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Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew watch Saturday morning cartoons, featuring the Futurama gang in a Scooby-Doo parody called Bendee-Boo and the Mystery Crew, a Merchandise-Driven Strawberry Shortcake-meets-The Smurfs parody called Purpleberry Pond, and an ultraviolent G.I. Joe parody called G.I. Zapp that Nixon tries to edit for content.
Tropes for this episode:
- Actor Allusion: Fry being an expy of Shaggy is a reference to the fact that Billy West voiced Shaggy in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.
- Ad Bumpers: Purpleberry Pond features two separate bumpers within the segment, one based on a skywriter ("We'll be write back") and the other featuring a bee ("We'll bee right back").
- Adaptational Villainy: Professor Farnsworth (who was morally ambiguous to begin with) and Dr. Zoidberg play the role of villains in Purpleberry Pond and G.I. Zapp.
- Adjacent to This Complete Breakfast: Purpleberry Puffs are loaded with sugar and clearly unhealthy for kids, but are still vouched as part of a nutritious breakfast.Purpleberry Puffs are the sweetest part of your complete breakfast; along with juice, toast, ham, eggs, bacon, milk, cheese, liver, waffles, and a biiiiig horse vitamin.
- And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Parodied during the PSA at the end of the G.I. Zapp segment. Nixon and Agnew come across Cubert and Dwight fighting over a football and decide to teach them a lesson about violence:Nixon: Now hold on there boys, violence never solved anything.
Dwight: Then how do we decide who gets the ball?
Nixon: Agnew, show 'em.
[Agnew walks over and rips their football in half.]
Nixon: There! How do you like your stupid ball now?
[Agnew drives him and Nixon away while Cubert and Dwight sob away.] - Bait-and-Switch: While Nutcracker swears vengeance for Freezer Burn's...sleeping (but actually, his death), Nixon interrupts to still say a mild swear over what she was going to say rather than something entirely child-friendly.Nutcracker: I will avenge him you heartless-!
Nixon: Bastards! [to Agnew] It's okay if I say it. - Blatant Lies: The entire G.I. Zapp segment features Nixon poorly overdubbing the cartoon in order to make it more child-appropriate, even when the screen continues to show horrific violence:[Kif's plane crashes behind some mountains and explodes.]
Nixon: I, uh... landed the plane safely next to this naturally occurring fireball! At Disneyland!
[Kif's severed arm lands in front of the camera.]
Nixon: Hi, Tinkerbell! - Bowdlerize: After receiving complaints from parents that cartoons are becoming too violent, Nixon takes matters into his own hands and tries to censor a G.I. Zapp cartoon as it airs. The result leaves a lot to be desired.
- The Butler Did It: Subverted in Bendee-Boo. The gang suspects the Professor's butler Zoidberg was the Dragon Ghost, but accidentally decapitate him when they try to "unmask" him. It turns out they had already caught the Dragon Ghost, who turned out to be George Takei.
- Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs: The Purpleberry Puffs cereal is blatantly unhealthy, despite its Merchandise-Driven tie-in cartoon claiming otherwise. The puffs are "triple-soaked" in maple syrup and turn the milk purple, and one variation is just the puffs coated in sugar. The little girl gets fat after eating one bowl. The commercials end with a diabetes joke:Girl: I don't know which I like more — original, or type two!
- Fake Shemp: Parodied in Bendee-Boo, where Larry Byrd's only dialogue is a recorded phone message about how he read the script and doesn't want to be involved with the cartoon at all.
- Family-Unfriendly Violence: G.I. Zapp seems to be aimed at children, but is filled with explosions, severed limbs, gruesome deaths, and the heroes gleefully committing war crimes against their foes.
- Fantastic Racism: The citizens of Purpleberry Pond are suspicious of the arrival of their new neighbor Lord Loquat, who unlike everyone else in town, is orange instead of purple.Hermes: There goes the purplehood.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: Three separate segments focusing on parodying old cartoons with the Futurama cast. Only the wrap-around segments with Nixon and Agnew are set during the 31st century.
- Four-Fingered Hands: Averted in Bendee-Boo, as true to the work it is parodying. Strangely, G.I. Zapp plays this straight.
- Fun with Acronyms: One of the most literal examples, with the evil terrorist organization ACRONYM:Kif: ACRONYM: A Criminal Regiment Of Nasty Young Men.
