List of recurring human characters from Futurama
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- This article discusses human recurring characters. For robotic recurring characters, see List of recurring robot characters from Futurama. For all others, see List of recurring alien characters from Futurama.
Futurama's recurring characters:
[edit] Celebrity heads
In the episode "A Big Piece of Garbage", Ron Popeil, his severed head floating in a large jar, mentions several of his inventions including the (fictional) technology to keep human heads alive in jars, implicitly arresting the aging process. A recurring feature of Futurama was use of this fanciful idea to allow guest appearances by 20th- and 21st-century celebrities, established as early as the first episode when Fry and Bender hide in "The Head Museum" and meet the head of Leonard Nimoy. Other celebrity heads can be seen in the background, including that of series co-creator Matt Groening. The museum also had a wall display titled "U.S. PRESIDENTS", with 22 jars containing presidential heads ranging from George Washington to Bill Clinton. This shows but does not explain how people who have died before the head-in-a-jar technology was developed can still benefit from it.
Several anomalies, some deliberate, have occurred. The robot actor Calculon at one point claimed that in his long life he had been "all of history's greatest acting robots", including David Duchovny, though Duchovny's head had appeared in the pilot episode. A subtle joke was used in one episode when the head of former president Grover Cleveland appeared twice, flanking the head of former president Benjamin Harrison, in reference to Cleveland's uniquely non-consecutive presidential terms.
Fry accidentally knocked over the jar containing the head of Richard Nixon (voiced by Billy West), angering the former president. The presidents (along with the heads of losing candidates Ross Perot, Lyndon Larouche, Walter Mondale and Bob Dole, among others) would later reappear in the episode "A Head in the Polls", while Nixon's head would exploit events in that episode to restart his political career.
The opinion on life in a jar seems to be somewhat split as Nimoy's head initially refers to it as being "a life of quiet dignity." His opinion appears to change in a later episode, when he claims "I'm living in a gefilte fish jar." George Foreman's head has an even dimmer view, claiming to "envy the dead" (Rich Little's head agrees).
Celebrity heads who have played major or recurring roles are listed below:
[edit] Al Gore
(Voiced by Al Gore) - First emperor of the Moon, and has "riddin the mighty moon worm", with a jar somewhat more elaborate than average, colored silver-white, seemingly backed with the top of a cape and two small rockets for mobility. By the year 3000, Gore's head appears on the five-hundred dollar bill. He claims to have invented the environment (a reference to Gore being popularly misquoted as having said he “invented the internet”; in fact, he actually referred to spearheading Congressional legislation promoting the development of the Internet into its modern form) and is the author of Earth in the Balance and the much more popular Harry Potter and the Balance of Earth, in which he explains that the environment must be protected from global warming and dark wizards.
Gore appears fully intact in "Anthology of Interest I", in which the characters watched a What-If machine simulation of events had Fry had not fallen into the cryogenics tube on New Year's Eve, 1999. This would have led to a tear in the space-time continuum which Gore, then leader of the Vice Presidential Action Rangers, was tasked by the U.S. Constitution to prevent.
The real-life Gore has said that Futurama is his favorite show. His daughter, Kristin Gore, was a writer for the show in its later seasons. Gore has also voiced the cartoon version of himself in the promotional video for An Inconvenient Truth along with John DiMaggio (the voice of Bender) and Billy West (the narrator).
It has been confirmed that Al Gore will voice his head again in the first of the four DVD movies, Futurama: Bender's Big Score.
[edit] Lucy Liu
(Voiced by Lucy Liu) - First appears as a captive of "Kidnappster.com", an Internet company (in a reference to the controversial Napster) that kidnaps celebrities and offers their personalities for download into "blank" robots ("I Dated a Robot"). After she is rescued, she convinces Fry that not only is the copying process an invasion of her privacy and rights, but that relationships between humans and robots are unnatural. After he reluctantly deactivates his Liu-bot, Liu's head falls in love with Bender. She briefly appears in a later episode ("Love and Rocket") stored in Bender's chest compartment.
[edit] Leonard Nimoy
(Voiced by Leonard Nimoy) - In addition to the pilot episode, Nimoy's head appears in "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", along with the heads of other cast members of the original Star Trek: William Shatner, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols (who would also appear, intact, in "Anthology of Interest I") and Walter Koenig, all voiced by the real-life actors. An animated version of DeForest Kelley (by then deceased) appears but does not speak. The episode also contains a brief cameo by the head of Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Jonathan Frakes. Leonard Nimoy states at one point that life as a head in a jar is a quiet, dignified life. However, after being given a new body by an alien and later having to give it up, Nimoy is obviously upset and states "I am living in a gefilte fish jar".
