The 31st-century world of Futurama is full of glorious inventions. Who wouldn’t love to drink some Slurm, visit Leonard Nimoy at the Head Museum, or smell distant objects with your trusty Smell-o-scope? But the future has a dark side, and the universe of Futurama has presented us with quite a few things that we’re lucky we don’t have to deal with. Here are some nuisances from the 31st-century life that prove living in the future isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Robots That Run On Alcohol
In “Crimes Of The Hot,” the earth is in the midst of a global warming-induced heat wave caused by the pollution emitted by all the booze guzzling robots. Why? Because when Professor Farnsworth was developing them at Mom’s Friendly Robot Company, he was too distracted by his budding romance with Mom to develop a more efficient, clean-burning robot. While a real-life Bender would undeniably be awesome, it’s probably not worth it if it would damage the environment so severely.
Mutants Roaming The Sewers
Hey look, the sewer mutants are perfectly lovely people — Leela is one of them — but if pollution becomes so severe that mutations actually start occurring in our public works systems, we would have a serious problem on our hands. But hey, that one mutant with the really big brain might come in handy.
Aliens Who Are Hell-Bent On Destroying The Earth
In the Futurama universe, space travel has been perfected, and it’s possible to travel to many distant planets. This is all well and good, but there’s also the ever-looming threat of the Omicronians, who have wreaked more than their fair share of havoc on the Planet Express crew. In “When Aliens Attack,” they threaten to destroy the universe because they aren’t able to watch a TV show. In “Spanish Fry,” they use Fry’s nose as an aphrodisiac, and when that doesn’t work, they come for his lower horn. In the interest of fairness, they did have their children get eaten in “The Problem With Popplers,” so the damage is hardly one-sided. Still, the future will be better off if we don’t have to deal with the menace that is Omicron Persei 8.
Giant Trashballs
We’ve established how polluted the 31st century is, but to be fair, this one is actually caused by all the garbage from the 20th century. After all the trash littering the streets was shot into space, it returns a thousand years later and is on a collision course with earth. Naturally, the only way to stop it was to create a second ball of trash, pushing the other one into the sun. No one had any idea how to stop the second ball from returning to earth. One can only assume that when it does, they’ll just build a third one.
Eyephones
Smartphone technology is becoming ever more advanced these days, but in the 31st century, your phone is crammed directly into your eye, which, as Fry’s blood-curdling scream when he gets his installed indicates, is an extremely painful process. If this technology were to be developed, it’s doubtful that too many people would be yelling “shut up and take my money!”
Hypnotoads
Do we really want to have our minds controlled by a super-intelligent toad who can command anyone to *stares directly at Hypnotoad* umm, I mean just kidding. I love the Hypnotoad. Who doesn’t? ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!
