Game of Tones

The crew journeys into Fry's dreams to seek the meaning of a mysterious alien melody.

Act I: "It's that schwacked-out music from outer space again."
Earth is slowly approached by a mysterious alien that repeatedly broadcasts four loud al tones, which can be heard by everyone on the planet. At first, the music is merely an annoyance, but as the ship draws nearer, the booming tones begin to cause structural damage, and will eventually grow so loud that the vibrations will literally shake the planet apart. No one has any idea what the ship is trying to communicate; only Fry seems to recognize the alien melody, but his memory of hearing it is so vague that he cannot place it.

Act II: "This was the last time I ever saw my family."
Seeing that it is crucial for Fry to recover his memory of the melody, Farnsworth scans Fry's brain, finding that Fry's memory of the music originates from 31 December, 1999, the night he was cryogenically frozen. While the alien ship is still two weeks away from Earth, Farnsworth connects Fry to one of his machines and sedates him, transporting Fry in a kind of dream state to the world of his memories of that day. The crew are able to view Fry's experience on a TV monitor, and even communicate with Fry with microphones. After exploring his neighborhood and retracing his steps for a very short time, he accidentally wakes up, only to find that he has been asleep for almost two weeks. The alien ship is now so close that major earthquakes occur every time the tones are played.

After complaining that he doesn't want to go back, remembering what a bad day it had been for him, mentioning in particular "hanging out with my crazy family", Fry returns to the dream state. As he arrives at the family home, he laments, "There's not one thing about this place that I missed." Just then Seymour runs up to greet Fry. As Fry muses on his feelings for Seymour, he thinks about his family, and realizes that perhaps he does miss them after all. In spite of Farnsworth's protests, Fry re-engages with his family, savoring the experience. He realizes that he needs closure, especially with his mother, but his fellow crewmembers begin to arrive in his dream, interrupting. Eventually they drag him out of the house, insisting that he continue his mission. Making a final effort to escape them, he runs back inside, but his people are gone; a quirk of this dream state has eliminated them.

Bitter and defeated, Fry leads the crew through the rest of his day, even up to his last two minutes at Applied Cryogenics, still with no satisfaction. Fry takes his place in front of the cryogenic tube, leaning back in his chair as the countdown to the New Year begins. In the final seconds as he falls back into the tube, he at last hears the four notes, followed by two additional, higher-pitched notes that he had not recalled until now. Armed with this new information, Nixon leads the crew to a landing facility built to receive the alien craft. When it arrives and blasts out the four notes, Fry uses a keyboard to respond with the final two. The ship lands, and from it emerges Digby, Nibbler's personal chauffer.

Digby explains that on 31 December, 1999, he had conducted Nibbler to Earth on his mission to ensure that Fry entered the cryo-tube. Accompanying Nibbler, Digby used a key fob, coincidentally at the very instant that Fry fell in, to remotely lock the spaceship. The fob, after all, was the source of the musical tones, the two additional notes being the acknowledgement from the ship. Mission accomplished, Digby and Nibbler became severely drunk at a local pub. Heading home, having forgotten where they had parked their ship, a drunken Digby dropped the fob, with keys attached, down a storm drain. Forced to take a cab back to their base on Vergon 6, Digby had later retrieved a spare set of keys, and has been traveling from one planet to another, broadcasting the security signal in an attempt to locate the "company car". Fry leads them to the roof of the Applied Cryogenics building, where the Nibblonian ship still rests, ransacked, with a dead battery. With Bender's help, Digby flies away. Nibbler thanks Fry, vowing to somehow repay him. Fry thinks of his mother and laments that they cannot give him what he really wants.

Act III "Mom, there's so much I need to say."
That night, while asleep, Fry has a dream about his mother, and once more expresses his desire to speak with her. When a television sportscaster announces the results of the 2000 Rose Bowl, Fry is confused; since that game took place after he was frozen, it should be impossible for him to know the results. Nibbler appears, and reveals that this is not actually Fry's dream; it is one of his mother's, and is the gift that Nibbler spoke of. Fry asks if it is really her, and she replies that it is, telling him that she has dreamed of him often since his disappearance. When she asks him what he would like to talk about, he wordlessly embraces her with tears in his eyes. Back in the 21st century, Fry's mother dreams of her son with a smile on her face.

Production
As late as 8 January 2013, the episode's title was revealed.

On 5 February, released a preview clip for the tenth broadcast season, which contained footage from the episode.

On 19 June, it was revealed that Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane would voice Seymour in the episode.

By 9 July, part of the animatic for the episode had been released online.

In the animatic, the montage of Fry spending time with his family was longer, and the song "" played over it.

By 8 August, Comedy Central had released a two-minute preview clip featuring the crew trying to discover the source of the melody.

Reception
By 5 December, the episode had been nominated for the 2014 s.