[edit] Richard Nixon
(Voiced by Billy West) - Of all of the celebrity heads, Richard Nixon's is the most seen throughout the series. Nixon's Head is introduced in the pilot episode when Fry and Bender run into the head museum to evade the police. They wander into the Hall of Presidents, and Fry knocks Nixon's head off the shelf by accident. In "A Head in the Polls", Nixon's head achieves mobility by having his jar mounted on Bender's body. He then runs for President of Earth, winning by a single vote (non-felon robots can vote and were widely impressed by Nixon's head's robotic "charisma"). Nixon's head returns Bender's body the night before the election, blackmailed by an audio recording Bender had made of Nixon's head ranting about the stupidity of voters and his intent, if elected, to "go into people's houses at night and wreck up the place" and to sell children's organs to zoos for meat. He manages to quickly secure a much larger robotic body, smashing his way into the White House after his election.
Nixon's head's administration is marked by a violent and aggressive foreign policy, frequently entering into wars which have little or no purpose, and which occasionally backfire, leading to Earth being invaded by alien forces. Nixon's head is a common character throughout the series, providing humor through his 1960s outlook on life and his aggressive, unpredictable persona. Nixon's head is sometimes accompanied by the headless body of Spiro T. Agnew, Nixon's first historical Vice President. Agnew's body, however, is given to Ogden Wernstrom as a form of payment in "Crimes of the Hot". In the final episode, "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", Nixon's head is pulled into Robot Hell by the Robot Devil.
In several commentaries, Billy West has commented that he is not impersonating Richard Nixon for the role; he's impersonating Anthony Hopkins in the movie Nixon (with "a little bit of werewolf"). Matt Groening also frequently expresses his pleasure that he can continue to poke fun at Nixon thirty or forty years after he was in office.
[edit] George Washington
(Voiced by Maurice LaMarche) - George Washington's head appears briefly in the pilot episode and has a speaking part in "A Head in the Polls", admitting that just as Bender had hocked his body, Washington had hocked his (legendary) wooden teeth for "booze money". His speech is not only anachronistic but also incorrect, as he says "thou" where "thine" would be more appropriate. Washington's head later reappears in "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid", as Fry attempts to re-educate the other Planet Express employees, not realizing their sudden stupidity is being caused by the malevolent Brainspawn. Himself stupefied, Washington incorrectly guesses the first president of the United States was Thomas Jefferson.
[edit] Zapp Brannigan
[edit] Father Changstein-El-Gamal
El-Gamal
(Voiced by David Herman) - A priest in the First Amalgamated Church, a mixture of many 20th century religions. Father Changstein-El-Gamal counsels Fry in "Godfellas" and later presides over Fry's funeral in "The Sting". He is generally not very helpful.
[edit] Dwight Conrad
(Voiced by Bumper Robinson) - 12 year-old son of Hermes Conrad and LaBarbara Conrad. He has a friendship with Cubert Farnsworth. Dwight takes after his father in many ways, such as finding accounting and bureaucracy more entertaining than more conventional sources of fun. Dwight sports dreadlocks and a T-shirt with the Jamaican flag on it. In the episode "The Route of All Evil", a bully throws Dwight's lunch pack into a black hole he has made for his science project. He also was once the shared owner of the delivery company, Awesome Express and helped take over Planet Express when it was discovered thet Professor Farnsworth had previously been declared dead. The way in which Dwight screams "My Manwich!" is very similar to the way Hermes screams the same words when Bender uses his sandwich as fishing bait.
[edit] LaBarbara Conrad
(Voiced by Dawnn Lewis) - Hermes Conrad's wife. She is considerably taller than Hermes and is usually seen wearing revealing clothes. LaBarbara was previously married to Barbados Slim, a tall, muscular athlete (whom she refers to as "that mahogany god") who won the limbo gold medal in the 3004 Olympics. She accompanies her husband on a trip on the Starship Titanic and another to Spa 5, which turns out to be a slave labor camp. She and her husband often refer to each other only as "husband" and "wife." In "The Route of All Evil," Hermes and LaBarbara's home is shown as very sumptuous.
[edit] Cookieville orphans
The orphans from the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium (where Leela spent her childhood) are first featured in the episode "The Cyber House Rules". Bender briefly adopts twelve of them, seeing a chance for profit in government stipends, but he is arrested, as are the orphans.
Some of the orphans also appear as background characters in other episodes, including "The Why Of Fry" (while on a Cookieville field trip to a skating rink); "Leela's Homeworld" (cheering for Leela after she is crowned "Orphan of the Year"); "Bender Should Not Be Allowed On TV" (as "cool kids" attending Cubert and Dwight's birthday party); and in "Three Hundred Big Boys" (in the audience while watching Mushu the Whale perform stunts). The three orphans that appear most often are named Albert, Nina, and Sally.
