< Futurama

Futurama/Tropes E to H


  • Earth All Along: A subtle example appears in "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" when Zapp tricks Leela into thinking that Earth was destroyed and they're the last Earthicans left alive, and stranded on a suspiciously Earthlike planet.
    • Also parodied in "The Late Phillip J Fry" where they find the Statue of Liberty blown up...then an Ape Statue of Liberty...than a Bird one...then a Lizard...then I dunno, a slug maybe?
  • Ear Trumpet: When Fry travels in time and accidentally has sex with his grandmother when she was younger; upon having it spelled out for him she responds to his screams with "What was that dear?" and uses an ear horn.
  • Easily-Thwarted Alien Invasion
  • Easy Road to Hell: There's one robot church that has an easy condemnation to Robot Hell for robots. According to his agreement with his new church, all Bender has to do is sin once to be dragged off to Robot Hell.
    • Robot Santa's naughty setting kind of falls under Easy Road to Hell. He condemns Scruffy to the naughty/death list just for picking his nose. Apparently Zoidberg is the only one who meets his standards.
  • Eat Dirt Cheap: After Lrrr accidentally conquers Earth the next thing we see is the main cast sentenced to the mines to supply his wife with gemstones to eat.
  • Eats Babies: The Poppler episode.
  • Edited for Syndication: A few examples:
    • The very first episode had a part where Fry is traveling through the transport tubes to "JFK Jr. Airport." Because of JFK Jr.'s mysterious death involving a plane crash, the destination was changed to "Radio City Mutant Hall" (this was even done on the DVD release, except for the animatic seen on the special features).
    • A strange example happened with the Comedy Central rebroadcast of "A Big Piece of Garbage": In the original broadcast, there's a tiny teaser about a death clock Farnsworth just invented for a science symposium, in which the joke is, after testing it out, it is implied that Fry has a very short lifespan. With the rebroadcast, Comedy Central decided to take the teaser, which, in the original, was placed before the opening credits, and place it after the opening credits.
    • On two episodes ("The Deep South" and "Bender Gets Made"), the Professor twice yells "Holy (or Sweet) Zombie Jesus!" This line was heard when it aired on FOX (if any viewer managed to see it on that channel) and in the reruns on Comedy Central. However, the former reruns on TBS's short-lived "Too Funny to Sleep" cartoon block and Cartoon Network's Adult Swim line-up mutes out the "Jesus" in "Holy (or Sweet) Zombie Jesus!" due to that hypocritical BS&P rule stating that "Oh my God" and its variants (i.e. "Oh God" or "Oh, dear God!" or even "Oh, Lord" and "Good Lord!") are okay, but "Oh, Jesus!" "Christ!" or "Jesus Christ!" is taboo (unless you're South Park, but that show is pretty much anything goes).
    • The second new episode of the 2010 run is basically built on a massive and hilarious Take That to this entire concept. The end pulls censorship's leg.
    • Two examples in the Comedy Central rebroadcast of "When Aliens Attack":
      • In the original Fox broadcast, Bender says "Bite My Red-Hot Glowing Ass!". This is followed by a Beat, and Bender saying "Wait a minute... Red Hot Glowing Ass?", calmly saying "Excuse me for just a minute" before running off screaming and diving off into the ocean to cool off. In the Comedy Central rebroadcast, the "Excuse me for just a minute" line is completely cut, and it goes from "Wait a minute...Red Hot Glowing Ass?" to him running straight into the ocean.
      • When Amy uses the can of All-Purpose Clothes Spray to get a new bikini top, Farnsworth (in the Fox broadcast) quietly says "Oh, My!" as she adds the strings. In the Comedy Central rebroadcast, the "Oh, My!" line is completely omitted.
        • These two edits, however, are likely just time shaves, rather than content edits, because the amount of airtime used up by advertising has increased since these episodes were originally produced.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Yivo
    • Yivo's something between this and a Genius Loci. It ("Schle"?) is sentient and has enough area to store everyone in the entire universe but Yivo is also very personable and tries to interact with the universe without dragging everyone to itself ("schleself"?) first. Yivo's also for all intents and purposes a living Fluffy Cloud Heaven (but with the added bonus of Naughty Tentacles), which gives Yivo another dimension.
  • Emergency Presidential Address: This tends to happen in Futurama all the time, which shouldn't be surprising given the number of world/universe ending calamities that need averting.
  • Endless Daytime: The planet that cats originally came from doesn't turn, so they have perpetual night and day for different sides of the planet. They come to Earth to steal its rotational energy, resulting in the same situation for Earth.
  • Enemy Mine: Bender's Big Score has everyone forced to evacuate Earth to other planets by the scammer aliens, with the main characters taking up residence on Neptune. Unfortunately, they forget that Robot Santa is based there. It turns out that he's also been scammed, and Leela "convinces" him and his fellow holiday mascots to join forces and take out the scammers.
  • Enhance Button: Averted and lampshaded in "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela".

