The “Nibbler in the first episode” easter egg makes me wonder what other things are hidden in more recent episodes, never to be expanded on…
Alas, alack, for Futurama.
Before the show premiered, I remember ads saying that a language and script were invented for the show, and dared people to decipher them. Was there any success in that?
UnuMondo
The issue I have, as well as several episodes contain an invented script of 26 characters, each standing in for one letter of the alphabet.
My guess:
“Metropolitan House of Opera”–implying that in the future IHOP will buy the Met.
Damn, that was a good show.
IMO, the writers for Futurama were writing for themselves and people like themselves–science fiction fans, computer and math geeks, and intelligent people who can grasp both text and subtext, a subset that obviously excludes Fox executives.
Despite its being a “cartoon show on Fox,” the quality of writing on Futurama was far more sophisticated and clever than the writing on The Simpsons, where the scripts contain broader, less esoteric jokes. Would The Simpsons show a movie theatre called the Aleph[sub]0[/sub] plex? And never has The Simpsons reached me emotionally as Futurama has in the episodes with the brother, the dog, and the holophoner.
I ran the Alien Language through a crpytogram utitilty … it came up with “BEGOT MAKES LANDING”.
Since the show title is “The Series Has Landed” the last two words make sense … the first one is probably a proper name
Fer Example
Morbo is a larger version of the evil aliens from Invasion Of The Saucer Men.
When Leela takes Nibbler to the vet, mixed in among the menagerie is a Rust Monster. This creature is not only straight out of Dungeons&Dragons, it’s straight out of the classic 1980’s Monster Manual. Apparently the writers agree with me that the illustration in the Monstrous Manual is too insectoid.
Dolemite!
And sometimes it excludes even its own fans. From gotfuturama.com page for “Anthology of Interest 2”: (A great site BTW):
Brain-guy: “All your base are belong to us!”
Orange-guy: “?ereh dnoura stnap emos teg yug a nac erehW”
Brain-guy? Orange-guy? OK, I can understand not recognizing the bad guy from “Beserk!” - but Robotron 2084? Q*Bert!!! Talk about feeling old…
Indeed it was. Those words appeared under it.
I believe the alien writing in the link provided reads “Tasty human burgers.” Yum!
Is this the untimely end of HypnoToad?
Strange that they’d release a FUTURAMA game on Xbox and Playstation 2 to pretty much coincide with the end of its run: