Anthology of Interest I

"Anthology of Interest I", alternatively titled "Tales of Interest", is the twenty-ninth episode of Futurama, the sixteenth of the second production season, the twentieth and the last of the second broadcast season and the first Anthology of Interest episode. It aired 21 May, 2000 on FOX. It guest stars Al Gore, Stephen Hawking, Nichelle Nichols and Gary Gygax as themselves. The What-If Machine tells three stories, one in which Bender becomes a 150 feet tall robot, another with Leela being slightly more impulsive and finally what would have happened if Fry never came to the future. And that's what things would have been like if Farnsworth had invented the Fing-Longer.

Act I: "Terror at 500 Feet"
The Professor demonstrates his latest invention, the Fing-Longer by turning on the What-If Machine. Bender wants to aks it a question. What if he was 500 feet tall?

Hundreds of Bending Units complete work on Bender, who blasts off and heads to Earth. Meanwhile, Fry roams New New York lonely and has no friends. Bender lands near Fry and the two become friends. While catching a frisbee, Bender kills the heads of Hanson and thousands of their fans so the DOOP retaliate. They begin attacking Bender. They are so focused on stopping Bender that they shoot Fry with electricity when he tries to stop the fighting. This causes Bender to go on a rampage and destroy every building that he can find in New New York. Noticing the carnage, The Professor enlarges Zoidberg so that he can fight Bender on equal ground. However, Zoidberg also has issues and begins destroying New New York. This causes a turf war between the two giants. While Bender attempts to boil Zoidberg, Fry walks up wanting to make Shrinky-Dinks. While Bender is distracted, Zoidberg cuts Bender's feet off and he is impaled on the Empire State Building, slowly killing him. Fry admonishes everyone for their part in the tragedy, while Bender laments that he was unable to fulfill his dream of killing all humans before dying.

Act II: "Dial L for Leela"
Leela gets to aks a question. After being teased about being unimpulsive, she asks the what if machine the following. 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 to get the money. The Professor's death motivates Zoidberg to begin investigating. Hermes finds the video will which shows Leela killing the Professor, so she attacks him, chops him up, and puts his remains in the garbage disposal. Bender catches her disposing of the body, so he tries to extort her ("The X makes it sound cool!"). She kills Bender using a microwave and it's radioactivity, and she turns Bender into a go-kart. Amy insults her by saying that the go-cart is sexier than her, which causes Leela to kill her and stuff the body inside a grandfather clock.

The remaining staff gather in the Accusing Parlor. Zoidberg attempts to solve the mystery. Cubert, Scruffy and Nibbler independently realize who the murderer is and meet their demise as they are about to expose Leela, all on the same sword. Zoidberg finally works it out, only because he gets a letter from Bender he wrote before he dies, but Fry leaves before Zoidberg can reveal the killer and Leela kills Zoidberg. Later, Fry works it out. ("Hey Leela, whatcha eating?" Leela: "Lobster.") Leela is able to keep him quiet by doing something really impulsive: having sex with him, which he likes.

Act III: "The Un-Freeze of a Lifetime"
Fry gets to aks a question. Fry's request for a repeat of Bender's question is denied, so he asks: 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 rift in Space-Time reappears, they try to make him enter the tube but instead he breaks the glass. This causes the universe to collapse 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.

However, it is revealed that this entire episode is itself 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.