Kif: That's all the resolution we have. Making it bigger doesn't make it clearer.
Zap: It does on CSI: Miami.

    • In "Law and Oracle" the Minority Report-style prediction videos can be enhanced by doing a binocular-focusing hand-gesture.
  • Establishing Character Moment: Bender's alcoholism and tendencies to steal were established, in a few seconds (After seeming to "join in" on the emotional moment by putting his hand on top of Leela's, and, when he pulls it back, the ring is gone. Leela swiftly accuses him of stealing the ring, to which he admits he stole and then returns it, declaring "and now the mystery of the stolen ring has been solved! Let's have a drink!", pulling out three large beer bottles and then guzzling all three down at one time) in "Space Pilot 3000".
  • Even Evil Has Standards: In the second movie, The Beast With a Billion Backs, Bender goes to the Robot Devil to get soldiers for his army of the damned. In exchange for this, the Robot Devil wants Bender's first-born son. Bender finds his long-lost son playing by himself outside of a suburban home. Bender's son looks up and runs towards him, yelling, "Daddy! I knew you'd come back!" The two share a hug and heart-warming music plays. Cut back to the Robot Devil's office where Bender has his long-lost son in his hands and kicks him through the plate-glass window into a lava pit.

Robot Devil: Wow! That was pretty brutal, even by my standards.
Bender: No backsies.

  • Everything's Better with Penguins: Specially if they have Shotguns
  • Everyone Meets Everyone: Twice in a row: Fry, Leela, Bender and Farnsworth meet each other in the pilot; the first three meet Hermes, Amy and Dr. Zoidberg in the second episode.
  • Everything's Better with Dinosaurs:
    • T. rexes are inexplicably alive and well in the year 3000 and are used to give children rides in petting zoos. Presumably they were cloned.
    • T. rexes ("the humblest of God's creatures") actually defeat an alien invasion in a episode of The Scary Door.
    • A random Stegosaurus also shows up grazing on the White House lawn in one episode.
  • Cute Kitten: Not to Amy. She's allergic. And kittens give Morbo gas.
  • Evil Feels Good: Bender does this a lot. He seems aware that stealing is bad but he sure enjoys it.
  • Evil Old Folks: Mom. Professor Farnsworth had a tendency to fall in love with her and leave her (again) when he discovered she was evil. This happened several times.
  • Evil Twin: In "Lesser of Two Evils", Flexo is considered Bender's Evil Twin (he has a goatee!). The trope is subverted is at the end of the episode, when it turns out that Bender is the Evil Bender.

Fry: You mean Bender is the evil Bender? I'm shocked! Shocked! Well, not that shocked.

"You mean somewhere there's a more evil Bender than me? I do my best, dammit!

  • Executive Meddling: As noted above, it had an often pre-empted timeslot on Fox.
    • To reiterate, the show aired for 3 seasons, was cancelled and had re-runs played for 5 years, then brought back with a bunch of TV movies, and cancelled yet again before being brought back a second time. And now, the series still doesn't have a secure spot for another season.
  • Exotic Entree: Just to show how messed up the future is, some animals not considered food today, are eaten regularly, like parrots. Not dolphins though, since they're apparently sapient. Unless they blow all their money on lottery tickets, then it's OK.
  • Expository Theme Tune: Parodied with the New Justice Team.
  • Extreme Omnivore: Zoidberg, Nibbler, and numerous other aliens.
  • Exty Years From Now: It's always 1000 years into the future.
  • Eye Scream:
    • The eyePhones are - you guessed it - inserted directly into the eyes.
    • A Martian Muck Leech attaches itself to Leela's eye in the fourth movie.
    • Bender's eye is drilled into in the third movie.
  • The Faceless: Leela's boyfriend (or later ex-boyfriend) Sean is alluded to multiple times across the show's run, but is never actually seen (although he is described).
  • Fake-Out Fade-Out: At the end of "Put Your Head on My Shoulder":

