Philip J. Fry
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| Futurama character | |
| Philip J. Fry | |
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| Age | 25 on January 1, 3000 (1025 chronologically) |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| Species | Human |
| Planet of Origin | Earth |
| Job | Interplanetary Delivery Boy of the Planet Express Delivery Company. |
| Relatives |
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| First Appearance | Space Pilot 3000 |
| First Line | "Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and the gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." |
| Voiced by | Billy West |
Philip J. Fry is the protagonist of the animated television series Futurama. His voice actor is Billy West.
He is usually referred to by his family name, "Fry."
Fry is a 20th century pizza delivery boy who awakes to life at the dawn of the 31st century after being cryopreserved since the first few seconds of the year 2000. According to the Volume 1 Futurama DVD, he was born on August 9, 1974 (the same day of Richard Nixon's resignation), in Brooklyn, New York City, New York. He is 25 at the time of the first episode.
Billy West, mentioning jovially that he bases Fry on himself, also jokes that he fell in love with Katey Sagal, the voice actor of Turanga Leela, while working on the Futurama voices.
The name "Philip" was given to Fry by Matt Groening as an homage to the then recently murdered Phil Hartman, for whom the role of Zapp Brannigan was created.
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[edit] Character
A great source of humor in Futurama is Fry's lack of intelligence and unabashedly pathetic lifestyle. He lives with his best friend, Bender, rarely thinks more than five minutes into the future, and frequently injures himself. He enjoys watching TV shows that follow the form "the world's blankiest blank" and singing "Walking on Sunshine" while showering, though the only lyrics he actually knows are "I'm walking on sunshine", so he hums the rest.
Fry is childlike and unpretentious for the most part. Although he is largely self-absorbed, he almost always does the right thing when confronted with the consequences of his actions. He sacrifices for his friends and has a good heart.
In the episode "Roswell That Ends Well", Fry travels to 1947 and becomes his own grandfather. He ended up killing the man who he believed was his grandfather, and, having incorrectly concluded that the now-deceased man's girlfriend could not possibly be his grandmother, proceeded to have sex with and impregnate her, thus becoming his own grandfather (much to his absolute horror). When reminded of this by the Nibblonians, he proudly notes that he "did do the nasty in the pasty". Because of this "past nastification", as Nibbler puts it, he has a genetic anomaly that causes him to lack the delta brainwave. This helps him save the universe twice from a malicious race of disembodied brains, dubbed the "Brainspawn" ("The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" and "The Why of Fry"), as the Brainspawn's primary weapon, the intellect-draining "Stupefaction Ray", interferes with the delta wave.
Fry is the deciding factor in the galactic conflict between the Nibblonians and the evil Brainspawn. In fact, the Nibblonians were responsible for Fry being frozen: their sages foretold that he would be needed to defeat the Brainspawn in the 31st century, but he would naturally have died long before then, thus they had to freeze him ("The Why of Fry").
[edit] Timeline
[edit] Childhood
Named by his father for Phillips-head screwdrivers, he was the second and youngest child of his parents; with one older brother, Yancy Fry. His mother ceded picking his name to his father, because she had picked what they had for dinner the previous day.
During his childhood, Fry was particularly active. He took part in breakdancing and basketball, during which he found a seven-leaf clover that gave him the luck to beat his brother at both. He later locked the clover away in the family's bomb shelter in the cover of a Breakfast Club soundtrack in the "Ronco Record Vault", with the combination "3".
As a child, he participated in a breakdancing troupe in order to help them win some parachute pants, and performed a septuple headspin with the help of the clover after his brother copied his dance moves and his "Outer Space" dance style.
[edit] Teenage years
As a teenager, Fry was a typical underachiever. During his time as a teenager, he is rumored to have spent his entire school time playing video games. He particularly liked playing Space Invaders while listening to his Rush mix tapes and drinking Shasta - so much so that his eyes bled from overexposure, although this may not qualify as canon, as it is shown during the Anthology of Interest II episode.
