Anthology of Interest I

Act I: Terror at 500 Feet
The Professor demonstrates his latest invention, the Fing-Longer by turning on the What-If Machine. Bender wants to ask it a question, What if he was 500 feet tall?

Hundreds of bending units complete work on Bender, who blasts of and heads to Earth. Fry is lonely and has no friends. Bender lands near Fry and they become friends. While catching a frisbee, Bender kills the heads of Hanson and thousands of their fans so the DOOP retaliate. They shoot Fry with electricity when he tries to negotiate so Bender goes on a rampage and destroys builings of New New York. The Professor enlarges Zoidberg so that he can fight Bender. However Zoidberg also destroys New New York and gets in a fight with Bender. Bender attempts to boil Zoidberg but Zoidberg cuts his feet off and he is impaled on the Empire State Building, slowly killing him. Fry admonishes everyone for the tragedy of Bender, who laments that he was unable to fulfill his dream of killing all humans before dying.

Act II: Dial L for Leela
Leela gets to ask a question, what if she was more impulsive?

Leela buys some boots with "a crazy green stripe". The Professor makes Leela his sole heir because she's "so un-impulsive". She kills the Professor by kicking him into his pit of man eating anteaters. Zoidberg begins investigating. Hermes finds the video will which shows Leela killing the Professor, so she kills him too. Bender catches her disposing of the body, so he tries to extort her. She kills Bender using a microwave. Amy insults her, then dies. The remaining staff gather in the Accusing Parlour. Cubert, Scruffy and Nibbler meet their demise as they are about to reveal the killer. Zoidberg finally works it out, only because he gets a letter from Bender he wrote before he dies, but Fry leaves before he can say and Leela kills Zoidberg. The next day Fry works it out, ("Hey Leela, whatcha eating?" Leela: "Lobster.") Leela stops him from talking by having sex with him.

Act III: The Un-Freeze of a Lifetime
Fry's turn to ask a question, what if he never came to the future?

Fry makes his fateful delivery to I. C. Wiener at Applied Cryogenics. Instead of falling in the freezer, he hits his head. This rips the fabric of space-time, through which we see some of the Planet Express staff. The next day Stephen Hawking drops by Panucci's Pizza. Fry asks him about the hole in nothing, with monsters in it. After work, the Vice Presidential Action Rangers abduct Fry. The rangers inform him that they have to fix the time-space continuum or the universe will be destroyed. Fry tells his story and it is decided that when he hit his head he should have died, the attempt at murder fails to fix it and the hole reappears, they try to make him enter the tube but instead he breaks the glass. The universe collapses on itself and Fry and the Vice Presidential Action Rangers are floating around outside the universe, they start a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

The Professor throws away the What-If Machine because he didn't think the stories were realistic, but declares the Fing-Longer a success.

It is revealed that this whole thing is being watched on the What-If Machine by the Professor, who wanted to know what life would be like if he'd invented the Fing-Longer

Trivia

 * Gary Gygax's appearance alongside Al Gore is something of an inside joke since Gore's wife, Tipper Gore, hates Dungeons & Dragons and has been publicly critical of it.
 * Al Gore received some criticism for his appearance because parts of the show "conflicted starkly with the anti-violence, anti-smoking and family-values themes of Gore's campaign". Gore's spokesperson responded by stating that most viewers would recognize that the show was meant to be entertaining and that it would be taken in the right spirit.
 * When rebroadcast during the 2000 Presidential Election fiasco, the tagline at the start of the episode said, "Starring a guy who is kind-of, sort-of our next president, maybe!".
 * Nichelle Nichols and Al Gore, both of whom would make later appearances in and  respectively
 * Giant Bender's shell seems to be made of bent girders.
 * As mentioned on the DVD commentary, the Anthology of Interest episodes came from a desire to tell stories that couldn't be told in normal continuity, similar to Marvel's What If? comics.
 * When Zoidberg is big, he attacks the Chase Manhattan Bank Building for denying his credit card application and the Apollo Theater for booing him offstage on open mike night. These are both references to when he is up on stage talking about the The Professor and the crowd doesn't like him he says it was the Apollo Theater all over again, and  when he says that they denied his application.
 * The first of two Anthologies, the Anthology of Interest episodes (and to a lesser extent the comics) are equivalent to Treehouse of Horror on The Simpsons.
 * This episode is Scruffy's first speaking appearance.
 * Despite his assertions in that Fry's 20th century sense of modesty is outdated, The Professor still seems to have accumulated tickets for public nudity (although this may be a result of the What-If-Machine's imagination).
 * The Professer calls the final story in this episode absurd, citing "Stephen Hawking in a pizzeria" as especially bad. Interestingly, in an episode of The Simpsons (Don't Fear the Roofer), Stephen Hawking buys a Little Ceasar's pizzeria.
 * This episode is one of four featured in the Monster Robot Maniac Fun Collection, reflecting its popularity with both fans and the creators of Futurama.
 * This episode was named #13 on IGN's list of Top 25 Futurama Episodes.

