Futurama timeline

I've seen a bundle of Futurama timelines around the place and I found them all to be inadequate, because they don't, by a long shot, include every conceivable dated event from the show. It's easy to guess at dates from things like "Pine trees went extinct eight hundred years ago" but that seems to be the limit of effort put in. So I went through, watched the whole 72-episode run again - yes, this is entirely my own work - and took notes in preparation for this, my considerably more exhaustive Futurama timeline.

Anything with a question mark in the date is probable, but not known for definite. A tilde (~) indicates that the date is approximate.

Only relatively few episodes have specific dates attached to them, but dates for the rest of them can be guessed at with a fair degree of certainty. For this purpose, I have made the simple assumption that the chronological order in which episodes occur is the same as the order of production code. There were four production seasons of roughly 18 episodes apiece. Space Pilot 3000 (1ACV01) is the first, The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings (4ACV18) is the last. This system enables all the episodes to be placed on the timeline, with only a little uncertainty and only one episode (Roswell That Ends Well) definitely out of sequence.

A slight anomaly is that this results in about 20 episodes taking place between January 1 and February 14, 3002. Hey ho. There are a few other interesting notes which you'll find as you read.

• 17 years before the Big Bang: Nibblonian civilisation is born
• ~28,997,001 BC or earlier: Emperor Nimbala rules Zuben 5. He will be seen in the year 3000 as a mummy in a tiny sarcophagus
• 1410 AD: Origins of banking industry regulations
• 1776: The United States of America are founded
• 1788: Steamboat invented
• 1793: Cotton gin invented
• 19th century: Light bulb, steamboat and cotton gin invented, according to Leela. Note that she's wrong on two of the three counts; the steamboat and the cotton gin are both from the 18th century. See above.
• 1820 to 1887: Golden Age Of Muttonchops
• 1874: Light bulb invented
• 1900s: Gwen's family starts making candy hearts from bone meal and earwig honey
• 20th century?: The Stupid Ages? Fry's era is referred to as the Stupid Ages more than once in the series. No dates are given, but the 20th century seems stupid enough to me.
• July 9, 1947: Emerging from a time-warp, the Planet Express ship crash-lands near Roswell, New Mexico
• July 10, 1947: Planet Express returns through the time-warp, leaving behind Bender's head
• 1951: Pete's TVs: "letting people watch news reports in our window since 1951"
• August 9, 1960: David Duchovny is supposedly born; Duchovny is in fact the individual who will later be known as Calculon; his birth date might be a lie.
• 1960: The 1960 Presidential elections are fixed by John F. Kennedy, according to Richard Nixon
• September 8, 1966: The first episode of the original series of Star Trek is aired
• 1969: The New York Mets win the World Championship.
• July 20, 1969: Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin land on the Moon. The original landing site will have been lost for centuries by the year 3000.
• 1973: Computers will double in speed between now and 3000, according to Richard Nixon in 3000 - probably something of an understatement
• 1973: Muhammed Ali faces an 80ft-tall mechanical Joe Frazier. The entire Earth is destroyed, according to George Foreman, whose memory is not, apparently, what it was
• 1974: birth of Philip J. Fry
• 1975: In Leela's dream, the Yellow Brick Road is renamed Martin Luther King Boulevard
• 1984 or later: Stricken with incurable boneitis, "that guy" (Steve Castle) is frozen. We know he's from the 1980s, but he has also certainly seen Apple's "1984" advert
• 1985: The New York Mets win the World Championship. Shea Stadium has a banner proclaiming: "Home of the 1969 & 1985 World Champion Mets". Note: This obliquely suggests that the Mets won't win the World Championship again for over a thousand years!
• 1988: What Hermes Conrad will later describe as a "legendary Jamaican bobsled team" first competes in the Winter Olympics
• between 1990 and 1996: Applied Cryogenics experiences their penultimate power failure
• 1994 or 1995: Fry scrawls a picture of himself on a rocket
• 1995 to 1998?: Fry goes roughly three years without getting time off
• 1997: Fry's dog, Seymour, is born.
• 1997: Applied Cryogenics experiences their most recent power failure.
• circa 1997: date on the last existing can of anchovies ("Angry Norwegian Anchovies" brand)
• August 1997: Fry meets his dog, "Seymour Asses"
• July 1998: The summer from "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer". Seymour swims in toppings.
• 1999 or earlier: The evil brainspawn begin constructing the Infosphere. The Nibblonians forsee its completion and realise their need to cryogenically freeze Fry so that he can ultimately defeat them.
• March 28, 1999: In real life, the first episode of Futurama is aired
• 1999: Fry spills a can of beer, disrupting the transmission of the series finale of Single Female Lawyer
• Evening of December 31, 1999: Nibbler orders a pizza to be delivered to Applied Cryogenics, using the pseudonym I. C. Weiner.
• 11:35pm, December 31, 1999: Fry leaves on his last pizza delivery.

