Difference between revisions of "Anthology of Interest I"

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[[Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth|The Professor]] demonstrates his latest invention, the [[Fing-Longer]] by turning on the [[What-If Machine]]. [[Bender Bending Rodriguez|Bender]] wants to ask it a question, What if he was 500 feet tall?
[[Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth|The Professor]] demonstrates his latest invention, the [[Fing-Longer]] by turning on the [[What-If Machine]]. [[Bender Bending Rodriguez|Bender]] wants to ask it a question, What if he was 500 feet tall?


Hundreds of bending units complete work on Bender, who blasts of and heads to [[Earth]]. [[Philip J. Fry|Fry]] is lonely and has no friends. Bender lands near Fry and they become friends. While catching a frisbee, Bender kills the heads of Hanson and thousands of their fans so the [[Democratic Order of Planets (DOOP)|DOOP]] retaliate. They shoot Fry with electricity when he tries to negotiate so Bender goes on a rampage and destroys builings of New New York. The Professor enlarges [[Dr. John Zoidberg|Zoidberg]] so that he can fight Bender. However Zoidberg also destroys New New York and gets in a fight with Bender. Bender attempts to boil Zoidberg but Zoidberg cuts his feet off and he is impaled on the Empire State Building, killing him.
Hundreds of bending units complete work on Bender, who blasts of and heads to [[Earth]]. [[Philip J. Fry|Fry]] is lonely and has no friends. Bender lands near Fry and they become friends. While catching a frisbee, Bender kills the heads of Hanson and thousands of their fans so the [[Democratic Order of Planets (DOOP)|DOOP]] retaliate. They shoot Fry with electricity when he tries to negotiate so Bender goes on a rampage and destroys builings of New New York. The Professor enlarges [[Dr. John Zoidberg|Zoidberg]] so that he can fight Bender. However Zoidberg also destroys New New York and gets in a fight with Bender. Bender attempts to boil Zoidberg but Zoidberg cuts his feet off and he is impaled on the Empire State Building, slowly killing him. Fry admonishes everyone for the tragedy of Bender, who laments that he was unable to fulfill his dream of killing all humans before dying.


===Act II: "The crime is unsolvable."===
===Act II: "The crime is unsolvable."===

Revision as of 22:30, 6 June 2008

Season 2 episode
Anthology of Interest I
Fry-Hole.jpg
No.29
Production number2ACV16
Written by[[Terror at 500 Feet:
Eric Rogers
Dial L for Leela:
Ken Keeler
The Un-Freeze of a Lifetime:
David X. Cohen]][[Category:Episodes written by Terror at 500 Feet:
Eric Rogers
Dial L for Leela:
Ken Keeler
The Un-Freeze of a Lifetime:
David X. Cohen|Anthology of Interest I]]
Directed by[[Chris Loudon
Rich Moore]][[Category:Episodes directed by Chris Loudon
Rich Moore|Anthology of Interest I]]
Title captionPainstakingly drawn before a live audience
First air dateMay 21, 2000
Broadcast numberS02E20
Opening cartoon"Bosko Shipwrecked"
Additional
Commentary
(Transcript)
Transcript

Pictures

Season 2
  1. I Second that Emotion
  2. Brannigan, Begin Again
  3. A Head in the Polls
  4. Xmas Story
  5. Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?
  6. The Lesser of Two Evils
  7. Put Your Head on My Shoulders
  8. Raging Bender
  9. A Bicyclops Built for Two
  10. A Clone of My Own
  11. How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back
  12. The Deep South
  13. Bender Gets Made
  14. Mother's Day
  15. The Problem with Popplers
  16. Anthology of Interest I
  17. War Is the H-Word
  18. The Honking
  19. The Cryonic Woman
← Season 1Season 3 →

The Story

Act I: "I'm a big robot!"

Giant Bender and Zoidberg

The Professor demonstrates his latest invention, the Fing-Longer by turning on the What-If Machine. Bender wants to ask it a question, What if he was 500 feet tall?

Hundreds of bending units complete work on Bender, who blasts of and heads to Earth. Fry is lonely and has no friends. Bender lands near Fry and they become friends. While catching a frisbee, Bender kills the heads of Hanson and thousands of their fans so the DOOP retaliate. They shoot Fry with electricity when he tries to negotiate so Bender goes on a rampage and destroys builings of New New York. The Professor enlarges Zoidberg so that he can fight Bender. However Zoidberg also destroys New New York and gets in a fight with Bender. Bender attempts to boil Zoidberg but Zoidberg cuts his feet off and he is impaled on the Empire State Building, slowly killing him. Fry admonishes everyone for the tragedy of Bender, who laments that he was unable to fulfill his dream of killing all humans before dying.

Act II: "The crime is unsolvable."

Leela, who is intimate with Fry

Leela gets to ask a question, what if she was more impulsive?

