its reemergence as a medieval kingdom (and its destruction), before the emergence of New New York.
    • In "The Mutants Are Revolting" As Fry leaves the Land Titanic, you can see a case of anchovies in the bottom right corner, a nod to "A Fishful of Dollars."
    • A blink and you'll miss it, but every now and then you'll hear people say "axe" instead of "ask".
    • In "Bender's Big Score," you can briefly see the fossilized remains of Seymour on a shelf over Lars' shoulder. Might also be seen as Foreshadowing of Lars' reveal later in the movie.
    • Hermes finds another one of Fry's fossilized dogs in "A Clockwork Origin." He throws it into some soup to avoid a repeat of the last one.
    • In "The Sting", Fry's funeral is attended by every one of his former lovers, including the radiator he made out with.
    • A couple more in "Ghost in the Machines," both by the Robot Devil, and within a minute of each other. The first is when he mentioned the hand-swap deal he made with Fry in the first Series Fauxnale "The Devils Hands are Idle Playthings." The second reference is when he starts singing the Robot Hell song from "Hell is Other Robots," but Bender interrupts it within the first few seconds.
    • And now a major one in "Law & Oracle." Let's see what we have here: The episode starts with Fry playing an arcade game, and fails miserably. Someone says "You stink, loser" in response to his failed attempt to play an arcade game. Someone comes in with a pizza and shouts "Hey, Fry, pizza going out. Come on!" Fry takes his (hover)bike out to the Applied Cryogenics building, where he realizes he's been duped once again. These are all taken, almost from context[1] from Space Pilot 3000. He even Lampshades his tendency to not look at the customer name before making the delivery!
    • The most recent episode, "All the President's Heads" features a major nod back to the third season episode "Roswell That Ends Well". In the most recent episode, the crew discovers a new method of time travel and goes back to Revolutionary days. Fry removes one of the lanterns from the "one if by land, two if by sea" church, prompting Paul Revere to exclaim "the British are coming! By land!". Upon seeing Fry's error, the Professor exclaims "Fry, you've really screwed the granny this time!".
    • "All the President's Heads also contains a nod to "Bender's Big Score". The Busty Head Doctor greets Fry at his job as a head feeder by calling him Lars. Fry tells her his real name, to which she replies, "whatever".
    • "Overclockwise" shows a profile of Bender, including his full name (Bender Bending Rodriguez), serial number, and the fact that he was inspected by Inspector #5.
    • Also from that episode, a sewer mutant is seen serving on the jury, a nod to them now being able to come to the surface from "The Mutants Are Revolting".
    • In "A Leela of her Own", the Atlanta Braves' uniform has a trident in place of the familiar tomahawk, a nod to "The Deep South", which showed Atlanta had become an Underwater City.
    • During Bender's Big Score, we see Bender fleeing after stealing an award. The chase scene involves the city being destroyed...cue the scene from the pilot of ships destroying the city outside the cryogenics lab's window.
    • In "The Late Phillip J. Fry", when approaching the "present" time, scenes from previous episodes are shown (albeit re-animated), including Fry and Zoidberg dancing on a table in "A Taste of Freedom".
    • Bender's gender-flip form in "Neutopia" is Coilette from "Bend Her".
  • Continuity Snarl: Averted. A Deleted Scene in "Bender Gets Made" features Bender crudely replacing his serial number with the number 14 to hide himself from the Robot Mafia. However, the serial number depicted was that of his good twin Flexo (2716057), not Bender's (3370318) -- the implication to attentive fans being that Flexo has covertly taken over Bender's life. The creators realized this wouldn't go over well with anyone and took the scene out.
    • The episode Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles shows Bender aging backwards into a smaller and smaller robot, then finally into a CD of blueprints. However he previously showed a picture of himself "just 4 months old" that he was going to send to Mom, which showed him at his current size, contradicting the whole 'robot aging' thing. It is possible to justify this, however. If one is willing to remember the scene where he was built in the factory, he was not 'born/finished' until fully produced. Meaning that the smaller robots and cd and blueprints would effectively be the robot equivalent of being a fetus. By this argument, He could be fully grown at 4 months, as he was effectively born fully grown. This is all probably overthinking the gag a bit, though.
    • There was an episode of the original run about Bender coming to terms with his mortality, having two funerals for himself. There is an episode of the new run about Bender claiming the be immortal and shocked when he discovers he isn't.