[edit] Albert
(Voiced by Kath Soucie) - Like Sally and Nina, Albert is mainly featured in the episode "The Cyber House Rules", where Leela rejects him, saying he is "kind of fatty". According to Bender he weighs approximately 35 pounds. He has been seen smoking cigars and is known to drink espresso. Unlike the other orphans, he is not seen in "The Why of Fry".
[edit] Nina
(Voiced by Kath Soucie) - Nina is one of the more talkative orphans, taking it upon herself to introduce all the orphans by name when prompted. She is one of Sally's best friends. In the episode "Leela's Homeworld", Nina puts on an eye patch pretending to be Leela. This prompts Albert to cover both his eyes to be a "double-Leela", after which he runs face-first into a wall.
[edit] Sally
(Voiced by Nicole St. John) - Sally is a mutant with a third ear on her forehead, who nevertheless is regarded by creators and characters as the cutest of all the orphans[citation needed]. Like Leela's eye, she is teased about her third ear. Leela wants to adopt her after feeling sympathy for her. Sally also admits to having a tail. She is very proud of being able to do 100 jump ropes. Unlike Nina and Albert, she is not seen in the audience in "Three Hundred Big Boys".
[edit] Cubert Farnsworth
[edit] Abner Doubledeal
(Voiced by Tom Kenny) - Onetime owner of the Ultimate Robot Fighting league, and later owner of the New New York Mets. Hired Bender to boost publicity in the Ultimate Robot Fighting league, and set him up for a fall when his popularity waned slightly. Later hired Leela as a sort of novelty act to up ticket sales for the Mets, in the process making her the first female Major League Blernsballer in history. Named for Abner Doubleday, baseball's purported creator.
[edit] Yancy Fry, Sr.
(Voiced by John DiMaggio) - Yancy is the father and the son of Philip J. Fry, and the father of Yancy Fry, Jr.; he is also the grandfather of Philip J. Fry II. He claims his name was passed down over generations since Minute-Man Yancy Fry, who "blasted Commies in the American Revolution". In the flashback scenes in "The Luck of the Fryrish" and "Jurassic Bark", he is shown to be obsessed with the Cold War and the Y2K bug, blaming everything on them. When Fry goes missing, Yancy cuts the search for him short since he feels it is a waste of taxpayer's money, which is also the same reason that they kept Fry out of school.
Though Yancy is Philip's father, he is also paradoxically Philip's own son, as Philip went back in time in "Roswell That Ends Well" and impregnating his own grandmother (believing that she was not his real grandmother). Through the paradox that Philip is his own grandfather, Yancy is also Philip's great grandson, and his great-great-great grandson, and his great-great-great-great-great grandson, and so forth. Yancy also holds the distinction of being his own grandfather (Yancy Sr.'s father is Phillip, whose father is Yancy Sr.)
[edit] Yancy Fry, Jr.
(Voiced by Tom Kenny) - Born in 1971, Yancy is the elder brother of Philip J. Fry, and father of Philip J. Fry II. In the flashback scenes in "The Luck of the Fryrish", a great deal of sibling rivalry is shown between Yancy and Philip, including fierce competition in breakdancing and basketball, though there is clearly a great deal of love as well. Yancy mostly competes with Philip by copying everything that Philip does, only placing his own (barely perceptible) spin on it, usually amounting to changing the name of what is done. Some time after New Year's Eve 1999 (when Philip becomes locked in a cryogenic tube, unknown to his family), an adult Yancy is preparing for his wedding and finds and keeps an amateurish sketch of a rocket ship drawn by Philip. He also finds Philip's rare seven-leafed clover, discovered by Philip during a childhood basketball game and which gives him luck. Later, Yancy names his newborn son after Philip and reveals that he misses his brother every day. He passes the clover on to his son, leading to Philip II's highly lucky and successful life. The name Yancy was given to the oldest son born in each generation of the Fry family (much to his dismay), back to the American Revolutionary War, since Minute Man Yancy, until his own son.
Though Yancy, Jr. is Philip's older brother, Philip is also Yancy, Jr.'s grandfather because of the paradox of Philip being his own father's father, in turn making Philip his own grandfather as well. As Yancy, Jr. is a direct ancestor of Hubert Farnsworth and Cubert Farnsworth, Philip is a direct ancestor of them as well.
In a fictional scenario in "Anthology of Interest II", Philip reveals that Yancy used to help him win Space Invaders because Philip needed him to get the last ship.