Fry: Listen, Leela. Thanks for rescuing me last night.
Leela: Anytime. I actually enjoyed hanging out with you.
Bender: Yep, everything worked out great thanks to good old Bender.
Leela: Come on! It's not like you intentionally set us up with bad dates so we'd spend Valentine's Day together.
Bender: Didn't I, Leela? Didn't I? (winks)
(Iris Out)
Leela: No, you didn't!

  • Fan Disservice:
    • The ancient Professor and fat Hermes often get naked or dressed in skimpy clothes for little to no reason, aside from the future having left behind such primitive concepts as "modesty". Also, we really didn't need to see Brannigan as the Adam figure in the second 2010 episode. Augh. Also, Mom and the Professor on "Mother's Day."

Fry: "Nothing in here but a couple of elephant skin rugs. (beat) Eeew!"

    • Leela and Fry making out in the bodies of Zoidberg and Professor Farnsworth on "Prisoner of Benda." Good God!.
    • The second part of the Girly Calendar on "Neutopia". It starts out nice, then rapidly becomes very disturbing.
    • The Nudist aliens. Especially when they exercise the Power Perversion Potential of time travel. Urhuurgh.
  • Fan Service:
    • In "Jurassic Bark", Fry walks in on Leela and Amy wrestling in revealing outfits for no discernible reason (Leela claims, "We need to practice hand to hand combat in case an enemy knocks the laser gun out of our hands and they slide way across the room."), but Fry is too busy prepping for the cloning of his dog to care about seeing a girl-on-girl fight.
    • Shortly afterward, Leela declares that Bender has been down in the lava too long and she is going in after him. She starts to tear off her skimpy outfit (revealing some underboob) but is stopped by Professor Farnsworth who angrily reminds her that lava is hot. The DVD Commentary says they pushed it as far as they could.
    • "Why Must I Be A Crustacean In Love?" has Fry accidentally hitting up the women's steam room, where naked Leela and Amy are relaxing. Amy moves the hand covering her chest, but just enough to keep it still covered (according to the DVD commentary, the writers used this scene as a bargaining chip for the FOX censors when they wanted to get away with something that the censors would immediately decline, telling them "You let us get away with this. Why can't you do the same with this scene?").

Amy: Hey, look what life was like before genetic engineering.
Leela: Those poor 20th century women.
Fry swings his legs closed.

    • The straight-to-DVD movies kick it up a notch. The first one begins with a visit to the "Nudie beach planet." In non-sexual fanservice, all the ContinuityNods qualify.
      • Additionally, a huge part of the first movie's plot revolves around Fry's ass, which is frequently bared.
    • The third movie has a scene where the whole crew takes a group shower together.
    • Excluding the Professor, although if he were there, it'd probably qualify as an immediate disservice to most fans.
    • Amy and Leela hug near the end of the third movie and then make out for a little while for no good reason.
    • In "Parasites Lost", the one in which Fry is infested with worms that make him smart, there are two fanservice scenes. One is of Fry, buffed up by the worms, ripping his shirt off. Another involves Leela sleeping in a VERY skimpy nightie as she waits for Fry to return.
    • The scene in "Rebirth" when Amy and Leela are ejected from the Stem Cell Tub may count.
    • The episode "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" has Leela wearing nothing but leaves to cover her naughty parts, eventually: at first she's covering her boobs with her hands, and not covering her front-parts with anything. Seriously, they might as well have inked in a little purple landing strip.
    • Leela as Clobberella in "Less Than Hero". Boy, is she sexy in that uniform and domino mask, and with her hair down.

Leela: It was brisk. I dressed in layers.

