20 Times Futurama Crossed The Line
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VOICE OVER: Phoebe de Jeu
Across its long run, "Futurama" has crossed the line multiple times. For this list, we'll be looking at moments when Matt Groening's hugely popular futuristic show just went too far. Our countdown of time "Futurama" crossed the line includes when we learned how Slurm is made, the Hermes Flesh Puppet, when Fry slept with his grandmother, the Poppler Crisis, and more!
Welcome to WatchMojo and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 20 Times Futurama Crossed the Line. For this list, we’ll be looking at moments when Matt Groening’s hugely popular futuristic show just went too far. Prepare for some intense eyebrow raising. When has “Futurama” crossed the line for you? Let us know in the comments!
While lounging around at Planet Express, Leela receives an invitation for a reunion at her old orphanarium. Initially she decides not to go because she was teased by the other kids when she was younger for only having one eye. She changes her mind so she can rub her success in everyone else's face. Accompanied by Bender and Fry, they stumble upon an old group photo where she reveals she had a crush on Adlai Atkins. When the two reunite, Adlai reveals he’s a doctor and offers to give Leela the appearance of having two eyes. Overcome with emotion she begins to touch her eye, which is too much for us. The squish sounds that are made make us shudder.
With everyone gathered around the Professor’s What-If Machine, Bender asks what it would be like to be human. It’s cool to see an alternate form of the bending unit, unfortunately Bender’s transformation really highlights how disgusting bodies can be. Immediately he pukes for fun and from there things go downhill when he discovers other things he can expel. As a robot Bender had little self control and as human he definitely has less. He drinks, smokes and eats like there’s no tomorrow. It culminates with him becoming massive after just a week of him living an excessive lifestyle. The worst part is he pulls out a grilled cheese from under the folds of his skin. We’ll be staying away from grilled cheese for a bit.
When a couple finds out they’re pregnant it’s a cause for celebration. When Kif gets pregnant, he’s excited but his smizmar, Amy, isn’t exactly thrilled and she runs away due to her fear of commitment. Kif returns to his home planet to perform his culture’s birthing rights. Once he makes it to his ancestral birthing grounds, he’s greeted by the Grand Midwife who performs the ceremony. Amy returns to be with Kif just before he gives birth. Their commitment to each other is touching but it’s undercut by the actual birthing process. Nothing graphic is shown but the squishy sounds coming from Kif make us queasy and there’s a shot of the tadpoles covered in goo. Life may be beautiful but it isn’t always pretty.
Mother’s Day in the 31st century works a little bit differently than what we’re used to. Instead of honoring mother’s it honors Mom, whose company is responsible for creating all the robots. She reveals that all of her robots have antennas so she can control them with a remote control and on this mother’s day she commands them to rebel and make her supreme overlord of Earth. In order to stop Mom’s plans, the Professor has to seduce her so he can grab the remote. While he’s successful in getting it, the two get busy. Wondering what’s taking so long, the others look for the Professor and find him and Mom in their post-coital glow. The expression on their faces says it all.
Fry finds a golden bottle cap in a can of the highly addictive drink and wins a trip to party with Slurms McKenzie. Before that happens he gets a tour of the factory, traveling along in a boat on a river Slurm. Fry gets thirsty and falls into the river while trying to drink from it. However, he can’t swim so Leela jumps in to rescue him and they, along with Bender, go down a drain. From there they discover how Slurm is actually made from a secretion of the Slurm Queen pumped directly into the cans. Understandably, they’re grossed out, as are we. The worst part is when the Queen drinks her own Slurm. Perhaps we’re better off not knowing the horrible truth.
President Nixon issues a $300 refund to the residents of Earth and Kif uses part of his money to buy a watch for Amy that tells the time wherever they both are. While the gift is a sweet gesture, it falls into the tank of Mushu the Whale and ends up in it's belly. The Planet Express crew come up with a plan to retrieve the watch by making Mushu throw up. Leela feeds the whale rotten fish and moments later it feels the effects from what it ate. Not only is the sound off putting but it goes on for a bit. Even worse is that when the watch appears Kif happily dives into the puke to get it. Yuck.
When the crew goes to the gym to work out, Dr. Zoidberg becomes super competitive and aggressive. He’s full of male jelly on account of it being mating season for his people. He’s taken back to his planet to find a mating partner. He comes across Edna, an acquaintance from high school but she has no interest in him. Fry offers to help him attract her as a mate. When Edna finds out Fry’s been coaching Zoidberg, she falls for Fry. She’s able to get Fry alone and plant what we think is a kiss on him. Her mouth flaps wrap around his face and he’s covered in a green liquid. In all honesty it doesn’t look like a pleasant experience.
