The Futurama Video Game Almost Gave The Cult Classic Show A Tragic Ending

As with many other TV adaptations for the video game market, Futurama was more of a love letter to the fans than a well-constructed game. The forgettable platforming mechanics were good enough to justify the experience, but the real draw was the chance to see a whole new adventure starring Fry, Bender, and Leela. Released after the show’s official cancellation on Fox, Futurama brought back the characters for a surprisingly high-stakes adventure.

What makes the game’s story stand out from other adaptations of cartoons for video games like The Simpsons Game or South Park: The Stick of Truth is the way it actually offers a possible final story for the characters — and not one that necessarily ends well for the heroes. In fact, given the show’s conclusion while the game was in development, Futurama almost ensured that the cult classic’s final adventure ended tragically for the heroes.

How Futurama Got A Video Game

The Futurama video game was a memorable addition to the cult classic sci-fi comedy that, if taken as the canon ending of the show, could have given the franchise a surprisingly bleak finale. The 3D platformer was released for the PS2 and Xbox in 2003 — a potential GameCube version was considered, but the lower sales of the Nintendo console led to it being canceled. While the somewhat standard platforming gameplay was largely forgettable, the game benefited from the involvement of the Futurama team. Series co-creator MattGroening served as Executive Game Developer on the project, and his fellow creator David X. Cohen directed many of the show’s voice actors (Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, and David Herman) in the title.

Futurama screenwriter J. Stewart Burns was brought in to pen the script, and the show’s composer Christopher Tyng constructed the game’s score. Although the game went into development during the initial run of the sci-fi comedy, it wouldn’t be released until after the series’ cancellation. While the forgettable gameplay wasn’t anything special, the plot and presentation felt right at home with the rest of the show, especially with how it took a standard sci-fi concept and played it for dark comedy.

What Happened In Futurama’s “Lost Episode”

Taken together, the game’s cutscenes amounted to an entire episode of the show. The plot follows Professor Farnsworth, owner of Planet Express, selling the company to his rival Mom. It turns out this was the key to giving Mom 50% controlling interest in Earth, turning her into the ruler of the planet. The game follows Fry, Bender, Leela, and Dr. Zoidberg as they attempt to escape Mom and then go through time to reverse her actions. To explain the game’s often lethal challenges, players were introduced to Professor’ Farnsworth’s new invention, the Re-animator — a device that allows people to be quickly resurrected if they die.

While characters could still be dispatched while making their way across a mix of new and familiar locations, they would then be restored by the Re-animator. When their efforts to escape Mom are complicated, and they’re briefly stranded on the sun, the crew meets the Professor’s old mentor — Adoy — and discovers that he has invented a time machine. Using the device, the crew is able to go back in time to stop Farnsworth from selling the company — albeit at the cost of their lives, as the Re-animator was destroyed in the process. However, in a final gag, Farnsworth is still convinced by Mom to sell the company, revealing that the events of the game were set in an endless time-loop.

This Could Have Been Futurama’s Final Adventure

Despite being an Emmy-winning show and a quick fan-favorite, ratings for Futurama suffered during the show’s initial run on Fox. This led to the series being cancelled in 2003 at the conclusion of the fourth season. Because the game’s story and characters were so consistent with the source material, many fans at the time took the game’s plot to be an unofficial series finale — and a surprisingly tragic one, at that. The plot ends with the heroes of the show caught in a time-loop, either accepting the galactic rule of the show’s most persistent villain or trying to stop it in a cycle that always ends in their deaths.

It was an appropriately sci-fi-inspired conclusion to the show, but also one that could have written off the characters in a surprisingly brutal way. Luckily, Futurama found a second life on cable and was revived for a series of direct-to-video movies — as well as two subsequent revivals, first with Comedy Central and then Hulu. Footage from the game and the cut-scenes were collected for the home-release of Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs, allowing fans to see the “lost episode’ in its entirety. It’s a good thing the show came back, as otherwise this surprisingly bleak ending would have been the final word on Futurama.