    • In "Neutopia", most of the first calendar shoot. Particularly when Leela is wearing nothing on her upper body except suspenders. HOW DID THEY GET AWAY WITH THAT?
    • In "All the Presidents' Heads" we see Amy as if the British had won the Revolution. Needless to say, God Save the Queen.
    • Then there is a mass nude conga line in "Time Keps On Slipping"
  • F Minus Minus: Parodied by Doctor Wernstrom.
  • Fantastic Comedy
  • Fantastic Religious Weirdness: Zoidberg is both stereotypically Jewish and a non-kosher shellfish.
    • Well I'm not sure there's a rule against being a shellfish, and if anything it's even more of a reason not to eat them... Notably, he does eat a sea creature at his old scuttling ground. "Who's laughing NOW Vinnie?" (This was a different kind of crustacean, which is why it was small enough for Zoidberg to pick up, even though it bullied Zoidberg as a kid.)
    • Human meat is as kosher as pork and shellfish. (The latter is, however, directly banned by Book Leviticus.)
    • Another example of this trope is the above mentioned confusion surrounding the the specifics of robot religion. Fry sneaks into the reception for BOT Mitzvah (does this mean robots are circumsized?), while Bender falls under the spell of Preacherbot and the Church of Robotology, which rejects robosexuality.
    • Fry briefly consulted Father Changstein el-Gamal of the First Amalgamated Church, which features elements of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Atheism, or at least Agnosticism. And when someone asks whether the Space Pope is reptilian, he means "Yes".
    • "Oh why couldn't he have joined one of the mainstream religions? Like Oprahism?"
    • "Or Voodoo?"
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Fearful Symmetry: The "perfectly symmetrical violence" between the two Leelas in "The Farnsworth Parabox".
  • Feudal Future: One of the futures that flashes by a frozen Fry in "Space Pilot 3000" is a civilization that resembles feudal times... until it's blown up by space aliens.
  • Fever Dream Episode ("The Sting")
  • Fiction 500: The Wong family and Mom.
  • Fictional Colour: once made mention of a color called Blurple. Oh, and there was also Fry's description of an amazing, indescribable thing he saw that day at the beginning of I Dated A Robot:

Fry: I just saw something incredibly cool. A big floating ball that lit up with every color of the rainbow, plus some new ones that were so beautiful I fell to my knees and cried.
Amy: Was it out in front of Discount Shoe Outlet?
Fry: Yeah.
Amy: They have a college kid wear that to attract customers.

  • Fictional Holiday: Freedom Day.
  • Fictional Political Party: The one world government on Earth is run by a slew of these, most of which are puns based on the names of real parties and lobbyist groups in American politics. These include The Antisocialists, the National Raygun Association, and the Green Party (whose members are, literally, green), among others. Republican and Democratic parties are known as the Fingerlicans and the Tastycrats.
  • Fidelity Test
  • Finish Him!: In "Why Must I Be A Crustacean In Love", Fry dramatically refuses to kill his friend, and Zoidberg takes the opportunity to chop off his arm.

Fry: [[[Beat]] as he stares at the stump of his arm before he flies into a rage and starts slapping Zoidberg with his own severed limb]: You bastard! I'll kill you! You bastard!

Fembot: "Have you any idea how it feels to be a fembot living in a manbot's manputer's world?"
Bender: ...What?

"I'm not from here! I have my own customs!! Look at my crazy passport!!!"

  • Foreshadowing:
    • Nibbler's eyestalk appears in a dust basket in a Flash Back to Fry's freezing in the Seymour episode.
    • You can also see it during the same scene in the very first episode.
      • Nibbler's shadow also appears for a brief second the moment Fry falls back into the cryo chamber.
    • Leela's parents can be seen in a crowd shot long before they're introduced.
    • Fry's brain slug starves to death. This may seem like a regular joke, until you find out that Fry lacks the delta brain wave.
    • French becoming a dead language was foreshadowed, or possibly a continuity nod, in the very first episode.
    • Blink and you'll miss it, but in "When Aliens Attack," when the camera zooms through the cosmos from Earth to Omicron Perseii 8, it passes by an Earth space probe engulfed in a blue, somewhat sparkly nebula. This is two and a half seasons before "Godfellas."
  • Freaky Friday Flip: "A Prisoner of Benda" takes this trope and runs across the border with it, refusing to come back until extradited for its various crimes. They set up a rule that two bodies can only switch minds once, and then proceeded to work out whether they could eventually restore everyone's original bodies via group-theory. The episode contains a 3-second shot of nothing but Farnsworth's laser-blackboard showing the new, completely original theorem proved just for this episode. And they said abstract math doesn't have any real-world applications.
  • Free Wheel: Parodied—the wheel is coming from an exploding spaceship.
  • Friendly Sniper: As of "The Tip of the Zoidberg", Zoidberg, of all people, is revealed to be one, or at least capable enough to put three shots into a body with a fairly tight grouping.
  • The Fun in Funeral. Bender's "funeral" in "A Pharaoh to Remember."

