15 Funniest Moments In Futurama, Ranked
Comedy is a funny thing. Just as no philosopher has ever been able to reach a definition of "art" that wasn't immediately challenged and exposed as insufficient by another philosopher five seconds later, no universally successful attempt has yet been made to take stock of what makes humans laugh, how that can be achieved through media, and what the rules for said media might be. We're still, by all accounts, making sense of the social phenomenon of laughter. And yet, no one needs to have read Terry Eagleton's "Humor" to understand when something is funny and react accordingly. There's something just ineffably, atavistically immediate about good comedy — something that could still be enduring 1,000 years into the future.
Such is the appeal of most futuristic sci-fi comedy, but especially so of "Futurama," arguably its greatest 21st-century exponent. The Matt Groening-created animated sitcom managed to get seven great seasons (or four great seasons and three good ones, depending on which fan you ask) out of its premise of a 1990s slacker cryogenically frozen and reawakened in 2999, only to find himself facing many of the same problems we do today. In that time, "Futurama" became not only one of the smartest, most involving, most inventive, and most unexpectedly touching animated series of the century so far, but, above all, one of the absolute funniest. You could fill 15 Top 15's just with laugh-out-loud moments from the show, but here are a few that are just total classics.
15. Leela and Amy bring their hostility to The Wizard of Oz
Both of the "Anthology of Interest" installments of "Futurama," in which the characters bear witness to simulations of would-be scenarios projected by Professor Farnsworth's (Billy West) What-If Machine, serve as great sandboxes for the show's writers to place the characters in creatively unrestrained scenarios. And "Anthology of Interest II," which aired as the 18th episode of Season 3, was particularly winning — especially its third and final segment, titled "Wizzin'."
The segment, a "Wizard of Oz" parody dreamed by Leela (Katey Sagal) after being knocked unconscious, features a great comedic jump scare that, while relatively simple in conception compared to other moments on this list, is worthy of mention as a scrumptious example of the show's most underrated character dynamic: the lovingly hostile relationship between Leela and Amy (Lauren Tom). Leela, as Dorothy, is wearing the glimmering red shoes of the "Man-Witch of the West," which Amy, as the seemingly helpful Cute Witch of the North, momentarily compliments — before snarkily adding (with that murderous sweetness only Tom can pull off), "Do they come in women's sizes?" Cue a fed-up Leela blasting the ship's door open and squashing a second witch for good measure. It really does seem like something Leela would dream of, doesn't it?
14. Fry and the radiator woman
"Futurama" always knew how to end an episode on a strong note, and Season 2's "The Lesser of Two Evils" was no exception, featuring a final exchange both glorious in its incongruity and perfect in its fidelity to character; that it's not higher on this list is only a testament to the show's batting average when it came to one-off Fry gags. As Leela and Bender (John DiMaggio) wistfully lament their respective failures over the course of the episode — Leela's to retain the Miss Universe crown after having her name accidentally called out by Zapp Branigan (Billy West), Bender's to retain the precious jumbonium atom he'd stolen from the pageant — Fry (Billy West) gloats to them about his success in making out with one of the beauties in attendance: the "radiator woman from the radiator planet."
A confused Leela, in Katey Sagal's brilliantly matter-of-fact deadpan, points out, "Fry, that's a radiator." And then it turns out that Fry, ever the king of impulse control, has gone even farther with the radiator woman, as he then asks for a burn ward. As if that joke weren't perfect in itself — the writers themselves fancied it enough to turn "Fry mistaking objects for aliens" into a running bit — it gets a callback on Season 4's "The Sting," when a radiator appears among Fry's ex-girlfriends at his supposed funeral.
13. The device that speeds and slows time
A good sitcom knows how to use its characters, and "Futurama" always got a lot of mileage out of Professor Farnsworth's habit of speaking in needlessly formal language and constantly describing the world in scientific (or at least scientific-sounding) terms. But one instance of such classic Farnsworth-ness, featuring wordplay that serves as a reminder of how "Futurama" could make even the corniest punchlines irresistible, was notable for also being a reminder that the professor once had a youth.
Season 3's "Bendin' in the Wind" begins with the gang coming across an ancient Volkswagen van dug up from the ruins of Old New York by the NNYC Hole Project. As Fry pores over all the souvenirs of his 20th-century youth found therein, the professor asks, "Where's the device that lets you speed or slow the passage of time?" Fry knows exactly what he's referring to and pulls out a bong from under the seat. Hey, the description is not incorrect — but the reveal of the item is still shocking enough to startle poor Hermes (Phil LaMarr).