Leela buys some boots with "a crazy green stripe". The Professor makes Leela his sole heir because she's "so un-impulsive". She kills the Professor by kicking him into his pit of man eating anteaters. Zoidberg begins investigating. Hermes finds the video will which shows Leela killing the Professor, so she kills him too. Bender catches her disposing of the body, so he tries to extort her. She kills Bender using a microwave. Amy insults her, then dies. The remaining staff gather in the accusing parlour. Cubert, Scruffy and Nibbler meet their demise as they are about to reveal the killer. Zoidberg finally works it out, only because he gets a letter from Bender he wrote before he dies, but Fry leaves before he can say and Leela kills Zoidberg. The next day Fry works it out, ("Hey Leela, whatcha eating?" Leela: "Lobster.") Leela stops him from talking by having sex with him.

Act III: "Ask something less stupid!"

Fry's turn to ask a question, what if he never came to the future?

Fry makes his fateful delivery to I. C. Wiener at Applied Cryogenics. Instead of falling in the freezer, he hits his head. This rips the fabric of space-time, through which we see some of the Planet Express staff. The next day Stephen Hawking drops by Panucci's Pizza. Fry asks him about the hole in nothing, with monsters in it. After work, the Vice Presidential Action Rangers abduct Fry. The rangers inform him that they have to fix the time-space continuum or the universe will be destroyed. Fry tells his story and it is decided that when he hit his head he should have died, the attempt at murder fails to fix it and the hole reappears, they try to make him enter the tube but instead he breaks the glass. The universe collapses on itself and Fry and the Vice Presidential Action Rangers are floating around outside the universe, they start a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

The Professor throws away the What-If Machine because he didn't think the stories were realistic, but declares the Fing-Longer a success.

It is revealed that this whole thing is being watched on the What-If Machine by the Professor, who wanted to know what life would be like if he'd invented the Fing-Longer

Additional Info

Promo pic of this episode

Trivia

  • Giant Bender's shell seems to be made of bent girders.
  • When Giant Bender first meets Fry, he says that he needs a big cereal. This is a catchphrase from [Honeycomb cereal] commercials, one of a few references made in the series.
  • When Zoidberg is big, he attacks the Chase Manhattan Bank for denying his credit card application and the Apollo Theater for booing him offstage on open mike night. These are both references to 2ACV10 when he is up on stage talking about the The Professor and the crowed doesn't like him he says it was the Apollo Theater all over again, and Bender Gets Made when he says that they denied his application.
  • The first of several Anthologies. The Anthology of Interest episodes (and to a lesser extent the comics) are equivalent to Treehouse of Horrors on The Simpsons.
  • The Earth forces that try to stop Bender consist of tanks, foot soldiers and strange double-decker fighter planes, this is a reference to the original King Kong movie.
  • This episode is Scruffy's first speaking appearance.
  • When giant Bender flies to Earth the song Iron Man by Black Sabbath is briefly heard.
  • Despite his assertions in Xmas Story that Fry's 20th century sense of modesty is outdated, The Professor still seems to have accumulated tickets for public nudity (although this may be a result of the What-If-Machine's imagination)
  • This episode was named #13 on IGN's list of Top 25 Futurama Episodes.

Quotes

  • Zoidberg: Friends, help! A guinea pig tricked me!
  • Farnsworth: Ohhh! You've killed me! You've killed me!
    Leela: Oh, god. What have I done?
    Farnsworth: I just told you. You've killed me!
  • Hermes: What are you hacking off? Is it my torso? It is! My precious torso!
    Zoidberg: Hermes, quiet! I'm deducing things.
  • Farnsworth: That question was less stupid. Though you asked it in a profoundly stupid way
  • Al Gore: If we don't go back there and make the event happen, the entire universe will be destroyed. And as an environmentalist, I'm against that.

Inside References

  • The Applied Cryogenics scene is missing a certain shadow that was seen in Space Pilot 3000.
  • The DOOP attempts to destroy Bender with electricity, this is a known drug for robots.
  • The anteater spitting the glasses back onto the Professor's skull is a reference to the fact we never see his eyes.

Fast Forward

  • The events of Roswell that Ends Well explain the timeline issues which cause the universe to be destroyed.
  • The Professor later invents the Fing-Longer.

Goofs

  • Leela and Bender are amongst the rest of the Planet Express Crew when the rip in space-time forms. This shouldn't be, because Fry was responsible for the two joining Planet Express in the first place. However, this could just be another inconsistency of the What-If Machine, just like how Nibbler's shadow is missing.

Prerequisites

  • 37 Follow up episode Follow up episode.
    This episode has been labelled as a follow up episode for the following reason:
    Here we see the professor's Fing-Longer created.

These are for Act III only.

  • 1 Suggested episode Suggested episode.
    This episode has been labelled as a suggested episode for the following reason:
    The story is an alternate version of the pilot
  • Roswell that Ends Well Follow up episode Follow up episode.
    This episode has been labelled as a follow up episode for the following reason:
    Explains the timeline issues which cause the universe to be destroyed.

Characters

(In alphabetical order)

Episode Credits