He has also had at least three heart attacks, implied to be caused by drinking excessive amounts of cola (over 100 cans per week, as mentioned in "Fry and the Slurm Factory"). Presumably, he would have stopped at this point, but his drinking habits suggest he merely moved up to beer.
In an alternate reality shown by Professor Farnsworth's "what-if machine" (after Fry asked what life would be like if it were more like a video game), Fry's experience became useful when he was called upon to help General Colin Pac-Man defend Earth from actual space invaders, a group of classic video game characters (such as Donkey Kong) from the planet "Nintendu 64" who wanted quarters with which to do their laundry. Despite having played video games for the majority of his life, he admits to doing poorly on Space Invaders when faced with the last ship, exclaiming "I could never get the last one, my brother always got it for me!".
Aside from his obsession with video games, he is an accomplished college dropout, dropping out after less than 3 weeks from Coney Island Community College, which appeared to be a fairground ride. In the future, however, this is only the equivalent of a high school dropout. In one episode, he claims that his parents kept him out of public school, deeming it a waste of taxpayers' money.
[edit] Adult life
He had a very dirty life-style. He makes references throughout the series about "mushrooms" growing on his bathmat or in his shower. "A Big Piece of Garbage" also shows more on his dirty lifestyle.
By 1999, Fry was dating a woman named Michelle and working as a delivery boy for Panucci's Pizza. On December 31, 1999, after being dumped by his girlfriend (who was shown in a car with another man and telling Fry that she had left his stuff on the sidewalk) he was delivering a pizza to a cryogenics lab when he realized that it was a prank order for "I.C. Wiener". He was leaning back in a chair while drinking a can of beer at the lab when the clock struck midnight, and just at that moment Fry fell backwards into an open cryogenic capsule that closed upon him and froze him (in the episode "The Why of Fry", it is revealed that Nibbler gave Fry the choice to push himself in to later fulfil his destiny to one day in the future save the universe). He remained frozen for 1000 years, during which time New York City was destroyed and rebuilt twice. He was defrosted on December 31, 2999, sometime during the day. (He did not defrost early; if the capsule interpreted "1,000 years" to refer to the average length of a year in the Gregorian calendar, Fry should have defrosted a few seconds after noon.) Needless to say, upon reawakening, he found himself in a world very different from the one he left at the turn of the 21st century.
Trying to adjust to the 31st century, Fry gains the friendship of a cyclopic woman, Turanga Leela, and a bending robot named Bender. Together, they find Fry's closest living relative, the ancient Professor Hubert Farnsworth, who agrees to employ the three of them in his delivery business, Planet Express.
Now a fish-out-of-water, Fry often tries to recapture his past. He came into a large sum of money through a millennium's worth of interest accrued in a bank account and furnished an apartment in a style befitting his twentieth-century lifestyle. He discovered the preserved corpse of his dog in "Jurassic Bark", and sought to clone him until Fry discovered that the dog had lived years after Fry was frozen.
Although Fry seems to have aged, his personality still resembles that of a child of very low intelligence, and is often portrayed as being very slow to pick up on events that are happening, as well as common sense. However, he is very knowledgeable about certain subjects, such as video games, television (particularly Star Trek), movies, and scary stories.
[edit] Relationships
[edit] Bender
Fry initially meets Bender in the first episode of the series, where the two are waiting to use a suicide booth. Fry mistakenly believes the booth to be a phone booth, and the impatient Bender pushes them both in, hoping to go for a "twofer" (two-for-one). After foiling Bender's attempt the two form a strong bond. As Bender puts it, "Of all the friends I've had, [Fry's] the first" ("I, Roommate"). Bender comments in the episode "The Sting" that when he threatens to "Kill All Humans!" he would silently add "Except one," that one being Fry. Also in this episode, his distress at the "death" of Fry is obvious, shown at Fry's funeral where he is seen wearing a veil, in the style of a widow, although technically all of these events take place in Leela's coma dreams. It has been stated in a few episodes that Bender views Fry as a pet.