At this point the time-stream diverges. As is well recorded, Nibbler is hidden underneath the desk that Fry will sit at as the new millennium rolls in, intending to deliberately make Fry fall in the cryogenics tube, so that in the future (specifically, the episode "The Why Of Fry") he can defeat the brainspawn on behalf of all intelligent life.

In one timeline (timeline A) this goes ahead as planned. In timeline B, a Fry arrives from the future, sent back in time by the brains, just in time to deliver to Nibbler the dire warning, "Scootie-Puff Junior sucks!" This will have significant consequences, as we shall see in the year 3002 or so. Either way, Nibbler's plan proceeds as envisaged:

• 12:00:0?am, January 1, 2000: Philip J. Fry falls backwards into a cryogenic chamber, which automatically freezes him for a thousand years
• lunchtime, January 1, 2000: Fry's father calls him, wondering where he is.
• 2000: The year Past-O-Rama is supposed to emulate
• 2000: Great Garbage Crisis in New York City. Garbage is put on a barge which is then pushed out to circle the world's seas for the next 50 years.
• 21st century: Cyborgs enslave humanity
• 2001?: Jury Duty II: Trouble On The Hubble is released
• 2003: Lucy Liu is named People Magazine's sexiest woman of the year
• August 10, 2003: In real life, the final episode of Futurama airs
• 2007: Charlie's Angels III: The Legend Of Charlie's Gold is released in cinemas
• 2008: Stop 'n' Drop becomes America's favourite suicide booth
• 2012: War of 2012. Conan O'Brien loses his freakishly long legs.
• 2012 or 2013: Seymour dies.
• 2019: Calculon is a robot arm working on Project Satan, the world's evilest car.
• 2038: Petroleum reserves run dry
• 2052: New York City obtains a rocket with which to launch the garbage into outer space.
• 2063: Lucy Liu is named People Magazine's sexiest woman of the year for the second time
• 2063: Humanity starts dropping ice cubes into the ocean to counteract global warming
• 2158: Central Bureacracy is established
• ~2200: Pine trees become extinct
• 2200s: The anchovy becomes extinct; also, the Decapodians arrive on Earth
• 2200s: The Star Trek cast do some musical reunions, but the guy who plays Scotty has trouble yodelling so he is replaced by Welshy.
• 23rd century: By this time, Star Trek has become a religion
• ~2202?: Lucy Liu is captured and held prisoner by kidnappster.com
• 2208: To get around relativity, scientists increase the speed of light. Note that all existing light continues to move at its original slow pace.
• 2256: date of a spear seen in a museum of weaponry
• 2265 to 2270: Time period of the original Star Trek five-year mission
• 2275: The Fairness In Hell Act is passed, requiring the Robot Devil to release a soul (and a solid gold fiddle) from Robot Hell if someone can beat him in a fiddle contest
• 24th century?: A medieval civilisation arises on the site of old New York. It will later be destroyed by aliens. (During the 1000-year sleep montage, you can see castles being built and then destroyed. No date is explicitly given, but a cop later in the episode suggests "going 24th century" on somebody's "ass". The connection is clear. Note that New New York City was hence built after this time.)
• ~2302?: Dashuba (sp?) monks begin searching for God
• 2354: Kwanzaabot begins giving out "What the hell is Kwanzaa?" books
• ~2400: American Express ceases to exist
• 2443: Second coming of Jesus. Most 20th century-era videotapes are damaged.
• 2475: Washington DC is rededicated to Washington the Sweathog
• ~2500: Visa ceases to exist
• ~2500?: New New York City becomes garbage-free. Note that New New York City was hence built before this.
• 2600s: New Yorkers elect a supervillain governor, who steals most of the world's monuments and puts them on Monument Beach
• 2620: To end that stupid joke once and for all, Uranus is renamed.
• 2636: Mars University is founded
• ~2702: The original cast of Star Trek leaves Earth behind
• 2790: Bender's Uncle Vladimir is constructed
• 2790: Ava Porter is born.
• 2800 or earlier: Voter turnout in world presidential elections dips below 6%, and will stay that low until 3000
• 2801 or earlier: The last ghost at Bender's Uncle Vladimir's castle dies
• 2801: Creation of Robotic Santa
• April 9, 2841: Professor Hubert Farnsworth is *actually* born
• April 9, 2851: Professor Hubert Farnsworth claims to have been born