Trivia

 * Admiral Crunch has a reappearance in this episode.
 * Gary Gygax's appearance alongside Al Gore is something of an inside joke since Gore's (now ex-)wife, Tipper Gore, hates and has been publicly critical of it.
 * Al Gore received some criticism for his appearance because parts of the show "conflicted starkly with the anti-violence, anti-smoking and family-values themes of Gore's campaign". Gore's spokesperson responded by stating that most viewers would recognize that the show was meant to be entertaining and that it would be taken in the right spirit.
 * When rebroadcast during the fiasco, the tagline at the start of the episode said, "Starring a guy who is kind-of, sort-of our next president, maybe!".
 * Nichelle Nichols and Al Gore both make later appearances in and  respectively
 * Giant Bender's shell seems to be made of bent girders.
 * As mentioned on the DVD commentary, the Anthology of Interest episodes came from a desire to tell stories that couldn't be told in normal continuity, similar to  comics.
 * When Zoidberg is big, he attacks the for denying his credit card application and the Apollo Theater for booing him offstage on open mike night. These are both references to  when he is up on stage talking about the The Professor and the crowd doesn't like him he says it was the  all over again, and  when he says that they denied his application.
 * The first of two Anthologies, the Anthology of Interest episodes (and to a lesser extent the comics) are equivalent to on The Simpsons.
 * This episode is Scruffy's first speaking appearance.
 * Despite his assertions in 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).
 * The Professor calls the final story in this episode absurd, citing "Stephen Hawking in a pizzeria" as especially bad. Interestingly, in an episode of The Simpsons, Stephen Hawking buys a pizzeria.
 * Scruffy reappears, although his moustache is now brown, not white like it was when he appeared in.
 * Al Gore is voiced by himself, making it his first appearance in any TV series of any kind. It is also one of the very rare times that a politician appears as himself on a show.
 * When giant Bender rips from its foundations, a sign indicates that the  were the  Champions in 1969 and 1986, which means that they won't win between now and the year 3000! This is further stated in the episode.
 * This episode is one of four featured in the Monster Robot Maniac Fun Collection, reflecting its popularity with both fans and the creators of Futurama.
 * This episode was named #13 on IGN's list of Top 25 Futurama Episodes.
 * When Bender boils Zoidberg inside Shea Stadium, the stadium is a complete bowl. In real life, Shea was open in the outfield (and torn down in 2009). However, considering Old New York was destroyed, this was likely meant to be a completely new Shea Stadium from the one the Mets used from 1964-2008.

Continuity

 * The Applied Cryogenics scene is missing a certain shadow that was seen in "Space Pilot 3000", but that may be explained by the fact that the being that causes the shadow caused him to fall into the tube.
 * The DOOP attempts to destroy Bender with something that looks like electricity. Electricity is a known drug for robots as seen in "Hell Is Other Robots".
 * The anteater spitting the glasses back onto the Professor's skull is a reference to the fact we never see his eyes.
 * At first it seems as though Bender is going to ask what it would be like if he were human, but instead he changes it. This foreshadows future events because in the sequel, "Anthology of Interest II", Bender does ask the What-If machine what it would be like if he were human.
 * This is the second time that Leela is seen having sex with somebody out of impulse (the first time being "Love's Labours Lost in Space" with Zapp Brannigan) and the first time we see her in bed with Fry. Although, since it was during a What-If scenario, it cannot be regarded as canon.

Allusions

 * When Giant Bender first meets Fry, he says that he needs a big cereal. This is a catchphrase from commercials, one of a few references made in the series.
 * The Earth forces that try to stop Bender consist of tanks, foot soldiers and futuristic biplanes, this is a reference to the.
 * Bender destroying the city and fighting Giant Zoidberg is a reference to ' and '.
 * Mr. Panucci says the only 'real' monsters are, and
 * When giant Bender flies to Earth the song "" by is briefly heard.
 * Nichelle Nichols appears as from Star Trek: .
 * Fry asks, "Was Planet Express built on an Indian graveyard?", a reference to the horror movie .
 * "Good night, sweet prince" is a direct and well-known quote from the play  by William Shakespeare; these words are spoken by Horatio as Hamlet dies.
 * There are several references about Dungeons & Dragons, including rolling dice to decide what to do, and holding a +1 mace.
 * Zoidberg wears the famous hat of the great detective, and "The Accusing Parlor" looks a lot like his home in London from the books.
 * The story of a giant robot coming to earth and making friends with a lonely kid is a parody of the story behind  which was made into an in 1999.
 * One of members of the Vice-Presidential Action Rangers is Deep Blue which was a computer made by that beat world chess champion  in 1997.
 * The cover of the Monster Manual at the end of the third segment is exactly the same as the original Monster Manual from from the late 1970s. This particular book was, of course, written by Gygax.