Nixon: Oh, that's clever. I'll leave that the way it is. - Hand Wave: During the explanation of how George Takei managed to disguise himself as the Dragon Ghost, he says that he used one of the projectors from his Kabuki theater to make it look like he was flying. When Leela points out that Kabuki theaters don't use projectors, Takei simply claims that some do.
- Historical In-Joke: It wouldn't be Nixon without a reference to the Watergate scandal:Nixon: Rosemary! Have we got any type of machinery that can edit tape?
Rosemary: Oh, you know we do! - Hypocritical Humor: The crowd gathered outside the White House protests the amount of violence on television, shortly before one of them hurls a Molotov cocktail at Nixon's window.
- Laugh Track: Just like in old Scooby-Doo cartoons, Bendee-Boo is accompanied by an ever-present laugh track. It's naturally lampshaded by the others:Amy: Did anyone else hear that weird laugh?
Leela: It's spooky. It doesn't seem to correspond with anything funny happening.
Fry: I'll say.
[Cue laugh track.] - Limited Animation: Deliberately done during the Bendee-Boo segment, as a nod to the cheap animation from the source material. Characters tend to stay in the same static poses, movement is very minimal, and certain elements like the Mystery Express are plainly just the animation cels being dragged across the background to convey movement.
- Merchandise-Driven: Purpleberry Pond is an attempt to teach kids valuable life lessons, but the real lesson to take away from the show is to buy all the new flavors of Purpleberry Puff cereal. The episode literally ends with the characters singing for the kids at home to beg their mom to buy more cereal.
- Mind Screw: The Purpleberry Pond show turns into its own commercial at one point.
- Moral Guardians: Nixon and Agnew are distracted from a morning of watching cartoons by a large group of parents protesting the content of children's programming. They first force Nixon to put on shows with "shoehorned in helpful messages", then later force him to cut down the amount of violence in Saturday morning cartoons.
- Motive Misidentification: Played for Laughs in Bendee-Boo. After the Mystery Crew explain that George Takei's motive was to sabotage the basketball game to increase interest in his Kabuki theater, he says he actually did it because he's mentally ill.
- No Kill like Overkill: Orphan Crippler corners a member of ACRONYM, and pops open his chest to reveal a rifle, power-drill, and chainsaw. The following death scene is so violent, that Nixon decides to cut the show short and skip straight to the PSA.
- Nutritional Nightmare: The Purpleberry Puff cereal is just sugar on top of sugar, with the ads showing kids who eat it on a regular basis will either become obese, get diabetes, or both.
- Scooby-Dooby Doors: Subverted. The Dragon Ghost chases Fry and Bendee-Boo into a hallway filled with doors. The two enter a single room, and stay in there until it cuts to the next scene.
- Spoofy-Doo: One of the segments is a fairly straightforward parody of Scooby-Doo called Bendee-Boo and the Mystery Crew, with Bender being Scooby, Fry being Shaggy, Amy being Velma, Leela being Daphne, and Hermes being Fred. The segment itself pokes fun at general conventions of the show such as limited animation and the Scooby-Dooby Doors.Theme Song: Bendee, Bendee-Boo, what's wrong with you? You're such a lousy mascot. No one understands a single word you say. Not even the jerk in the ascot.
- The Stoner: Shaggy's resemblance to a stereotypical stoner is parodied with Fry in Bendee-Boo:Hermes: Say Fry, why do you always have the munchies? And also, your eyes are bloodshot, you're paranoid, and the van has a skunky odor?
Fry: Search me. No, don't! I'm carrying. - Stock Footage: The brief cameo by Farnsworth and Zoidberg in Purpleberry Pond is repeated several times during the segment.
- Stylistic Suck: All three segments viciously lampoon the common traits of cartoons made during The '70s and The '80s. Bendee-Boo has glaring animation mistakes, Purpleberry Pond is focused on selling merchandise rather than telling an interesting story, and G.I. Zapp is hastily re-edited to remove all the child-unfriendly violence that's on full-display.
- Tie-In Cereal: Invoked. The Smurfs parody was made completely to sell a very unhealthy cereal.
- Wraparound Background: Parodied during the opening of Bendee-Boo, as the Mystery Express take a drive through the Repeating Forest.
