The Professor Farnsworth Mystery Even Futurama's Creators Can't Answer
In the very first episode of "Futurama," Professor Hubert Farnsworth (Billy West) a doddering old relic of the scientific intelligentsia and mad scientist extraordinaire, was about 149 years old. It would later be revealed (in 2000's "A Clone of My Own") that he had lied about his age and that he was actually 159 years old. Then, thanks to a mystical time-acceleration whirlpool on a distant planet, as seen in the 2003 episode "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles," the Professor would age forward even further. At last count, the character was hovering somewhere around 175.
The Professor is rarely seen in anything other than a lab coat and slippers. He also always wears incredibly thick glasses that obscure his eyeballs. The Professor's eyes have never been seen on "Futurama." When Mom (Tress MacNeille) removes his glasses before a moment of intimacy in the 2000 episode "Mother's Day," he is only seen from behind. She remarks that his eyes were always a lovely shade of white. Details about the Professor's pupils have to remain in the realm of conjecture.
This was, of course, kind of by design. "Futurama" creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen once questioned what the Professor's eyeballs might look like on a commentary track for the 2008 "Futurama" movie "Bender's Game." It seems that the show's main characters smashed up the Planet Express ship and that Professor was too blind to notice. Was the Professor actually blind? Cohen and Groening couldn't come up with a solution. Because of the design of the Professor's Coke bottle glasses, Cohen began to assume that they weren't transparent at all, but cylindrical blocks of opaque glass. Even to the show's creators, the Professor's glasses were a mystery prescription.
The Professor's mysterious eyeballs
On a commentary track, Cohen asked "Is the Professor blind, Matt? Or what's the deal? Are those glasses actually opaque or are they just so thick that the light is distorted or ... What's happening there?" One of the running gags of Professor Farnsworth is that his advanced age has robbed him of several vital faculties as well as a large chunk of his sanity. Often he can't even remember who his co-workers are.
One might think that Groening, who invented the character, might know a little bit about his eyesight, but even he was stumped. "I never thought it through. We have never shown his eyes, right?" Producer Claudia Katz and Billy West both seemed to recall the Professor's glasses being removed, but never what his eyes looked like. Groening immediately outsourced the question to the many "Futurama" fans of the world, saying outwardly to the listener "If anybody knows, go to the website right now, put it in." Groening was probably just being playful, as he once noted in an earlier commentary track (at least by this author's hazy recollection) that it was part of the "Futurama" series bible that the Professor's eyes should never be seen. Like the mask of Strong Bad, the glasses are merely to be accepted as a permanent feature of his face.
Thankfully, enterprising fans did contradict Groening and "put it in a website." On the "Futurama" fan site The Infosphere, a reader noted that the Professor did have his glasses yanked off and that his eyeballs were plainly visible in a story called "Downsized!," printed in the 29th issue of "Futurama" comics from 2007.
I think we can all agree that it looks weird.
The newest season of "Futurama" is currently streaming on Hulu.