Bender: I never said I wasn't a drama queen!

    • The most glaring one occurs with the show's treatment of Star Trek; in "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", even mentioning the show's name will send people in the immediate vicinity in a panic and will likely get you arrested, and Leonard Nimoy seems adamant on denying any involvement with it. Yet in episodes before that, not only was Star Trek mentioned without incident, but Nimoy seemed perfectly comfortable talking about being Spock.
      • Possible Fridge Brilliance, Nimoy first wrote the book I am Not Spock, which dealt with his feelings towards Star Trek and his conflicting identity as himself and as Spock, who was he was often conflated with by fans. Later, he wrote I Am Spock, which detailed his acceptance of the role and how it played into his life from there on out.
    • If Zoidberg's species dies after having sex, then how could his body survive having sex with Farnsworth's, even if he wasn't mentally present?
      • Might only apply when both partners are Decapodians, also their method of reproduction is probably different so it wouldn't count.
  • Contrived Coincidence: In "Godfellas", Bender's return to Earth is only prompted after a very lucky spin of the radio telescope's trackball and then Fry crossing his Despair Event Horizon in earshot of the microphone. Leela Lampshades this:

Leela: This is by a wide margin the least likely thing that has ever happened!

  • Convection, Schmonvection: Happens a few times. Lampshaded in one episode thanks to Farnsworth. ("PROFESSOR! LAVA! HOT!")
    • That's more of a subversion if anything. Farnsworth isn't upset about lack of concern for proximity to the lava, but the fact that people are going swimming in it.
  • Conveniently Cellmates: Bender and Fry get implicated in a bank robbery with Roberto, a maniacal robot. Once they are imprisoned in the robot insane asylum, Fry's cellmate turns out to be... Roberto!
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Mom.
    • Farnsworth may count too, despite being one of the protagonists. After all, the planet express slogan is "Our crew is expendable, your package is not!"
  • Couch Gag: The tagline below the logo at the beginning of the theme song and the animation clip at its end. Some taglines:

"Painstakingly Drawn Before A Live Audience"
"Deciphered From Crop Circles"
"You Can't Prove It Won't Happen"
"As Foretold By Nostradamus"
"Psst -- Big Party at Your House After the Show"
"Please Rise For The Futurama Theme Song"
"From the Creators of Futurama"
"When You See The Robot, Drink!"
"See you on some other channel!" on the last Fox episode.
"It Won't Stay Dead!"

Bender: Court's kind of fun when it's not my ass on the line.

  • Cowboy Episode: The episode "Where the Buggalo Roam" is a Western parody set on Mars, including Martians who closely resemble American Indians.
  • Cranial Processing Unit: Bender is shown more than once to be able to completely remove his head and continue to function in any way his head normally would.
  • Crapsack World: Any place that has insane head of Richard Nixon as president of Earth, Zapp Brannigan as supreme commander of its military, a snooty WASP as a powerful judge, alien invasions being quite frequent, and numerous other awful things... it's no wonder there are Suicide Booths in conveniently placed locations.
  • Crazy Memory: Subverted Trope and parodied, twice. In the episodes "Fry and the Slurm Factory" and "A Clockwork Origin," Professor Farnsworth is declared crazy and everything he has just said has been lunacy. In retaliation, he begins ranting and shouts "and he's my uncle" pointing to the much younger character, Fry. This is actually true, as Fry comes from the distant past and is Farnsworth's great great great great great uncle. However, nobody believes him, writing him off as nuts.
  • Credits Gag: In Law&Oracle, Fry is being promoted:

Farnsworth: Executive delivery boy!
Fry: Executive?!
Conrad (whispering): It's a meaningless title, but it helps insecure people feel better about themselves.
(Credits for the Executive Producers)

Fry: I feel better about myself!

  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Arguably, Nibbler, of all people. Despite his overwhelming cuteness, he is a soldier...
    • Zoidberg is developing into one of these, as well. JOHN F*CKING ZOIDBERG!
  • Crying Indian: Subverted. It looks as though he's crying about the litter, but it's because the Slurm can reminded him of how much he missed someone named Cynthia.
  • Cryptic Background Reference: A thousand years of history have passed between the time Fry was frozen and let out, characters will often make casual references to events that occurred during that period of time much in the same way people in our time do with our own history.

Zapp: We have only one option. Protocol 62.
Nixon: Not possible, we don't have nearly enough piranhas!
(later)
Zoidberg: They're flying Manhattan into the sun! They mustn't have had enough piranhas!

