10 Things You Learn Rewatching Futurama
3. Where All The Memes Came From
This one is a little silly, maybe, but if you spend enough time on the internet you’ll see a Futurama meme sooner or later. It still can’t hold a candle to the animated meme king Spongebob Squarepants, but there’s more than you’d think, and you catch them all on a rewatch.
Spongebob’s are more modern and relevant, to be fair, while Futurama’s mostly hail from the impact font days of the meme. Most are well and truly dead now, but it’s still fun seeing them crop up again. Futurama even reference themselves, by putting the Fry squinting ‘not sure if X or just Y’ meme as their credits gag in one episode.
As well as that one, Fry also has ‘shut up and take my money!’ in the mainstream meme canon, while the Professor has ‘I don’t want to live on this planet anymore’, and the Hypnotoad is a meme unto himself.
Zoidberb gets in on the fun too, with ‘why not Zoidberg’ and ‘X is bad and you should feel bad!’ making their way into the zeitgeist. Clearly, Futurama was a very influential show even outside of television.