n 1999, “Futurama” first aired on Fox, and quickly became known as the comedy
of the future. With its wacky characters, crazy plots and sci-fi antics, the show easily kept
the laughs coming throughout its seven season run. But just because a show can make you laugh
doesn’t mean it can’t make you cry too. In fact, Futurama is just as well known for its bittersweet
and totally heartbreaking moments as it is for its jokes. But which of these moments is the saddest?
I’m Brad with WickedBinge, and this is Futurama Moments:
Sad to Saddest. Like we said,
this list is gonna be all about the tear-jerking moments of “Futurama”. If a moment made you cry,
or even a bit misty-eyed, it’ll probably be on this list. Moments
that are more bittersweet or have a happy moment afterwards will be lower on the list
while the ones that are more sad or tragic will be higher. With all that said, let’s get started.
At the bottom of our list, we have the reveal of Leela’s Parents. This moment
was certainly a long time coming, and for many fans, we’re sure it was more cathartic than
sad for most fans. In the episode “Leela’s Homeworld”, we learned that due to Leela
being the least-mutated human ever, her mutant parents decided to give her up to the Orphanarium.
Figuring that she could pass as an alien, her parents just wanted to give
her a chance at a normal life instead of forcing her to live in the sewers.
Shortly after this flashback, Fry is able to stop Leela from killing her parents,
revealing them for who they are. As the three of them hug, we’re treated to a small montage of
Leela’s parents being there for her in secret, making her rough childhood just a bit better.
While this is certainly a tearjerking moment, we can’t exactly call it sad. Yes, it’s sad
that Leela had to grow up without them, feeling alone as she missed a family she never knew,
but like we said, this episode showed that she was never truly alone. Her family was always looking
out for her and tried to do what was best for her. Additionally, Leela gets the opportunity to spend
time with her parents in future episodes. While this can’t entirely make up for a whole childhood
without them, Leela still has the opportunity to get to know her parents and bond with them
along with now finally knowing where she came from. If Leela’s parents had died,
or if there was something else preventing her from visiting them, this moment may
have been a bit more sad. As it is now, it’s more heartwarming and bittersweet than anything else.
We have a smaller moment next, with Fry Learning the Truth. In “The Why of Fry”, Fry is called
upon by the Nibblonians to save the universe and stop the Brainspawn once and for all. However,
what starts out as a simple mission quickly goes wrong, and for a moment,
it looks like Fry is about to die alongside the Brainspawn. In an attempt to save themselves
and turn Fry against the Nibblonians, the Brainspawn reveal what truly happened to Fry.
Though he always thought that his freezing was an accident, Fry learns that it had actually been
Nibbler that caused Fry to fall into the cryogenic chamber. It’s a pretty shocking
twist, all things considered, and one that the writers had apparently planned since the
beginning. What really makes this moment hurt is Fry’s response when Nibbler asks
him “What is one life weighted against the entire universe?” Oof… You can’t help but feel bad for
Fry in that moment. But like with our last entry, it’s the rest of the episode along with the rest
of the series that stops it from being put any higher. Fry is able to realize that it’s worth
being in the future if he’s able to save his friends, especially Leela, and though he’ll
always miss his old life, we know that he’s able to create a happy life for himself in the future.
It’s still sad, but it’s not exactly tragic or heartbreaking, so it gets a low spot on this list.
Next up, we have Leela’s Message at the End of Time. For the most part, “The Late Philip J.
Fry” is a pretty silly episode filled with time-travel shenanigans and wacky futures.
But underneath the laughs, there’s a B-Plot that once again shows how much Fry and Leela
care about each other. When Fry, Bender and the Professor go missing and are assumed to be dead,
Leela takes over Planet Express, becoming more work-focused, lonely and bitter as the years go
on. She remains angry at Fry for ditching her birthday dinner, but still clearly misses him.
Towards the end of the B-Plot, Leela learns that Fry’s disappearance hadn’t been his fault, and
that she had been angry at him for nothing. With this new information in mind, Leela goes to the
restaurant where they would have had their dinner - Cavern on the Green - and leaves a message for
him on the floor of the restaurant. Fry is able to finally read this message in the year One Billion,
and cries after doing so. You have to remember that at this point, Fry and the others didn’t know
that time was circular. In Fry’s perspective, not only did he never get to say goodbye to Leela, but
now he knew that her life had been worse without him in it. Despite their ‘will they, won’t they’
dynamic for most of the series, moments like these truly show the love between Fry and Leela. Again,
we had to drop this moment down a few rankings, as Fry is eventually able to make it back to the year
3000 and even arrives at the date a few minutes early, leading to a pretty heartwarming ending.
Following that, we have Fry’s Forced Goodbye. In the episode “Game of Tones”, a mysterious ship
threatens to destroy the planet with a deafening sound - a sound that actually seems familiar
to Fry. In order to try and figure out what the sound is, Fry is sent into his dreams, and gets
to relive his last day in the year 2000. While in this dream, Fry realizes just how much he missed
his family, and that there were a lot of things he didn’t get to say to them - especially to his mom.