Sketchy gas station food is never a good idea which is of course why Fry decides to eat an egg salad sandwich he got from a machine in a truck stop bathroom. Aside from a blackened tomato that looks like a cracker, things don’t seem so bad at first. When Fry gets impaled by a pipe, his wound seemingly self repairs. The Professor decides to investigate further after hearing Fry ate a suspect sandwich and has Zoidberg examine his gastrointestinal tract. Not only do we get a visual but we get this awful rubbing, liquidy sound as the camera moves through Fry. Things only get worse as his body is now infested with worms.
Bender’s raucous lifestyle can be tempting to outside observers. It’s that appealing lifestyle that makes Bender a popular character on the show “All My Circuits”. His rowdy behavior makes an impression on the show’s younger fans. They think Bender is cool and want to be just like him. When Dwight, Cubert and Tinny Tim are influenced by Bender’s behavior and Dwight imitates the robot by taking a puff of a cigar. This causes him to immediately throw up. The Professor and Hermes were right to set up a protest group against Bender.
When the new eyePhone comes out both Fry and Bender start uploading videos and gaining followers on the Twitcher app. They make a bet to see who can get to a million followers first. Initially Fry stipulates it’s for a buck but soon they up the ante with the condition that the loser has to do a double somersault into a tub of alien goat vomit and diarrhea. Much to our chagrin, we’re introduced to Mr. Chunks, a double ended alien goat, who spews from both ends. Not only are the sounds it produces disgusting but there’s a tub full of its inner contents just stewing on the Planet Express building. It’s definitely too much for us.
We all know from Fry’s hearty Slurm addiction that he’ll drink anything . . . even when it comes out of another creature’s butt. However when Fry is accidentally trapped on Omicron Persei 8 in this blatant parody of “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial”, we learn the true lows of this incorrigible garbage gut. Making a home in the closet of young omicronian Jrrr, he finds sustenance in his friend’s feces. With their bright colors and perfectly round shape, sure, they look a lot like candy. But still, even if they tasted like it too, that’s just nasty.
On the surface, Hermes might seem like he’s got it all figured out with his great job, a goddess of a wife, and business-smart kid. But underneath it all, he still has some insecurities. So when he fires himself from his own job and is replaced by a robot, Hermes tries to build a better version of himself by turning himself into a machine. Fortunately, what Mecha-Hermes throws away, Zoidberg uses to recreate the flesh and blood Hermes . . . although but not before slipping his claw inside the stitched-together body to use it as a ventriloquist dummy. You do you, Zoidberg.
Zoidberg isn’t the best doctor, so why does the Professor keep him on payroll? Well, it turns out the two have a secret pact about a terrible disease the Professor thinks he contracted years ago. When the symptoms start to show themselves, he asks Zoidberg to euthanize him. Only problem is, it has to be by surprise, because he’s afraid of dying. All of this could be uncomfortable in and of itself, but it’s the way Zoidberg attempts to murder his longtime friend that pushes it too far. Strangulation? Electrocution? Stabbing? Then again, the elaborate killing machine built be the rest of the crew isn’t exactly better.
From exploiting the adorably innocent “Humplings” for a children’s TV show, to subjecting the brains of helpless orphans to so-called “snuggle rays”, there are quite a few things wrong with this episode. One of them is Tickleodeon CEO Abner Doubledeal’s pitch for a new TV series called “Popular Slut Club”. But even worse is “Extreme Toddler Wrestling”, which easily breaks just about every child abuse law ever. Tiny babies pitted against each other in a playpen - one even using a highchair to beat down the other - and all for the amusement of adult fans? Thank goodness it's animated.
Over the course of the show, the crew has quite a few run-ins with Omicron Persei 8, but this is the one that started it all. After a long day’s work in space, the hungry trio decide to hunt for snacks on a nearby planet. They discover a delicious protein source that soon also becomes a big hit back on Earth. There’s only one problem. They’re eating babies - the larvae of the Omicronians. You’d think that learning they’d been gobbling down someone’s live young like chicken nuggets would be a decisive moment for the crew - but it takes a lot more than that to put some of them off their food.
Here’s another encounter with Omicron Persei 8 that we’re sure the crew, particularly Fry, would like to forget. When Fry’s nose is stolen by aliens who regard ‘Human Horns’ as aphrodisiacs, things couldn’t get much worse. Except that, well, thanks to Bender, they could. After Bender’s explanation of human anatomy, the Omicronian leader Lrrr decides to remove and consume his ‘lower horn’ instead. What a way to go. The social commentary on our use of animal parts as aphrodisiacs in the real world is clever and funny, but also extremely uncomfortable . . . Yikes.
