1. Futurama Set Up Fry's Backstory Four Seasons In Advance
It's not uncommon for shows to return to the origins of its main characters quite far into their run. Many writers spend a bit of time setting up characters early on, but they're eager to start writing about new relationships and exciting antics. It's only once those relationships have been drawn out and those antics become less fresh that they return to character's pasts. Futurama, then, is no different...or perhaps it truly is? In the tenth episode of the show's fourth season titled The Why Of Fry, it's explained that Fry's cryogenic freezing until the 31st century wasn't the accident most viewers believed (Fry was thought to have fallen into the freezing machine after losing his balance on a chair). The whole thing was actually planned by a creature called Lord Nibbler, who believed Fry was key to saving the universe, and actually pushed him. It sounds exactly like the kind of crowbarred origin story that many television writers resort to, and it's nearly always disappointing. The appeal of many characters is how average they are until they're thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and removing this averageness later on is often damaging. Yet it seems the writers had planned this twist from the very start. During the scene in the first episode of the show (titled Space Pilot 3000) in which Fry watches what happened on a television screen, Nibbler's shadow can be seen underneath his chair right from the very start.