  • Cryptid Episode: In "Spanish Fry", Fry goes to look for Bigfoot, who appears at the end to act as a Deus Ex Machina.
  • Cut Apart: "Beast With A Billion Backs" shows Brannigan's ship, the Nimbus, fighting fruitlessly against the tentacled creature while Brannigan narrates. We then find out he's piloting the ship by remote in an Applebees on earth.
  • Cutaway Gag: In "The Mutants Are Revolting", the series' 100th episode, one of the ways that the mutants plan to take their revenge against the humans is by forcing the West Manhattan Sewer Line back up to the surface, prompting this exchange:

Fry: But who could bend such a huge steel pipe like that?
(scene then cuts to Bender, in a Hugh Hefner-style jacket, wearing sunglasses shaped like the number 100, throwing a wild party with every single minor character in the series)

  • Cute Giant: The episode Mother's Day reveals that Farnsworth and Mom used to be in a relationship...until she tried to make his latest toy, Cutey McWhiskers, 18 feet tall with lasers, causing him to angrily proclaim, "Eighteen-foot-tall things aren't cute; you don't understand me!" and break up. Later they reconcile, Farnsworth admits they're still cute at 18 feet tall then Mom reveals that there's an even taller model and he gets angry again...at first.
  • Cuteness Proximity:
    • Leela is often a victim of this, even in the presence of animals that are generally not that cute, such as the muck leech on Mars in Into the Wild Green Yonder. A muck leech who turns out to be evil.
    • This is also a plot device in the episode "That Darn Katz!"
  • Cypher Language: The alien languages found throughout the show can be decoded to reveal hidden messages.
  • Darker and Edgier: The movies are definitely edgier, most likely due to the writers being free from network television handicaps. The commentary for Bender's Big Score notes that they now seem to have more dismemberment and butt shots than they did in the original series.
    • Also the Comedy Central episodes, with more part-nudity and adult jokes.
  • Deaf Composer: Bender loves cooking, but can't taste food.
  • Death by Sex: Death by "snu-snu."
  • Decided by One Vote:
    • "A Head In The Polls"
    • "Future Stock" - Farnsworth is replaced as the CEO of Planet Express by one shareholder vote.
  • Deliberately Cute Child: Tinny Tim.

Tinny Tim: "I'm sorry, sir. I'm only programmed to make oilade and write signs with cute backward letters like these."

Fry: Look! On the TV! It's that guy you are!

    • Also, Bender's full name is Bender Bending Rodriguez. When he says "bending is my middle name" he means it.
  • Deus Ex Nukina: Nixon wants the Brain Balls dead.
  • Development Gag: One of the crew members justified his six years of graduate school all for the sake of Bender and Flexo's serial numbers joke, i.e. "We're both the sum of two cubes."
  • Devil but No God: Seems to be one of the driving principals of Robotology; the Robot Devil is even a reoccurring character. Though, Bender did meet God once, or at least "the remains of a space probe that collided with God".

"That seems probable."

    • Actually, in an interview, Ken Keeler specified: "I took great pains in the script never to say that the Galactic Entity (as we called it) was in fact God, and fought some battles over that point during the rewrite."
    • This was actually brought up on the DVD Commentary. "If there's a Robot Devil, where's the Robot God?" "There is no Robot God." Yet at a 'bot mitzvah' it's revealed there was a Robot Jesus.
    • Averted, as of "Ghost in the Machines", where Bender is pulled from Robot Devil in Robot Hell to Robot Heaven. However, the being running Robot Heaven denies being Robot God.
  • Dirty Old Man: Professor Farnsworth has his moments.
  • Dirty Commies: It is the primary source of Paranoia Fuel for Yancy Fry, Fry's father. Whenever he is seen with Fry in a flashback in the '80's, he is constantly making sure if "Kremlin Joe has let the nukes fly yet."
  • Disability Superpower: Fry's lack of the delta brainwave grants him immunity to the evil Brainspawn's powers. It also makes him immune to mind readers as seen in "Into the Wild Green Yonder."
  • Disappeared Dad: Bender is one, as we find out in The Movie, when he returns to his son... so he can give him to the Robot Devil as payment for a robot army.

Robot Devil: Wow, that was pretty brutal even by my standards!