[edit] "Fishy Joe" Gillman
(Voiced by John DiMaggio) - Gillman, or "Fishy Joe", is the owner of the "Fishy Joe's" chain of seafood restaurants (one-time vendor of "Popplers") and "Family Bros. Pizza". He is indifferent to Popplers being sentient, even as his restaurant chain serves them by the billions - which he apparently also does to cats. He later purchases a Cygnoid pizza stand for $100,000, impressed by their unusual recipes ("A Leela of Her Own").
[edit] Linda
(Voiced by Tress MacNeille) - Morbo's human co-anchor, she seems to be blissfully unaware of or indifferent to his hatred for humanity, often giggling absentmindedly in classically unaware news anchor fashion, as Morbo says things like "Morbo congratulates our gargantuan cyborg president. May death come quickly to his enemies!" (on Richard Nixon's election). Linda appears to be vapid and unintelligent, providing comic relief to Morbo's violent comments. She also flashes her chest to Zapp Brannigan in exchange for some beads on Freedom Day.
[edit] Hattie McDoogal
(Voiced by Tress MacNeille) is the resident crotchety-old-lady of the Futurama universe. She lives alone with her cats in New New York. Her wardrobe always consists of her pink nightgown and slippers. She also has a lazy eye. Frequently she likes to use nonsense words and phrases such as "whatcha-ma-call-it", "kajiggers", and "thingy" to refer to different objects and people.
Hattie was for a brief time the landlady of Philip J. Fry and Bender ("I, Roommate") and once hired Kif Kroker, then unemployed, as a male prostitute ("Brannigan Begin Again"). She owns one share of stock of the Planet Express Delivery company ("Future Stock"), which proved decisive during a vote to elect a new CEO.
She is comparable to Eleanor Abernathy ("The Crazy Cat Lady") from The Simpsons. Hattie's surname is revealed in Futurama Comics #5.
[edit] Michelle
(Voiced by Kath Soucie, Sarah Silverman) is Fry's girlfriend from the 20th century. She appears in the first episode "Space Pilot 3000", casually dumping Fry on New Year's Eve, 1999, shortly before he makes a pizza delivery to a cryogenics company and falls into a freezer tube, where he would remain for 1000 years. She has a rough few years with the guy she left Fry for, all the while not knowing what had happened to Fry, and coincidentally chooses to have herself frozen for 1000 years as well ("The Cryonic Woman"). Though her relationship with Fry resumes, Michelle has trouble adjusting to the 31st century, particularly the monster-like aliens and creatures. Ultimately, she leaves Fry for another long-term cryogenic customer; Pauly Shore. She is also seen with Pauly Shore in the audience at the Oscars in That's Lobstertainment!.
Michelle's hair was originally black, but later appearances show it as brown. Michelle's mother's name is Beth, who criticizes Fry behind his back. Michelle is seen grieving for Fry, along with some of Fry's other lovers, at his funeral in "The Sting".
[edit] Mom
[edit] Randy Munchnik
(Voiced by John DiMaggio) A very effeminate man who owns a jewelry store. Randy is also gay, and when the polar ice caps melt ("Crimes of the Hot"), he builds an ark and fills it with same-sex animal couples, claiming there are "Parts of the Bible I like, and parts I don't like." He lives in a rent controlled apartment. Randy has never been named in the series, though his name is given in DVD commentaries. Randy is actor John DiMaggio's favorite Futurama character. In the DVD commentary for "Three Hundred Big Boys," it is revealed that Randy had a subplot in the episode that had to be cut for time. In the cut scene he and his boyfriend (seen in the picture) argue over how to spend their tax refunds. They resolve the argument by tossing both $300 bills into the fireplace, deciding love is more important than money. Randy's surname was revealed in Futurama Comics #5.
[edit] Mr. Panucci
(Voiced by John DiMaggio) – the owner of Panucci's Pizza, the New York restaurant where Fry worked in the 20th century. He has little regard for hygiene in his pizzeria; despite this, Stephen Hawking is a frequent customer according to "Anthology of Interest I". Pizza Boxes from Panucci's feature the slogan, "Do not tip delivery boy".
After Fry was frozen, Mr. Panucci continued to tend to Fry’s dog, Seymour.
In A Fishful of Dollars, Mom's son Walt plays Mr. Panucci, as part of a ploy to access Fry's PIN for his credit card, so they can bankrupt him of his 4.3 billion dollar account, and force him to sell the last remaining can of anchovies to Mom. The plan somehow works, despite Walt looking nothing like Mr. Panucci, but Zoidberg ends up eating the anchovies.
Mr. Panucci is one of the few recurring characters who doesn't appear in the 31st century.
Mr. Panucci believes there are only three real monsters: "Dracula, Blacula and Son of Kong."
