"Good news, everyone! I've catalogued an incomplete list of all the stupid decisions you've all made over the course of your Futurama careers!"
- In "A Fishful of Dollars", Mom's sons trick Fry into giving his bank account number (it is the price of a cheese pizza and a large soda where he used to work, Panucci's Pizza).
You'd Expect: Fry to see that he is not in the past. If seeing one of Mom's sons wearing a phony mustache isn't enough, then Pamela Anderson's head in a jar should be the clue.
You'd Also Expect: Fry to realize that something's off when "Mr. Panucci" produces a cheese pizza almost instantly. Having a soda ready is one thing, but a cheese pizza would take at least 15-20 minutes to cook.
Instead: Being Fry, he falls for it easily, resulting in him losing all of his money. Even worse, he says out loud that the price is the same as his PIN! - In "I Second That Emotion", Bender has been given a chip that gives him Leela's emotions in order to try and teach him empathy. Later, Nibbler is being attacked and only Bender can save him because the others are tied up, however, due to Leela's emotions, he is too scared to.
You'd Expect: Leela to focus more on her determination to save Nibbler, making Bender determined to save Nibbler.
Instead: She follows Fry's suggestion: to make Bender tough by ceasing to care about Nibbler. This works, but there was a high risk of Bender just walking off without saving Nibbler. Sure he wouldn't be scared anymore, but if he didn't care about Nibbler, why would he save him in the first place? Especially since Bender is a bit of a Lazy Bum and doesn't care about following directions. It also has the unintended side effect of Leela learning to be mean. - "Brannigan, Begin Again": The Planet Express crew brings oversized scissors to Zapp Brannigan for the grand opening of the new DOOP headquarters.
You'd Expect: Zapp to kindly take the scissors and cut the ribbon with them.
Instead: Zapp, using the power of Insane Troll Logic, thinks that the Planet Express crew is trying to assassinate a few aliens with those scissors and puts them under arrest, using the laser from his Nimbus ship instead to cut the ribbon.
Thus: The new DOOP headquarters get blown up by the laser, leading to Zapp and Kif getting fired. - In "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?", Zoidberg does eventually find a woman, named Edna. Edna then uses Fry, and Zoidberg later comes in.
You'd Expect: Zoidberg to realize that Edna is using Fry to cheat on him and go save him.
Instead: He thinks the Fry is using her to cheat on him.
End Result: Fry and Zoidberg battle to the death, complete with Star Trek: The Original Series' battle theme and, in the end, neither of them get Edna since she ran off with someone else and died during the frenzy. - In "The Lesser of Two Evils", the episode with the debut of Flexo, features Fry, Bender & Flexo have to keep watch on the gigantic atom of "jumboinum". Then comes Fry's turn.
You'd Expect: Fry to at least try to stay awake.
Instead: He falls asleep seconds after Flexo leaves. - "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back":
- Leela has invited her former co-workers from the cryogenics lab for a game of poker, and Bender uses X-ray glasses to clean everybody and ends up winning, much to the dismay of everyone playing.
You'd Expect: Bender would not even let on that he had some way of cheating.
Or: Bender to try and comfort them without implying that he's cheating.
Instead: He warns one of them about a worm in his stomach, which while it was an attempt of a Pet the Dog moment from Bender, but it also tips him off that Bender was using X-ray glasses.
End Result: All it takes is one "Eureka!" Moment from the boss for the cryogenics lab people to chase Bender into Hermes' office and trash the place, leading to the events of the rest of the episode. - Morgan is having an illegal relationship with Fry, and goes to visit Fry at his apartment. Fry warns Morgan that Bender could return at any second.
You'd Think: Morgan, rather than risk being caught in an illegal relationship by Bender, would accept that this is a possibility, and suggest that she and Fry feign having a conversation about office work before ordering Bender to do something in the event he returns.
Instead: She chooses to say he won't return. Bender enters the room a few seconds later, discovers the affair, and threatens to expose it, setting off the main plot of the episode.
- Leela has invited her former co-workers from the cryogenics lab for a game of poker, and Bender uses X-ray glasses to clean everybody and ends up winning, much to the dismay of everyone playing.
- "Parasites Lost": Fry gets infested by worms that make him smarter, stronger, and brave enough to tell Leela he loves her, which ought to lead to a discretion shot.
You'd Expect: that he just leave the worms in, because they are the best thing that has ever happened to him.
Instead: Under a contrived notion that since the worms are rebuilding him they are essentially taking the original him away from Leela, he goes inside his own body and drives the worms out in order to prove to himself that Leela would love him without the worms. He's wrong.
You'd expect: that Leela finally gets a clue that Fry is exactly the kind of person she's holding out for.
Instead: The next episode happens, and she's back to treating Fry like her idiot kid brother. - "The Why of Fry": A guy Leela is dating uses his city connections to sweep her off her feet, including reserving a skating rink for the two of them. A bus full of orphans shows up, and the kids are disheartened to find the rink closed to them. Leela says, "Ah, why don't we let them skate with us?"
