Edible Apple

Apple is pretty adept at getting its products onto some of TV’s most popular shows, but no show can top Futurama when it comes to a sprinkling of both well-known and obscure Apple references. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given the fact that series co-founder David X. Cohen is a huge Apple fan whose favorite piece of technology is the Apple II – Cohen even named the character “Dr. Zoidberg” after a computer game he originally created for the Apple II in assembly language.

Below, take a look at the some of the more prominent Apple references that Futurama was able to incorporate in its far too short 5 season long run.

From Season 1, “Fear of a Bot Planet”: Fry and Leela find themselves trapped on a robot planet where everyone hates Humans, and at a makeshift trial, the Judge is an old Mac 128K, the original Mac computer..

Note the Mac OS style progress bar.

Oh crap, this undoubtedly looks familiar to any pre-OS X Mac user. Nice to see you again System 7. When the Mac freezes up, one of the character suggests in a bit of uber mac nerd humor, “Try control-alt-delete.”

In “I dated a Robot” from Season 3, Fry dates a robot with the downloaded personality of Lucy Lui. Below, check out Professor Farnsworth getting a “Mac Formatted” blank robot for Fry. Speaking of ‘Mac Formatted’, anyone out there remember PC Exchange?

In the same episode, the Mac 128K re-appears in a film warning about the dangers of dating a robot.

Futurama decided to spoof Apple’s iconic “1984″ commercial in season 4′s “Futurestock”, where Fry goes into business with a walking 80′s Wall St. stereotype. Check out the video below:

From the same episode, a futuristic stock ticker shows that OSX is up 39 cents and WIN is down 50 cents. Also, check out the Run-DMC reference.

And now some iMac love. Check out Isaac, the bartender from Season 2′s “A flight to remember”

Also in Season 2, “A Bicyclops Built For 2″ shows Bender using a Mac style menu with the appropriate keyboard shorcuts.

In a Season 4 episode called “Bender should not be allowed on TV”, the president of a TV network is a computer who speaks via an old school Quicktime player.

In quite a few episodes, whenever there a video is playing on a computer, the window interface often resembles OS 8 and OS 9. Check out some of the screenshots below.

In the episode “The problem with Popplers” from Season 2, everybody’s favorite Jamaican limbo champ can be seen using an old-school iBook style laptop.

From the season 1 episode “When Aliens Attack”: Note the OS 9 style desktop below.

This episode also gives us an excuse to mention one of the all-time great Zapp Branigan quotes:

“If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.”

The following exchange between Brannigan and Fry regarding a pending battle is also great:

Zapp: The key to victory is discipline, and that means a well-made bed. You will practice until you can make your bed in your sleep

Fry: You mean when I’m sleeping in it?

Zapp: You wont have time for sleeping soldier, not with all the bed making you’ll be doing.

Okay, back to the Apple refrences. The Mac 128k returned once again in one of the more memorable Futurama episodes from Season 2- Mars University. The screenshot below is from a scene where Bender and some college robots decide to do embark on a little late night peeping tom activity. “Robohouse!!”

And lastly, in “Fear of a Bot Planet”, the sound to commence the ritual robot hunting of humans is the Mac OS startup sound.

Well, we think you get the idea. Futurama loved tossing in Mac references anywhere it could, and the above examples are suprisingly not 100% inclusive. Believe it or not, there are quite a few other Apple references from Futurama that didn’t make the cut.

We mentioned earlier that David Cohen is a huge Apple fan, but there’s more. Simpsons creator and Futurama co-creator Matt Groening is an Apple fan as well. Groening actually helped Apple design a Macintosh brochure geared towards college students back in 1989. If you’re still reading at this point, thanks, and you can check out Groening’s old Mac brochure over here.