Although it always struggled to match the ratings of Matt Groening’s previous show The Simpsons, Futurama is one of the greatest TV series ever made. Groening and his team of Harvard-educated writers set out to make more than just an absurdist comedy. There are plenty of one-liners and sight gags in the show, but without those elements, it would work as a straight science fiction series.
Set at the turn of the 31st century, Futurama got a lot of comedic mileage out of exploring humanity’s future. But it also introduced the sci-fi fans in the audience to plenty of thought-provoking concepts.
Transport Tubes
There’s an intricate network of tubes around New New York that people use to get around. It’s a new kind of public transport whereby people are sucked through a glass tube from point A to point B in single file.
These tubes feature prominently in the opening credits. It’s certainly more appealing than sitting on a crowded bus or racing to catch a train — it might even feel kind of like a rollercoaster.
Liquid-Based Organisms
When Fry is sent traipsing through the blistering heat of the planet Trisol to deliver a package in the season 1 episode “My Three Suns,” he sees what looks like a bottle of water sitting in a lavish throne room and eagerly gulps it down. Armed guards enter, at which point Fry realizes Trisolians are liquid-based organisms and he just drank their emperor.
The idea of a liquid-based lifeform is fascinating, as is the idea that they would embrace a carbon-based lifeform as their new leader (“Fry the Solid”) after he drank the old one.
The Holophonor
Fry sells his soul to the Robot Devil in exchange for becoming a master of the Holophonor in the season 5 finale “The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings,” which was intended to be the series finale before the show was revived.
Kind of a cross between a woodwind instrument and a holographic projector, the Holophonor visualizes the music that’s played on it. Fry wants to write an opera for Leela. In the end, she finds the clunky version he plays straight from his heart to be much more touching than the one he composed with demonic powers.
Fight Trash With Trash
In a hilarious parody of Michael Bay’s Armageddon, season 1’s “A Big Piece of Garbage” sees a giant ball of trash careening toward Earth because scientists’ response to trash building up on landfill sites was just to bundle all the trash together and send it into space.
When the garbage comes back to Earth, Fry comes up with the novel idea of bundling together a second ball of trash and launching it at the first one.
Mind-Switching Device
Professor Farnsworth invents a device that allows two people to switch consciousnesses in the season 6 episode “The Prisoner of Benda,” and everyone on the Planet Express crew gets stuck in the wrong body.
The episode’s writer, Ken Keeler, who has a PhD in mathematics, developed a proven mathematical theorem to explain how everyone ends up in the right body by the end.
Space Titanic
In the season 1 episode “A Flight to Remember,” the Planet Express crew boards the maiden voyage, the largest space cruiser ever built: the Titanic. With Zapp Brannigan at the helm, the ship is naturally doomed.
Instead of hitting an iceberg, the spacefaring version of the Titanic runs afoul of a black hole. This episode kickstarted Amy and Kif’s relationship. The writers planned it as a one-off gag but ended up turning it into a long-running storyline.
The Farnsworth Parabox
The Professor plans to destroy the titular invention in season 4’s “The Farnsworth Parabox” after it nearly kills him and he forbids the Planet Express crew from touching it before he can launch it into the sun.
But, of course, they can’t stand the mystery and look inside the box. It turns out to be a portal into various parallel universes.
A Presidential Candidate From The Future
Richard Nixon’s reanimated head is shown to be the President of Earth in Futurama. Matt Groening enjoyed the opportunity to continue to poke fun at Nixon decades after he left office in disgrace. When Nixon runs for a third term in the season 7 installment “Decision 3012,” he’s challenged by a candidate from the future named Chris Travers.
Travers claims to have been sent back in time to run against Nixon and prevent him from destroying the world with his policies. In a parody of the “birther” movement, Nixon demands to see Travers’ “Earth certificate.”
Time Runs On A Loop
In the season 7 episode “The Late Philip J. Fry,” Professor Farnsworth invents a “forward time machine” that can only go into the future. He takes Fry and Bender for a test drive forward one minute and they end up being accidentally flung thousands of years into the future. They have no choice but to keep going further and further into the future, hoping to find a time when humans have invented a backwards time machine, but the end of the world arrives first.
As they sit and watch the death of the universe, they’re surprised to witness a second Big Bang that creates an identical universe to the previous one. So, they just travel through the entirety of existence to get to their own time. They end up missing 3010, so they have to go all the way around the cycle of the universe again and witness a third Big Bang before making it home.