"LOUDER AND SADDER!!!!!!!"

  • Funny Background Event
  • Fun with Acronyms: Fathers Against Rude Television was a group made by Farnsworth and Hermes in response to Bender's decadence when he starred on All My Circuits in "Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television".
  • Fun with Flushing: Bender finally gets fed up with (or more accurately, jealous of) Nibbler and flushes him down the toilet. This prompts them to install a chip that forces him to feel Leela's emotions, causing him to flush himself (in pieces) so he can rescue it.
  • Fur Bikini: The Amazon planet.
  • The Future
  • Future Badass: Lars Fillmore in Bender's Big Score. Not actually a Badass, nor technically from the future, but he is a look at a much, much more mature version of a present-day character.
  • Future Imperfect
  • Futuristic Superhighway: All cars are hovercars, so there are skylanes along with regular ground roads. In "Bendin' In The Wind" the Golden Gate Bridge is now a hoverbridge, so it doesn't need an actual road on it... which is a problem, since the gang is on a 20th Century VW Microbus. Intergalactic trucking routes and railroads are also present, and "Rebirth," the first episode after the series was Uncancelled, features the Panama Wormhole.
  • Gaia's Lament: Played for laughs. Pine trees, anchovies, cows, and poodles are extinct. Owls replace pigeons and rats as urban pests. Jungles exist on Mars but not Earth, and global warming was solved by dropping a piece of ice in the ocean every now and then. It was later solved by pushing the Earth away from the sun. In another episode, Hollywood Global Warming was said to be solved with the nuclear winter.
  • Gambit Roulette: Spoofed by the Don Bot in "The Silence of the Clamps".

Don Bot: I knew Bender would turn up purely by coincidence.

  • GASP: Done all the time.
  • Geeky Turn On: "Dirty boy! Dirty, dirty, dirty!"
  • Gender Bender: Done with Bender himself. Of course how robots have genders shouldn't matter. Rule of Funny and all that.
    • Done to all characters in the episode "Neutopia".
  • General Failure: Zapp Brannigan.
  • Genius Breeding Act: In one episode, a Genius Breeding Act is referenced from a time when aliens landed on Earth and forced the smartest members to mate continuously. Farnsworth was disappointed that the latest alien invasion wasn't going to involve this.
  • Genius Ditz:
    • Amy is an ABSOLUTE Ditz. However, as the episode "That Darn Katz" reminds us, she IS an engineering graduate student who designs a machine to harness the rotational energy of the Earth. Also, she officially gains her doctorate at the end of the episode, so she is the ultimate Genius Ditz.
    • Also Dr. Zoidberg. Even though he's the staff Doctor, he knows absolutely nothing about the Human Anatomy. We later find out that he IS a doctor - of Art History.
      • What's more impressive is that there were a couple of occasions where Zoidberg actually performed operations successfully. Impressive, considering he doesn't actually have any medical training. He may not know anything about human anatomy but he is a terrific alien Doctor.
  • Get a Room: Bender shouts this at an offscreen couple while he, Fry and Leela are climbing up the Watergate hotel. When one of them replies that they're in a room, he tells them to lose some weight.
  • Get Back to the Future: "Roswell That Ends Well".
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar:
    • According to DVD commentary, the background joke on "Why I Must Be a Crustacean in Love" where a woman is shown using a "Kegelcizer" at the gym is considered the dirtiest joke the writers have ever done, but the censors didn't catch it because they had no idea what a kegel exercise is. Here's a link to it from The Other Wiki.
    • They also got away with showing a bong by referring to it in the script as a "weird bottle", or at least that's what the DVD Commentary claims.
      • Also referred to as "the device which speeds or slows the passage of time". It's kept under the passenger's seat of Fry's VW.
    • "I took the liberty of fertilising your caviar!" says Zoidberg at a party. Translation "I came on your food!"
    • "Let's get brickfaced!"
    • From Benderama: "That's right, Linda; water is n-now booze, and everyone's titty much protally fitshaced.
    • And from All the President's heads: "Pray that you do not fhit your pants, the British attack has begun."
    • Came from this quote: "That is how we spell our s's, you ftupid fhitheads." For both those quotes, replace the f's with an s.
    • When in need of an accomplished harpoon shooter, Amy volunteers. Leela responds thusly:

