The Duh-Vinci Code

After Fry and the Professor discover a sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, the crew races to Rome to discover his big secret.

Act I: "All my life I've been inspired by great minds"
Fry is trying his luck in Who Dares To Be A Millionaire?, a game show hosted by Morbo. He fails the first question and gets "thrown out". Later, the crew is gathered by the conference table discussing Fry's (lack of) intelligence. Hermes and the Professor accuse Fry of being dumb, while Amy, Leela and Bender stand up for him. The Professor, thinking he was too harsh on Fry, takes him to the lab to explain why he finds him "so repugnant". Farnsworth tells Fry about the great minds that have inspired him all his life, such as Leonardo da Vinci, his personal role model. He shows "the dumb monkey" his most precious possessions, such as Achilles' heel, some of Leonardo's creations, and his beard. Fry accidentally discovers a hidden drawing in the beard, a drawing of Da Vinci's fabled lost invention. He offers his help to the Professor to figure out what it was for, but all he gets in return is a teasing laugh.

In front of the Planet Express building, Fry is distracted by his thoughts and gets hit by a hover bus. He returns from the hospital two weeks later and the Professor is still trying to deduce the function of the mysterious device. Bender walks in with the original version of (because everyone at Kinko's was an idiot), which reveals a clue after a High-Powered X-Ray is fired at it. It seems that was actually a robot. The crew then races to Future-Rome to unearth what became of St. James.

Act II: "My God - Robot St. James is a zombie!"
In Rome, the crew finds St. James' grave in the catacombs. The robot inside explains he is not St. James but Animatronio, a robot built by Leonardo da Vinci to be his artist model, who was left to guard da Vinci's big secret and await his Shadow Society of Intellectuals. When he realizes the crew is not part of the Society, he refuses to tell them any more, and 'dies' before Leela can force him.

Even though Animatronio is dead, the Professor manages to deduce where the next clue is, and the crew travels to the Trevi Fountain. However, it is guarded by a giant octopus. After Bender kills it in a climactic battle (ending with a shootout), he finds a giant "nickel" featuring at the bottom of the fountain. As Bender grabs it, he discovers it's actually a giant drain plug, which sucks Bender into the sewers. The rest of the Planet Express Crew follows. As they enter the sewers, so does a mysterious hooded figure.

Emerging in the Pantheon, they discover a statue of the Vitruvian Man and a giant coin slot. When putting in Bender's "nickel", the man moves and reveals da Vinci's secret workshop. As they observe the inventions, the cloaked Animatronio shows up and attacks them. He is immediately knocked down by Bender and once again feigns death. The Professor and Fry sit in da Vinci's nonfunctional flying machine. A chain of occur to put the machine in space. The Professor realizes it didn't work in air because it's not supposed to - it's a space ship. The flying machine blasts off with Fry and the Professor in it.



Act III: "In truth, I am what you call a 'space alien'"
After a month of flight in space, the flying machine lands on an Earth-like planet. There they meet Leonardo da Vinci who explains that he is actually an alien from Planet Vinci who visited Earth centuries ago. The aliens of the planet are incredibly smart, Leonardo being the stupidest person and for that reason leaving for Earth to feel intelligent, only to return when he became annoyed at being surrounded by unintelligent people. Leonardo explains that he used to enjoy himself inventing, but that he since he lost the plans for his masterpiece, the Macchina Magnifica, he can't find solace even in that. Fry shows the sketch for the lost invention they found, and Leonardo says it's the one.

Fry and Leonardo find friendship, both being the stupidest of their planet. They build the Macchina Magnifica together. Meanwhile, the Professor finds trouble, feeling inferior and stupid during mathematical lectures on the planet. Finally the day comes for the big reveal of da Vinci's brilliant invention, and he shows off... a doomsday device! His plan is to have his revenge and exterminate everyone who has ever made him feel inferior. Fry protests, as he was told it was an ice cream machine. The Professor, too, joins Leonardo, as long as they kill his math teacher first.

The doomsday device barely kills anyone, but Fry manages to stop the device by falling inside it, jamming the gears. In a last attempt, Leonardo pulls a lever for a final attack, but the machine malfunctions and a cog falls on Leonardo, presumably killing him. Fry and Professor head to the flying machine and travel back home.

Reception
In its original American broadcast, "The Duh-Vinci Code" was viewed by an estimated 2.204 million people, a rise of nearly 200 000 since "Proposition Infinity".

