Cold opening

A cold opening is an opening to an episode before its title sequence. As such, they can often be used to establish the premise for the episode in question or just serve as a joke.

Cold openings were mostly popular during season 1, where only "I, Roommate" and "Hell Is Other Robots" did not have cold openings.

However, already by season 2, they disappeared, and "Brannigan, Begin Again" was the last episode to have a cold opening during the original run. Some episodes of season 2 have Sponsors as cold openings.

It should not be until Bender's Big Score before the concept returned. The three other films also had its own small set of cold openings, but no where as true as Bender's Big Score. The Beast with a Billion Backs simply had a "previously on Futurama" feature, while Bender's Game did not have any and Into the Wild Green Yonder's was an introduction of the Chi, albeit small and without dialogue.

The secund run premiere Rebirth included a three minute cold opening before the opening sequence, including both a recap from Into the Wild Green Yonder and a cliffhanger of the aftermath.

Production
During the first season, cold openings was primarily used as jokes, and writers would pitch for some of these opening jokes for an episode. However, they soon realised there was no real need for them, and was disbanded.

But the original premise for the usage of cold openings did not come from experience, The Simpsons had never had cold openings, and as such, there had to be a more concrete explanation. The purpose originally grew from "Space Pilot 3000", which is the only episode to have a significant cold opening, and particularly an opening that could not have worked as decent as a regular one.

David X. Cohen, however, felt that viewers should a sudden wakeup call, that they were watching Futurama, and as such, the show had to start with the opening sequence and the cold opening had to go.

Appearances
These are episodes with cold opening
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