Mr. Panucci would often discipline Fry by paddling him.
The $0.93 in Fry's account at 2.25% over 1000 years compounded annually turns out to be $4,283,508,449.71.
His catch-phrase is "Come on!", which he generally screams at people when they are doing something he doesn't like; like when Fry complained about working on New Year's Eve when he could be at a party.
[edit] Mayor C. Randall Poopenmayer
(Voiced by David Herman) - the Mayor of New New York has appeared in many episodes, normally when his city is in grave danger, such as in the episode "A Big Piece of Garbage". His Mayoral duties include execution of condemned prisoners, a duty we see him try to perform in "A Tale of Two Santas". That episode also shows that he could be fooled into believing that Dr. Zoidberg was Jesus ("How dare you lie in front of Jesus!"), despite the fact that he arrives with three fake Santas portrayed by various other members of the Planet Express crew.
[edit] Morgan Proctor
(Voiced by Nora Dunn) Morgan Proctor first appears in the episode "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back" as a rank 19 bureaucrat sent to inspect Hermes for possible promotion. The inspection does not go well and Hermes threatens to commit suicide, prompting Proctor to send him on vacation and assume his bureaucrat duties at Planet Express.
While there she begins an affair with Fry, claiming to be attracted to him because, as a slob, he stands in stark contrast to the "neat freaks" Proctor normally works with. Their relationship is discovered by Bender and in order to silence him, Proctor removes his personality disk and sends it to "the master in-pile" (a mountain of unsorted documents) of the Central Bureaucracy, where it would presumably be untouched for years. Instead a newly-returned and rejuvenated Hermes performs an emergency sort on the pile and restores Bender's personality. He also discovers an incorrectly-stamped form filed by Proctor years earlier involving her prom date. Bureaucrat 1.0 (a senior member of the bureaucracy) demands the forms he'd need to fill out to have her "taken away" by security, fate unknown.
She is briefly shown along with other of Fry's ex-lovers at his funeral in the episode "The Sting".
[edit] Sal
(Voiced by John DiMaggio) - A recurring generic surly, overweight, blue-collar worker with a thick Bronx accent. His first appearance is as a janitor on the moon in "Episode Two: The Series Has Landed", servicing the machines in the amusement park. He has appeared many times since, always employed in a tedious job which he does not do well ("What's do I looks like, a guy who's not lazy?"). In this regard, he is similar to the nameless balding smart alec who appears in a variety of jobs on The Simpsons. Some fans have speculated that there are numerous Sals, all cloned from the original, which would account for his showing up working many jobs. Either that, or he simply gets fired/resigns and finds new employment on a regular basis. Even among the series' writers, there is confusion on the matter. He has a habit of pluralizing words that needn't be pluralized; ("He's busteds, gets hims outta heres") and vice versa (Whoas! Cripe!), which becomes more pronounced as the series progresses. He shows close similarities to Sgt. Luther Rizzo from M*A*S*H, in his lines, demeanour and appearance, and also bears an uncanny resemblance to Onslow from the British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, in his attitude, attire, and personality.
Sal's numerous jobs have included:
- Janitor in Luna Park ("Episode Two: The Series Has Landed")
- Bus driver ("Put Your Head on My Shoulders")
- Cleaner ("The Honking")
- Tattooed art exhibit on loan from the Louvre ("The Cryonic Woman")
- Truck driver/construction worker ("Parasites Lost")
- Factory foreman ("Bendless Love")
- Working On The New York Hole Project ("Bendin' in the Wind")
- Newspaper-truck driver ("The Route of All Evil")
- Owner/operator of Sal's Wrecking Co ("I Dated a Robot")
- Robot Mechanic ("Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV")
- Demolition worker ("A Pharaoh to Remember")
- Sewage treatment worker ("Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles")
- Owner/operator of an asteroid junkyard (Futurama (video game))
- Pulling the cart holding the heads of the Beastie Boys (Hell is Other Robots)
- Pulling the cart holding the heads of the Supreme Court Justices ("A Taste of Freedom")
[edit] Scruffy
(Voiced by David Herman) - The Planet Express janitor, appearing in 12 episodes in the original 4 seasons. He first appears in the episode, "A Fishful of Dollars" where he is seen massaging Bender. A recurring joke is that because he interacts so little with the rest of the employees, nobody ever remembers seeing him before. When fellow employees ask who he is he answers with: 'Scruffy, the janitor', his explanation of why they haven't seen him before is that he hasn't seen them before either. Scruffy frequently refers to himself in the third person and speaks in a voice reminiscent of Karl Childers, the protagonist of the movie Sling Blade. In "Future Stock", it is revealed that he has vast holdings of Planet Express stock because "...Scruffy believes in this company...[sniff]". Also when in an unfavorable situation Scruffy will often mutter "Oh marmalade..." In later episodes it is revealed that Scruffy is actually quite intelligent and can concoct brilliant plans almost immediately. Scruffy is an ex-con, stating: "Prison ain't so bad. You can make sangria in the terlet. 'Course it's shank or be shanked."
