# explain a futurama joke **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 16, 2004, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590 "2004-03-16T04:59:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![owlofcreamcheese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/97f17d/32.png) [@owlofcreamcheese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/owlofcreamcheese)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/21 "2004-03-17T02:47:23Z")
it doesn’t seem they would be planning to lie… since its really really really well established that there is a hand held age messureing machine. ---
**Author:** ![BuckleberryFerry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5f9b8f/32.png) [@BuckleberryFerry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BuckleberryFerry)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/22 "2004-03-17T02:50:25Z")
Did Leela look annoyed? It’s pretty much a running joke that Amy is always trying to one up Leela on femininity and attractiveness–maybe this is the same? ---
**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/23 "2004-03-17T06:53:20Z")
Funny how we all read this one differently. I thought it was a boobs joke. Leela was relatively flat-chested in teenage form, and after her dip in the water her boobs became fuller. I interpreted the “few years younger” comment as meaning despite them being restored to basically their correct ages, their boobs were perkier because they weren’t as old as they had been before. The wink was a chick-to-chick, only-girls-would-understand thing. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/24 "2004-03-17T12:48:43Z")
> [@](#): > > it doesn’t seem they would be planning to lie… since its really really really well established that there is a hand held age messureing machine. My interpretation is that Leela meant what she said, and Amy assumed she was lying to look more attractive (and winked to show she was “going along with it”) because that’s exactly what Amy would do. I think Leela looked annoyed after the exchange, but I’m not sure. ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/25 "2004-03-17T14:17:16Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > My interpretation is that Leela meant what she said, and Amy assumed she was lying to look more attractive (and winked to show she was “going along with it”) because that’s exactly what Amy would do. I think Leela looked annoyed after the exchange, but I’m not sure. That’s it. The rest of y’all are reading way too much into it. The gargoyle is funny preciously because he is so random. He’s French becuase one finds gargoyles on French gothic cathedrals. It is a continuity error, since French was once named a s a dead language, but I think that was a throwaway joke, and I won’t hold it against them. Now, try to unravel the time-travel paradoxes in the Fry/Nibbler saga. ---
**Author:** ![Myrr21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Myrr21](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myrr21)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/26 "2004-03-17T16:25:38Z")
Oh c’mon. The Nibbler time travel paradox is much easier to wrap your head around than the travel back in time, kill your own grandfather (well, get him killed), and sleep with your grandmother to become your own grandfather one. To say nothing of really screwing with the genetics of the whole thing. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/27 "2004-03-17T16:34:20Z")
I heard someone say that if you look at the pilot episode, you can actually see Nibbler’s shadow as he knocks Fry into the freezing chamber, meaning they’d been planning this plot arc for years. Does anyone have the DVD and know if that’s right? ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/28 "2004-03-17T17:03:18Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I heard someone say that if you look at the pilot episode, you can actually see Nibbler’s shadow as he knocks Fry into the freezing chamber, meaning they’d been planning this plot arc for years. Does anyone have the DVD and know if that’s right? Yes, his shadow IS in the pilot, meaning that entire arc was planned from the start. In addition, in _Anthology of Interest I_, we again see the scene where Fry tips into the Chamber, but he doesn’t fall into it, thus creating a temporal distortion (“I call it a Hawking Hole”), and there is no shadow on the floor this time, and in _Jurrasic Bark_, we once again have this scene (they show it a lot) and we see Nibbler’s eyestalk in the trah bin, as well as both Nibbler’s shadow, AND another, somewhat familiar shadow. This is explained in _The Why of Fry_, in which we find out that the Nibblonians use Fry to destroy the Brain Spawn’s Infosphere, but in the process, he gets sucked into another dimension with them. They convince him to go back in time and not freeze himself, so he does, and is under the desk with Nibbler, but Nibbler convinces him to freeze himself to save Leela, and he ends up actually pushing himself in, then gives Nibbler a helpful hint so that the next time Fry goes to destroy the Infosphere, he is able to get out. Yes, I know waaaaay too much about this show. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/29 "2004-03-17T17:04:48Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I heard someone say that if you look at the pilot episode, you can actually see Nibbler’s shadow as he knocks Fry into the freezing chamber, meaning they’d been planning this plot arc for years. Does anyone have the DVD and know if that’s right? I read about that on this board, and when they recently replayed the 1st episode I did indeed see Nibbler’s shadow. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/30 "2004-03-17T17:08:10Z")
