5. A Mother's Dream
Ah, the dead people from Fry's past, the go-to source of heart-wrenching Futurama pain. It is the wound that the writers open every time they want you to vomit saline from your face glands, and they've worked it down to a fine art. Using flashbacks from the past and echoing their thematic resonance in the present is pretty pavlovian when it comes to feelings manufacture, but these episodes are just so damn lovely. In 'Game of Tones', which aired during the final season of the show, Fry is tasked by Nibbler with exploring his own memories, Assassin's Creed-style, in order to locate a mysterious combination of musical notes that are threatening the future. There are rules to such exploration, of course. He can only explore the last day before he was frozen, and things in the past that he never experienced are whited-out because he has no memory of them. Fry spends a lovely day with his family, especially his mother. He wants to stay with them for as long as he can, but unfortunately his family are whited out past a certain time of the day, because those are the rules. Ouch, my eyes. The emotional moment comes at the end of the episode, after the mission is completed. Fry returns to the future, distressed at the thought that he will never see his family again. He falls asleep and dreams of his mother, but soon realises that he is remembering things that he didn't experience. Nibbler tells him that he's not in his dream, but his mother's. The two hug and his mother wakes up in her time, happy to have seen her long-lost son in her dreams. That is weapons-grade bittersweet.