  • Disney Death: Fry gets many.
    • Kif has one in The Beast With A Billion Backs.
    • Leela has one in "Rebirth".
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?:
    • The cute, gluttonous sidekick/pet Nibbler, performed by Frank Welker?
    • Proposition infinity - infinity looks like an '8' on its side...
    • In "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings," Bender walks in on Fry practicing his holophoner ... an oddly shaped, multi-coloured pipe which (when played badly) exudes smoke-like whisps of holographic image. When Bender enters Fry's room, Fry frantically waves the "smoke" away and attempts to hide the holophoner.
  • The Dog Bites Back: The cast hates and mistreats Zoidberg. He gets payback when Fry calls him for help.

Fry: Zoidberg, get in here!
Zoidberg: Screw you!

  • Dogged Nice Guy: Fry may be an Idiot Hero, but Leela does treat him pretty awfully sometimes. This is actually sort of a Tear Jerker when you consider that Fry regularly risks or outright sacrifices his life to save Leela, yet, up until the conclusion of the last movie, he still can't win the affection of Leela, which is all he wants from her.
  • Dojikko: Amy, for comedy reasons. The creators wanted to have a female slapstick character that's always getting herself hurt, since they're almost always male (in western animation, at any rate).
  • The Don: Don Bot.
  • Doomy Dooms of Doom: All the time.
    • In one memorable example, after Earth is invaded by aliens, this exchange takes place:

Professor Farnsworth: Dear Lord, they're back!
Amy: We're doomed!
Hermes: Doomed!
Bender: (takes a deep breath) DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--(scene cuts away)

    • During "The Farnsworth Parabox", the parallel benders do a nifty reverb-double-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Tonight at Eleven: DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

    • Bender's Big Score gave us countless Doomsday Devices, a Platinum Doom-Proof Vest, and the Doom Meter, Which measures exactly how doomed something is measuring the amount of millidooms it's emitting. (A Time Paradox}} duplicate emits doom at 10 times the background level.)
  • Doomsday Device: Professor Farnsworth may just be the patron saint of Doomsday Devices.

Farnsworth: I suppose I could part with one and still be feared.

  • Downer Ending:
    • "Jurassic Bark", among others.
    • Done deliberately in the three stories of The Futurama Holiday Spectacular,
  • Double Entendre: The episode title "The Mutants Are Revolting".[2]
  • Double Standard: The episode "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch" gets a lot of humor out of reversing the "woman gets pregnant, man is nervous about it" trope, but Amy is still treated a lot more sympathetically than a man would be in the same position.
  • Dressed in Layers: Parodied when Leela became a superhero. She wore her costume under her street clothes, and then another set of street clothes under her costume. It was a cold day. Furthermore, neither of her outfits could hide under the other (her superhero outfit has a collar and shoulders that would be visible under her tanktop, and her tanktop covers her navel while her super hero outfit doesn't.)
    • Yet you don't mention the most glaring part: her normal outfit has a pair of pants, while her Super Hero outfit is just a Leotard.
  • Driving Stick: The Planet Express ship has a manual transmission whose first gear is notoriously difficult to engage without grinding. Since transmissions are strictly a motorized machines thing, this is purely Rule of Funny. It might also be a shout-out to Red Dwarf, who did this exact gag whenever the crew was driving Blue Midget.
  • Dude, Not Ironic: A running gag in "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" is Bender correcting the Robot Devil on his abuse of "irony".Culminating in him reading the definition from the dictionary.
  • Dumb Blonde: Totally Zig Zagged for laughs in Bender's Big Score. There's a sexy blonde female doctor whose entire joke is alternating between being a competent doctor offended by dumb blonde stereotypes to... well... being a dumb blonde.
  • Dutch Angle: Crops up in the series from time to time. For classic examples, look at the episodes "I, Roomate" and "All The Presidents' Heads".
  • DVD Commentary: As in The Simpsons, there's a commentary for every episode, and Matt Groening is on all of them (which makes him the likely world record holder for "most appearances on commentaries"). Each usually has five or six commentators, and starting in volume 5, they average out to eight, always including Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West and John Dimaggio, along with writers, producers, directors and other cast members. The commentaries are known for often being as funny as the episodes, with the voice actors doing random bits as their characters.
  1. ↑ The main difference from this and the pilot is that instead of getting dumped and repeatedly saying "I hate my life," Fry simply gets run over by a hoverbus
  2. ↑ "Finally, something we agree on."
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