Shout Out / Futurama

Shout Outs in Futurama.

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General

• The show's title comes from the Futurama exhibit made by General Motors for the 1939 New York World's Fair. The fair's theme was "the World of Tomorrow," a phrase which comes up several times in the pilot episode and is referenced over the course of the series.
• The look of the eyes of many of the series' robotic characters—the most prominent being Bender—is a nod to Crow T. Robot from Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Show

• When the team go to Luna Park in "The Series Has Landed" Bender shoves his beer bottle through the right eyes of moon-faced mascot Craterface's mask in a shout out to A Trip to the Moon.
• Professor Farnsworth's rant about creating "a race of atomic supermen" in "A Fishful of Dollars" is a nod to Bride of the Monster.
• The goal of the Brain Spawn is to gather all information in the universe, and then destroy it, so that no new information can be created, thus making them omniscient. Rather similar to another brain-themed alien supervillain.
• Bender being offered a chance to face off with the Robot Devil in a fiddle contest to win his soul (and a golden fiddle) in "Hell is Other Robots" is a reference to the classic country song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".
• In "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", it is revealed that Leela is turned on by musicians, no matter how gross and immature they are.
• Loads of shout-outs to all science fiction, ever, but especially Star Trek ^note Even though it was revealed that any mention of the franchise is considered illegal in the future. Just from the new series, "V-Giny" in "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" is a parody of V-Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Not to mention Janeway's Guide). And in "Proposition Infinity", the interracial couple are from the planet in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", which was destroyed by racial hatred. In the episode: "Where No Fan Has Gone Before," the Planet Express fitted with nacelles bear a striking resemblance of the stardrive section of the Enterprise seen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies.
  • The plot of "Obsoletely Fabulous" reminds one of Total Recall (1990). Similarly, "A Big Piece of Garbage" takes a page from Armageddon (1998).
• In "Fear of a Bot Planet", the robot planet, Chapek 9, is named after Czech writer Karel Capek, who along with his brother coined the word "robot". (The plot of the episode however is modeled on one of Stanislaw Lem's Ijon Tichy stories).
  • In that same episode, Fry and Leela go on trial at the Hall of Justice.
• The manhole cover from The PJs is seen in "I Second That Emotion" and "The Luck of the Fryrish". According to the DVD commentary, the writers put that reference in there as they loved The PJs and hated the fact it got Screwed by the Network.
  • The PJs reciprocated with Fry's Face on a Milk Carton.
• In the episode "Law & Oracle", Fry can be seen using a computer that highly resembles the ARI from Heavy Rain. He even uses the exact same hand movements Agent Jayden uses to interface with the evidence.
  • One scene has Fry riding a motorcycle that turns into a lightcycle during a car chase.
  • Also, the general plot of the episode is an obvious shout-out to Minority Report.
• The holophonor is a vanishingly rare example of a Shout-Out to Isaac Asimov's Foundation. The instrument is based on Magnifico's Visi-Sonor, which creates holograms and music at the same time.
• In "Decision 3012", during the Thundercrats Global Convention, several banners with shout-outs to locations in other popular media can be seen, such as Skyrim, Panem and R'lyeh.
  • The Reveal about Travers' origin may be a combined shout-out to Terminator (lone man sent back in time to prevent a robot uprising) and Serious Sam (said lone man is wearing bright red sneakers when he's sent back).
• The episode "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles" had a gargoyle named Pazuzu, the same name as the demon who possessed Regan Macneil in The Exorcist.
  • Pazuzu speaking with a French accent with the Eiffel Tower in the background is a reference to a comic book by Jacques Tardi, "Le démon de la tour Eiffel". In this Adele Blanc-Sec adventure, Pazuzu is the antagonist.
• In "The Six Million Dollar Mon" the way Zoidberg says "Something wonderful" in reply to "What are you doing?" along with the music in the background is a shout out to 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
