Unraveling the Mind-Bending Mysteries: Futurama's Ultimate Time Travel Conundrums Explained!

Summary

Futurama explores 10 major time travel paradoxes and plot holes throughout the series, showcasing its fascination with complex sci-fi concepts.

The show presents paradoxical situations such as Fry becoming his own grandfather and Bender being responsible for the devastation of New York, sparking thought-provoking inquiries.

"I Know What You Did Next Xmas" gives rise to a significant temporal paradox and inconsistency in the plot, contradicting the events depicted in "The Late Philip J. Fry."

Futurama frequently employs time travel, resulting in the presence of 10 significant paradoxes and plot holes throughout the series. The show is accustomed to tackling complex scientific concepts, often requiring a certain level of understanding to appreciate its humor. As a result, Futurama has actively explored and experimented with time travel paradoxes, and the following are the most notable ones from the entire series.

With Hulu reviving the beloved Matt Groening series for an entirely new set of episodes, Futurama is finally back. Season 11 of Futurama has already revisited numerous storylines from the original series, featuring sequels to episodes such as "Parasites Lost" and "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch." Specifically, in season 11, episode 6, "I Know What You Did Next Xmas," a sequel to "The Late Philip J. Fry," the show's distinctive form of time travel once again takes center stage. However, this episode introduces a significant paradox in the timeline and creates a plot hole, a recurring concept within the series.

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10 Fry Is His Own Grandfather

The episode "Roswell that Ends Well" in Futurama introduces the most well-known paradox, the Grandfather Paradox. In this episode, Fry goes back in time and sleeps with his own grandmother, resulting in his father's birth, who then gives birth to Fry. This creates a time loop where Fry must become the father for his own existence to happen. This peculiar time travel scenario brings numerous questions to the Futurama universe and greatly impacts Fry's family tree.

9 Bender Caused The Destruction Of New York

One of the most significant events in Futurama's timeline is the First Destruction of New York, which resulted in the creation of New New York. This catastrophic event occurred while Fry was frozen in the year 2308. Surprisingly, the movie Bender's Big Score reveals that the First Destruction of New York was caused by none other than a time-traveling Bender. However, this revelation presents a paradox. Without Fry, it seems unlikely that Bender would have been present at Planet Express to embark on his time-traveling mission. Conversely, if Bender hadn't destroyed New York, leading to the creation of New New York, the Applied Cryogenics scientist wouldn't have been there to preserve Fry's cryogenic tube.

8 Farnsworth Created Robot Santa While Trying To Stop Him

In "I Know What You Did Next Xmas," episode 6 of Futurama season 11, a new paradox unfolds surrounding the origins of Robot Santa. Farnsworth travels back in time to the moment when Robot Santa was first created and adjusts his Naughty and Nice meter, successfully rectifying him. However, he soon realizes that his actions actually triggered the initial malfunction of the meter, leading to the creation of the malevolent robot. This realization highlights the circular nature of events, as Farnsworth's decision to alter the meter stems from Santa's evil persona. Thus, a significant Xmas paradox ensues from this interconnected chain of events.

7 “I Know What You Did Next Xmas” Negates “The Late Philip J. Fry”

6 Bender Has A Missing Time Machine

The connection between Robot Santa and Farnsworth is not the only time travel issue that arises from "I Know What You Did Next Xmas." This episode actually creates a plot hole by contradicting the events of "The Late Philip J. Fry." In that episode, Fry, Bender, and Farnsworth utilize a forward-only time machine and journey into the future until a backward time machine is invented. However, in "I Know What You Did Next Xmas," Farnsworth manages to fix the time machine so that it can travel backwards. This implies that the characters from "The Late Philip J. Fry" only needed to travel to a point in season 11 of the timeline.

The crossover episode "Simpsorama" between Futurama and The Simpsons is well-known for bringing the Planet Express crew to Springfield in a time-travel adventure. While Fry, Leela, and the gang successfully use a wormhole in Bender's stomach to reach Springfield, it remains a mystery how Bender himself arrived in the past. It is assumed that Bender possessed a time machine of some sort, although the details of its acquisition and his decision not to use it to return to the 3000s are never clarified. This plot hole regarding time travel in Futurama is noteworthy, as the presence of a fully functional time machine could have contributed to numerous captivating storylines.

5 Futurama’s The Simpsons Crossover Time Travel

4 Fry’s “Bender’s Big Score” Tattoos

The time travel featured in "Simpsorama" results in a perplexing intermingling of the Futurama and The Simpsons' universes, leading to significant timeline inconsistencies. An example of such discrepancy is apparent in the portrayal of humans in Springfield, who are depicted as yellow, contrasting with the normal skin tones of humans in New New York. Curiously, this contradiction is left unexplained. Adding to the complexity, The Simpsons is presented as a television show within the Futurama universe, thus conflicting with the timeline depicted in "Simpsorama."

The movie "Bender's Big Score" in the Futurama franchise is known for its extensive use of time travel, which has resulted in significant complications. One of the most noteworthy issues revolves around Fry's tattoo. In the film, Fry possesses a tattoo on his buttocks depicting Bender, which contains a time code enabling temporal journeys. Interestingly, this tattoo leads to the creation of a paradoxical duplicate named Lars, who also bears the same tattoo. Towards the end of the episode, Bender removes the tattoo from Lars and transfers it onto the original Fry, elucidating its origins. Consequently, a time loop ensues as Fry acquires the tattoo from Lars, and Lars acquires it from Fry.

3 Fry’s Backstory Should Be Completely Different Because Of Lars

2 Travers & Nixon’s Paradoxical Presidential Election

Lars' Bender's Big Score story presents yet another significant challenge to the Futurama canon. Throughout the series, it is mentioned that Fry's family members spent their entire lives searching for him following his disappearance in 1999. However, Lars, an alternate version of Fry, remained in the past and lived as Fry until 2012. Consequently, this implies that Fry's family had an additional 13 years with him, creating a discrepancy that the show has attempted to rectify, albeit without success, ultimately resulting in further confusion.

In "Decision 3012," an episode of Futurama, we witness a presidential election featuring Richard Nixon's head and a fresh-faced senator named Chris Travers. Somehow, Travers ends up victorious, only to later reveal that he hails from the future. It turns out that in the original timeline, Nixon's actions led to a bleak future, prompting Travers to go back in time to prevent his election. However, with Nixon's loss, Travers never existed, which means Nixon would have won, resulting in Travers' existence and so on.

1 Futurama’s Time-Paradox Duplicates

In addition to the time travel paradox storylines in Futurama, the series also showcases numerous duplicates with time travel paradoxes. The most well-known one is Lars Fillmore, but duplicates of Nudar, Hermes' deceased body, and countless versions of Bender also exist. The presence of all these paradoxical individuals would certainly disrupt the show's timeline, making it one of Futurama's largest paradoxes. Be sure to catch new episodes of Futurama on Hulu, released every Monday.