Quotes

 * Zoidberg: Friends, help! A guinea pig tricked me!
 * Farnsworth: Ohhh! You've killed me! You've killed me! Leela: Oh, god. What have I done? Farnsworth: I just told you. You've killed me!
 * Hermes: What are you hacking off? Is it my torso? It is! My precious torso! Zoidberg: Hermes, quiet! I'm deducing things.
 * Farnsworth: That question was less stupid. Though you asked it in a profoundly stupid way


 * Al Gore: If we don't go back there and make the event happen, the entire universe will be destroyed. And as an environmentalist, I'm against that.
 * Al Gore: You fool! You foolish fool!

Inside References

 * The Applied Cryogenics scene is missing a certain shadow that was seen in.
 * The DOOP attempts to destroy Bender with electricity, this is a known drug for robots as seen in.
 * The anteater spitting the glasses back onto the Professor's skull is a reference to the fact we never see his eyes.

Outside References

 * When Giant Bender first meets Fry, he says that he needs a big cereal. This is a catchphrase from Honeycomb cereal commercials, one of a few references made in the series.
 * The Earth forces that try to stop Bender consist of tanks, foot soldiers and strange double-decker fighter planes, this is a reference to the original King Kong movie.
 * Bender destroying the city and fighting Giant Zoidberg is a reference to Gojira and Kingu Kongu tai Gojira.
 * Mr Panucci says the only 'real' monsters are Son of Kong, Dracula and Blacula
 * When giant Bender flies to Earth the song Iron Man by Black Sabbath is briefly heard.

Fast Forward

 * The events of explain the timeline issues which cause the universe to be destroyed.
 * The Professor later invents the Fing-Longer in.
 * A sequel to this episode is created,.
 * Sadly, Gary Gygax passed away eight years after this episode aired. The film  was dedicated to his memory.

Goofs

 * Leela and Bender are amongst the rest of the Planet Express Crew when the rip in space-time forms. This shouldn't be, because Fry was responsible for the two joining Planet Express in the first place. However, this could just be another inconsistency of the What-If Machine, just like how Nibbler's shadow is missing.
 * This same mistake was made in the first part of this episode, where Leela works for Planet Express, and Fry isn't assigned a job. This shouldn't be, because Leela would have assigned Fry the job of a Delivery Boy since Bender wasn't there to help Fry escape from her and the police, and because of this, Leela wouldn't have lost her job for making friends with Fry, forcing them to go to Fry's only living relative (Farnsworth), thus making them members of Planet Express, but this may also be an inconsistency of the What-If Machine.
 * In Act 2, after Cubert and then Scruffy have been impaled on the point of a sword during lights out, Nibbler is the third character impaled on the sword, but somehow winds up between Cubert and Scruffy on the sword.

Characters
(In alphabetical order)
 * Debut: Al Gore
 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Cubert Farnsworth
 * Debut: Deep Blue
 * Fry
 * Debut: Gary Gygax
 * Hermes
 * Glab
 * Kif Kroker
 * Leela
 * Lou
 * Debut: Narrator
 * Nibbler
 * Debut: Nichelle Nichols
 * Mr. Panucci
 * Prof. Farnsworth
 * Scruffy
 * Debut: Stephen Hawking
 * Terry
 * Zapp Brannigan
 * Zoidberg

Episode Credits

 * Writers
 * Eric Rogers (Act 1)
 * Ken Keeler (Act 2)
 * David X. Cohen (Act 3)
 * Directors
 * Chris Loudon
 * Rich Moore
 * Voice Actors
 * Billy West
 * Katey Sagal
 * John DiMaggio
 * Tress MacNeille
 * Maurice LaMarche
 * Lauren Tom
 * Phil LaMarr
 * David Herman
 * Kath Soucie
 * Frank Welker
 * DVD Commentary
 * Matt Groening
 * David X. Cohen
 * Rich Moore
 * Ken Keeler
 * John DiMaggio
 * Billy West
 * Special Guests
 * Al Gore
 * Gary Gygax
 * Nichelle Nichols
 * Stephen Hawking