Scruffy is lazy and can usually be found in the basement of the building, watching the boiler (but never actually fixing it) and reading Zero-G Juggs or National Pornographic (parodies of real-life magazines Juggs and National Geographic). His inertia is such that when the boiler begins to dangerously rumble, seconds from exploding, his only reaction is to calmly declare "Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived," and turn the page in his magazine. In the Futurama video game, he is asleep in the (flooded) basement of Planet Express with an adult magazine. In some of the Futurama Comics he tells Zapp Brannigan that he has "naked pictures of Leela".[edit] Sewer mutants
Years of pollution poured into the sewers under New New York have created a society of mutants. They have established schools, businesses and churches in an effort at normalcy and are forbidden to travel to the surface without special permission. In the pilot episode Leela says that mutants are just a myth, though everyone seems to know about them and there are laws to keep them off the streets. They first appear in "I Second That Emotion", though the underground ruins of Old New York (as well as several creatures who may have been nonhumanoid mutants) are seen as early as "Space Pilot 3000".
[edit] Dwayne
(Voiced by David Herman) - Dwayne is a mutant with two noses and a catastrophically large forehead. He is fond of challenging people's understandings of practically everything, for example claiming that the humans may be living in the sewer of a great civilization above them (which is disproved quickly). Dwayne is a teacher at Martin Luther Thing Jr. High School ("Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles"), and has been known to play the guitar with minimal provocation. He also appears to be the resident folklore expert.
[edit] Raoul
(Voiced by Maurice LaMarche) - Raoul is the democratically elected leader of the sewer mutants, his official title being "Supreme Mutant". His most notable mutation is a third arm, which has grown in place of his right ear. Accordingly, he is somewhat hard of hearing. However, in "Leela's Homeworld", he is shown to have two ears. He has a slight British accent. He is romantically involved with (and possibly married to) Vyolet.
[edit] Turanga Morris
(Voiced by David Herman) - Father of Leela. A mutant who lives in the sewer, he has one eye, a vertically oriented mouth, and sheds his skin. Very irresponsible; encourages the consumption of alcohol by practically everyone, including children. ("No beer until you finish your tequila!") Both he and his wife appear in the first episode to feature the sewer mutants, "I Second That Emotion", though they are not wearing the hoods they later use to conceal their identities from Leela, nor do they speak to or confront their daughter. In the DVD commentary for that episode, Matt Groening and the others hint that they would shout out when an important hint was dropped, and they all say "DING!" repeatedly when Morris and Munda appear.
[edit] Turanga Munda
(Voiced by Tress MacNeille) - Mother of Leela. She has one eye, a lion tail, and octopus tentacles in place of arms, as well as purple hair. Has a Ph. D in Exolinguistics, which enabled her to write the indecipherable note left with Leela at the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium to convince them that she was an alien, which would allow her to live a more comfortable life on the surface.
[edit] Vyolet
(Voiced by Tress MacNeille) - A chain-smoking mutant with gills and a generally reptilian appearance, Vyolet has the most appearances of any mutant besides Leela, because she reacts whenever something is thrown in a gutter. She believes Barbie dolls portray an unrealistic standard of beauty. In the episode "Leela's Homeworld", Bender ruins her wedding dress, indicating that following that episode she was married, most likely to Raoul. She is constantly snorting through her dialog because of her pig nose, which may be a reference to the Twilight Zone episode The Eye of the Beholder.
[edit] Smitty
(Voiced by Billy West) - Policeman in New New York. Together with URL, they are the partners of police patrol car 718. Sometimes seen with a lightsaber that he uses as a nightstick. He appears primarily in the episode "Space Pilot 3000", and later in the episode "I, Roommate", but is in almost every episode in which police are involved. In "A Tale of Two Santas", it is revealed that he has been fired from his job, but anticipates reinstatement following his capture of Bender, whom he and URL mistook for Robot Santa.
[edit] Ethan "Bubblegum" Tate
(Voiced by Phil LaMarr) - Ethan "Bubblegum" Tate is Captain of the Globetrotters and Senior Lecturer in Physics at Globetrotter University. After challenging and defeating Earth in a game of basketball, Tate helps Professor Farnsworth to restabilize time in "Time Keeps on Slippin'", unfortunately his "showboating" math turned out to be incorrect. He also serves as one of the guest judges in the Iron Cook competition in "The 30% Iron Chef". He also appears briefly in "Less Than Hero". It is revealed in "A Taste of Freedom" that Tate's home planet the "Globetrotter Homeworld" has an embassy on Earth between the Neutral Planet embassy and the Klingon Embassy.