  • In the robot cemetery, there's a head stone for Helper.
• In "Cold Warriors", Manhattan is enclosed, ripped out of the ground, and lifted off of the earth in a reference to the novel Manhattan Transfer.
• In Zapp Dingbat, there's an obvious Shout-Out to the Wretched Hive Cantina from A New Hope, but it goes even more obscure as holophonors recreate the holographic lead dancing circus acrobat from The Star Wars Holiday Special. (George Takei yells, "Dance, slave, dance!")
• In Bender's Big Score, the bunnies have one ear, much like Bongo the Rabbit from Life in Hell.
• The Neanderthal attack in Fun On A Bun is filled with clever visual references to Princess Mononoke
  • At the end of that episode, Zapp Branigan is served some giant mammoth ribs, which, when set down on the table, flip it over the same way the brontosaurus ribs flip over Fred's car at the drive-in during the closing credits of The Flintstones.
• The Late Philip J. Fry includes a song that is a parody of In the Year 2525, with a longer timescale ("In the Year 252525").
  • In the same episode, the characters visit a future where a grizzled soldier informs them that the robots humans built to make their lives easier ultimately rebelled and destroyed society.
• Leela's name may be a reference to a former companion of The Doctor that had the same name.
• The crew's shopping trip to pick out new uniforms in 31st Century Fox is an orgy of shout-outs to costumes from other Sci-Fi series and movies. It starts with the whole crew in stillsuits from the David Lynch's Dune (1984). Then we see Zoidberg in Imperial Stormtrooper armor, Fry in an Original Series redshirt, Amy in a PanAm space stewardess uniform, Leela in Barbarella's see-through spacesuit, and the Professor in Zed's horrific red bikini.
• In Leela and the Genestalk the crew find Jake and Finn trapped in Mom's floating Genetics lab.
  Jake: What time is it?
  Bender: Time for you to shut up!
• In "Bender's Game", during a flashback when Farnsworth was working for Mom, a reference is made to the famous clay pottery scene from Ghost (1990).
• In "Fry and the Slurm Factory" Fry guesses that the secret ingredient in Slurm may be humans. Leela says that's not possible, since there is already a soft drink with humans in it: Soylent Cola.
  • And of course, that episode was itself a Charlie and the Chocolate Parody.
• The big tear-jerker in Jurassic Bark may be inspired by Hachikō, or Odysseus's faithful dog, Argos.
• In "All the Presidents' Heads", an establishing shot of the Planet Express building features a man with a long scarf and fedora ^note  the Fourth Doctor getting off of a bus and running into a familiar blue box.
  • In the same episode, enroute to Philadelphia, their wagon gets overtaken by a kid on a small wooden horse being pulled by his father, prompting the following complaint:
  Prof. Farnsworth: Oh! Why couldn't my disgraced anscestor have lived during the NASCAR era?!
• The series taxi cab numbers are the smallest possible numbers that are the sum of two different cubes in two different ways. And they are are everywhere in this show. The rank one taxi cab number is 1729 (look closely and you will see it a lot). It is on tons inconsequential little things, ship No.'s box universes, serial No.'s. They even show the rank two number, a sum of two different cubes in three different ways. 87539319 is actually used as a literal taxi cab number, and is on the cab Fry gets out of to board a boat to get his whale back in the 2000's.
  • This is an extended shout-out to Srinivasa Ramanujan, a famous mathematician renowned by many a staff member on the Futurama team.
• In "31st Century Fox," Bender calls the store owner Squidward Scissorhands.
• In "The Route of All Evil" (3:55 in, specifically), Hermes is briefly heard singing a version of "Get Up, Stand Up" by Bob Marley and the Wailers in his office - with lyrics changed to bureaucratic themes, natch.
• There's the Harlem Globetrotter planet, which was an extended shout-out to the old Hanna-Barbera Harlem Globetrotters cartoon series.
  • As well as the Globetrotters themselves.
• In "The Beast with a Billion Backs", when Bender assaults Yivo, the scene resembles a certain savvy pirate meeting a kraken with his sword.
• The episode "A Bicyclops Built for Two" contains several Shout Outs to Married... with Children, the show actress Katey Sagal (who voices Leela) was best known for before her work on Futurama. At one point, Leela does her hair up like Peggy Bundy, dresses like her, walks like her, and exchanges cheap dirty insults with her husband-to-be, an alien named Alcazar.

