The Exact Moment Futurama Lost Us
3. Some Of Its Greatest Moments Were Retconned
When you think about the most iconic moments in the history of Futurama, chances are your mind will immediately go to Seymour waiting for Fry outside of Panucci’s Pizza, and Fry finding out that his nephew had been named after him to carry on his spirit.
These are two of the most emotional moments in animated TV history, and thanks to 'Bender’s Big Score', they have both been ruined. As have any imagery of Fry’s family missing him, even those from 'Game of Tones' that came six years after the first movie.
In order to escape the alien scammers in the 31st century, Fry used the universal time code and jumped back to the year 2000. From here his time paradox duplicate lived for 12 years before discovering he was actually Lars and rushing back to freeze himself again. This meant that, to the people in the past, Fry didn’t disappear in the year 2000.
He was there every day for Seymour before ultimately going on his voyage, and since he never mysteriously disappeared, there was no reason for Yancy to name his son Phil. Time travel is a tricky narrative to navigate, and in doing so the Futurama writers ruined some of their greatest ever moments.