Fed up with his go-nowhere job as a delivery boy (especially after Roberto the Psycho Robot takes everyone hostage), Fry joins the police force.
Tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch:
- Regular cop character Smitty is absent after his first scene in this episode, with his comrades lamenting his loss and saying he only had a few days left until retirement. When Fry inquires, it turns out Smitty took an early retirement.
- When confronted by an Angry Guard Dog, Bender takes out a steak... which he uses to slap the dog unconscious before eating it himself.
- Blessed with Suck: Pickles grows tired of always knowing what will happen in the future so he sets up a con to have this ability removed.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite his usual incompetency and laziness, Fry quickly proves he makes a surprisingly good cop and detective. He even manages to Out Gambit someone who is able to see into the future.
- Call-Back:
- The call back to the pilot episode in the first minute, where it starts with Fry playing a game similar to Paperboy and losing, with Zoidberg and Leela using the respective lines of the little boy and Mr. Panucci.
- The house HedonismBot married in The Late Phillip J. Fry makes an appearance
- URL and Chief O'Mannahan are in an open robosexual relationship, which were made legal back in "Proposition Infinity".
- Cultural Translation: In the French dub, both instances of Fry mentioning Speed Buggy were replaced with him instead mentioning Scooby-Doo. Also in that same dub, the Take That! against Jay Leno was replaced with a Take That! against Eddie Murphy.
- Dynamite Candle: Played with, where Bender lights a dynamite stick then leaves it in his mouth like a cigar... but he does a double-take and realizes IT'S DYNAMITE and uses it to break open an invisible safe.
- Flipping the Bird: In the final scene, Bender gives Fry the finger when Fry says he got fired for tipping off Bender.
- The Heart: The rest of Planet Express realize that without Fry, their company loses its charms. Bender and Leela have nothing to talk about during delivery missions, Hermes' reports become as dull as reports get, etc. By the end of the episode, the Professor notes that they don't know what Fry does exactly, but they desperately need it.
- Hidden Depths: Fry turns out to make a pretty good cop. Who knew?
- Instant Oracle: Just Add Water!: To complete the nod to Minority Report, Pickles is partially submerged in a tub of water. He emits colored balls that the police scoop out of the water to receive his premonitions.
- Kansas City Shuffle: When Fry is told of a future crime he has to solve; an oracle robot called "Pickles" gives Fry the prediction that one of the following will happen: 1. He will shoot Bender, causing him to destroy the Maltese Liquor and die; 2. He won't shoot Bender, but Bender will share the priceless alcohol with Planet Express, killing everyone due to its lethality. Fry attempts to pick neither, but Pickles appears at the crime and reveals it wasn't a prediction, but a setup. After Fry accidentally shoots Bender, Pickles shoots Fry and drinks the real liquor to kill his human brain, thus removing his psychic abilities; however, it is then revealed that the prediction came true simply because Fry figured out Pickles was the mastermind (due to the inconsistency of Bender sharing) and thus set up Pickles' con, causing Pickles to lose his oracle powers and allowing them to arrest him.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When Fry discovers he will shoot Bender in the future, parodying Minority Report
- Out Giving Birth, Back in Two Minutes: Chief O'Mannahan ducks into the bathroom for a minute and comes out holding a baby, no prior indication that she was even pregnant.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Fry is able to tell that Pickles is deceiving him when he shows Bender sharing strong malt liquor to the crew of the Planet Express (which, though harmless to robots, is deadly to humans). As Bender is an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist, he would not share it with anyone.
- Paddleball Shot: Parodied when Bender throws a sandwich at the camera and a message telling the viewers to "Put On 3D Glasses One Minute Ago" flashes up.
- Self-Deprecation: At the end of the episode, Fry gets his job back at Planet Express with the new title of "Executive Delivery Boy." Hermes says, "It's a meaningless title that helps people feel better about themselves." Roll Executive Producer credits for Matt Groening and David X. Cohen.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Played Straight, with most of the Oracle's predictions turning out that as he predicted because the observers of the prophecy made it that way.
- Double Subverted in a prophecy created turning out the way he predicted, with the observers playing their parts, all because he made it happen that way. His abilities are shown to not only predict the future but to create and change it.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: Chief O'Mannahan, due to her invoking every Da Chief stereotype imaginable, congratulates Fry and URL on a major drug bust while in the police locker room while clad only in a towel. Said towel is only covering her waist, thus fully exposing her breasts for all (but the audience) to see. She calls no attention to this at all. Fry does, though.O'Mannahan: Congratulations on your big bust.
Fry: You, too. - Shout-Out:
- To Paperboy, TRON, and Minority Report
- There's also a nod to the famous thought experiment Schrödinger's Cat; Fry arrests Schrodinger and opens the box he's carrying around; out jumps a very-much-alive cat that attacks him. (The box also contains drugs.) The state of the cat might be a shout-out to Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies, which describes the possible states of the cat in the box being Alive, Dead and Absolutely Bloody Furious.
- Fry says that his scheme of outsmarting Pickles was based on an episode of Speed Buggy.
- The Maltese Liquor is of such an absurdly high alcohol content level that it is fatal to everyone but robots and Billy Dee Williams.
- Leela and Bender go on a delivery to Pandora and complain when the professor won't let them use Avatars to do it.
- Spotting the Thread: Fry realized something was up with Pickles' predictions when it showed Bender sharing the Maltese Liquor with the rest of Planet Express because Bender isn't someone who shares his booze.
- Stylistic Suck: Pandora is rendered in deliberately bad red-cyan 3D over black and white. Leela complains that she can barely see anything due to her one eye.
- Take That!:Pickles: Do you have any idea what a burden it is to know everything that will ever happen?! To never be surprised. To know the punch line of every joke hours in advance?!
Fry: Like watching Leno!- Bender and Leela also go to Pandora, which is a needlessly 3D special effect planet.
- Taught by Television: URL and Fry have this exchange during their chase in Circuit City, after the latter flies off a wall:URL: Whoa! Where'd my man learn that?
Fry: Sunny D commercial. - Vetinari Job Security: Invoked when Fry quits Planet Express to join the police; even though he didn't actually do much in his role as Delivery Boy, the rest of the crew quickly discover that they need Fry to distract them from how much they don't get along with each other, ranging from Farnsworth only saying "Good news!" because it made Fry feel better to Leela and Bender having nothing to say on delivery when it's just the two of them without Fry to act as a buffer.Professor Farnsworth: Fry, we have no idea what you do around here, but we desperately need you back.
- We Want Our Idiot Back!: The Planet Express crew begs Fry to come back to work for them after he's fired from his police job, as the company has become boring and hostile without him.