  Turanga Leela: Aaaaaaaaal!.

  • In the same episode, one of Alcazar‘s brides is a Yithian from from The Shadow Out of Time.
• Two shout-outs to Star Trek in the episode "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love": The Decapodian tradition of dueling to the death is named Claw-plah (after the Klingon word for victory, Qapla'), and their national anthem is the dueling music often featured in similar deathmatches fought in the Original Series.
• Another Star Trek shout-out that has already been used twice is the reference to Christopher Pike, former captain of the Enterprise, and particularly his wheelchair. The chair appears first in the episode "Love's Labours Lost in Space". Pike himself appears in the chair at Professor Farnsworth's 150's birthday in "A Clone of My Own". In both cases either the chair or pike's disfigured visage are subverted. The sliding doors used all throughout the show have the same sound effect from the ones in Star Trek, which is commented on by Fry in the first episode. He later gets stuck in the door too.
• Even before Bender's Game, there were numerous shout outs to Dungeons & Dragons in the series, ranging from the obvious (Gary Gygax showing up in "Anthology of Interest") to the subtle (a rust monster at a veterinary hospital, a beholder in "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back").
• The "Iron Cook" cooking competition show from "The 30% Iron Chef" is an obvious shout out to Iron Chef; complete with Hong Kong Dub-like commentary and an expy of Chairman Kaga. Matt Greoning has mentioned in an interview (and again in the commentary for that episode) that he is a fan of the show.
• From "Why Must I Be A Crustacean In Love", Fry used his dismembered arm to fight Zoidberg, just like Amada Shiro.
• "You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location, the kind of place where there might be a monster or some kind of weird mirror. These are just examples; it could also be something much better. Prepare to enter The Scary Door."
• The Studio 1²2¹3³ Studio 54 dance club, first seen in "Rebirth".
• The spaceship graveyard in the Bermuda Tetrahedron in "Möbius Dick" contains the Discovery One, Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, the Satellite of Love, the Jupiter II, the spaceship from Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, spaceships commonly seen on albums by Electric Light Orchestra, Journey and Boston, an Apollo Lunar Module with the ascent and descent stages still attached, an Apollo Command/Service Module labeled "Apollo 100", and Skylab. There are also two spaceships named Garmin and TomTom.
• In "Raging Bender", a fan at one of the shows has a Bender 3:16 sign.
  • At one point, Bender says he'll "...float like a hoverbot, sting like an automatic stinging machine."
• The base camp in "War Is the H-word" is a big shout-out to M*A*S*H, complete with the "Suicide is Painless" theme, arriving helicopters, and a Hawkeye Pierce Expy-bot who switches between funny, maudlin, and...Groucho Marx.
• "Saturday Morning Fun Pit" has three segments all parodying the Saturday morning cartoons Scooby-Doo, Strawberry Shortcake, and G.I. Joe. The former also doubles as an Actor Allusion with Fry being the Expy of Shaggy since Billy West actually voiced the latter in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.
• One episode has a cameo of Eric Cartman's head at the museum of celebrity heads in jars.
• The particular noise Dr. Zoidberg makes every time he's frightened is exactly the same Curly, from The Robonic Stooges, makes when he's on the blink.
• In "The Impossible Stream", when Bender was browsing the TV Guide, if you pause the scene, there are a lot of title parodies of various television shows and some films. Some of which reference parts of the Futurama Universe. These titles include:
  • Cosinefeld
  • Jupiter's Next Top Model
  • Shatner's Creek
  • Friends Reunion Reunion
  • Steady State Universe Theory
  • Unexplained Friday Night Lights
  • The A-Team but with an Alienese symbol instead of an A
  • TruthBusters
  • Regular Ghost: Coast to Coast
  • Downton Crabby
  • Star Trek: The Original Reboot
  • Disenpantment
  • Better Call Cthulhu
  • The Marvelous Mrs Poopenmeyer
  • Buckminster Fuller House
  • Fonfon Ru Crashers
  • Stanley Tucci: Searching for Alderaan
  • The Sex Lives of Amazonian Women
  • II's Company
  • Melvar Place
  • Alien vs. Predator vs. Bluey
  • Queer Eye for the Straight Line Segment
  • America Lacks Talent
  • Say No to the Overalls
  • The Sims' Sons
  • Pimp My Hovercraft
  • Grey Alien's Anatomy
  • The Botfather
  • Family Gorn
  • Will and Grkrk
  • 0.999 Full House
  • Sandcrab and Son
  • All in the Phylum
  • 30 Rock From the Sun
  • American Holo Story
  • Back to the Present
  • M*A*T*H
  • CSI Ceti Alpha V
  • Just Disruptor Blast Me
  • Rick and Morky
  • Everybody Loves Raygun
  • Frank Herbert's Name That Dune
  • Two and a Third Mutants
  • Fargo But in Space
  • Smizmar Island
  • NYPD Ultraviolet

Comics

• In the first issue of the comic book, recoloured versions of Lum and Ten make a cameo appearance on page 11.
• The third issue briefly shows a DVD of Family Guy at the flea market.
• In Issue 38 of the comic, Fry is heavily implied to be playing Sonic the Hedgehog and namedrops Mario, Lara Croft and Crash Bandicoot.
• Issue 42 features an alien dog resembling Odie and Zapp Brannigan using his teeth to tug at the bottomwear of a female dog alien in a manner reminiscent of the Coppertone ad.
• Issue 44:
  • Fox McCloud, Slippy Toad, Peppy Hare and Mario appear at Fry's trial:
  Space Chicken: Your honor, this boy's as guilty as a star-fox in a space-henhouse!
  Fox: That's not fair! Those charges were dropped!
  Peppy: Easy, S.F., easy!
  • One of the parallel universe Frys seen during Fry's driving test resembles Bert.
  • Zapp Brannigan accidentally calls for R2-D2 at one point.
  • Hattie McDoogal gets sent through a portal to the ThunderCats universe.
• Issue 76 features Captain Ersatzes of the Avengers, with Zapp Brannigan playing the role of Captain America. In addition, The Incredible Hulk copy is yellow, wears blue pants, and has Homer Simpson's hair.

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