"On both 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama,' we have the idea of the freeze-frame gag. [This] means that the only way you're going to get some of the jokes is if you tape the show, go back and actually freeze-frame [it]." -Matt Groening, TV Guide, April 3rd, 1999

"This show is so jammed with visual jokes that we've even got an alien alphabet that we're not translating. We're going to allow our fans to try to figure out what those things say." -Matt Groening, TV Guide, April 3rd, 1999

Fox executives ordered 13 episodes of "Futurama" without ever seeing a frame of film.

Fry's first name is Phillip, after the late Phil Hartman. His middle intial is J., much like Homer J. Simpson.

Leela's first name is Toronga.

Professor Farnsworth's first name is Hubert.

Billy West, in addition to voicing Fry, also voices Professor Farnsworth and space commander Zapp Brannigan, a part originally written for the late Phil Hartman.

Billy West (Fry) used to be the voices of Ren and Stimpy.

Katey Sagal (Leela) used to play Peg Bundy on "Married... with Children."

John DiMaggio (Bender) is a stand-up comedian.

Executive producer David X. Cohen was a writer for "The Simpsons" and "Beavis and Butt-head." He has a physics degree from Harvard and a Master's in theoretical computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He spent a year at the Harvard Robotics lab, wrote for the Harvard Lampoon and had an article published in the Journal of Discrete Applied Mathematics.