Futurama is a sci-fi comedy from the creator of The Simpsons. While any other creator would have such a series be a lighter version of other science fiction materials, Matt Groening sticks to his cynical ground and the world of Futurama be even darker.
His world of tomorrow is overrun by corporate monopolies, political corruption, new forms of pollution, old forms of pollution, and dark ways to die. It's a campy world that revels in the worst fears of tomorrow, and that can often mean having fun interpretations of the end. This list will be preparing readers for the apocalypse, as it runs down a few ways the world nearly ended in Futurama.
10 Please Stop Time Travelling
Whenever time travel gets introduced, something is gonna go wrong, and the world is just bound to end a little sooner than expected. This is at full display in Futurama's unique take in their first movie, Bender's Big Score. When the Planet Express crew finds the actual secret to time travel tattooed on Fry's butt, they awaken a variety of shenanigans. There's a catch, however, in the fact that two bodies from different timelines can't coexist in one space for too long.
In a fresh rule from the series, the universe will find some way to correct the overlap and kill a duplicate. While this comes up in interesting ways across the movie, it really sees its opus at the end, when Bender erroneously has multiple treasure hunting trips across time loop back to one moment. With that many Benders in one space, the universe had to make some serious corrections.
9 Remember 2012?
2012 was this strange phenomenon in the early 2000s in which everyone raved about the Mayan calendar's prediction of the end of the world. This would get adapted in Futurama in the way of "3012," a Martian prophecy that not only calculates a devastating solar flare but has also prepared a stone spacecraft for just the situation.
When the solar flare nears and all electronic devices are shut down due to the magnetic forces, everyone on the planet scrambles for seats, leaving a begrudging population behind. When the Earthlings make it to Mars, they ironically discover that the prophecy predicted the end of Mars, not Earth. In hindsight, "Martian prophecy" should've tipped someone off.
8 Too Many Benders
Bender is a little rapscallion, isn't he? The party machine that he is, one can always bet that he'll always nearly end the world. One time, he literally doesn't try. Overcome by laziness, Bender steals a cloning machine from the Professor, adds it to his body, and makes a few mini-servants for himself to split up menial tasks.
However, being mini-clones of Bender, these little guys get the exact same idea and begin cloning smaller versions of Bender for themselves. Having to consume materials for the process, an outbreak of microscopic Benders begins to overtake the planet, creating mass collateral damage and the mysterious molecular restructuring of all water into alcohol.
7 Please Handle With Care: Universe Inside
It really shows how much the creators value the sanctity of the universe when they literally put it within the confines of a box. After risking his life in a horrific lab experiment, Professor Farnsworth somehow engineers a box that connects to a parallel world. Said parallel world also has a box of their own containing the fragile existence of the original(?) universe.
Given that the boxes themselves are just cardboard, everybody goes on red alert when they learn that Hermes is about to dispose of one of them into the Sun. While they manage to somehow stop him, they don't exactly do their best to protect their cardboard universes afterwards.
6 That One Car Alarm
As the series went on, it became more and more fascinated with the miraculous and nostalgic events of Fry's accidental journey to the future. Fry falling into the cryogenic chamber has involved everything between alien conspiracies to grand battles across time, and the episode of "Game of Tones" is no different.
Earth becomes ravaged by a mysterious noise that's destroyed various planets before them. Oddly enough, Fry is the only who can recognize it, thinking that it has something to do with his past. After peeling through his memories, the crew discover that the noise is actually from one of the Nibblonians trying to find their lost spacecraft. It just so happens that the car alarm happens to be a little loud.
5 Garbage Ball
The real world was shaken up when it learned that mass excess and poor disposal standards had actually created an entire island made of garbage somewhere in the middle of the sea. In Futurama, the great minds of the 21st century saw a quick solution to the mass overrun of garbage in the world: Launch it into space.
And while that sounds pretty good at first, much like garbage island itself, it becomes a huge, destructive problem for the future. The planetary clump of garbage had actually found its way back to the Earth's atmosphere and now threatened the planet with a horrific crash. Facing a trash ridden apocalypse, the people of Earth decide to fight garbage with garbage.
4 Cancellation
To be clear, this isn't referring to Futurama's actual cancellations, even though those eras were a harsh time for the Futurama faithful. This entry is actually dedicated to one of the many instances in which the overlords of Omicron Persei 8 once again become mad at Earth for some trivial thing.
In "When Aliens Attack," this just happens to be the unsatisfying conclusion to its rulers' favorite courtroom drama. Holding the entire planet essentially held at gunpoint, the people of Earth scramble to make a remake that is both faithful and satisfying to its scrutinizing fans. Get ready to look for new planets.
3 Massive Headaches
The Brain Spawn are the enemies of the Nibblonians and one of, if not the greatest, threat to the galaxy itself. Hungry for both knowledge and total supremacy, the Brain Spawn travel the universe, acquire different planets' knowledge, make its inhabitants stupid(er), and then destroy the place.
This pink threat has not only attempted to attack Earth but has even seen defeat and their utter downfall at the hands of most unique mind of the entire universe. To kill a brain, sometimes one just needs an even dumber brain... and some explosives.
2 Global Warming
In one of the most critically acclaimed and politically sobering episodes of the beloved series, Futurama reminded audiences that its fictional world is still susceptible to global warming. When excess pollution threatens to heat Earth to unbearable degrees, a new order is placed demanding that the most polluting items on Earth be "relocated."
It just so happens that these items are robots who, for some reason, still run on alcohol based fuels in this future. This then becomes a difficult dilemma for the Planet Express crew: What can they do to save the planet when one of their best friends is inherently destroying? Having that friend be Bender changes things, but only slightly.
1 The Literal End Of Time
Last but not least, this list reaches an actual end of the world. Kind of. In the episode "The Late Philip J. Fry," Professor Farnsworth interrupts one of Fry's dates with Leela to have him and Bender accompany him in an experiment of his new time machine. (Oh boy.) Improving upon their debacles in Bender's Big Score, the Professor ensures that the time machine can only travel forward in time.
This presents new issues, when the trio accidentally trigger the machine and send themselves to a distant future. Having to explore time to either find a new time machine or circle their way back, the trio actually get to witness the end of the world first hand (a couple of times).