Bender making off with Amy’s body, and then an emperor’s, seems cruel, but that’s just the thing we’d expect from the kleptomaniac robot. It’s actually Fry and Leela we’re focusing on for this entry. With both of them arguing that the other only loves them for their looks, they decide to switch bodies too - Leela into the Professor’s body and Fry into Zoidberg’s. This soon escalates into the two using their new bodies to gross each other out, then dropping everything to get busy in public. Makes Bender’s scheme seem kinda innocent by comparison.
It’s the Emmy-winning episode the show became infamous for, and a storyline that continually comes up in later episodes. In this "Back to the Future" parody, the crew accidentally travel back in time to 1947, which happens to be when Fry’s grandparents were dating. Although Farnsworth warns him against tampering with the past, Fry of course visits both, accidentally killing his own grandfather Enos . . . and then sleeping with his grandmother Mildred. Sure, he ensures his existence by becoming his own grandfather. But in the process, he also commits incest. Causal loops or not, this is a gross one.
Naturally, at first, everyone freaks out when tentacles from another universe plunge into the back of their necks. But instantly, they’re filled with love and peace, so everything is OK, right? Wrong. All those tentacles? Yeah, it turns out they aren't just tentacles. They’re sex organs. The creature was mating with everyone in our universe, at the same time! And even if the creature, Yivo, and the universe’s population did eventually fall in love, and even move in together for a bit, it all started with the sentient planet taking advantage.
Thanks to this episode, “death by snu-snu” has become a popular phrase, referring to being intimate with a tall or muscular woman. But its origins are actually pretty brutal. On the Futurama planet Amazonia, giant, voluptuous women use “snu-snu” as a sentence for criminal offenses. Now in theory, getting it on until you drop might sound like an exciting idea. At least, it does for Fry, Zapp, and Kif, who are both terrified and thrilled. But it’s also non-consensual, results in a crushed pelvis, and eventually . . . well, death by snu-snu.
#20: Leela Pokes Her Eye
“The Cyber House Rules”While lounging around at Planet Express, Leela receives an invitation for a reunion at her old orphanarium. Initially she decides not to go because she was teased by the other kids when she was younger for only having one eye. She changes her mind so she can rub her success in everyone else's face. Accompanied by Bender and Fry, they stumble upon an old group photo where she reveals she had a crush on Adlai Atkins. When the two reunite, Adlai reveals he’s a doctor and offers to give Leela the appearance of having two eyes. Overcome with emotion she begins to touch her eye, which is too much for us. The squish sounds that are made make us shudder.
#19: Bender as a Human
“Anthology of Interest II”With everyone gathered around the Professor’s What-If Machine, Bender asks what it would be like to be human. It’s cool to see an alternate form of the bending unit, unfortunately Bender’s transformation really highlights how disgusting bodies can be. Immediately he pukes for fun and from there things go downhill when he discovers other things he can expel. As a robot Bender had little self control and as human he definitely has less. He drinks, smokes and eats like there’s no tomorrow. It culminates with him becoming massive after just a week of him living an excessive lifestyle. The worst part is he pulls out a grilled cheese from under the folds of his skin. We’ll be staying away from grilled cheese for a bit.
#18: Kif Gives Birth
“Kif Get Knocked Up a Notch”When a couple finds out they’re pregnant it’s a cause for celebration. When Kif gets pregnant, he’s excited but his smizmar, Amy, isn’t exactly thrilled and she runs away due to her fear of commitment. Kif returns to his home planet to perform his culture’s birthing rights. Once he makes it to his ancestral birthing grounds, he’s greeted by the Grand Midwife who performs the ceremony. Amy returns to be with Kif just before he gives birth. Their commitment to each other is touching but it’s undercut by the actual birthing process. Nothing graphic is shown but the squishy sounds coming from Kif make us queasy and there’s a shot of the tadpoles covered in goo. Life may be beautiful but it isn’t always pretty.
#17: The Professor & Mom Get It On
“Mother’s Day”Mother’s Day in the 31st century works a little bit differently than what we’re used to. Instead of honoring mother’s it honors Mom, whose company is responsible for creating all the robots. She reveals that all of her robots have antennas so she can control them with a remote control and on this mother’s day she commands them to rebel and make her supreme overlord of Earth. In order to stop Mom’s plans, the Professor has to seduce her so he can grab the remote. While he’s successful in getting it, the two get busy. Wondering what’s taking so long, the others look for the Professor and find him and Mom in their post-coital glow. The expression on their faces says it all.
