Due to the fact that Futurama wasn't always aired in order, as well as the fact that most fans discovered the series through syndication, it can sometimes be difficult to appreciate all the little hints the showrunners placed throughout the series.
Take Space Pilot 3000, for instance. The series' debut episode where 20th Century delivery boy Phillip J. Fry cryogenically freezes himself supposedly by accident, if you look closely, you can actually see a familiar shadow next to the chair Fry falls off.
Later seasons would reveal that Fry was not taken to the future by accident, but by design. In a bid to defeat the evil Brainspawn, the Nibblonians - knowing that Fry lacked the delta brainwave and so would be impervious to their attacks - went back in time and made it so that he would come to the year 3000. It's also revealed that Nibbler was the one to push his chair into the freezing tube.
The wild thing about this is that the reveal didn't come for another FOUR SEASONS, meaning that this was planned from the very start. This handy scene comparison above from YouTube channel dimitreze even illustrates the lengths the show went to making everything sync up!
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