• 2856: Eloise Porter is born.
• 2880?: Wernstrom is born
• ~2881?: Farnsworth begins working for Momcorp.
• 2890: establishment of Staadgi & Staadgi auctioneers
• ~2900?: Wernstrom is Farnsworth's most promising student
• 2922: Date on Farnsworth's old Harold Zoid hologram
• 2923 or 2924?: Bigfoot is born.
• 2927: The Yankees are put in a jar (?)
• 1:54pm, October 17, ~2927?: While 14 geese fly outside the window, Farnsworth invents the pollutant robot
• ~2931?: Farnsworth walks out on Mom
• ~2952: The invention of Smellovision coincides with the beginning of Harold Zoid's decline from stardom
• ~2960?: Slurms MacKenzie's babes join him
• 2962: The Bigfoot video is made
• 2967 or 2968: Melllvar is born
• 2972?: Sheldon and Gwen get married, also start running Romanticorp
• 2973 or 2974: Calculon claims to have been born
• 2974 or 2975?: Leela claims to have been born
• 2975?: RobotMania is held for the first time. (Assumes RobotMania is a yearly event like Wrestlemania.)
• 2976?: RobotMania II is held
• 2977?: RobotMania III is held
• 2978?: RobotMania IV is held
• 2979?: RobotMania V is held
• 2980: At the 2980 Summer Olympic Games, Hermes Conrad witnesses a kid die while attempting to imitate him in the limbo event. Hermes will never limbo again.
• 2980?: RobotMania VI is held
• 2981?: RobotMania VII is held
• 2982?: RobotMania VIII is held
• 2983?: The tradition of Claw-plakh is instituted on Decapod 10.
• 2983?: RobotMania IX is held
• 2984: Future teen singer Wendy is born.
• 2984: Hermes is beaten in every Olympic limbo event by Barbados Slim.
• 2984?: RobotMania X is held
• 2984 or earlier?: Fry's Holophonor teacher, Mrs. Mellinger, starts taking the joy out of music
• 2985?: RobotMania XI is held
• 2986?: RobotMania XII is held
• 2987: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives, as it will every year from now until at least 3003
• 2987?: RobotMania XIII is held
• 2988: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2988?: RobotMania XIV is held
• 2989: Cubert Farnsworth is cloned from a growth on Farnsworth's back
• 2989: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2989?: RobotMania XV is held
• 2990: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2990?: RobotMania XVI is held
• 2991: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2991?: RobotMania XVII is held
• 2991 or 2992?: Leela gets her green jacket
• 2992: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2992?: RobotMania XVIII is held
• 2992?: Zoidberg joins Planet Express.
• 2993: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2993?: RobotMania XIX is held
• 2994: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2994?: RobotMania XX is held
• 2995: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2995?: Nibbler is presumed to have been born. Note that Nibbler is in fact at least a thousand years old; his race lacks the ability to time-travel, and he was seen alive in the year 1999.
• 2995?: RobotMania XXI is held
• 2996: Some coin with a picture of a guy with dreadlocks is made (?)
• 2996: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2996?: RobotMania XXII is held
• 2996 or 2997 or 2998?: Bender is constructed in Tijuana.
• 2997: Fronty's Meat Market: "Not a front since 2997"
• 2997: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2997?: RobotMania XXIII is held
• 2998: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2998?: RobotMania XXIV is held
• 2999: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 2999?: Farnsworth presents his Death Clock at the science symposium
• 2999?: Farnsworth builds the smelloscope
• 2999?: RobotMania XXV is held
• 2999?: Farnsworth declares himself dead as a tax dodge
• Tuesday, December 31, 2999: Fry is unfrozen. (Bender correctly notes later in the episode that it is a Tuesday.) Note: Fry was not frozen for a full thousand years. He was woken up roughly twelve hours early, during daylight hours. There are a number of possible explanations for this: a slightly fast timer on the cryogenics chamber or a slight change in the length of the Earth's day due to events similar to those in "Crimes Of The Hot" are the two most obvious that spring to mind.
• 12:00:00am, January 1, 3000: Planet Express ship escapes the police
• 3000?: Events of "The Series Has Landed"
• During Superbowl MXXIV?: Planet Express ad airs (on another channel)