In "I, Roommate", after being forced out of living in the Planet Express office, Fry moves in with Bender, only to find that his apartment is as small as a closet. They then decide to rent another apartment together. However, because of the interference from Bender's antenna, the apartment's TV (with TVs from other apartments in the same block) couldn't get any reception, and for the sake of friendship, Bender cuts off his antenna so that the TV will get reception. However, they soon decide to leave that apartment and move back into Bender's previous apartment, only to discover that the apartment's 'closet' is actually the size of a typical living room, with plenty of space for Fry to comfortably live in.
Bender and Fry, while being a rather odd couple, have a strong relationship, and have sacrificed things for each other over the years of their friendship, such as fame, money, and even their own lives. Their friendship is tested when the fossilized remains of Seymour, Fry's old dog, are unearthed, and Fry spends time worrying about him instead of spending time with Bender ("Jurassic Bark"). Bender eventually feels sympathetic for the loss of Fry's dog, and even willingly jumps into hot lava just to save his dog (after throwing him into the lava in the first place). Their friendship was also tested in "The Honking", when Bender is transformed into a were-car, doomed to kill his closest friend; however, Were-car Bender first attacks Leela, leading to jealousy on Fry's part. The situation returned to normal when Were-car Bender, offered his choice of victim by the original Were-car, proves slightly more eager to kill Fry than Leela, to Fry's great delight.
[edit] Seymour
In 1997 while on a prank delivery, he finds an abandoned dog on the streets and names him Seymour (since the prank name was Seymour Asses). After feeding the dog pizza, Seymour follows Fry who then decides to keep him. By 1998 he had taught Seymour to sing Walking on Sunshine, clean up and wait for him after a delivery. Before Fry was frozen, Seymour attempted to prevent Fry leaving on his fateful New Year's Eve prank delivery.
He discovered Seymour's preserved corpse in "Jurassic Bark", and was eager to bring him back to life with the Professor's help, until he realized the dog lived twelve years after his disappearance. Thinking Seymour had lived a full life without him, Fry abandoned the project. In a poignant flashback we see that Seymour, like Hachiko or Odysseus' dog Argos, waited out his entire life for his master to come home, never leaving that spot or giving up hope.
[edit] Love life
[edit] Amy Wong
Fry and Amy Wong have a short relationship in the episode "Put Your Head on My Shoulders". After spending time together Fry and Amy recognize their commonalities (they feel the same way about "junk, and stuff") that lead to a relationship. However, Fry quickly feels as though Amy is not giving him enough space, and decides to break it off. Unfortunately, before he can tell her, Dr. Zoidberg crashes Amy's hovercar, resulting in Fry's head having to be severed from his body and transplanted onto Amy's shoulder. In the later episode "Time Keeps on Slippin'" when Fry is attempting to remember what he did to make Leela marry him, it is suggested that perhaps he is a fantastic lover, which Amy denies.
[edit] Turanga Leela
Fry met Leela shortly after being defrosted when she was working as a career counselor at the cryogenics lab. Afraid of getting a career chip (which would doom him once again to a life as a delivery boy) implanted in his hand by Leela, he ran from her, but eventually befriended her after she abandoned her job as career counselor and joined Planet Express with Fry. Later on, Fry turned his attentions to Leela, and in subsequent seasons began his quest to impress her. Fry maintains an interest in Leela throughout the series, and he is frequently rejected by her. The idea of a romantic connection between Fry and Leela is explored more in the later episodes of the series.
Towards the end of the series there are hints that Leela and Fry were beginning to fall for each other. The clearest example of this is in the episode "The Sting", when Fry is killed after being impaled on a space-bee's stinger. The death of Fry, which she believes herself responsible for, sends Leela spiralling into sorrow-induced insanity. However, it turned out that Leela was in a coma, and the events she perceived after being stung were simply a horrible dream. Fry, who only needed a replacement spleen, had stayed by her bedside the entire time, trying to keep Leela's mind together by continually talking to her for two weeks.
While traveling through time, Fry was present at the time of his past self's freezing, there to attempt to prevent it. However, Nibbler brings Fry to realize that the future is worth living, for Leela's sake, and Fry froze himself (Nibbler in this scene says, "She must be the other," however this aspect of the plot was not explored prior to the cancellation of Futurama's initial run.) In return, Nibbler helped Fry get together with Leela by giving him a flower, which Fry then gave to Leela after she had a bad date ("The Why Of Fry").
