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.

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.