Trivia

 * The episode, which deals heavily with Fry's past, aired on Fry's birthday.
 * Michael Rowe, the writer of the episode, has also written for Family Guy. In, he introduces himself as Seth MacFarlane, and then says "wrong show". "Game of Tones" is Seth MacFarlane's second appearance on Futurama.
 * Fry was also stuck on an inclined table in "Cold Warriors", which also featured Fry's family. In addition, the digits in the production code for "Cold Warriors" add up to the same amount as the digits in the production code for this episode.
 * The professor also calls Fry a dope in the twenty-third episode of the sixth production season, "All the Presidents' Heads".
 * After the Eiffel Tower bends, a French man says "this never happens, I swear!", a very obvious erection joke.
 * The episode shares multiple similarities with the 1986 film Star Trek . A mysterious ship arrives, sending a strange melody to communicate, which, however, damages the planet, and the main characters have to travel back in time (in this episode through dreams).
 * Nibbler says "bye-bye keys", which a toddler says in the Simpsons episode "".
 * The song that plays at the end of the episode is "Manchild", by the, from the 1996 album .
 * An image of the blank interior of Fry's house, featuring Bender and Fry, is used on the extras menu for Volume 8. The piece of music that plays when Fry sees the neighbourhood strip club is used on the main menu for the first disc.

Allusions

 * The episode's title is a reference to the TV series Game of Thrones.
 * English Emilia Clarke, who plays  in Game of Thrones, guest-stars in another episode of the season, "Stench and Stenchibility". She and Seth MacFarlane used to date.
 * Shazam is a reference to.
 * Seymour sitting on the couch along with the rest of the Fry family and holding a is a reference to Family Guy's, who is also voiced by Seth MacFarlane.
 * The rugby-stadium scene is likely a reference to the classic  .
 * There are several references to the 2010 film . From the very act of getting into a dream, to the fact that, if Fry dies in the dream, he wakes up, the time proportion being different (inverted in Futurama) between the real world and the dream, the crew members connected to the dream machine, the shots of the world shaking due to the dream's collapse and the slow motion and music used as Fry is falling into the cryo-tube.
 * The scene where the crew communicates with the alien ship via sound and lights on a billboard is reminiscent of the climax from the 1977 film . A location similar to is also seen in the background.
 * The final scene is a reference to the ending of the 2001 film , where the protagonist gets to live one last experience with his mother based on memories.

Continuity

 * Bender's "let's go already" song is from "Proposition Infinity".
 * Bender previously wore a diaper in "The Tip of the Zoidberg".
 * The episode revisits the cold opening of "Space Pilot 3000".
 * Nibbler tells Fry that he has once more done the Nibblonians a great service. This is a reference to "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" and "The Why of Fry", in which Fry saves the world and the universe, respectively.
 * Fry meets his mother again on New Year's morning, when Wisconsin has won the 2000 Rose Bowl. This is in line with Mrs. Fry's remark in "Luck of the Fryrish" of Fry's disappearance occurring "the day Wisconsin won the Rose Bowl 17-9".

Goofs

 * Fry's alarm reads "09:01" thirty seconds after turning to nine o'clock.
 * This may be due to the fact that the clock is part of a dream.
 * The design of the radio-cranial dream injector in the second act is different from the design of the radio-cranial dream injector in the first and third acts. The animatic version of the design, however, is the same.
 * Fry is saddened to relive the last time that he ever saw his family, but in "Space Pilot 3000", he seems thrilled at the notion all the people he ever knew were dead.
 * His feelings may have changed as time went by, as in "The Luck of the Fryrish" with his brother and "Cold Warriors" with his father.
 * When Fry sees his mother in the kitchen, she is watching TV, but, when he walks up to the counter, the TV is not on.
 * Fry's mother said she thinks of him constantly after he disappeared, but, in Bender's Big Score, Fry's duplicate comes back and lives in the past for a decade. Fry's duplicate is visibly older before freezing himself, but Fry's mom is still young during the end scene indicating that the time period should be somewhere when Fry's duplicate comes back.

Characters

 * 20th-century kid
 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Charles Constantine
 * Debut: Digby
 * Donkey Kong
 * Fry
 * Fry's breakdancing crew
 * Glagnar
 * Hermes
 * Last clone of Agnew
 * Leela
 * Michelle
 * Mr. Panucci
 * Mrs. Fry
 * Nibbler
 * Noticeably F.A.T.
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Randy Munchnik
 * Richard Nixon's head
 * Scruffy
 * Seymour Asses
 * Debut: Shazam
 * Yancy Fry Jr.
 * Yancy Fry Sr.
 * Zoidberg

Places

 * Apartment 00100100
 * Applied Cryogenics
 * Debut: Booby Tuesday's
 * Eiffel Tower
 * France
 * Fry's house
 * Debut: Fry's old apartment
 * Debut: Mount Shushmore
 * O'Grady's Pub
 * Old New York
 * Panucci's Pizza
 * Paris
 * Planet Express conference room
 * Planet Express employee lounge
 * Planet Express headquarters
 * Planet Express lab
 * Debut: Planet Z-7
 * Robot Arms Apartments
 * Vergon 6

Miscellaneous

 * "Bender is great!" (in animatic only)
 * Charleston Chew
 * Cryo-tube
 * Debut: Digby's new spaceship
 * Debut: Digby's old spaceship
 * Fry's past
 * Futurama
 * "Good news, everyone"
 * I. C. Wiener
 * "Let's go already!"
 * Debut: Long-range scanner
 * Nibbler's shadow
 * Owls
 * Debut: Radio-cranial dream injector
 * Debut: Thoughtspike
 * "Walking on Sunshine"