“Futurama cannot be killed.”
Truer words have not been spoken. Considering the original run was from 1999 until 2003, when it was cancelled, to which many thought it was was the end. But then it returned as a series of straight-to-video movies until it made a triumphant return in 2008 on Comedy Central to which it ran until 2013.
Now, the legacy continues in the Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow mobile game, launching June 29 for for iPhone and iPad in the app store.
At the Hollywood shindig from Jam City and TinyCo, Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick was sure to note the zombie-esque qualities of the animated program.
“You shouldn’t say that,” said show mastermind David X. Cohen. “Because every time I truly give up hope, that’s when the show comes back.”
“This is because of No. 1: our extreme, hardcore fans our show has always had, that when our show goes off the air, refuse to stop watching on streaming, or cable, or on video games…hopefully. And number two: writing about the future, the show doesn’t age as much as other shows as shows written ten years ago.”
And if more Bender, more Amy Wong, more Nibbler weren’t enough, the more game will also contain completely new episodes of the show. This includes pie-eyed 1920s animation, sexy gender-bending Scruffy, Zoidberg in love, tributes to John Carpenter’s The Thing and more shiny asses you can shake a wrench at.
And the game is jam packed with all sorts of the type of guests that make science freaks and Marvel lovers go squee.
“It’s a pretty nerdy list,” said Cohen. “Like CHRIS HARDWICK! And George Takei, Stephen Hawking, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson.”
“I totally don’t belong in there,” cried Hardwick.
The event also included a live read of by the cast of the episode of “Proposition Infinity,” in which Amy and Bender fall in love and begin a taboo relationship. The cast on hand included Billy West (Fry), John Dimaggio (Bender), Lauren Tom (Amy), Maurice LaMarche (Kif), Phil Lamarr (Hermes), Tress MacNeille (Inez Wong, Leela for the sake of this episode as Katey Segal was unavailable) and David Herman (Scruffy). And to introduce the group, show creator, Matt Groening.
At the event, the cast chatted about the working together for many years, including the sheer amount of brainpower in the group, which included many mathematicians on the writing staff. In fact, writer Ken Keeler created a theorem for use in the body-swapping episode “The Prisoner of Benda” so that applied mathematics could be used to solve the issues of the brain-trading episode that involved the Harlem Globetrotters. Because cartoon.
“We wanted to science up the episode a little bit, so we made it a little more complicated, so we said if two people ever switched brain, they could not switch back, so they had to get another it back using a series of other people,” said Cohen. “Once we started talking, we were like, ‘Oh, wait a sec, maybe we can’t even get your own brain back.’ So we got to the end of the day and we didn’t even know the answer to the question. We came in the next morning and Ken was like, ‘I PROVED THE THEOREM!”
Take that, Scooby Doo.
Futurama is known for appealing to the science lovers out there. Not only with its guest stars and math, but for inside jokes that require a good chunk of left brain power to figure out.
“We had an alien language in the show that was just simple code. We just substituted A for this, B for this. We just gave them five letter. Then we lurked on the internet to see how long they would get it. And of course, 45 minutes later, they got it.”
“For you game players out there who are also math nerds, the game has an incredibly hard alien language that’s not even part of the game really. Just a side puzzle for you really, if you have an extra month.”
The math jokes continue with Futurama: Worlds Of Tomorrow, on June 29.
