Like most long-running sitcoms, Futurama ended up Flanderizing most of its cast.
- Fry has gone all over the place. He started out as an ordinary 20th-century delivery boy who was cryogenically frozen for a thousand years and is just trying to adjust to an unrecognizable sci-fi future where everyone he ever knew and loved was long dead. But the writers admitted that he adapted far faster than they had planned, so they retooled him into an Idiot Hero who got progressively stupider as the show went on. But he also became more of a soulful romantic who wins Leela's affection and occasionally shows insight as a Genius Ditz. Part of this stems from the fact that the show diminished his screen time in later seasons to showcase the other characters, meaning his character wouldn't develop unless the episode was focused on him specifically.
- Amy started out as a somewhat ditzy engineering student who was working with Professor Farnsworth on her Ph.D (only to be roped into his profit-making delivery enterprise). Her shallowness and ditziness were emphasized as she was Flanderized. Later episodes would try to fix this by addressing her intelligence again, showing how she finally earned her Ph.D and helped the Professor with some of his inventions. Her privileged upbringing, while always the subject of occasional jokes, also became even more noticeable as time went on.
- Bender has been Flanderized multiple times in different directions. He started out as an abrasive Robot Buddy who's not really into the whole "buddy" thing. When Fry moved in with him, they introduced a gag where he muttered "kill all humans" in his sleep, which was then spun into a complete disregard for human life. He got some Character Development, showing that he once lived with a human, cared for a race of tiny orphan aliens, fell in love and partially merged his programming with a female personality, and underwent a sex change and back (twice) — only for him to be re-Flanderized into a more jokey persona.
- Dr. Zoidberg is the show's biggest victim of Flanderization. When he was first introduced, he was a one-joke character: an alien doctor who treats humans, despite being ignorant of their biology (and oblivious to the fact). Despite this, the rest of the cast treated him like a real, respected doctor — until season 2's "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?", when it's revealed that Zoidberg is considered a loser even by the standard of his own species. From then on, he became the series' Butt-Monkey, and the jokes about his medical incompetence gave way to jokes about how he's poor,note gross, and completely unpopular with the rest of the cast.
- Hermes started out as an Obstructive Bureaucrat, only for his character to be Flanderized into The Stoner. Earlier pot jokes tended to be a lot more subtle — the kind of thing that only adults would get.note In later seasons, he was openly a stoner and even seemed to be giving up on his beloved bureaucracy just to get high. The fact that he's Jamaican didn't help matters. He also picked up an Irrational Hatred at Zoidberg (irrational at least for the series' standards) in parallel with that character's own Flanderization.
- Leela started out as the archetypal captain figure, the only sane Action Girl who despite her own quirks could run a crew comprised of the idiots who make up Planet Express. But she was Flanderized into a quirkier, but less competent character; in some ways, it even resembled outright Chickification, as she became more naive and sheltered, and more easily hurt or exploited by male characters. Simultaneously, she also became more impulsive and violent, which was particularly jarring because she was previously so calm and level-headed — indeed, one "Anthology of Interest" short explored what would happen if she was violent and impulsive.
- Kif was originally presented as a straight man to the overbearing incompetence, loutishness, and immaturity of Zapp Brannigan — a far more competent second-mate who is forced to serve a nitwit in a completely unjust hierarchy. As the series progresses, however, and he moves out of Zapp's shadow, Kif becomes an increasingly pathetic figure who it's hard to imagine would be any better in a leadership position — completely weak and neurotic in every possible way. This changed though in the third revival of the show when he became a father in “Children Of A Lesser Bog” and eventually got fed up with Zapp abuse in “Zapp Gets Cancelled”
- Lrrr, the ruler of Omicron Persei 8, started out as a typical overlord wannabe who invaded planets but often had understandable reasons to and had a peculiar taste for television shows from Earth. As the series went on though, Lrrr turns into an impulsive couch potato who invades planet for little to no reason and at highly inconvenient times while he his non invasion time is either spent bickering with his wife, Ndnd, or being overbearing towards his son, Jrrr.
- Ndnd on the other hand also fell victim to trait exaggeration. She was introduced as the wife of Lrrr who often stood by her husband’s cause and was somewhat snarky towards her husband but in “Lrrreconcilble” Ndndifferences”, Ndnd’s constant nagging became the trait that consumes her as she becomes an overbearing, unreasonable, and spoiled queen who goes as far as to domestically abuse Lrrr with frying pans and become jealous when people other than her nag Lrrr. While she did not get much screentime after this, her domineering attitude towards Lrrr was still present.