Ms Wong, you have the poon.

    • The entire "private exhibition" joke in "The Lesser Of Two Evils". Farnsworth just wanted to introduce the atom that would be used on the tiara for the "Miss Universe" pageant, but the way he worded it really squicked everyone out.
    • In "Raging Bender: "Now quit scratching your ax hole and get out there!"
    • In "Mars University": "Coney Island College: Go, Whitefish!"
  • Gilligan Cut: Used, along with most other cut gags, in "Time Keeps on Skippin'"

Leela: "Fry, stop. I don't wanna hurt you, but there is absolutely positively no way that you and I will ever, ever--" (time skip)
Preacher: "--man and wife. You may kiss the bride."

    • It was used in the new season 6 episode as well, where the crew stumble upon a bus filled with skeletons of dead people. When Zoidberg shoves the bones off of a bed, the Professor scolds Zoidberg for desecrating the bones of the dead people. However, when Amy says that she found a safe, cut to Farnsworth using a skull to break into the safe
  • Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: Titanius Anglesmith (Bender) and Greyfarn's (Farnsworth) opinion on Leegola (Leela) and Gynecaladriel (Amy) making out in Bender's Game.

Titanius Anglesmith: Ah, can it wait a couple of minutes?
Greyfarn: Yes, yes it can.

    • Bender and Fry watching Amy wash the Planet Express Ship, aka Bender's current girlfriend (quite literally Cargo Ship).
  • God Guise: In "Godfellas", Bender ends up drifting in space, where he becomes God to the Shrimpkins, a race of miniature people who end up settling on his body.
  • Godly Sidestep:
    • After learning that Nibblonians have been around since the dawn of time, Leila asks them about the creation. After seconds of untranslated Niblonian gibberish, Leila exclaims "That means every religion is wrong!"
    • In "Overclockwise", Bender temporarily achieves omniscience, and obtains printouts with the answers to life's great questions. He casually throws away "the reason we exist", but does show Fry and Leela an account of their future together.
  • Going Critical: Better than most shows, but in "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular", Grandma's fruitcake reaches critical mass when thrown into Santa's sleigh, creating a small mushroom cloud.
  • Going to Give It More Energy: The Planet Express crew tries this against the Star Trek-loving Energy Being Melllvar. It doesn't work...

Leela: Hmm... If we can re-route engine power through the primary weapons and configure them to Melllvar's frequency, that should overload his electro-quantum structure.
Bender: Like putting too much air in a balloon!

...

Leela: It's not working! He's gaining strength from our weapons!

Fry: Like a balloon and... something bad happens!