Fast Forward

 * The events of explain the timeline issues which cause the universe to be destroyed.
 * The Professor later invents the Fing-Longer in.
 * A sequel to this episode is created,.
 * Sadly, Gary Gygax passed away eight years after this episode aired. The film  was dedicated to his memory.

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. There have been some explanations for this:
 * This could just be another inconsistency of the What-If Machine, just like how Nibbler's shadow is missing.
 * Nibblers shadow was possibly missing because he was the reason why Fry fell into the tube.
 * This same mistake was made in the first part of this episode, where Leela works for Planet Express, and Fry isn't assigned a job. This shouldn't be, because Leela would have assigned Fry the job of a Delivery Boy since Bender wasn't there to help Fry escape from her and the police, and because of this, Leela wouldn't have lost her job for making friends with Fry, forcing them to go to Fry's only living relative (Farnsworth), thus making them members of Planet Express, but this may also be an inconsistency of the What-If Machine. Bender would be dead because he would have committed suicide.
 * Though Fry and Leela could still have ended up as employees at Planet Express because Fry's attempted escape could still have ensued and could have arrived at the same conclusion without Bender, though without Bender's participation the events leading up to this similar conclusion would have been different. The only major effort on Benders part was the Bending of the bars at the head museum, and they had only attempted to hide there because of Bender's suggestion that it was free on Tuesdays.
 * After Fry falls and bumps his head on the freezer door, he gets up and the table he was sat at is now a lot further away from the freezer than it was when he fell and the can isn't in his hand or on the floor.
 * Scruffy's moustache and hat keep changing colors throughout the episode.
 * Al Gore called Nichelle Nichols 'Commander Uhura', but she only had 1 gold braid which indicates the rank of Lieutenant.
 * When Leela kills Bender, his now detached eyes are shown as spheres. However when his eyes move or fall out in other episodes (such as the pilot) they are shown to be rounded cylinders.
 * Several times throughout the episode, the characters say the word "ask", which was said in Xmas Story to be an archaic term for "ax".

Characters

 * Abner Doubledeal
 * Debut: Al Gore
 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Cubert Farnsworth
 * Debut: Deep Blue
 * Prof. Farnsworth
 * Fry
 * Debut: Gary Gygax
 * Glab
 * Debut: Hanson
 * Hermes
 * Kif Kroker
 * Leela
 * Lou
 * Debut: Narrator
 * Debut: Nichelle Nichols
 * Nibbler
 * Mr. Panucci
 * Mayor C. Randall Poopenmeyer
 * Randy Munchnik
 * Scruffy
 * Debut: Stephen Hawking
 * Terry
 * Dr. Ogden Wernstrom
 * Zapp Brannigan
 * Zoidberg

Episode Credits

 * Writers
 * Eric Rogers (Act 1)
 * Ken Keeler (Act 2)
 * David X. Cohen (Act 3)
 * Directors
 * Chris Loudon
 * Rich Moore
 * Voice Actors
 * Billy West
 * Katey Sagal
 * John DiMaggio
 * Tress MacNeille
 * Maurice LaMarche
 * Lauren Tom
 * Phil LaMarr
 * David Herman
 * Kath Soucie
 * Frank Welker
 * DVD Commentary
 * Matt Groening
 * David X. Cohen
 * Rich Moore
 * Ken Keeler
 * John DiMaggio
 * Billy West
 * Special Guests
 * Al Gore
 * Gary Gygax
 * Nichelle Nichols
 * Stephen Hawking