At one point (specifically "Time Keeps on Slippin'"), Fry actually managed to marry Leela only to be followed by a speedy annulment. Due to the "time-jumps" that take place in this episode, neither Fry nor Leela knew exactly what caused them to end up married until the end, where Fry looks out the window of the ship to see that he moved the stars themselves to give Leela a love letter in the sky, which is destroyed during an attempt to halt the time-skips before Leela gets a chance to see it properly.
In the episode "The Farnsworth Parabox," the main cast of Futurama travels to a parallel universe (named "Universe 1" by the Alternate Planet express, although alternate universe Fry's original suggestion was the Fighting Mongooses), which is basically the same as the normal Futurama universe ("Universe A") except that all coin flips are opposite in the two worlds. In that episode, Leela and Fry are shocked to discover that their counterparts are happily married. Apparently, both Leelas at one point flipped a coin to decide whether or not to go on a date with Fry; while Leela A got tails and made up an excuse involving ghosts, Leela 1 went out with Fry 1, which led to a year-long relationship and eventual marriage. One year later after their first date, Fry 1 gave Leela 1 a diamond scrunchie, while a year after Leela A's excuse, Fry A got beat up at a Neil Diamond Concert by a guy named Scrunchie. At the end of the episode, after returning to Universe A, Leela apparently goes out with Fry, though no long relationship seems to develop.
In "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", the last episode for season 5 (and the last episode of the series as of yet), Fry tries to improve his Holophonor skills in order to get Leela to love him. Unable to do so with his original hands, he takes the advice of Bender to make a deal with The Robot Devil to exchange them for new and better robotic hands via transplants from a 'random' donor (selected from a Wheel Of Fortune type of board), only to find the 'random' donor to be the Robot Devil himself. With his new hands, Fry's skill in the Holophonor improves exponentially, allowing him to go on to public recitals and having his musical works sold with great fanfare. Inevitably, Fry was commissioned by Hedonism Bot to write and perform a full opera. Fry agrees, but only if the opera is about Leela herself. Fry writes his opera, but on the day of the performance, Leela was accidentally deafened by Bender, due to the plottings of the Robot Devil. She goes anyway, hoping Fry won't notice. The first half of the opera is performed with great success, but Leela, unable to fully enjoy it due to her deafness, makes a hurried deal with the Robot Devil during the intermission to get robotic ears in exchange for 'her hand'. During the second half of the opera, angered by his portrayal in the opera, the Robot Devil demands Fry to return his hands. Fry initially refuses, until the Robot Devil threatens to claim Leela's hand in marriage. Fry relents, getting his old hands back, and thus unable to perform the remainder of the opera. While the rest of the audience leaves in disgust, only Leela remains, and in a touching conclusion to the episode/series, she asks Fry to continue and to see 'how it ends'.
[edit] Lucy Liu-bot
After having a crush on Lucy Liu for as long as he has known, Fry dates a copy of Lucy Liu which has been holographically projected onto a blank robot (despite the protests of the other characters), which he downloaded from "(Kid)Nappster" on the Internet.
[edit] Michelle
Michelle is Fry's girlfriend from the 20th century, who dumped Fry on New Year's Eve 1999.
After Fry was frozen, Michelle realized he was the man she really loved, so she froze herself in depression (not knowing Fry had been frozen; like everyone else in Fry's life, she knew only that he was missing and presumed dead). No one had searched because his parents felt it was a waste of taxpayers' money. Therefore, when she was revived in the year 3000, Michelle was joyously and unexpectedly reunited with Fry. When he was fired from Planet Express, he ended up with Leela's old job at the cryogenics lab (in a mixup involving career chips), he unfroze Michelle and they continued dating. Unfortunately, Michelle started to complain about the 31st century being too "weird", and the couple froze themselves, intending to re-emerge from cryogenic suspension in the year 4000; instead, their tube was dumped in Los Angeles before the re-screening of an old Pauly Shore film (the tube Fry and Michelle were in was believed to contain Pauly Shore, who had been unfrozen early by Fry), and when they were thawed, only a few days had passed. They entered a few more arguments and then broke up conclusively ("The Cryonic Woman").
