From suicide booths to drone cameras, Matt Groening's animated sci-fi series was surprisingly prophetic! Join us as we explore the eerily accurate predictions made by Futurama that eventually came true in our reality. Our countdown includes mundane virtual reality, asteroid deflection technology, pandemic quarantines, and more! Which Futurama prediction shocked you the most?
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00:00The situation is expected to deteriorate as newscasters whip the city into a panic.
00:05RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
00:10Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at times Futurama predicted the future.
00:15Although we wouldn't have to wait until the 31st century.
00:18If my calculations are correct, this garbage ball will knock the other garbage ball directly into the sun!
00:24And if my calculations are correct, we're all going to die horribly!
00:28HA HA HA HA!
00:31Number 10, Miss Universe Mess Up, The Lesser of Two Evils.
00:35Our ninth finalist, Miss Methane Planet, Halatina Smugmire!
00:45What do real-life TV host Steve Harvey and animated character Zap Branigan have in common?
00:50Not much, except they both hosted the Miss Universe pageant, with Zap's version being a more literal take on the word universe.
00:57They also both announced the wrong winner.
01:00Branigan was distracted by Leela.
01:02Leela?
01:05Wait, you're making a… ooh, look at that!
01:09Harvey read the name of the first runner-up instead.
01:12We have to apologize.
01:13We have to apologize.
01:14We have to apologize.
01:19The first runner-up is Columbia.
01:31Given the widespread notoriety Harvey's flubbed received, and the fact both were hosting the same pageant, you may think the Futurama scene was a parody.
01:42But Zap's mess-up happened on an episode that aired in 2000, fifteen years before Harvey made the same mistake.
01:48Wait, what are you people, idiots?
01:50I'm still going mano-a-mano with this envelope.
01:53So, it's more a case of life imitating art.
01:58Inadvertently, of course.
02:00Number 9.
02:01Star Wars Episode 9, The Lesser of Two Evils
02:04In an early 2000 episode, Fry and Leela walk by a movie theater marquee that reads Star Wars 9 Yoda's Bar Mitzvah.
02:11Give me your wallet or I'll cut you!
02:14While it was clear to audiences back then that the episode title was a sight gag, it wasn't clear there'd be a ninth Star Wars film, even by the year 3000.
02:22Audiences had just seen the first prequel movie, The Phantom Menace, which they had waited sixteen years for.
02:29They would have to wait another twelve years for Disney to purchase Lucasfilm and confirm a sequel trilogy was even happening.
02:35Then, another seven after that for the real Episode 9, The Rise of Skywalker, hit theaters, almost two decades after Futurama predicted it.
02:44I'll take the camera, too!
02:46Learning is fun!
02:49Number 8.
02:50Its own cancellation, where no fan has gone before.
02:53Bill!
02:54L-Dog.
02:55Hey, this is wonderful.
02:56Oh, man.
02:57I'd feel like hugging you.
02:58Well, I would, except you have no body.
03:00And we're both men.
03:02Futurama has been cancelled twice officially, and brought back more times than that, sometimes by different networks.
03:08So, predicting its own cancellation now, or even a decade ago, wouldn't have been that prescient.
03:14Doing so in its fourth season is a whole other story.
03:17It happened in an episode famous for bringing back most of the original series' Star Trek cast, playing themselves.
03:23Hey, we've done heroic things, too.
03:25Yeah, in the third season I kissed Shatner.
03:28Bender refers to Trek as, quote, another classic sci-fi show cut short before its time.
03:34This was less than a year before Fox brought Futurama's production to a halt.
03:38Thus, Star Trek was forever scoured from human memory.
03:41Another classic science fiction show cancelled before its time.
03:45We can't be sure if the writers had an idea it was coming, or if this was just a bit of accidental irony.
03:50Number seven, Quarantine, Shades of Covid, Cold Warriors.
03:54When Fry inadvertently brings back the common cold, at a time when no one has resistance to it, authorities envelop the Planet Express building, placing it under quarantine.
04:03Come out with your hands!
04:04I mean, stay in with your hands up!
04:06You are hereby quarantined until such time as it is deemed safe to enter and shoot your asses.
04:15Bender escapes, and quickly spreads the virus to the entire city of New New York.
04:20While the episode largely focuses on Fry's relationship with his father through a series of flashbacks, we get to see public officials warning people to wash their hands, and considering launching the whole city into the sun.
04:31No doctor likes hurling his patients into the sun, but since there is no way to make a vaccine for the common cold…
04:38Eventually, they make a vaccine with a sample of the cold Fry knew about.
04:42Although no one considered incinerating a city as a solution, quite a bit of this was mirrored in reality nine years after this episode originally aired, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
04:52You saved millions of lives, Fry. You should feel proud.
04:55Number six, Assisted Death, Space Pilot 3000.
05:00Listen, buddy. I'm in a hurry here. Let's try for a twofer.
05:05In the 31st century, there's a booth on every street corner where people can take their own lives with assistance.
05:11This is established in the series premiere when Fry, thinking it's a phone booth, meets Bender outside of one.