• Stardate 3000.3: Events of "Love's Labor's Lost In Space"
• April 13th.2, 3000: Further events of "Love's Labor's Lost In Space"
• 3000?: Events of "Fear Of A Bot Planet"
• 3000: Events of "A Fishful Of Dollars"
• 3000?: Events of "My Three Suns"
• after April 9, 3000?: Events of "A Big Piece Of Garbage". Farnsworth is aged 149 in this episode.
• 3000?: Events of "Hell Is Other Robots"
• 3000?: Events of "A Flight To Remember"
• 3000?: Events of "Mars University"
• 3000?: Events of "When Aliens Attack"
• 3000?: Events of "Fry & The Slurm Factory"
• 3000?: Events of "I Second That Emotion"
• 3000?: Events of "Brannigan Begin Again"
• 3000: Events of "A Head In The Polls". Note: The 3000 world presidential elections take place in this episode. Richard Nixon wins. This is, according to a reporter, Nixon's third term as president, which technically violates the Constitution. This in turn means that the whole of Earth is now using the same constitution that America started out with in 1776, which in turn means that (in the Futurama universe), sometime between 2000 and 3000, America attacked and conquered the entire world!
• 3000: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 3000?: RobotMania XXVI is held
• December 24, 3000: Events of "Xmas Story"
• January 3, 3001: Trash pickup resumes outside the Planet Express building
• 3001?: Events of "Why Must I Be A Crustacean In Love?" Decapodian mating season on Decapod 10.
• 3001?: Events of "Lesser Of Two Evils"
• February 14, 3001: Events of "Put Your Head On My Shoulder"
• 3001?: Events of "Raging Bender". RobotMania XXVII is held.
• 3001?: Events of "A Bicyclops Built For Two"
• April 9, 3001: Events of "A Clone Of My Own"
• 3001?: Events of "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back"
• 3001?: Events of "The Deep South"
• 3001?: Events of "Bender Gets Made"
• Mother's Day, 3001?: Events of "Mother's Day"
• 3001?: Events of "Anthology Of Interest"
• 3001?: Events of "War Is The H-Word"
• 3001?: Events of "The Problem With Popplers". Note: This is probably the same event as below.
• June 12, 3001? (exactly 247 days prior to "Love & Rocket"): Omicron Persei 8 invades Earth. This is probably the same event as above.
• 3001: Events of "The Honking"
• 3001: At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 3001?: Events of "The Cryonic Woman"
• 3001?: Events of "Amazon Women In The Mood"
• 3001?: Events of "Parasites Lost"
• Xmas 3001: Events of "A Tale Of Two Santas"
• 3001 or 3002?: Events of "Luck Of The Fryrish"
• 3001 or 3002?: Events of "The Birdbot Of Ice-Catraz"
• 3001 or 3002?: Events of "Bendless Love"
• 3001 or 3002?: Events of "The Day The Earth Stood Stupid"
• 3002: Events of "That's Lobstertainment!"
• 3002?: Events of "The Cyber House Rules"
• 3002?: Events of "Where The Buggalo Roam"
• 3002?: Events of "Insane In The Mainframe"
• 3002?: Events of "The Route Of All Evil"
• 3002?: Events of "Bendin' In The Wind"
• 3002: Events of "Time Keeps On Slippin'". Note: Major temporal kerjiggers go on in this episode, but since the universe seems to be approximately back to normal at the end of it, we can place a year on it.
• 3002?: Events of "I Dated A Robot"
• 3002: Events of "A Leela Of Her Own"
• 3002?: Events of "A Pharaoh To Remember"
• 3002?: Events of "Anthology Of Interest 2"
• September 21, 3002: Events of "Roswell That Ends Well" begin. The Planet Express ship enters a time warp. Note: If we assume the episodes take place in order of production code, this is the only episode which is out of sequence. You can mentally shift it down below "Love & Rocket" if you like.
• September 22, 3002?: Bender's head is dug up again
• 3002?: Events of "Godfellas"
• 3002?: Events of "Futurestock"
• 3002?: Events of "30% Iron Chef"
• 3002?: Events of "Kif Gets Knocked Up A Notch"
• 3002?: Events of "Leela's Homeworld"
• February 14, 3002?: Events of "Love & Rocket"
• 3002?: Events of "Less Than Hero"
• 3002?: Events of "A Taste Of Freedom"
• 3002?: Events of "Bender Should Not Be Allowed On TV"
• 3002?: Events of "Jurassic Bark"
• 3002?: Events of "Crimes Of The Hot". Note that Earth's orbit is increased in radius slightly in this episode, simultaneously easing the effects of global warming and lengthening the year by one week - namely, Robot Party Week.
• 3002?: Events of "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles"
• 3002?: Events of "The Why Of Fry".