Trivia

 * It is revealed that Dr. John A. Zoidberg is a doctor in art history. He may also be a doctor of medicine but may have been trained on Decapod 10, which would explain quite a few things.
 * The Roman Numerals on the tomb do indeed equal 1. The expression is 2^11 - (23 x 89), which can be simplified to 2048 - 2047.
 * Niccolò Machiavelli, an Italian writer who is considered one of the main founders of modern political science, faked his own death. Animatronio does it twice in this episode. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli is considered a good example of the.
 * Animatronio's legs can be seen for a brief moment when the hooded figure dives into the Trevi Fountain.
 * The scene near the start that takes place in the laboratory has been entirely slowed down a fraction.
 * One of the formulas hovering around during the calculus lecture is the
 * The statue behind the bench where Fry and Da Vinci sit is a statue of Braino, who Professor Farnsworth had stated was one of his inspirations earlier. Maybe Braino is also from Planet Vinci?
 * After the crew decide to go to Rome, Hermes asks "didn't we used to be a delivery company?", a reference to the fact that Planet Express has not made any known deliveries in quite some time.
 * However, in "Attack of the Killer App", a recent episode, the crew's visit to the Third World of the Antares system can be considered as a delivery (of e-waste).
 * The phrase "My God" is spoken ten times in the episode: six times by Farnsworth and one each by Amy, Leela, Zoidberg, and Fry. In subsuquent airings of the episode on Comedy Central, the word is omitted.

Continuity

 * A variation on the fing-longer makes a brief appearance near the beginning of the episode. This version has two long fingers that are able to poke both eyes out. The original version of this invention was first revealed in "Anthology of Interest I".
 * Professor Farnsworth was not shown to have actually invented it until "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz".
 * The Space Pope is seen again, last seen in "I Dated a Robot", and is revealed to reside in Rome.
 * Fry says he has eaten rocks, even though he declined them in "The Problem with Popplers".
 * He probably didn't want rocks if Bender (established to be a bad cook) was sautéing them in mud.

Allusions

 * The title and premise of the episode is a parody of the Dan Brown novel later turned motion picture The Da Vinci Code.
 * Morbo's quiz show Who Dares To Be A Millionaire? is a reference to the 20th century quiz show.
 * In the comics, Morbo hosted a similar show entitled "Who's Dying to Be a Gazillionaire?" in an issue of the same name. Fry was a contestant on that show as well, however instead of being eliminated on the first question he won and was then disqualified.
 * Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth calls his greatest influences inventor, astronomer and mathematician  (as well as Braino).
 * Fry asks Leela to join the "Mile deep club", a reference to, which is "joined" by having sex in an airplane.
 * The Biff character is a reference to from .
 * The scene where Fry falls into the doomsday device is a reference to the Charlie Chaplin film,.
 * When Professor Farnsworth poked Fry with his Finglonger, this was a reference to a classic joke made by The Three Stooges.

Goofs



 * When Bender, Leela, and Fry are talking to Animatronio in the chamber, Bender's cavity door is not outlined.
 * Due to the nature of round openings and the objects that close them, the "big nickle" that Bender picks up in the Trevi Fountain could not possibly fit through the opening it sealed off seconds before.
 * Fry comments that "the perspective lines [of the ] draw the eye right to his dong," but in every frontal shot of the sculpture the man is depicted without genitalia.
 * That really wouldn't count as a goof since the Vitruvian Man couldn't be shown on TV with his genitals intact, even if it is classic art.
 * There are many obvious problems with Leonardo's spacecraft. Some of them include:
 * It could not have been launched into space by the cannon, as the force would not be sufficient.


 * Once in space, the fins and the turning headpiece appear to be propelling the ship by displacing air, although there is no air in space. You can also hear them flapping.
 * There could not possibly be enough food, water and oxygen on the ship to last Fry and the Professor for a month.
 * Although they may have gone into hibernative naptosis during the journey. Moreover, such a space-craft (propelled by canon, made of wood) - if it could work - could only be travelling at sub-light speeds, so could not possibly reach a planet outside the solar system in a month - indeed, it appeared to be travelling so slowly (seemingly much slower than rocket-propelled shuttles) it would be nowhere near Mars in that time.
 * When Leonardo activates the Macchina Magnifica, the blade cuts Fry's "hair horn", but, in the very next shot, Fry is seen again, with his hair back in place, as if it was untouched.
 * This is what happens in this kind of animathion - for example, people are only seen with watches when they look at them. It is simply the way it works.
 * The crowd of people around Biff when he is mocking Leonardo's failed doomsday machine is completely different to the crowd that is around him 10 seconds later, after Leonardo accidentally kills himself.
 * Hermes apparently has a little person's skeleton, despite his skeleton being shown to be normal sized in "Rebirth".
 * It was done for the sake of a one-time joke. Continuity is sometimes sacrificed for a joke in cartoons.
 * It looked small  compared  to Hermes' fat, it looked  normal  sized  without  it.
 * Not true. It was shorter than the other people.

Characters

 * Albert Einstein
 * Amy
 * Debut: Animatronio
 * Bender
 * Debut: Biff
 * Bolt Rolands
 * Debut: Braino
 * Fry
 * Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
 * Hermes
 * Debut: Pope John the Patient
 * Leela
 * Debut: Leonardo da Vinci
 * Morbo
 * Mrs. Fry (mentioned)
 * Space Pope
 * Zoidberg