The Futurama Title Caption Companion

Inspired by my similar piece for The Simpsons chalkboard gags a few weeks ago, it’s time for a similar look at another show. At the beginning of every episode of Futurama, there’s a humorous caption on the title slide. Don’t take my word for it, here’s an example:

But if you have the DVDs, you’re not getting the full title caption experience. Here, then, is a list of all the known anomalies.

1.3 I, Roommate

1.9 Hell is Other Robots

The captions for these two episodes should read “As seen on TV” and “Condemned by the Space Pope” respectively, but on some releases of the DVD they’re not there, leaving just blank space.

The versions without title captions were also broadcast in the UK by Channel 4. FOX’s DVDs have a tendency to use revised versions of episodes if they were altered in any way after their first broadcast, so I strongly suspect that the captions were seen on original transmission but not present on network repeats; hence the UK broadcasts and the DVDs are the revised versions. “Condemned by the Space Pope” may have been controversial with religious groups (see also the infamous Catholic Church Superbowl advert from the Simpsons episode “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday”), but I am less sure as to why “As seen on TV” would have had to go. Is it trademarked or something, possibly?

2.16 Anthology of Interest I

Here’s an interesting one. The original broadcast and the DVD both use the caption “Painstakingly drawn before a live audience”. However, according to The Infosphere, a repeat broadcast during the 2000 US election campaign changed it to “Starring a guy who is kind-of, sort-of our next president, maybe!” (a reference to Al Gore’s guest appearance as himself) I can’t find any other reference to this alternate caption, so more information would be appreciated.

The DVD Movies (Bender’s Big Score, The Beast With a Billion Backs, Bender’s Game and Into the Wild Green Yonder)

The four DVD movies were each chopped up into four individual episodes for Comedy Central’s TV broadcasts, creating a sixteen-episode “fifth season”. The first part of each story uses the same caption as the feature-length version (with the exception of “Into the Wild Green Yonder”, which uses the movie’s caption on part 4). This results in twelve captions which can’t be seen on the DVDs:

“Watch, Rinse, Repeat”

“Apply directly to the foreclaw”

“Last known transmission of the Hubble Telescope”

“It makes a nice sandwich”

“0100100001101001” (‘Hi’ in ASCII)

“The Robots are Coming! The Robots are Coming!”

“The episode they’ll be thinking about by the water cooler, but not mentioning specifically”

“Current eBay bid: $8.51”

“Collect all fifty billion!”

“ESP: Closed-captioned for the ESP-impaired”

“If you can read this, thank us!”

“Now available without a prescription”