[edit] Others
Fry also fell in love with a Southern-belle-type mermaid named Umbriel, but fled when he discovered the disadvantages of her piscine lower-half ("The Deep South").
Perhaps his most distressing romantic escapade, however, was backstage at the Miss Universe pageant, when he made out with "the radiator woman from the radiator planet", only to be informed afterwards that it was actually just a radiator ("Lesser of Two Evils"), after which he asks the question; "Is there a burn ward within 10 feet of here?". This radiator is seen sitting next to many of Fry's past lovers in Fry's funeral in the dream-sequence Episode "The Sting"
He once had a nearly fatal "snu-snu" experience ("Amazon Women in the Mood").
In "Love's Labours Lost in Space", Fry managed to score a date with an unnamed woman from the 21st century at the The Hip Joint, even paying Bender to 'vacate' their apartment for the night, giving him money to "go see a saucy puppet show."
Additionally, Fry carried on a short-lived affair with Morgan Proctor, the bureaucrat that had replaced Hermes Conrad at Planet Express for a brief time, though the affair ended when Morgan removed Bender's personality. ("How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back").
In a particularly disturbing twist, Fry ended up going back in time, killing his grandfather and having a one-night stand with his own grandmother (then a 30 something waitress), thus becoming his own grandfather, and hence being infinitely in-bred.
In "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?", Zoidberg visits his home planet (Decapod 10) to mate, Fry helps Zoidberg to get together with a female (Edna) Zoidberg knew previously in order to mate with her. After Edna finds out it was Fry who told Zoidberg to say the things he said to woo her, she becomes infatuated with Fry, going so far as to invite him to her apartment and attempting to seduce him. When Zoidberg finds out, he challenges Fry to 'Claw Plach', a ritual fight to the death. While fighting, the mating frenzy begins and Edna leaves with the king, along with everyone else. After finding out that Decapodians die after mating, Fry and Zoidberg became friends again, despite Fry having lost his arm to Zoidberg's claw.
Many of the women (and the radiator) that he had sexual relations with appear at his "funeral" in "The Sting".
[edit] Notable Events
[edit] Achievements
Over the course of the series, Fry managed to accomplish a wide range of achievements.
| Season | Episode | Achievement |
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"The Series Has Landed" | Rediscovered the location of the original 1969 moon landing site after it was lost for centuries. |
| "A Fishful of Dollars" | Was briefly extremely wealthy after earning 1000 years of 2.25% interest accrued on a bank account balance of 93 cents, amounting to $4.3 billion ($4,283,508,449.71 exact amount). | |
| Was the sole owner of the Earth's last known tin of anchovies, before putting them on a pizza and sharing it with the Planet Express staff. | ||
| "My Three Suns" | Briefly Emperor Fry the Solid of the planet Trisol, which lies in the darkest depths of the Forbidden Zone in the Galaxy of Terror. | |
| "A Big Piece of Garbage" | Saved New New York City from a giant ball of 20th century garbage with his 20th century garbage making skills, which guided the citizens of New New York to create and launch a second garbage ball, deflecting the first. | |
| "Mars University" | Proud of being a college dropout, he was shocked to discover that by 31st century standards, he was no smarter than a high-school dropout. He therefore briefly attended Mars University before dropping out. | |
| "When Aliens Attack" | Saved Earth from invaders from the planet Omicron Persei VIII when he remembered enough of a 1000 year old TV show ("Single Female Lawyer," a spoof/satire of Ally McBeal) to write, direct and produce a believable ending to the series finale that was knocked off the air in 1999 by Fry himself. His plan was successful, but the Omicronians decided not to give them the recipe for an immortality potion. During the early stages of the conflict, Fry, under the command of Zapp Brannigan, helped to destroy the Hubble Telescope, which the latter thought to be the Omicronians' mothership. | |
| "Fry and the Slurm Factory" | Won a contest to tour the Slurm factory, then discovered the secret to Slurm (a Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory parody), but to prevent it from being outlawed decided to keep it a secret. | |