12. Fry doesn't remember the word idea
Oh, Philip J. Fry, you complete idiot. Characters so dumb their very existence often defies logic is not a new concept in comedy, but centering your entire show around one takes some guts — not that Matt Groening would be a stranger to that, of course. Any number of memorable dimwit moments from the 20th century's only surviving human could make this list — "for no raisin" was strongly considered — but, in the end, the most fitting choice is the moment in which it's demonstrated that Fry is so dumb, the very concept of thinking is alien to him.
As the characters try to figure out what to do about the Earth's domination and the human race's enslavement by Decapodians on Season 4's "A Taste of Freedom," Fry has a Eureka moment. "I'm having one of those things! You know, a headache with pictures?" he announces, grasping for words. "An idea?" Leela asks. And, indeed, it is an idea — even if Fry couldn't remember the word. Baby steps.
11. Professor Farnsworth isn't a fan of the French language
French is a dead language in the 31st century of "Futurama." Although references to that fact are plentiful, the first and most amusing one comes in the Season 2 episode "A Clone of My Own." The show's gratuitous hostility towards the French language adds a hilarious extra dose of melancholy to the plot about Professor Farnsworth contemplating his mortality. As he prepares his skeptical 12-year-old clone, Cubert (Kath Soucie), to succeed him, the professor finds that even his younger self isn't too enthused about his inventions — a point driven home when he introduces his attempt at a universal translator.
"Unfortunately, so far, it only translates into an incomprehensible dead language," the professor admits. To test it, Cubert blurts out "Hello," and the machine answers back with "Bonjour." "Crazy gibberish!" the older Farnsworth exclaims, without a beat, clearly dispirited that that is what his intellectual efforts have amounted to. While jokes at the expense of the French might be a bit too commonplace in cartoon parlance to merit, say, a Top 10 placement on this list, the exchange is just too cattily well-executed to deny. Naturally, in the French dub, the machine speaks German.
10. Amy's obscene tattoo
"Futurama" wouldn't be a good sci-fi comedy without some brainy meta-humor. Among its many fourth-wall-tickling gags, arguably the funniest and subtlest example happens quite early. On the show's sixth-ever episode, Season 1's "A Fishful of Dollars," Fry is visiting a historic 20th-century apartment with Leela, Amy, and Bender when everyone starts mocking the "pathetic 20th-century TV" on display in the living room. Bender explains to a confused Fry that it had notably poor picture quality.
With the stage thus set, Amy goes in for the gag, noting, "On a TV like this, I bet you couldn't even make out my obscene tattoo," then proceeding to show a tattoo on her left arm that appears blurred to us. The catch, of course, is that the episode aired in April 1999, when most consumer TVs had yet to achieve high-definition quality. It's a joke that works on three levels: a meta-mockery of flimsy notions of technological advancement (indeed, what 1999 TV set doesn't look ancient even today?), a fun bit of Amy lore, and a dig at network TV censorship. Even if it's not as laugh-out-loud funny as the next entries on the list, it's so maddeningly clever that its place in the Top 10 is still a must.
9. The Robot Devil has had enough of Fry's writing
This is where the list begins to enter "It would be shocking if you didn't laugh" territory, and what better usher could there be for this section than the recurring character whose every minute was nigh-impossible not to laugh at? Whether voiced by Dan Castellaneta or Maurice LaMarche, The Robot Devil was always a delight whenever he appeared. Castellaneta got to do arguably his best-ever work in the role on the Season 4 finale, "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings," in which it turns out that even the ruler of Robot Hell himself can't put up with Fry's antics. After failing to get Fry to trade hands back with him all throughout the episode, the Robot Devil finally loses his temper and interrupts Fry's opera, "Leela: Orphan of the Stars," when a character representing him onstage is depicted as a pathetic fool.
Fed up with Fry's defiance of him, the Robot Devil insults Fry's writing skills, exclaiming, "Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't just have your characters announce how they feel!" And then he immediately turns around and adds, "That makes me feel angry!" — a perfectly goofy punchline that would be right at home on any "30 Rock" episode a few years later, and which Castellaneta makes an utter meal out of.
