After their 100th delivery, Leela's outed as a mutant and forced to live in the sewers with the rest of her kind. Angry at the poor conditions of the sewers, Leela organizes a movement for equal rights, while Fry decides to prove his love and jump into the contaminated lake!
Tropes:
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Land Titanic was the largest (and only) bus of its kind ever built. It was also ludicrously slow, and sunk after hitting a mailbox.
- Baby Planet: The asteroid Lady Astor lives in. In order to cross the bridge to her mansion, Bender takes a long running start that goes all the way around.
- Body Horror: Fry's apparent mutation is pretty hideous, even by mutant standards.
- Cloudcuckoolander: When the sewers get redirected to shoot up, Igner is seen actually smiling as he's held aloft by spewing sewage. That boy ain't right...
- Comically Small Bribe: Lady Astor states she's Mayor Poopenmeyer's largest campaign contributor, and therefore demands action.Poopenmeyer: Okay. $80 worth of action it is!
- Continuity Cavalcade: Bender's party includes various minor characters from the show's run.
- Continuity Nod:
- A can of Angry Norwegian anchovies, last seen in "A Fishful of Dollars", can be seen near the Land Titanic wreck.
- The Quantum Gemerald from "Less Than Hero" returns once again as an important MacGuffin.
- Dance Party Ending
- Dope Slap: The Professor slaps Fry with the arm of the Land Titanic's director's arm after Fry asks everyone if they knew he had a crush on Leela.
- Expy: Mr. and Mrs. Astor are one to the famed Astors of New York
. Unlike her counterpart, the actual Astors were beloved in New York as philanthropists, including an entire section of town named after them (Astor Place). - Going Down with the Ship: Mister Astor went down with the Land Titanic after giving up his seat on a lifeboat to a little mutant girl (who grew up to be Leela's grandmother). This is based on the story of the real John Jacob Astor IV, who did the same thing on the real RMS Titanic
- Handwave: After Mrs. Turanga gives her explanation, Leela asks Munda why she never mentioned any of this before. Munda just whispers that she's "nuts".
- Heel–Face Turn: Lady Astor decides to have the mutants freed in honor of Mister Astor.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Feeling guilty about the situation he put Leela in, Fry decides to jump into the toxic lake in order to mutate himself, resulting in himself becoming a horribly disgusting mutant. Leela is disgusted but touched. He actually didn't mutate because he landed in the mouth of the mutated Mister Astor and got lodged there
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Mister Astor's first name apparently is "Mister".
- Hypocritical Humor: Farnsworth childes Zoidberg for desecrating the bodies of those who died in the Land Titanic. But when the ship's safe is discovered, he is seen using the cruise director's skull to open it.
- Inexplicably Awesome: Lady Astor is able to prevent nitro-glycerine laced cake from exploding right in front of her, in defiance of all logic.Zoidberg: Where's the exploding?Hobsy: One does not explode in the face of Mrs. Astor.
- Kick the Dog: Lady Astor practically makes a sport of it, having her butler dump a cake she's just taken one bite out of in a room full of dogs. The cake, which includes nitro-glycerine, promptly explodes. She also uses Brown University to keep mutants distracted, and tries having them murdered for wanting better rights.
- Limited Wardrobe: For whatever reason, Mayor Poopenmeyer spends the entire episode in the same tuxedo he's wearing at Lady Astor's party.
- Marilyn Maneuver: Parodied when a girl is walking on the streets with the Mayor when an air conditioner, which had just lifted her dress a little too high, exudes an enormous quantity of sewage that sends her through the air.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After the rest of Planet Express get banished to the sewers, Bender initially throws a massive party in the headquarters without them. However, he quickly comes to miss them and kicks all the party guests out.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Fry inadvertently blabs about Leela being a mutant, getting her kicked down to the sewers. It then goes From Bad to Worse, as his revealing that the Planet Express crew knew all along that Leela was a mutant gets them (except for Bender, who wasn't present at the time) two weeks banishment to the sewers as punishment for knowingly harboring a mutant.
- Nitro Express: The team has to deliver a cake with nitroglycerine to Lady Astor (for her heart condition). There is even a rickety old bridge they have to cross.
- Parasol Parachute: While the rest of the crew painfully lands in the sewers, Zoidberg gracefully floats down with one of these.Zoidberg: Three dollars at the drugstore.
- Reset Button:
- Fry appears to turn into a mutant after jumping into the mutagen lake, but is actually lodged inside the mouth of the mutated Mister Astor, who spits him out good as new.
- Averted with the end, when mutants are granted free access to the surface, and remains so for the rest of the series.
- Rich Bitch: Lady Astor, at least at first.
- Saying Too Much: First Fry at the party, then Fry trying to reason with Mayor Poopenmeyer, followed by Hermes.Mayor: Wait, you're saying you knowingly harbored a mutant?Hermes: We did harbor a mutant! ... Uh-oh.
- Shout-Out: In the Dance Party Ending, Leela and Fry dance similar to Gilbert and George when they danced to the same song.
- Sinking Ship Scenario: Spoofed with the Land Titanic, which sinks into the street after hitting a mailbox at Fifth Avenue.
- The Symbiote: Mr. Astor was mutated into a living slime organism that can harbor people in his body. When Fry lands in his mouth, he acted as a mutant suit for the human until Leela nearly kissed him/them.
- Take That!: Mark Mothersbaugh and Devo appear, stating they'll do anything for their fellow mutants. When Dwight demands they play "Whip It", they refuse instantly.
- Was Too Hard on Him: After Fry accidentally reveals that Leela is a mutant, Leela gets mad at him about it and yells at him. Later, she tells her parents "Maybe I was too hard on Fry. He didn't ruin my life on purpose."
- Whole-Plot Reference: To Metropolis. The scene of the Mutants working on the Westside Pipeway is a blatant reference to a scene in the film where a machine explodes.