05:17While Assisted Death was legal in some areas when the episode aired in 1999, the practice would only start to gain broader reach a few years later in the Netherlands.
05:26It'd be more widely available around the world at the end of the 2010s.
05:31You are now dead. Thank you for using Stop and Drop.
05:35In Futurama, these booths are a commercial product that costs a quarter.
05:39While it's nowhere near as crassly commercial, you can, in fact, pay for assisted death in Switzerland.
05:45Ah, lousy stinking rip-off.
05:48Well, I didn't have anything else planned for today. Let's go get drunk!
05:53Number five, The Ebola Crises, a big piece of garbage.
05:56Tomorrow you'll be making a delivery to Ebola-9, the virus planet!
06:01Ebola swept through West Africa in 2014, spreading to several countries, including major cities.
06:07The World Health Organization declared it an emergency of international concern.
06:11One of the reasons it spread so quickly is the outbreak largely took people by surprise.
06:16Fifteen years earlier, though, Futurama dropped a reference to Ebola-9, which Professor Farnsworth called the virus planet, where all its residents were infected with Ebola.
06:26The Planet Express crew needed to wait a day to make their delivery there, because Farnsworth needed everyone alive for an event that evening.
06:33Why can't they go today?
06:34Because tonight's a special night, and I want all of you to be alive!
06:38At least some people had an idea of what danger Ebola might cause as far back as the late 90s.
06:44Number four, Interactive Mainstream Media, Raging Bender.
06:47Well, that finishes this paperwork.
06:50Calculon Enterprises.
06:53The Planet Express crew head to the movies, which is still a popular form of entertainment in the 31st century.
06:59Watching All My Circuits, though, they're given a choice.
07:02Action sequence, or Calculon finishing his paperwork, with the buttons clearly rigged for the lower budget option.
07:08I have no choice but to…
07:10If you want Calculon to race to the laser gun battle in his hover Ferrari, press 1.
07:15If you want Calculon to double-check his paperwork, press 2. Enter now!
07:20Interactive entertainment isn't a new thing, as there were experiments with it dating back to 1967.
07:26However, mainstream media letting the audience decide wasn't really a thing when this episode aired in 2000,
07:32and would only become one a bit shy of a couple of decades later, with shows like Black Mirror.
07:37You have pressed 2!
07:39No, I didn't!
07:40I'm almost positive you did!
07:42Number three, Asteroid Deflection.
07:44A big piece of garbage.
07:45A giant asteroid composed of garbage from the Earth is hurtling back home.
07:49Fry discovered it using Professor Farnsworth's Smelliscope, an invention comparable to the nasal radar which has since been invented.
07:56Oh man, this is great!
07:58Hey, as long as you don't make me smell your anus!
08:01That's not the only thing this 1999 episode got right.
08:05The ultimate solution to prevent the asteroid's devastation wasn't to destroy it, but to deflect it with another, giant piece of garbage.
08:12It turns out scientists now believe that deflecting an asteroid heading toward Earth is the way to avoid catastrophe,
08:18as attempting to destroy one will only break it into multiple, smaller, deadly pieces.
08:28NASA even successfully changed an asteroid's trajectory with its DART spacecraft in 2022 as a test.
08:35It worked!
08:36Woohoo!
08:37Yeah!
08:38Come on!
08:39Number two, Drone Cameras.
08:41C-SPAN 9 presents The Thrill of Politics.
08:46Drones are everywhere now.
08:48Both their recreational and commercial use have increased exponentially since the 2010s.
08:53Most major sporting broadcasts will cut to a drone camera shot at least a few times during an event.
08:59In the early seasons of Futurama, drone cameras are commonplace, being used to film press conferences and political debates.
09:05I say your three-cent titanium tax goes too far, and I say your three-cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough.
09:14It may look like an exaggerated depiction of the present instead of an imaginative guess of the future, but those episodes aired in the very late 90s and early 2000s, when the aerial shots generally came from cameras mounted on cranes.
09:26Two terrific candidates, huh, Morbo?
09:28All humans are vermin in the eyes of Morbo!
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09:48Number 1.
09:50Mundane VR.
09:51The series has landed.
09:53Ugh, who buys this trash?
09:55Idiots who need gifts for other idiots!
09:58Hey, I got you guys refrigerator magnets!
10:01In Futurama's second episode, the Planet Express crew takes a trip to the moon, where Amy Wong tries out virtual reality.
10:08VR was already becoming more commonplace throughout the 90s.
10:11The look of the headset that Amy wore was in line with where the design was already headed.
10:16What the show surprisingly got right, though, is what she was experiencing virtually.
10:20Amy was playing virtual, virtual skeeball next to someone playing virtual skeeball next to someone playing actual skeeball.
10:28Wow!
10:29I could swear I was really playing virtual skeeball!
10:36While VR can be a way to escape from, or enhance, the mundane, it's largely used to virtually replicate mundane experiences,
10:44like gardening and office work.
10:47Are there any other times Futurama's future ended up mirroring our present?
10:50Let us know in the comments.
10:51Uh, Crosstown Express?
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