  • Good News, Bad News: Whenever the professor says "Good news, everyone!", he's inevitably going to announce something horrible. Parodied in one episode when he's announcing something even worse than normal and simply says "News, everyone!" in exactly the same tone of voice as normal and lampshaded in "The Sting" when he says (in exactly the same tone of voice as normal) "Bad news everyone! Now normally when I say "Good news" it's usually bad news. So you can imagine how bad this news actually is." Also, in another episode, the Professor purchases some IKEA πKEA science instruments which... go exactly how you'd expect them to. He is blown through the wall in to the next room. As he stands up, he says "Bad news, no one."
    • In the Freaky Friday Flip, he and Amy try to switch to their original bodies. When they fail, he says "Bad news, me."
  • Goodnight, Sweet Prince: Mentioned twice on the "Anthology of Interest" episodes (both at the end of an act one story where Bender ends up dead -- in Anthology of Interest 1, Bender gets impaled on a skyscraper. In Anthology of Interest 2, Bender [who has been turned human] kills himself with excess eating, drinking, and partying).
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: The Planet Express crew rarely smoke... except for Bender. Also, Mom and her cigarettes.
  • Grand Finale: They really tried with the ending of Into the Wild Green Yonder , but just got blasted back to Earth when the series restarted on Comedy Central.
  • Grand Romantic Gesture: Fry pulls off one so big Leela decides to marry him. Unfortunately, due to time slips, they both forget what the gesture is. It turns out to be a love note... written with about thirty suns Fry rearranged in space.
  • Granola Girl: Done to death in Into the Wild Green Yonder.
  • Grapes of Luxury: Hedonism-bot. He appears to be made for it.
  • Grade System Snark: Apparently, within the lecture halls of Mars University, specifically the Twentieth-Century History class Fry, Amy, and Gunter, a chimpanzee whose intelligence was greatly enhanced due to a bowler hat that absorbed the energy of sun spots in "Mars University", each individual seat is rigged to electrocute any student who makes a snide or incredibly stupid remark, calls out of turn, or gets a question wrong. It doesn't help that the professor in charge of that particular class was thick on the sarcasm.
  • Grey and Grey Morality: "Benderama", interestingly enough. The giant starts smashing up everything, only because he has some self-esteem and anger issues and everyone is insulting him. Everyone except Bender is entirely drunk and so can't really be held accountable, and while Bender stops the giant, he really was the only sober one and isn't any better than everyone else drunk:

Bender: Let this be a lesson about attacking those more handsome than oneself.

  • Grey Goo: Done with the infinitely replicating Benders, which even drop the trope name. They only thing saving the world was the Benders' collective laziness. The do leave behind significant damage before leaving to avoid doing even a minisulce fraction of a thing.
  • Great Way to Go: Several. Fry tends to be a part.
  • Hachiko: Seymour, the dog, in Jurassic Bark. Fry knew him from when he was 2-3, and he was flash fossilized at 13. From the Exit Medley, we learn that all 10 of those years were spent waiting.
    • And when they first met, Fry saved him from starvation.
    • The effect is ruined by Bender's Big Score...though at least the flash fossilisation is explained.
  • Hand Wave: "I thought that machine made noses?" "It can do other things. Why shouldn't it?" (Granted, that all makes perfect sense.)
  • Hanging Judge: Judge Whitey
  • Happily Married: Leela's, Amy's, and Fry's parents. Also Hermes and Labarbara Conrad, usually.
  • Hard on Soft Science
  • Have I Mentioned I Am Sexually Active Today?: Zapp Brannigan is one of the page quotes.
  • Heads or Tails: In one episode, the main characters enter an alternate universe where coin flips have opposite results causing decisions to be different.
  • The Hedonist: The aptly-named Hedonism Bot.
  • Hellevator: In Robot Hell. There's also a slide.
  • Hello, Attorney!: "Single Female Lawyer"
  • He Knows Too Much: When the crew is throwing away their "overly-complicated Japanese toilet", it offers them "Happy Poopy Time" if they'll spare it. Fry responds with this trope.
  • Her Codename Was Mary Sue: Melllvar's Author Avatar is the classic example of this in his FanFic.

Shatner: (reading aloud in bored monotone) Alas, my ship, whom I love like a woman, is .. .disabled. (to self) Oh, Lord!
Nimoy: (reading aloud in bored monotone) Fascinating, Captain, and logical too. Yet we need some help.
Takei: (reading aloud in bored monotone) Look, Captain, Melllvar will help us.
(A little later)
Nichols: (reading aloud in bored monotone) My, what a handsome energy creature you are. I love you.

Leela: I know Fry's rich, but do we really have to wear these top hats?
Bender: Maybe you don't understand just how rich he is. In fact, I think I'd better put on a monocle.

