Top 10 Best Futurama Guest Stars

This TV and film star didn't just play herself as a pickled head on Futurama; she also voiced a full-bodied robot version of herself programmed to be attracted to Fry - as well as an army of evil Liu Bots, an homage to her reputation as an action star. At one point all the Lius are fighting at a screening of a Charlie's Angels movie starring Lucy. That's a whole lotta Liu to pack into one show, so much so that she would even return in another episode, “Love and Rocket”.

This quirky funnyman may have only appeared on Futurama once, but it sure was a memorable guest spot. TV's Tobias Fünke played the principal antagonist and titular character Yivo in the feature-length “Beast with a Billion Backs”. At first Yivo comes across as a scary mind-controlling alien with many tentacles from another universe, but then we find out that schlee just wants to date us. All of us. Everyone in our universe. So who better to play a lovestruck space monster than this master of sarcastic, self deprecating comedy?

Yes, Virginia, John Goodman really did play Santa Claus, but he sure wasn’t Jolly Old Saint Nick. This is Futurama, after all, so naturally Santa is a huge robotic killing machine who keeps a list of who has been naughty, and seeks to eradicate the offenders with a wide array of holiday-themed weaponry. Though the character would go on to appear a few times during the series' run, Goodman only voiced Santa's first appearance, which many would argue – for obvious reasons – is his most memorable.

So how do you put on a great concert, bouncing around the stage, when you're just three preserved heads in jars? It’s easy as long as you get a little help from the crew. At least that's how The Beastie Boys pulled it off when they appeared in this first season episode. Oddly, however, while Mike D voiced himself, Adam “Adrock” Horovitz had to pull double duty, voicing both himself and an absent Adam “MCA” Yauch. The episode started with the Planet Express crew catching one of their shows, only to have the trio show up again later on to throw some more rhymes.

Seeing as Futurama is a Matt Groening creation, it was only a matter of time before stars from Groening’s other series made an appearance. Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson, Krusty the Clown and other characters made six visits to New New York, voicing Beezlebot. Also known as the Robot Devil, Beezlebot ran Robot Hell – the dark underworld of Robotology - and was played to perfection by Castellaneta in all but one of his appearances. As the musically-inclined deal-making manufactured demon, Beezlebot had plenty of encounters with the Planet Express crew, Bender in particular.

She's no stranger to outer space or dealing with alien life, and, in general, she’s accustomed to weirdness. But this time around, Sigourney Weaver wasn't locked in a life or death battle to protect her ship – she was the ship itself. Voicing the Planet Express ship's newly installed female-personality, Weaver sparks something in Bender, who finds her irresistible. The two quickly fall for each other, but when Bender gets bored, the ship gets jealous. Bender clearly never saw any of Sigourney's movies, because if he had, he would have thought twice about messing with her.

We can argue about who the most famous, most interesting or funniest guest star was, but when it comes to the smartest Futurama guest star, it's hard to beat the theoretical physicist, cosmologist, published author, and one time Star Trek: The Next Generation guest star Stephen Hawking. Universally regarded as brilliant, Hawking appeared in two TV episodes and one Futurama movie, each time playing himself, sometimes as a head and sometimes not. While we're sure this Hawking is just as smart as his real-life counterpart, he also has the ability to vaporize people with lasers, something the real Hawking couldn't do.

There have been plenty of politicians impersonated on Futurama but when you see two term Vice President, one-time Democratic Presidential Nominee, film director and environmentalist Al Gore on the show, it's really him doing the voice. Sometimes he's his head, once he led a shadowy group trying to preserve the timeline and once he played himself losing the 2000 election with a little help from Bender. In all he made an impressive five appearances on the show, though his daughter Kristin being a writer on the series may have helped make this happen.

Grammy-winning musician Beck is known for experimentation and incorporating electronic elements into his genre-defying sound. On Futurama he takes it one step further by adding Bender, a fully electronic being, to his band. He even shows the robot how he can play music without the use of his arms or legs, something a rock star who's just a head in a jar would probably be pretty familiar with. Beck performs some of his biggest hits on the show, but also an original duet with Bender. Soy un perdedor!



Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honourable mentions:



Mark Hamill



Patrick Stewart



Bea Arthur

It was bound to happen, and for all our enjoyment, one time it did. Having already featured cameos from Trek stars Leonard Nimoy and Nichelle Nichols, as well as countless Trek references, Futurama decided to bring as much of the original series cast together as they could for one episode. Nimoy and Nichols were joined by William Shatner, George Takei and Walter Koenig, and together they played both their own celebrity heads and youthful versions of themselves re-animated by a cheesy Original Series approved alien. Naturally, this means there was plenty of trivia, references to the show and, of course, some of their most famous lines throughout.