#16: How Slurm Is Made
“Fry and the Slurm Factory”Fry finds a golden bottle cap in a can of the highly addictive drink and wins a trip to party with Slurms McKenzie. Before that happens he gets a tour of the factory, traveling along in a boat on a river Slurm. Fry gets thirsty and falls into the river while trying to drink from it. However, he can’t swim so Leela jumps in to rescue him and they, along with Bender, go down a drain. From there they discover how Slurm is actually made from a secretion of the Slurm Queen pumped directly into the cans. Understandably, they’re grossed out, as are we. The worst part is when the Queen drinks her own Slurm. Perhaps we’re better off not knowing the horrible truth.
#15: Mushu the Whale
“Three Hundred Big Boys”President Nixon issues a $300 refund to the residents of Earth and Kif uses part of his money to buy a watch for Amy that tells the time wherever they both are. While the gift is a sweet gesture, it falls into the tank of Mushu the Whale and ends up in it's belly. The Planet Express crew come up with a plan to retrieve the watch by making Mushu throw up. Leela feeds the whale rotten fish and moments later it feels the effects from what it ate. Not only is the sound off putting but it goes on for a bit. Even worse is that when the watch appears Kif happily dives into the puke to get it. Yuck.
#14: Edna Sucks Fry’s Face
“Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?”When the crew goes to the gym to work out, Dr. Zoidberg becomes super competitive and aggressive. He’s full of male jelly on account of it being mating season for his people. He’s taken back to his planet to find a mating partner. He comes across Edna, an acquaintance from high school but she has no interest in him. Fry offers to help him attract her as a mate. When Edna finds out Fry’s been coaching Zoidberg, she falls for Fry. She’s able to get Fry alone and plant what we think is a kiss on him. Her mouth flaps wrap around his face and he’s covered in a green liquid. In all honesty it doesn’t look like a pleasant experience.
#13: Fry’s Colonoscopy
“Parasites Lost”Sketchy gas station food is never a good idea which is of course why Fry decides to eat an egg salad sandwich he got from a machine in a truck stop bathroom. Aside from a blackened tomato that looks like a cracker, things don’t seem so bad at first. When Fry gets impaled by a pipe, his wound seemingly self repairs. The Professor decides to investigate further after hearing Fry ate a suspect sandwich and has Zoidberg examine his gastrointestinal tract. Not only do we get a visual but we get this awful rubbing, liquidy sound as the camera moves through Fry. Things only get worse as his body is now infested with worms.
#12: Dwight Imitates Bender
“Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV”Bender’s raucous lifestyle can be tempting to outside observers. It’s that appealing lifestyle that makes Bender a popular character on the show “All My Circuits”. His rowdy behavior makes an impression on the show’s younger fans. They think Bender is cool and want to be just like him. When Dwight, Cubert and Tinny Tim are influenced by Bender’s behavior and Dwight imitates the robot by taking a puff of a cigar. This causes him to immediately throw up. The Professor and Hermes were right to set up a protest group against Bender.
#11: Mr. Chunks
“Attack of the Killer App”When the new eyePhone comes out both Fry and Bender start uploading videos and gaining followers on the Twitcher app. They make a bet to see who can get to a million followers first. Initially Fry stipulates it’s for a buck but soon they up the ante with the condition that the loser has to do a double somersault into a tub of alien goat vomit and diarrhea. Much to our chagrin, we’re introduced to Mr. Chunks, a double ended alien goat, who spews from both ends. Not only are the sounds it produces disgusting but there’s a tub full of its inner contents just stewing on the Planet Express building. It’s definitely too much for us.
#10: Feces Pieces
“T: The Terrestrial”We all know from Fry’s hearty Slurm addiction that he’ll drink anything . . . even when it comes out of another creature’s butt. However when Fry is accidentally trapped on Omicron Persei 8 in this blatant parody of “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial”, we learn the true lows of this incorrigible garbage gut. Making a home in the closet of young omicronian Jrrr, he finds sustenance in his friend’s feces. With their bright colors and perfectly round shape, sure, they look a lot like candy. But still, even if they tasted like it too, that’s just nasty.
#9: Hermes Flesh Puppet
“The Six Million Dollar Mon”On the surface, Hermes might seem like he’s got it all figured out with his great job, a goddess of a wife, and business-smart kid. But underneath it all, he still has some insecurities. So when he fires himself from his own job and is replaced by a robot, Hermes tries to build a better version of himself by turning himself into a machine. Fortunately, what Mecha-Hermes throws away, Zoidberg uses to recreate the flesh and blood Hermes . . . although but not before slipping his claw inside the stitched-together body to use it as a ventriloquist dummy. You do you, Zoidberg.
