FUTURAMA - Collectible Comic Art Wrist Watch

Futurama is essentially a workplace sitcom, the plot of which revolves around the Planet Express interplanetary delivery company and its employees,^[61] a small group that largely fails to conform to future society.^[62] Episodes usually feature the central trio of Fry, Leela, and Bender, though occasional storylines centered on the other main characters.

Philip J. Fry (Billy West): Fry is a dim-witted, immature, slovenly, yet good-hearted pizza delivery boy who falls into a cryogenic pod, causing it to activate and freeze him just after midnight on January 1, 2000. He re-awakens on New Year's Eve, 2999, and gets a job as a cargo delivery boy at Planet Express, a company owned by his only living relative, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. Fry's love for Leela is a recurring theme throughout the series.
 

Turanga Leela (Katey Sagal): Leela is the competent, one-eyed captain of the Planet Express Ship. Abandoned as a baby, she grew up in the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium believing herself to be an alien from another planet, but learns that she is actually a mutant from the sewers in the episode "Leela's Homeworld". Prior to becoming the ship's captain, Leela worked as a career assignment officer at the cryogenics lab where she first met Fry. She is Fry's primary love interest. Her name is a reference to the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen.
 

Bender Bending Rodríguez (John DiMaggio): Bender is a foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking, cigar-smoking, kleptomaniacal, misanthropic, egocentric, ill-tempered robot manufactured by Mom's Friendly Robot Company. He was originally programmed to bend girders for suicide booths, and is later designated as assistant sales manager and cook, despite lacking a sense of taste. He is Fry's best friend and roommate.

Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth (Billy West): Professor Hubert Farnsworth, also known simply as "the Professor," is Fry's distant nephew.^[65] Farnsworth founded Planet Express Inc. to fund his work as a mad scientist. Although he is depicted as a brilliant scientist and inventor, at more than one-hundred and sixty years old he is extremely prone to age-related forgetfulness and fits of temper. In the episode "A Clone of My Own," the Professor clones himself to produce a successor, Cubert Farnsworth, whom he treats like a son.
 

Dr. John A. Zoidberg (Billy West): Zoidberg is a lobster-like alien from the planet Decapod 10, and the neurotic staff physician of Planet Express. Although he claims to be an expert on humans, his knowledge of human anatomy and physiology is woefully inaccurate. Zoidberg's expertise seems to be with extra-terrestrial creatures. He is homeless, penniless, and—despite being depicted as Professor Farnsworth's long-time friend—held in contempt by everyone on the crew, except Fry.

Amy Wong (Lauren Tom): Amy is an incredibly rich, blunt, spoiled, ditzy, and accident-prone long-term intern at Planet Express. She is an engineering student at Mars University and heiress to the western hemisphere of Mars. Born on Mars, she is ethnically Chinese and is prone to cursing in Cantonese and using 31st-century slang. Her parents are the wealthy ranchers Leo and Inez Wong. She is promiscuous in the beginning of the series and eventually enters a monogamous relationship with Kif Kroker. In the show's sixth season, she acquires her doctorate.

Hermes Conrad (Phil LaMarr): Hermes is the Jamaican accountant of Planet Express. A 36th-level bureaucrat (demoted to level 37 during the series) and proud of it, he is a stickler for regulation and enamored of the tedium of paperwork and bureaucracy. Hermes is also a former champion in Olympic Limbo, a sport derived from the popular party activity. He gave up limbo after the 2980 Olympics when a young fan, imitating him, broke his back and died. Hermes has a wife, LaBarbara, and a 12-year-old son, Dwight.

Zapp Brannigan (Billy West): Zapp Brannigan is the incompetent, extraordinarily vain captain of the DOOP starship Nimbus. He is a satirical pastiche of Captain Kirk and William Shatner. Although Leela thoroughly detests him, Brannigan—a self-deluded lady's man—pursues her relentlessly, often at great personal risk. Brannigan was dishonorably dismissed from the DOOP in Brannigan Begin Again but was reinstated in the same episode. He was originally going to be voiced by Phil Hartman, but Hartman died before production could begin.
 

Kif Kroker (Maurice LaMarche): Zapp Brannigan's 4th Lieutenant and long-suffering personal assistant, Kif is a member of the amphibious species that inhabits the planet Amphibios 9. Although extremely timid, he eventually works up the courage to date Amy. Kif is often shown sighing in disgust at the nonsensical rantings of his commanding officer.
 

Mom (Tress MacNeille): Mom is the malevolent, foul-mouthed, cruel, and narcissistic owner of MomCorp, the thirty-first century's largest shipping and manufacturing company, with a monopoly on robots. In public, she maintains the image of a sweet, kindly old woman by speaking in stereotypically antiquated statements and wearing a mechanical fat suit. She occasionally launches insidious plans for world domination and corporate takeover. She has a romantic history with the Professor which left her bitter and resentful. She has three bumbling sons, Walt, Larry, and Igner (modeled after theThree Stooges), who do her bidding despite frequent abuse, and often infuriate her with their incompetence. In Bender's Game, it is revealed that Igner's father is Professor Farnsworth.

Nibbler (Frank Welker): Nibbler is Leela's pet Nibblonian, whom she rescued from an imploding planet and adopted early in the series. Despite his deceptively cute exterior, Nibbler is actually a highly intelligent super-being whose race is responsible for maintaining order in the universe. He is revealed in "The Why of Fry" to have been directly responsible for Fry's cryogenic freezing. While the size of an average house cat, his race is capable of devouring much larger animals. He defecates dark matter, which until Bender's Game is used as fuel for space cruisers in the series.