[edit] Terry
(Voiced by David Herman) - In the future, Terry works at the cryonics lab (Applied Cryogenics) where Fry is frozen in the year 2000. He is the first to greet Fry after he is unfrozen with his usual melodramatic greeting "Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!", which is a parody from the 1939 New York World's Fair. He later appears in the episodes "The Cryonic Woman", teaching Fry about working in the lab, and again in "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", invited (along with other Applied Cryogenics employees) by Leela to a poker game at Planet Express. He also attends Fry's funeral in "The Sting" yelling "Farewell, from the world of Tomorrow!" at the coffin. He is excessively theatrical in speech and behaviour, which he explains as "a little thing called showmanship".
[edit] Mr. Vogel
Mr. Vogel is the director and only employee of Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium. In "Leela's Homeworld" he is shown to have found Leela on the doorstep of the orphanarium after being left there by her parents. He also finds the note from her parents written in Alien Language One and saves it in her file. As part of his duties at the orphanarium he keeps records on all of the Cookieville orphans and for this reason he has held the rank of Level 135 Beauraucrat throughout the time covered in the show. Mr. Vogel often tries to find homes for the orphans in his care particularly in "The Cyber House Rules" when he tries to get Fry to adopt some of the orphans. This results in Bender adopting all of the children, however, they are later returned to the orphanarium. One of his talents is that he can remember everything that happens "like it happened yesterday" as he has a photographic memory. He makes short appearances in "The Why of Fry" and "Three Hundred Big Boys".
[edit] Waterfall Family
Members of the Waterfall family represent stereotypes of left-wing politics. All their appearances have been voiced by Phil Hendrie and the male members of the clan have a pattern of dying in comically violent ways.
[edit] Free Waterfall III
Not shown in the TV series, but appears in Futurama Comics #5 as a contestant on the game show "Who's Dying to be a Gazilionaire?" (a parody of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?). Free Waterfall III was going to use the money to save the holographic rainforest, but is killed during the million-dollar question by a giant laser.
Dying words: screaming
[edit] Frida Waterfall
Appears in "A Taste of Freedom" but only named in the script. She runs up to Old Man Waterfall after he is killed, referred to him as "great-grandfather", and blames his death on the "man-o-centric male-ocracy." She may be the daughter to Free Waterfall Jr. and/or sister to Free Waterfall III, but this is unknown.
[edit] Free Waterfall Jr.
A stereotypical hippie, vegetarian, environmentalist "treehugger", and spokesman for Mankind for Ethical Animal Treatment (M.E.A.T.). He strongly objected to the eating of popplers and was himself eaten by Lrrr of Omicron Persei VIII, promptly sending Lrrr on an experience not dissimilar to a drug trip ("The Problem with Popplers"). He had extremely low tolerance for beliefs that are not congruous with his own: "You're all crazy, shut up, let me talk."
Dying words: "This is not happening."
[edit] Free Waterfall Sr.
A nature activist, father of Free Waterfall Jr. and founder of Penguins Unlimited (spoofing real-life environmentalist group Ducks Unlimited). He leads the organization in an effort to save a penguin colony on McPluto after a dark matter spill threatens their habitat in a manner analogous to an oil spill. He is strong in his environmental beliefs, even discouraging applause as it kills spores. He is not opposed, however, to culling penguins in order to keep their habitat populations low, perhaps because the culling of McPluto was to prevent the penguins from starving. He frequently says that something is nature's something else. For example: "If you're cold, rub your body with permafrost; that's nature's long johns." He is eventually pecked to death (and presumably eaten) by angry penguins ("The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz").
Dying words: "Make sure they use every part of my body!"
[edit] Old Man Waterfall
A bisexual polygamist, civil-rights lawyer and much-suffered space war veteran ("Name a body part and a planet, and I've taken a bullet in it, on it!"). He vows to avenge his son, Free Waterfall Sr., when he is killed by penguins. He is also the grandfather of Free Waterfall Jr.
He unsuccessfully defends Dr. Zoidberg's constitutional right to eat a flag (though he does manage to secure constitutional protection for polygamy) and dies after being crushed by the giant metal claw of the Decapodian Mobile Oppression Palace ("A Taste of Freedom"). A running joke throughout the episode was that he will often say something controversial to receive scorn from the crowd.
Dying words: "I request a Satanic funeral." (The crowd boos.)