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"How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back" | Briefly an executive (Executive Delivery Boy) of Planet Express. |
| "The Problem With Popplers" | Makes over $8 billion (pre-tax) from the sale of Popplers. He made 50 cents per dozen popplers sold, with approximately 198 billion sold, together with Bender. | |
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"The Luck of the Fryrish" | Performed the septuple headspin, with the help of a seven-leaf clover. |
| "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" | Defeats the Brainspawn by imprisoning the Master Brain in a badly-written book, tricking it into leaving Earth. He is able to do this due to his lack of the Delta Brainwave. | |
| "Time Keeps on Slippin'" | Learns to pilot the Planet Express ship, with help from Leela. | |
| "Roswell That Ends Well" | Travels through time. | |
| Does the "nasty in the pasty" thus becoming his own biological grandfather and the only being in the universe to lack the Delta Brainwave. | ||
| "Future Stock" | Briefly an executive (Vice President) of Planet Express (PlanEx). | |
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"Less Than Hero" | Briefly a superhero, known as "Captain Yesterday". |
| "The Why of Fry" | Uses a "Quantum Interface" bomb to send the Brainspawn and their "InfoSphere", a giant memory bank twice the size of three ordinary memory banks, to another dimension from which there is no escape. Once again defeating the Brainspawn. | |
| "Three Hundred Big Boys" | Briefly had super speed after drinking 100 cups of coffee in a short period of time allowing him to save the lives of the main characters and various minor characters. | |
| "Spanish Fry" | Discovers Bigfoot. | |
| "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" | Became a successful Holophonor player for the second time and wrote an opera about Leela after winning the Robot devil's hands in a "deal with the devil" |
[edit] Injuries suffered
In the series, Fry is injured fairly often, but usually recovers by the end of the episode.
| Episode | Injury | How it happened | How it was fixed |
| "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?" | Severed right arm | Cut off by Zoidberg in Claw-Plagh, a ritual fight to the death. | Reattached by Zoidberg (eventually) |
| "Put Your Head on My Shoulders" | Decapitated | Car crash | Fry's head was kept alive by being temporarily transplanted onto Amy Wong's shoulder. After Fry's body was repaired, his head was restored. |
| "Amazon Women in the Mood" | Crushed pelvis | Attempted death by snu-snu | Not Shown, but Fry appears at the end of the episode on crutches and in a body cast, suggesting medical care was administered |
| "Parasites Lost" | Impaled | A lead pipe propelled by an exploding plasma fusion boiler | Once the pipe was removed, the parasites quickly repaired him. |
| "I Dated a Robot" | Severed hands | Hands bitten off by a T-Rex | Replaced by Handcrafters (a parody of quick-service optical chain LensCrafters) |
| "The Sting" | Impaled | Jumped between a space bee and Leela | Not Shown, but described to have only required a spleen transplant. |
| "Spanish Fry" | Severed nose | Harvested as an aphrodisiac in alien abduction, later bought by Lrrr, leader of the Omicronians | Leela reattaches it with her laser. |
| "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" | Severed hands | Swapped hands with the Robot Devil | Swaps back with the Robot Devil |
[edit] External links
| Futurama | |
|---|---|
| Media | |
| Episodes • Comic books • Video game • Bender's Big Score | |
| Characters | |
| Fry • Leela • Bender • Professor Farnsworth • Doctor Zoidberg • Hermes • Amy Zapp Brannigan • Kif Kroker • Nibbler • Cubert • Calculon • Mom Recurring human characters • Recurring robot characters • Recurring alien characters • Secondary characters |
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| Universe | |
| Planets: Amphibios 9 • Eternium • Omicron Persei VIII Alien races: Cygnoid • Decapodian • Neptunian • Omicronian Politics and religion: Earth Government • Robotology • D.O.O.P. Technology: Gadgets • Suicide booth • Planet Express Ship • Nimbus Other: Timeline • Blernsball • All My Circuits • The Scary Door • Slurm • Products • Locations • Animals |
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