Commentary:Mars University

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Commentary for
Mars University
Production number	1ACV11
On DVD	Season 1 Disc 3
Additional
Transcript

Topics of Discussion

• Hovering technology was supposed to have completely replaced the wheel, but wheels still appear in some episodes.
• Remixed theme music is used, apparently after hearing this they decided never to do it again, but there are a few other cases of different theme music.
• Mars' sky is yellow instead of red to avoid Fry blending in.
• The library's sign refers to Marilyn vos Savant who had the highest IQ in the world.
• J. Stewart Burns regularly tries to add chess jokes.
• Ideas were "borrowed" from numerous college movies, such as Animal House, The Program and Revenge of the Nerds.
  • Dean Vernon was named for John Vernon who played the Dean in Animal House
• The Simpsons characters are only to appear as objects, as they are a show in Futurama.
  • Interestingly, Futurama later became a show in some episodes of The Simpsons but real in other episodes. In the crossover comics however, The Simpsons retain fictional status and interacted with the crew via Mental Realms.
• Early versions of the characters had five fingers to diferentiate from The Simpsons, it looked weird and was changed, through Poster Guy sometimes retains the extra finger.
• Constant use of Apple Macintosh computers.
• Guenter was going to be more realistic, but it looked creepy.
• The Professor's eyes had at this point never been seen. Billy wanted to see them, Matt said that he shouldn't.
• Billy's high quality voice work.
• Very early on, Cubert Farnsworth was going to be the Professor's experiment and Fry's room-mate.
• The diagram "Witten's Dog" was drawn by a physicist at Caltech, it parodies a real style of physics diagram.
  • If you look closely it's also a faeces joke.
• Pointing out the urine on the floor of Guenter's parent's cage. Most of the commentators hadn't noticed it before.
• Frank Welker's animal sounds.
• Guenter was the name of Stewart's college room-mate.
  • His other room-mates are listed on the floor plan.
• Earlier versions had more animals fall from the tree.
• Fry's dancing was originally a random one-off character.
• Planning to bring Guenter back.

Highlights / Quotes

• Unknown: There's your phone number, how'd you come up with that
  Unknown 2: The Lambda? That was a desperate effort not to have a phone number that went 555-0155.

Goofs

• This is said to be the first appearance of Amy's parents, but they were in the previous episode.

Commentators

• Matt Groening
  • Creator
• David X. Cohen
  • Executive Producer
• Rich Moore
  • Supervising Director
• J. Stewart Burns
  • Writer
• Bret Haaland
  • Director
• Gregg Vanzo
  • Supervising Director
• Billy West
  • Actor (Fry, Professor Farnsworth, miscellaneous)

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