[edit] Professor Ogden Wernstrom
(Voiced by David Herman) - Rival of Professor Farnsworth (who usually greets Ogden with a contemptful "Wernstrom!") who resents the "A-" grade Farnsworth gave him for sloppy penmanship when Wernstrom was completing his senior year in 2900. Wernstrom is in his 120s, at least forty years younger than Farnsworth. Wernstrom swore revenge, "even if it takes [him] a hundred years!" In 3000, Wernstrom finally achieves his goal when Wernstrom beat Farnsworth in the Annual Inventors' Symposium, publicly giving Farnsworth's Smell-o-Scope the worst grade imaginable, an "A - -".
Despite this condemnation, the Smell-o-scope proves essential in saving the Earth from a giant mass of waste in orbit from the 21st Century. Wernstrom is given the task of stopping the great mass of trash when Farnsworth's plan, to blow it up with a timed bomb, fails when he incorrectly wires the timer. For his cooperation, Wernstrom demands and receives tenure, a big research grant, a lab, and five graduate students (at least three of them Chinese by his request). He then abandons the city of New New York to its doom (since he has tenure, he cannot be fired). Wernstrom's Inventors' Symposium award is stripped from him after Farnsworth and the Planet Express crew come up with a second plan, which manages to save New New York, thus prompting another promise of revenge, "even if it takes another hundred years!"
Wernstrom also appears at the Professor's 150th birthday party ("A Clone of My Own") and in the audience of the Nobel Prize ceremony ("Anthology of Interest II"). He later devises a plan to combat global warming with a giant space mirror in "Crimes of the Hot", but after this goes awry he teams up with President Nixon's Head to use the mirror to deactivate every robot on Earth - the robots having been revealed as the source of greenhouse gasses. His final appearance is in "Obsoletely Fabulous" presenting his killbot at Roboticon 3003; He manages to get into a fistfight with Professor Farnsworth over whose killbot was better. The killbots are disgusted by this display of violence and go for a paddleboat ride together.
[edit] Judge Ron Whitey
(Voiced by Billy West) – Judge at "Famous Original Ray's Superior Court", who presides over most of the court cases where the main characters appear. His voice appears to be a spoof of Thurston J. Howell, III (Jim Backus), the millionaire castaway on the TV show Gilligan's Island. In "A Tale of Two Santas" he sentences Bender to death, he presides over the divorce of Fry and Leela in "Time Keeps on Slippin'" and in "Insane in the Mainframe" he sends Fry and Bender to the Institute for Criminally Insane Robots. A parodic archetype of the worldview, values, and mannerisms of a "country-club Republican", Judge Whitey is very rich, seems to lack morals, and, in "Three Hundred Big Boys", he tells a joke about having cut off his butler's foot (a reference to the television special Roots), and enjoys making fun of upper-middle class people.
Whitey is preoccupied with money and wealth, but does not know what a bank is until his caddy's chauffeur informs him that "a bank is a place where people put money that isn't properly invested." Judge Whitey previously ruled that "the crime of being poor" was a mental illness. He also states in that episode that "the only poor people I want to hear about are the people who tend to my pores at the spa". He also believes you are never too rich to enjoy a free turkey dog.
[edit] Leo and Inez Wong
(Leo Wong, voiced by Billy West and Inez Wong, voiced by Lauren Tom) – are the very wealthy but meddlesome parents of Amy Wong. They own the entire western hemisphere of Mars (the better hemisphere), and live on the "Wong" buggalo ranch. At an undefined point, their ancestor Sir Reginald Wong bought half of Mars from the native Martians for only one bead (a reference to the purchase of Manhattan Island from the Native Americans for 24 dollars worth of beads). It is later revealed that the bead in question is a gargantuan diamond.
Throughout the series Leo and Inez are often seen pestering Amy about their lack of grandchildren and meddling in her love life, trying to find a man to father their grandchild. In "A Flight to Remember", they introduce Amy to Kif Kroker, but when the two begin dating they decide he is not man enough for Amy. They both have stereotypical Chinese accents.
[edit] Unnamed Fat Boy
A monstrously obese boy who made his first appearance in "A Flight to Remember" when Amy's parents offer him to her. He is seen again in the same episode holding a limbo stick for the limbo competition. He appears in "Bendin' in the Wind" at a vendor and is nearly hit by Bender who is falling from a hover bridge after falling out of Fry's VW camper van. As he falls, Bender yells "Someone fat get in my waaaaaay!", but he misses the fat boy and instead lands on the slim woman next to him. He also appears in "The Problem With Popplers" as a customer at Fishy Joe's.
[edit] See also
- List of recurring robot characters from Futurama
- List of recurring non-human, non-robot characters from Futurama
| 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 |
|
| 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 |
|