#8: Violent Euthanasia
“The Tip of the Zoidberg”Zoidberg isn’t the best doctor, so why does the Professor keep him on payroll? Well, it turns out the two have a secret pact about a terrible disease the Professor thinks he contracted years ago. When the symptoms start to show themselves, he asks Zoidberg to euthanize him. Only problem is, it has to be by surprise, because he’s afraid of dying. All of this could be uncomfortable in and of itself, but it’s the way Zoidberg attempts to murder his longtime friend that pushes it too far. Strangulation? Electrocution? Stabbing? Then again, the elaborate killing machine built be the rest of the crew isn’t exactly better.
#7: Extreme Toddler Wrestling
“Yo Leela Leela”From exploiting the adorably innocent “Humplings” for a children’s TV show, to subjecting the brains of helpless orphans to so-called “snuggle rays”, there are quite a few things wrong with this episode. One of them is Tickleodeon CEO Abner Doubledeal’s pitch for a new TV series called “Popular Slut Club”. But even worse is “Extreme Toddler Wrestling”, which easily breaks just about every child abuse law ever. Tiny babies pitted against each other in a playpen - one even using a highchair to beat down the other - and all for the amusement of adult fans? Thank goodness it's animated.
#6: The Poppler Crisis
“The Problem with Popplers”Over the course of the show, the crew has quite a few run-ins with Omicron Persei 8, but this is the one that started it all. After a long day’s work in space, the hungry trio decide to hunt for snacks on a nearby planet. They discover a delicious protein source that soon also becomes a big hit back on Earth. There’s only one problem. They’re eating babies - the larvae of the Omicronians. You’d think that learning they’d been gobbling down someone’s live young like chicken nuggets would be a decisive moment for the crew - but it takes a lot more than that to put some of them off their food.
#5: Fry Almost Loses His Lower Horn
“Spanish Fry”Here’s another encounter with Omicron Persei 8 that we’re sure the crew, particularly Fry, would like to forget. When Fry’s nose is stolen by aliens who regard ‘Human Horns’ as aphrodisiacs, things couldn’t get much worse. Except that, well, thanks to Bender, they could. After Bender’s explanation of human anatomy, the Omicronian leader Lrrr decides to remove and consume his ‘lower horn’ instead. What a way to go. The social commentary on our use of animal parts as aphrodisiacs in the real world is clever and funny, but also extremely uncomfortable . . . Yikes.
#4: Fry & Leela Get Busy in the Bodies of the Professor & Zoidberg
“The Prisoner of Benda”Bender making off with Amy’s body, and then an emperor’s, seems cruel, but that’s just the thing we’d expect from the kleptomaniac robot. It’s actually Fry and Leela we’re focusing on for this entry. With both of them arguing that the other only loves them for their looks, they decide to switch bodies too - Leela into the Professor’s body and Fry into Zoidberg’s. This soon escalates into the two using their new bodies to gross each other out, then dropping everything to get busy in public. Makes Bender’s scheme seem kinda innocent by comparison.
#3: Fry Sleeps With His Grandmother
“Roswell That Ends Well”It’s the Emmy-winning episode the show became infamous for, and a storyline that continually comes up in later episodes. In this "Back to the Future" parody, the crew accidentally travel back in time to 1947, which happens to be when Fry’s grandparents were dating. Although Farnsworth warns him against tampering with the past, Fry of course visits both, accidentally killing his own grandfather Enos . . . and then sleeping with his grandmother Mildred. Sure, he ensures his existence by becoming his own grandfather. But in the process, he also commits incest. Causal loops or not, this is a gross one.
#2: Tentacles Galore
“Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs” (2008)Naturally, at first, everyone freaks out when tentacles from another universe plunge into the back of their necks. But instantly, they’re filled with love and peace, so everything is OK, right? Wrong. All those tentacles? Yeah, it turns out they aren't just tentacles. They’re sex organs. The creature was mating with everyone in our universe, at the same time! And even if the creature, Yivo, and the universe’s population did eventually fall in love, and even move in together for a bit, it all started with the sentient planet taking advantage.
#1: Death by Snu-Snu
“Amazon Women in the Mood”Thanks to this episode, “death by snu-snu” has become a popular phrase, referring to being intimate with a tall or muscular woman. But its origins are actually pretty brutal. On the Futurama planet Amazonia, giant, voluptuous women use “snu-snu” as a sentence for criminal offenses. Now in theory, getting it on until you drop might sound like an exciting idea. At least, it does for Fry, Zapp, and Kif, who are both terrified and thrilled. But it’s also non-consensual, results in a crushed pelvis, and eventually . . . well, death by snu-snu.