Unfortunately, before Fry is able to properly talk to his mom, the rest of the Planet Express crew
interrupt and force him to move on for the sake of the planet. They literally have to drag Fry out of
his house, with Fry protesting and begging the entire way. Even when Fry manages to get free,
the door to his home has already closed and his family is gone. Fry, naturally, is completely
devastated by this, actually falling to his knees. It’s a relatable moment for sure, as
we can all understand wanting to spend more time with family members who have passed away.
So even if Fry wasn’t shown to have a strong relationship with his mom in previous episodes,
you can still understand and feel his emotions in this moment. Thankfully, by the end of the
episode, Fry is able to reunite with his mom in her dream thanks to a bit of help from Nibbler.
This is enough to stop us from putting the sadder moment from this episode any higher up.
Our next saddest moment is Fry’s Failed Love Note. Yeah, Fry just can’t really catch a break,
and there are plenty of other sad Fry-focused moments coming up. As for
this one, it’s actually borderline cruel along with being pretty sad. Throughout the episode,
“Time Keeps on Slippin’,” Fry attempts to win Leela’s heart. At one point, the two even get
married! But because time keeps skipping ahead and no one can remember what happened in-between
the skips, the two quickly divorce. Ouch… Feeling like there’s still a chance for love,
Fry tries desperately to try and remember what he did that won Leela over. Eventually,
he learns that he had actually moved a small cluster of stars to write a love note to Leela.
A love note that Leela completely misses, and is promptly blown up and sucked into a black hole.
Though Fry tries to explain, he gives up and is left to simply stare out at space,
heartbroken and alone once again. What really makes this moment hit hard
is how the episode just ends after this moment, completely silent save for Bender’s whistling.
Though this is hardly the final episode of the series and we know that Fry will have other
chances to romance Leela, this moment is still pretty rough because we can see how devastated
Fry is. There’s no bittersweet twist or final joke, just Fry sadly staring out the ship’s
window. It certainly leaves an impact, so we felt that we had to give it a decent spot on our list.
Up next is a scene from the first of the “Futurama” TV movies, the Death of
Lars. So, “Bender’s Big Score” is a pretty wild and confusing time-travel story, even by Futurama
standards. Throughout this movie, we get the story of Lars, who is in fact a paradox duplicate
of Fry that briefly lived back in the year 2000 before returning to the future to be with Leela.
However, given that he is a paradox, it was pretty clear that he likely wouldn’t have a happy ending.
Thankfully, Lars’ eventual death wasn’t in vain. After Nudar survives Farnsworth's doomsday device,
he demands the time code from Lars, threatening to murder Leela if Lars doesn’t give him what he
wants. Lars then tricks Nudar by pulling out a self-destructing Bender paradox out of the
freezer. Lars holds the Bender down over Nudar and all three are killed. Through Lars’ brave actions,
Nudar is defeated once and for all. This makes the moment slightly more bittersweet, however
there’s still a streak of tragedy in it as we’re shown shortly after Lars/Fry’s death just how
thrilled he had been to see Leela again. Fry had waited years, had missed her for so long, and had
been so happy to finally be the type of mature boyfriend Leela had always wanted. If not for his
sad fate as a paradox, he would have even married her, something Fry has wanted to do for the better
half of the series. But alas, it just wasn’t meant to be. But while Lars doesn’t get his happily ever
after with Leela, at least we know that there’s still one version of Fry that eventually does.
Speaking of death, we have the So-Called ‘Death’ (and funeral) of Fry next. If you
know the true ending of the episode, “The Sting”, then this moment may not seem like
much. But for the characters themselves, and especially Leela, this is the heaviest loss
that they’ve had up until that point. The death scene itself is also pretty gruesome, with Fry
getting completely impaled by the space bee’s stinger, and this shot happening in slow motion,
forcing us to really take in the impact of the attack. Leela’s slow realization of what happened,
and her reaction to seeing Fry dead and realizing that he saved her life are also pretty impactful.
Regarding the funeral scene directly afterwards, despite it still having
jokes - makes sense, since this is a comedy at the end of the day - seeing Bender and Leela
crying over Fry is also pretty upsetting. Top it off with some bagpipes and Fry getting shot
into space like Spock at the end of “Wrath of Khan”, and you’ve got a pretty effective funeral
scene. Now, we’re sure you’re all wondering why we’re putting the red-herring death scene on our
list and not the ending of the episode. Simple - the ending, while definitely emotional, is a happy
one. We see Leela wake up from her coma and learn that Fry is alive, making the ending more
of a relief than anything else along with being super heartwarming and sweet. Admittedly, Leela’s
nightmare before could qualify as a sad moment, but it’s more frightening and,
in Leela’s perspective, confusing than actually sad. You could also argue that the whole episode
was sad, but since we’re ranking moments and not full episodes, we had to go with Fry’s ‘death’.