8. The time-skipping gravity pump construction
Season 3's "Time Keeps On Slippin'" is straight-up one of the most underrated "Futurama" episodes on the whole — an absolutely golden half-hour that explores the comedic possibilities of its time-skipping conceit to the fullest, yielding a higher laugh-a-minute ratio than pretty much anything this side of "Roswell That Ends Well" (and that's not even getting into its infamous gut punch of an ending).
The funniest sequence of smash cuts may be the one involving the gravity pump, which uses the time skips as a narrative shortcut so baldly and shamelessly as to be guffaw-inducing. It would be honestly worthy of topping this list if every gag from here on out weren't an indispensable classic. Globetrotters leader and genius physicist Ethan "Bubblegum" Tate (Phil LaMarr) observes that re-stabilizing spacetime will require a "badass gravity pump," which they'd need "all the money on Earth" to construct ... jump to Richard Nixon's Head (Billy West) granting them literally all the Earth's money to build a device with just that official name. They contemplate the task of building it, which might take months ... jump to them standing in front of it, already built. But they must still begin the arduous task of attaching it to the ship ... jump to the ship taking off with the gravity pump attached. The whole sequence is hilarious; that final smash cut, interrupting West's typically perfect rendition of Farnsworth's pompous verbosity, is just something else.
7. A quantum finish
"Futurama" was very different from "Rick & Morty," the other time-bending adult sci-fi cartoon it often gets compared to, starting with the fact that it didn't resort to hyper-specific science-related humor with as much frequency. But on the occasions where it did play around with science lingo and physics concepts, "Futurama" always delivered handsomely. As a case in point, we have the horse race on Season 3's "The Luck of the Fryrish."
The episode's horse race sequence starts with Hermes yelling "Baby needs a new pair of shoes!" and Zoidberg (Billy West) replying, "To hell with your spoiled baby! I need those shoes!" which is a hilarious enough exchange on its own. But then the race ends almost tied, which gets broken with the help of an electron microscope, with which horse #3 is announced as the winner in a "quantum finish." This prompts Professor Farnsworth to protest, "No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!" It's one of the best-remembered lines on "Futurama" ever for a reason; it wouldn't be surprising if the sci-nerd insider humor of everything from "Rick and Morty" to "The Big Bang Theory" to any number of niche Twitter accounts had been directly or indirectly inspired by its sheer wit.
6. The Neutral President has a message for his wife
Sometimes, a good "Futurama" running gag was just about hitting on the right conceit, and the appearance of the Neutral Planet and its citizens on Season 2's "Brannigan, Begin Again" is one great example. It's great enough that the Neutral Planet, with its pacifism capable of driving the war-hungry Zapp Branigan up the wall, is a literal neutral planet in which people behave in a neutral manner, most notably the Neutral President (Maurice LaMarche). But then the episode keeps finding ways to make every reminder of the neutral citizens' neutrality more over-the-top, beginning with the oft-memed line, "I have no strong feelings one way or the other."
When the Planet Express ship is about to crash into the Neutral Planet in the episode's climax, the running joke also reaches its apex, with the Neutral President declaring, "If I don't survive, tell my wife, 'Hello'" — a line so incredible it's hard to even write it down here without giggling. That LaMarche manages to make the president's intonation just a smidge more resigned and mournful while still remaining neutral is just the (beige) icing on top.
5. Amy's holo-calendar
While "Futurama" is rightfully remembered in large part for its clever, rapid-fire banter, the show was known to offer up the occasional elite-tier sight gag as well. And when it comes to the best sight gag on "Futurama," it's hard to top Amy's holo-calendar on Season 4's "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch" for sheer density.
Seen while Amy is out for drinks with Leela and talking about her relationship with the newly-pregnant Kif (Maurice LaMarche), the holo-calendar contains several entries spread across an unspecified 31-day month, and every single one of them is golden — from the 2nd's hardcore-sounding "Yoga rave" to the 25th's unfathomably privileged "Search couch for spare millions" to the 31st's on-brand "Rearrange teddy bears, promote Mr. Fluffy." The centerpiece, of course, is the four-day successive sequence of "Lunch with Molly" / "Trash Molly with Tina" / "Trash Tina with Molly" / "Find new friends," which is then seemingly followed up by a slot that appears to read "New friends announced today" on the 20th. Say what you will about Amy, but she's an organized gal — which makes it all the funnier and more heartbreaking when she reluctantly activates "Motherhood mode" and all of the calendar's cells are swiftly replaced by just the word "Motherhood."
