10 Futurama Secrets You Never Knew

3. The Reason Behind The 'X' In David Cohen's Name

Matt Groening obviously deserves a lot of credit for developing Futurama, but equally, a lot of praise needs to go David X. Cohen's way.

Before Futurama, Cohen had written for both The Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead. When it came to developing the sci-fi series with Groening though, he had his work cut out for him. Cohen acted as a head writer on the show, as well as an executive producer and voice director. He was instrumental in its success, but did encounter a slight hiccup just before the series' pilot episode aired.

Fox's prime-time animated shows unionised around the time of Futurama's development, and the WGA (Writers' Guild of America) prohibited its members from from using the same name. Cohen was thus forced to change his original middle name - "Samuel" - and replace it with something else, eventually settling on "X" because, in his words, "it sounded sci-fi-ish".