It is here that the split caused in 1999 becomes significant. Fry is sent by the Nibblonians into the brains' InfoSphere so that he can destroy it. In timeline A, Fry's vehicle - a Scootie-Puff Junior - shatters in his hands, and he is sucked along with the InfoSphere into an empty universe. The brains then send him back in time to 1999, timeline B: see above.

In timeline B, thanks to Fry's warning in 1999, the Nibblonians provide Fry with a Scootie-Puff Senior with which he escapes the InfoSphere in time.

• 3002: Events of "Where No Fan Has Gone Before"
• 3002: Roboticon 3002 is held. At Momcorp, the future of robotics arrives.
• 3002 or 3003?: Events of "The Sting"
• 3002 or 3003?: Events of "Bend Her"
• 3003: Events of "Obsoletely Fabulous"
• 3003 or 3004?: Events of "The Farnsworth Parabox"
• February 14, 3004: Kif Kroker gives Amy Wong a watch for Valentine's Day
• Summer 3004: Events of "Three Hundred Big Boys"
• 3004?: Events of "Spanish Fry"
• 3004?: Events of "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings"
• 3021?: Time when Leela could expect to receive Bender's brain back from Central Bureacracy, if she filed a request during "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back"
• 3022?: Kif's babies sprout legs and crawl back onto land as children
• ~3300: Trapped robots on the universe's last titanium mine on Titan are expected to all be dead by now
• 4001?: The year Fry and his girlfriend would have woken up if they'd stayed frozen for another thousand years
• ~1,000,000,000,002,000: Al Gore, Fry, Deep Blue, Stephen Hawking, Nichelle Nicholls and Gary Gygax finish playing Dungeons & Dragons (not that this is canon, of course]

Conclusions

Futurama has a pretty rich timeline which is much more complete and consistent than most people would imagine. Whether the writers are aware of this and have a definite plot of future history written, or they just got lucky, is unknown, but there is only one definite contradiction in the whole series' run (look up Hermes' Olympic exploits in 2980, then in 2984), which in fact is very impressive. One can only hope that if (and when) further Futurama episodes are made, Futurama's writers have the sense to respect and work within the continuity they have created for themselves.

Original here