Time travelers: Only 331 shopping days 'til last Xmas
A Three Shorts Christmas Episode based around the three winter holidays previously featured on the show: X-Mas, Kwanzaa, and Robanukah.
Tropes in all three segments
- Continuity Nod:
- Richard Nixon's Head has a new vice president, Dick Cheney's Head, replacing the deceased Headless Body of Spiro Agnew, killed back in Into the Wild Green Yonder.
- Robanukah was originally an excuse Bender came up with to ditch work in "Fear of Bot Planet". This is mentioned.
- Fry plays a Holophonor during Bender's song about Robanukah.
- Death as Comedy: Lots of characters die for the sake of a dark joke. This is especially noticeable with Scruffy being killed by the end of the first segment's musical number and Kwanzaabot arriving to save everyone from the Space Bees only to get killed by them off-screen.
- Downer Ending: A Running Gag for all three segments.
- In the first one, Bender lighting a cigar ignites Earth's atmosphere, killing everyone.
- In the second, the entire crew (save Bender) are crushed and die. Upon returning to the surface, the Earth is shown to have become a desolate wasteland with Bender and the two fembots wrestling one another in oil being the only survivors.
- And in the third, the Space Bees seal the entire crew in wax and prepare to burn them.
- Gone Horribly Right: In the X-Mas and Kwanzaa specials.
- The pine tree is reintroduced, and thanks to cross-contamination from the germ warfare vault, reproduces at lightning speed, covering the entire planet. Oxygen levels in the atmosphere sharply rise causing the entire planet to incinerate after Bender lights a cigar.
- Hermes uses the spirit of Kwanzaa to rekindle the Space Bees' hive mind, and they promptly turn on the Planet Express crew.
- Musical Episode: Each segment has one musical number to explain the traditions of each holiday.
- X-Mas Special: And Robanukah Special and Kwanzaa Special.
Tropes in the X-Mas segment
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The end of the segment has Robot Santa directly address the audience and tell them to stay tuned for the next segment.
- Improbable Weapon User: The Professor helps fight off Robot Santa with fruitcake. Nuclear fruitcake, which has reached critical mass.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone turns to Bender in horror when they see him light a cigar in the oxygen saturated atmosphere.
- Running Gag: The first segment has someone pointing something out about the seeds, only for the Seed Vault Guard to deny there's a problem.
Tropes in the Robanukah segment
- Comically Missing the Point: When asked by Fry about why the Albino Humping Worm is called that, the Professor explains it's called such because it doesn't have any pigment. Right after the creature starts humping the Planet Express ship.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Albino Humping Worm. It's a giant worm. It's albino. And boy, does it hump!
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Bender's mission to extract petroleum is revealed to have been entirely pointless when he returns to the decayed Planet Express building to find that the oil he had poured over the fembots miraculously lasted for millions of years.
- Time Skip: The final scene takes place millions of years later.
Tropes in the Kwanzaa segment
- Fan Disservice: Petunia offering "a little honey", which actually elicits exclamations of disgust from the other characters.Petunia: Die young, leave a pretty corpse; that's what I say.
Bender: You should say something else. - Fantastic Racism: As a result of parasitic infection, Space Bees become willing to shoot one another over being either yellow with black stripes, or black with yellow stripes.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Kwanzaa-bot tries to pull a Big Damn Heroes at the end, but the Space Bees kill him.
- Suddenly Voiced: The Space Bee Queen, who previously communicated only in buzzes, is voiced by Dawnn Lewis.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Hermes saves the space bees from their parasite infestation. Seconds after the Queen Bee thanks him, the other bees turn on the protagonists and kill them all.