You'd Expect: He'd say, "Sure, why not." Even if he didn't have the same sympathy for the kids that Leela had, it should've at least occurred to him that doing something so nice for them would've made bedding her a slam dunk.
Instead: Being the Jerkass that he is, he tells them to beat it and "Come back when you have connections." Not surprisingly, Leela slaps him and dumps him on the spot. - "The Sting": The Professor sends the crew on a dangerous mission to collect honey from Space Bees. Leela notices the baby queen is cute, and starts cuddling her. Fry grabs the Smart Ball and tells Leela they're lucky to have made it this far and leave the queen alone.
You'd Expect: Leela would listen.
Instead: She says that they can use the queen to make their own honey. Apparently, Leela has never run an apiary. Then she insists on holding onto the baby when Bender insults the big queen, who personally leads the attack.
Predictably: There is a reason you don't bring wild animals into human areas. The baby queen tries to sting Leela; Fry gets in the way and tells the bee Go Through Me. It does so, impaling Fry and poisoning Leela, who ends up in a coma from the venom. Leela has a fever dream where she thinks Fry died, and Planet Express indirectly blames her for her recklessness. - "Cold Warriors": A 20th-century strain of the common cold which lay dormant in Fry reactivates and threatens to contaminate the whole world, since the disease had been eradicated centuries earlier and humans have since lost all immunity to it, an eventuality which Farnsworth admits he was living in mortal terror of.
You'd Expect: Farnsworth to take the appropriate measures to prevent Fry from spreading any 20th-century diseases, or to quarantine Fry from the first sneeze.
Instead: The cold spreads from Fry to the rest of the Planet Express crew except for Bender, and only then is a quarantine imposed.
Furthermore, after the cold spreads to the rest of New New York, causing panic due to hardly anyone knowing what the long-thought-extinct cold is...
You'd Expect: One of the preserved heads of somebody who had lived through the times of the virus to know what the effects of it would be or what measures would be appropriate to take against it.
Instead: President Nixon immediately goes right to the nuclear option — even though he lived in such a time himself and as such should know exactly what the common cold virus is. - "The Thief of Baghead": Bender becomes a photographer for a celebrity gossip magazine and decides to get a picture of famed actor Langdon Cobb, who always wears a paper bag over his head. He manages to get a photo of the guy without his bag on, and Langdon warns him not to show the photo to anyone.
You'd Expect: That Bender would listen to him.
Instead: As soon as he gets back to Planet Express, he shows it to Fry.
The Result: Unbeknownst to Bender, Langdon is a "quantum lichen", a race of alien lichen parasites that feed off attention and admiration. Gazing upon a quantum lichen's face will result in whoever's doing it having their "life force" sucked out (Bender is immune because he's a robot and ergo doesn't have a life force), which promptly happens to Fry.
Then You'd Expect: Bender to destroy the photo or at least not show the photo to anyone else.
Instead: He shows it to Amy because he wants to make sure that Fry getting his life force sucked out after looking at the photo wasn't just a coincidence.
The Result: Amy gets her life force sucked out too.
Then You'd Expect: Bender to realize that looking at the photo is dangerous and destroy it.
Instead: He still doesn't quite get it because "two times hardly establishes a pattern" and shows it to Hermes.
The Result: Hermes gets his life force sucked out, which finally makes Bender realize that the photo is dangerous.
So You Would Then Expect: That Bender would destroy the photo.
Instead: He tries to show it to Zoidberg For the Evulz.
Fortunately: Professor Farnsworth grabs the photo before Zoidberg can look at it and tears it up. Bender eventually manages to defeat Langdon and Fry, Amy and Hermes get their life forces back. - "The Butterjunk Effect": Leela and Amy become athletes in a competitive sport called Butterfly Derby. After they realize the steroids they're taking are affecting their behavior, they decide to go cold turkey.
You'd Expect: They would forfeit their last match because it's over lava.
Instead: Amy and Leela try to compete without the drug, against a group of murderous ladies.
The Result: They nearly get killed, if not for Fry's Big Damn Heroes moment. - "Near-Death Wish": Fry is upset that the Professor isn't good family to him, and decides to revive the Professor's parents from their retirement home. It turns out they're estranged because they moved the Professor from the city to a farm when he was a child and had to send him to a mental institution after he suffered a nervous breakdown. Their second child, Floyd, was encouraged to become a rodeo clown.
You'd Expect: They would know their own children apart. Hubert also is very obviously a scientist with the coat and all.
Instead: They mistakenly think that Hubert is Floyd.
Predictably: Hubert angrily corrects them that he spent longer in grad school than in the institution. - "Murder on the Planet Express" After Dan McMasters terrified the crew and made them afraid of a shape-shifting monster, he decides invite Fry and Bender to the pizza party.
You'd Expect: That he would bring the still-alive Planet Express crew members as evidence that there is no danger.
Instead: He goes to calm them down by himself.
The Result: Still paranoid, Fry and Bender shoot him dead.