**bouv** , that episode was on last night. That’s what reminded me. Just more evidence to me that this show was utterly brilliant. ---
**Author:** ![owlofcreamcheese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/97f17d/32.png) [@owlofcreamcheese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/owlofcreamcheese)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/31 "2004-03-17T20:17:01Z")
I wouldn’t count the gargoyal speaking french as an error. if there was a gargoyal in a movie now speaking latin or sandscrit I wouldn’t find that weird. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/32 "2004-03-18T02:36:56Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I heard someone say that if you look at the pilot episode, you can actually see Nibbler’s shadow as he knocks Fry into the freezing chamber, meaning they’d been planning this plot arc for years. Does anyone have the DVD and know if that’s right? I’ll top you one… …in a season 1 episode, [I Second that Emotion](http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/GuidePageServlet/showid-249/epid-1547), you see Leela’s parents in a wide shot in a sewer scene. It wasn’t officially revealed that her parents were really mutants until a few seasons (and years) later. So, right now, I’d say that even Futurama has bested _The X-Files_ in the “faithfulness to story-arc” area. 😛 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Yumblie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/76d3ee/32.png) [@Yumblie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yumblie)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/33 "2004-03-18T05:04:06Z")
And though it may not be an example of planning ahead, in the first episode Farnsworth takes his crew’s old career chips out of an envelope labeled “contents of space wasp’s stomach”. In a much later episode, Farnsworth sends the crew on the same mission the last crew died on, which is gathering honey from a giant space beehive. The current crew manages to almost completely survive! ---
**Author:** ![Spiff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiff/32/9852_2.png) [@Spiff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiff)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/34 "2004-03-18T14:54:47Z")
Put me in the “I’ve got my virginity back” camp. (No. Really. I want to go to that camp! 😃 ) ---
**Author:** ![Bakhesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3da27b/32.png) [@Bakhesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bakhesh)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/35 "2004-03-18T16:33:20Z")
Slightly off topic, as this one isn’t a clever forward thinking story arc, but a subtle back reference. Still its funny enough to mention… In an early ep (can’t remember which one exactly), the planet express team go a ceremony full of dignataries from different planets. Fry comes over and says “I’ve just been making out with a radiator women from a radiator planet”. Leela says “Fry, thats a radiator” Years later when fry “dies” in “The Sting”, there is an amazon women saying “He gave good snoo-snoo”. Then you see all the other women fry has slept with doing a so-so gesture, and, there is a radiator there. I nearly fell off my chair when I got this joke. ---
**Author:** ![Yumblie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/76d3ee/32.png) [@Yumblie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yumblie)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2004, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/36 "2004-03-19T21:45:02Z")
> [@Bakhesh](#): > > Slightly off topic, as this one isn’t a clever forward thinking story arc, but a subtle back reference. Still its funny enough to mention… > > In an early ep (can’t remember which one exactly), the planet express team go a ceremony full of dignataries from different planets. Fry comes over and says “I’ve just been making out with a radiator women from a radiator planet”. Leela says “Fry, thats a radiator” > Years later when fry “dies” in “The Sting”, there is an amazon women saying “He gave good snoo-snoo”. Then you see all the other women fry has slept with doing a so-so gesture, and, there is a radiator there. > > I nearly fell off my chair when I got this joke. I also liked the cryogenic guy’s farewell. _“Goodbye…from the world of tomorrow!”_ ---
**Author:** ![UrielsLilith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/c37758/32.png) [@UrielsLilith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UrielsLilith)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2012, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/37 "2012-03-06T03:28:52Z")
“Oh. Your. God.” Bender Bending Rodriguez 😛 ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-a-futurama-joke/234590/38 "2012-03-07T00:46:54Z")
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