Reincarnation

"Reincarnation" is the one hundred and fourteenth episode of Futurama, the twenty-sixth and last of the sixth production season and the thirteenth and last of the eighth broadcast season. It was for some time thought to be the 'series finale', but the announcement of the upcoming seventh production season proved otherwise.

Story
In three mini-stories, Futurama is re-envisioned in three alternative animation styles - and  style,  and  style.

Production


The title was originally "Resurrection", but it was changed to "Reincarnation" in the process.

The episode is a three-parter and presumably non-canon, as with the Anthology of Interest episodes and "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular". It is divided into three different classic animation styles, in which the series will be "re-incarnated": a black-and-white style, a low-resolution, video-game style, and an  action style.

The episode was early on planned to be production episode 25 of season 6 (6ACV25), the second-to-last, but was in November 2010 changed to be the twenty-sixth episode - the season finale.

During June 2011, Countdown to Futurama released six items of promotional material for the episode: reused concept art of Bender in Fleischer style from The Beast with a Billion Backs on 10 June, concept art of Nibbler in Fleischer style on 11 June, concept art of Fry in anime style on 12 June, part of the storyboard showing a battle between a robot and a wizard from the anime sequence on 13 June, concept art of Leela and Bender in anime style on 14 June, and a video clip featuring the crew in anime style on 21 June.

On 15 June, David X. Cohen announced in an interview that "Reincarnation" was one of his favourite episodes of the broadcast season. He also said that they had licensed actual existing music to fit the different sequences - jazz for the Fleischer one, actual anime scores for the anime one, and video-game music for the video-game one - and that the anime sequence will be screened on the 2011.

According to Eric Rogers, the writers even considered, but decided against due to time constraints and money.

Trivia

 * The episode is among the few one-word titled media.
 * Stephen Hawking will guest-star, voicing his head.
 * This is the second time that Futurama paid tribute to, the first being "The Beast with a Billion Backs Part 1", which also had some influences.
 * This is one of four episodes of broadcast season 8 to be broadcast in production order. The other three are "Fry Am the Egg Man", "Cold Warriors", and "Overclockwise".

Continuity

 * The concept of owls as pests is revisited.

Allusions

 * The space robot Zagtar looks similar to.

Characters

 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Debut: Evil Wizard
 * Fry
 * Galactic Entity
 * Hermes
 * Leela
 * Nibbler
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Stephen Hawking's head
 * Debut: Zagtar
 * Zoidberg