4. Bender sings the definition of irony
"The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings" will be the only episode to land two entries on this list, but, in fairness, both are doozies. And this, in particular, might be the finest Bender gag on the show — which is saying a lot, hence its high placement. This is because it steps away from his usual crudeness to focus on a different set of quirks that help make everyone's favorite chain-smoking robot so funny: his stubbornness, arrogance, and random bursts of intellectual preciousness.
After spending the entire episode hyper-fixating on the Robot Devil's uses of the word "ironic" and supposedly "correcting" them, Bender finally gets a chance to have his moment of triumph when the Robot Devil's request for Leela's hand turns out, mid-opera, to be for her hand in marriage. From the audience, Bender then reads from a dictionary, in tandem with the music, "The use of words expressing something other than their literal intention! Now that is 'irony.'" Everything about this moment — Bender's out-of-nowhere singing, the sheer confidence of his statement, the fact that it's completely wrong in that context (he's actually thinking of puns) — is utterly flawless. And, yes, very much ironic.
3. Poor Dr. Mbutu
The moment is simple. A few minutes into Season 1's "I, Roommate," while Fry, Bender, and Leela sit and ponder over how to find a decent apartment (following an anti-New Jersey smash cut that also ranks among the show's best early jokes), Professor Farnsworth gets the news that his colleague, Dr. Mbutu, has passed away.
"Oh, how awful. Did he at least die painlessly?" he asks on the phone, followed by a pause, and then, "To shreds, you say." Trying to segue into a less gruesome topic, the professor asks, "Well, how is his wife holding up?" And then repeats, once again, in the exact same cadence, either flawlessly replicated by Billy West or just reiterated with the same audio clip, "To shreds, you say." Many shows would be satisfied with achieving even one punchline that simple, self-contained, and perfect at any point in their runs. "Futurama" got it in by the third episode.
2. Zoidberg Jesus
It's hard to explain what makes Zoidberg Jesus so funny — on some level, it really just comes down to something like, "Well, it's Zoidberg, and it's Jesus." Zoidberg and the Decapodians at large being coded as Jewish throughout the show certainly adds to the sense of discrepancy, as does the sheer absurdity of the visual — and the fact that out of all the characters to take a central role in the gang's "Spartacus"-like Santa Claus moment, Zoidberg?
But mostly, it's the way the scene itself builds. When everyone starts entering the execution room and claiming to be Santa Claus, the audacity of the "Spartacus" parody already scans as impressive, but also kind of disarmingly sweet, given how obviously ineffective it will be. Then, when Zoidberg enters and blurts "And I'm his friend, Jesus" in the most Zoidberg-sounding voice ever, it all goes from "sweet" to "okay, what the heck are they even thinking?" at just the right moment. Why do they even need somebody dressed as Jesus for their plan? Where did they find a full Jesus getup? And, again, why Zoidberg? It's all just too perfectly nonsensical to resist. Even better is when Mayor Poopenmeyer (David Herman) immediately sees through their plan yet actually believes that Zoidberg is Jesus and asks for his help. That prompts a panicking, yet cheeky, Zoidberg to say, "I help those who help themselves," turning this from a great joke to a great moment in television history.
1. The windmills will not, in fact, keep the turtles cool
Even with the many cruel, brutal, and violent threats that Morbo the Annihilator made during his anchor duties for √2 News, the most upsetting thing he ever said on air may have come on a rare occasion when he wasn't being cruel and destructive. As the characters pay attention to TV news about the massive heat wave taking over Earth, a story comes on about turtles' migration to the Netherlands due to the heat. The turtles' plight moves Bender to tears, and, uncharacteristically, even Morbo, perhaps with his heart mellowed by the temperature, "wishes these stalwart nomads peace among the Dutch tulips."
Then, a sweat-caked Linda van Schoonhoven (Tress MacNeille) tries to put her usual positive spin on things, saying, "I'm sure those windmills will keep them cool!" But Morbo is not having it, and immediately screams what is at once the show's most pointless, memorable, ridiculous, and most quotable line: "WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!" It's a beat so jarring that the laughs it produces are almost ancestral; whether you choose to read it as an expression of Morbo's indifference, his poorly-concealed sentiment for the turtles, his general social ineptitude, or just as a lapse of total insanity, it's the single funniest moment that "Futurama" has ever yielded.