Setting

Fry's first glimpse of New New York City

Futurama is set in New New York at the turn of the 31st century, in a time filled with technological wonders. The city of New New York has been built over the ruins of present-day New York City, referred to as "Old New York." Various devices and architecture are similar to the Populuxe style. Global warming, inflexible bureaucracy, and substance abuse are a few of the subjects given a 31st-century exaggeration in a world where the problems have become both more extreme and more common. Just as New York has become a more extreme version of itself in the future, other Earth locations are given the same treatment; Los Angeles, for example, is depicted as a smog-filled apocalyptic wasteland.

Numerous technological advances have been made between the present day and the 31st century. The ability to keep heads alive in jars was invented by Ron Popeil (who has a guest cameo in "A Big Piece of Garbage"), which has resulted in many historical figures and current celebrities being present, including Groening himself; this became the writers' device to feature and poke fun at contemporary celebrities in the show. Curiously, several of the preserved heads shown are those of people who were already dead well before the advent of this technology; one of the most prominent examples of this anomaly is frequent Earth president Richard Nixon, who died in 1994. The heads also appear to be in the age that the individual was most famous and not the older age in which they died. The Internet, while being fully immersive and encompassing all senses — even featuring its own digital world (similar to Tron or The Matrix) — is slow and largely consists of pornography,pop-up ads, and "filthy" (or Filthy Filthy) chat rooms. Some of it is edited to include educational material ostensibly for youth. Television is still a primary form of entertainment. Self-aware robots are a common sight, and are the main cause of global warming thanks to their alcohol-powered systems. The wheel is obsolete (no one but Fry even seems to recognize the design), having been forgotten and replaced by hover cars and a network of large, clear pneumatic transportation tubes.

Environmentally, common animals still remain, alongside mutated, cross-bred (sometimes with humans) and extraterrestrial animals. Ironically, Spotted Owls are often shown to have replaced rats as common household pests. Although rats still exist, sometimes rats act like pigeons. Pigeons still exist, as well. Pine trees, anchovies and poodles have been extinct for 800 years. Earth still suffers the effects of greenhouse gases, although in one episode Leela states that its effects have been counteracted by nuclear winter. In another episode, the effects of global warming have been somewhat mitigated by the dropping of a giant ice cube into the ocean, and later by pushing Earth farther away from the sun.

Futurama's setting is a backdrop, and the writers are not above committing continuity errors if they serve to further the gags. For example, while the pilot episode implies that the previous Planet Express crew was killed by a space wasp, the later episode "The Sting" is based on the crew having been killed by space bees instead. The "world of tomorrow" setting is used to highlight and lampoon issues of today and to parody the science fiction genre.

Themes

Earth is depicted as being multicultural to the extent that a wide range of human, robot, and extraterrestrial beings interact with the primary characters. In some ways the future is depicted as being more socially advanced than Fry's, and therefore the audience's, reality. However, it is often shown to have many of the same types of problems, challenges, mistakes, and prejudices as the present.

Robots make up the largest "minority". Most robots are self-aware and have been granted freedom and self-determination, but while a few are depicted as wealthy members of the upper class, they are often treated as second-class citizens. Likewise, robot–human relationships (termed "robosexual") are stigmatized, and robot–human marriages are initially depicted as illegal. Sewer mutants are mutated humans who must live in the sewers by law. They are initially depicted as holding urban legend status and regarded as fictional by most members of the public. This was contradicted by later episodes that depict Earth society as having enforced laws regarding mutants. However, since the conclusion of Season Six, mutants have been granted full status as citizens and are therefore granted the same rights to surface use as normal humans.

Religion is still a prominent part of society, although the dominant religions have evolved. A merging of the major religious groups of the 20th century has resulted in the First Amalgamated Church,^[71] while Voodoo is now mainstream. New religions include Oprahism, Robotology, and the banned religion of Star Trek fandom. Religious figures include Father Changstein-El-Gamal, the Robot Devil, Reverend Preacherbot, and passing references to the Space Pope, who appears to be a large crocodile-like creature. While very few episodes focus exclusively on religion within theFuturama universe, they do cover a wide variety of subjects including predestination, prayer, the nature of salvation, and religious conversion.

Earthican flag, "Ol' Freebie"
 

Earth has a unified government headed by the President of Earth. Richard Nixon's head is elected to the position in Season Two, and holds the office in subsequent episodes. Earth's capital is Washington, D.C., and the flag of Earth is similar in design to the flag of the United States, with the western hemisphere displayed in place of the fifty stars. The show is set mostly in the former United States, and other parts of the world are rarely shown. Citizens of Earth are referred to as "Earthicans," and English is shown to be the primary language of almost every sentient species.

The Democratic Order of Planets (D.O.O.P.) has been compared to both the United Nations and the United Federation of Planets of the Star Trek universe. Numerous other galaxies have been colonized or have made contact by the year 3000. Mars has been terraformed and is home to Mars University, Mars Vegas, and tribes similar to Native Americans, though they departed upon learning that the "worthless bead" they traded their land for (the Martian surface) was actually a giant diamond worth a fortune, deciding to buy another planet and act like it is sacred.

A derivative of baseball, called blernsball, is played, and the New New York Mets, a laughingstock of the league, still play in Shea Stadium. A New New York Yankees team also exists.

Due to the fact that the world of Fry's time was destroyed, much of the knowledge of history before then was lost. In the 31st century, facts gathered by archaeologists are portrayed as grossly inaccurate. For example, in "The Lesser of Two Evils", the theme park "Past-O-Rama" presents a history in which 20th-century car factories had "primitive robot" assembly lines in which cars were not assembled by giant robotic welding arms, but by robots dressed like stereotypical cavemen. Another example comes from "The Series Has Landed", in which knowledge of the Moon Landing has been lost for centuries. As a result, archaeologists came to the conclusion that the idea to go to the moon came from the infamous quote from The Honeymooners.