  • High Collar of Doom: The Omicronians.
  • High Fantasy: The theme of the world Bender invents (and then everyone gets transported to) in Bender's Game.
  • Historical In-Joke: Where the whole "alien ship crashes in Roswell, NM" thing is "explained". Also, George W. Bush winning the 2000 US election in "Bender's Big Score".
  • Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Double subverted in "The Late Philip J. Fry." Professor Farnsworth succeeds in assassinating Hitler when his time machine has to cycle through the death and rebirth of the universe, but they miss their intended time period and are forced to travel through time a second time. His haste this time around causes him to miss and assassinate Eleanor Roosevelt instead.
  • Hold Up Your Score
  • Holodeck Malfunction: Parodied to hell and back with the Holo-Shed in "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch".

Holo-Lincoln: Real holographic-simulated Evil Lincoln is back!

  • later*

Zapp: Damn, the last time that happened I was slapped with three paternity suits.

  • Hollywood Density: Parodied as starship fuel (dark matter) is so dense that "a single pound of it weighs ten thousand pounds." In one case, Fry refers to a ball of this fuel, which has previously been shown on rare occasions to be liftable by a human, as "weighing as much as a thousand suns."
    • "The Game" throws the dark matter's weight out the window by having the characters pushing wheelbarrows filled with it. On the sun.
    • A Lampshade Hanging gets hung on this when Fry and Leela are going to have a fiddle contest with the Robot Devil where the prizes are Bender's soul and a solid gold fiddle. When Fry (of all people) asks "Wouldn't a solid gold fiddle weigh hundreds of pounds and sound crummy?" the Robot Devil admits that it's mostly for show, then (being a robot) takes it and plays a complicated piece on it.
    • Then Bender grabs some wings and begins to fly out of Robot Hell carrying Fry and Leela. When Leela tells him he needs to fly faster he says he could if she would drop the solid gold fiddle she was carrying (dented from hitting the Robot Devil over the head with it).
  • Hollywood Tone Deaf: In "Spanish Fry," Leela sings a warbly and off-key bit of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You." Katey Sagal (besides being known as Peg Bundy and Turanga Leela) is a talented singer, and manages to convincingly sing badly.
  • Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Literally: in "Hell is Other Robots" there's a robot hooker who has an actual heart of solid gold.
  • Hug and Comment:
    • Leela hugs Fry and mentions that "you smell like you've been rolling in New Jersey."
    • Another episode ends with the revelation that Leela has been comatose for weeks, and Fry has been at her side the whole time. They hug, and:

Leela: You could really use a shower.
Fry: So could you.

Scientist: I have combined the DNA of the world's most evil animals to make the most evil creature of them all!
(A naked man walks out of the chamber)
Naked Man: Turns out it's man.

  • Humans Are Morons: The 20th Century is known as "The Stupid Age" to historians. However, that doesn't make humans of the 31st Century any less stupid than us.
  • Hurl It Into the Sun: Hermes and the box in "The Farnsworth Parabox". Also done with a shipment of popcorn kernels in "A Bicyclops Built for Two" and a shipment of candy hearts in "Love and Rocket", although in that episode it was a quasar instead of the sun.
  • Hurricane of Excuses:
  • Hurricane of Puns: Numerous examples, but the one that really takes the cake is the Lead In to "The Luck of the Fryrish", containing every joke imaginable about horse racing, and, Just for Pun, a joke about Quantum Physics.
  • Hyperspace Lanes: The Panama Wormhole, Earth's central shipping channel.
  • Hypnotic Eyes: THE HYPNOTOAD. This has reached the levels of Memet--ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • In Bender's Game, following a particularly brutal Take That to Robin Williams (in form of a horde of Morks, a combination of orcs and, well, Mork who can only repeat his catchphrases and are messily slain in great numbers for being annoying) for supposedly not being funny, we are subjected to The Eviscerator, which seems like the exact kinda joke Williams would make in his stand-up routine.
    • "That Darn Katz" has Nibbler claiming that nothing acts cute without an ulterior motive. Even keeping in mind his actions through the entire series, he follows this up by acting cute to trick Amy into changing his diaper.
    • "Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!"
    • "I hereby promote you to executive delivery boy!" "It's a meaningless title, but it helps insecure people feel better about themself"...Executive Producers: Matt Groening, David X. Cohen.
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