Now we’re getting into the real tearjerkers. Following that moment, we have Bender’s Sacrifice
for Ben. Although some consider the later seasons of “Futurama” to be a bit lacking, examples like
this show that even the newer episodes can still yank on the heartstrings. In the episode “The
Bots and the Bees”, Bender hooks up with a vending machine named Bev. The two have a son named Ben,
and although Bender is reluctant to take care of Ben at first, the two quickly bond. Unfortunately,
Ben is unable to bend due to inheriting weak arm-control software from his mother.
Ben also only has one expansion slot, which houses his memory card, meaning that he can’t learn to
bend without wiping his memory. Eventually, Bender recognizes just how badly his son wants to bend,
and allows the Professor to replace Ben’s memory card with a bending software card. Even though
Bender knows that Ben won’t remember him at all, Bender still takes the time to tell Ben that he
loves him. It’s a really heartbreaking moment - and given that it comes from Bender of all people,
the guy who drop-kicked another one of his kids into Robot Hell, it just hurts even more. Though
Bender has to live with his son not knowing who he is, he still gets to see Ben fulfilling
his dreams of bending and is able to get him to Bending University. While obviously not a
completely happy ending, it’s still enough to keep it from the very top of our list.
Taking the runner-up spot, we have the ending of “Luck of the Fry-rish”. Forget about “The
Breakfast Club”, this ending is what most people associate the song “Don’t You Forget About
Me” with. This episode was one of the few times in the series where we had the chance to flashback to
Fry’s past, with this instance focusing on his brother, Yancy. Like typical siblings,
the two of them never really got along due to Yancy always stealing Fry’s stuff. When Fry goes
to look for his old seven-leaf clover and sees that it’s missing, he reasonably assumes that
Yancy steals it. He later accuses his brother of going so far as to steal Fry’s identity,
using the luck from the seven-leaf clover to accomplish everything that Fry wanted to do.
Of course, the truth is both much sweeter and much more heartbreaking. As it turned out, Yancy had
taken the clover, but then gave it to his son, who he named after Fry in order to honor him.
Not only that, but it turned out that Yancy cared about Fry much more than he let on,
and that he truly missed his younger brother. It’s a moment that shows how deeply connected
family can be with each other, even when it doesn’t seem like it. Fry immediately
regrets his anger and suspicion, and although he’s unable to thank or say goodbye to Yancy,
he does get to spend a moment with the body of his nephew, now proud of the other Phillip J.
Fry for all that he had accomplished. While the moment is mostly tragic, as
the two brothers never had a chance to reconcile and Yancy died never knowing what happened to Fry,
this scene still manages to fall short of the top of our list. The small smile Fry gives at
the end of the episode, and the realization he has regarding how much his brother cared about him,
manages to make this moment shift into being bittersweet, even if it’s still mostly tragic.
Surprising absolutely no one, our Saddest Futurama Moment is the ending of “Jurassic
Bark”. Yep, there’s a reason why this episode is infamous not just in the “Futurama” fandom,
but in the animation fandom as a whole. Call it a bit overrated if you want, it still doesn’t
detract from just how much of a gut-punch this ending tends to be for most people. Semi-based
off the story of Hachikō, this episode introduces Fry’s dog, Seymour. The two were incredibly close,
with Seymour pretty much being Fry’s best friend in the year 2000. As such, when Fry went missing,
Seymour chose to wait outside Panucci's Pizza for his friend to return. The tragedy of this
ending is two-fold. Firstly, we see throughout the second-half of the episode that Seymour
was actually able to find Fry frozen, but was unable to free him due to Fry’s parents not
noticing. The poor pup was so close to getting his best friend back, but it unfortunately just wasn’t
meant to be. The second part of this tragedy is, of course, Fry’s assumption when he learns that
Seymour lived to be 13 years old, a reasonable age of death for a dog. When he hears this,
Fry believes that because Seymour lived a full life, he likely forgot all about Fry, and as such
Fry decides to let him rest in peace. The episode closes with the aptly titled song “I Will Wait
For You”, and if you aren’t tearing up by that point, you may want to get your eyes checked.
Unlike many of the other sad moments in this list, there’s no moment of levity or something
that makes it more bittersweet than purely sad. We do see Fry and Seymour together in other episodes,
like “Bender’s Big Score” and “Game of Tones”, but those episodes were made years after
this one, which meant that audiences still had to sit with this ending for quite a while. But
even with these scenes, they can’t really erase the heartache we feel when we rewatch this one.
So, we felt we had no choice but to give this moment the title of Saddest Futurama Moment.
But let us know in the comment section if you agree with our ranking,
and tell us what we should cover next. Remember to hit that notification bell
and binge more of our videos. But most importantly, stay wicked.