Futurama: Unused ideas

According to Box Incorporated, these were in the commentaries from Season 7B DVD.

Quote from: Box Incorporated on 12-13-2013 01:18

Listening to them now. Will edit this post with any interesting trivia I hear starting now.

Forty Percent Leadbelly

*When Bender was walking across the railroad tracks, it was supposed to have gone on 3x the length, with trains keep missing Bender.
*Bender switched himself with the duplicate while they were attached by octopus’s.
*The selling out song was voice recorded with a big base note ringing the entire time, shaking everything in the room (cans, pens).

2-D Blacktop

*The start of the episode was actually supposed to have had a lot of long scenes for a delivery to Ms. Aster’s Astroid to deliver the chandelier. This was to demonstrate why the ship was dangerous and the problems with it.
*The ship crew was based on the one’s in the Fast and Furious movies.
*Eric Rogers thought of the Minx backstory joke….get him guys. Wasn’t that funny to the writers until he called it unspoken verbal abuse.
*There was an idea for the 2D plot before this episode where the crew goes diving for treasure and find a 2nd dimention by going into a bathosphere, but the writers couldn’t think of how to make it work quite right.

T.: The Terrestrial

*There was going to be more statues cut to such as the Holocaust Deniers Memorial.
*Lrrr was supposed to have been interested in other modern TV shows like Hot in Cleveland and Downtown Abbey. He was also looking forward to the series premiere of Allen Gregory (why was that not put into the episode!?)
*The sacred weed thing was supposed to have been expanded upon, including Omicron Persei 8 being OP8.
*The scene with the crew sneaking onto Omicron Persei 8 was supposed to be longer, with Hermes dressing up like an Omicronian and having his dreadlocks being horns.
*Fry was supposed to get addicted to actual candy, but after about 10 minutes, it became turds, then it was all downhill from there.
*Matt shows his dislike for poop jokes here, refusing to have the poop be brown here, or in the sewers.
*Besides the you are my hero line at the end, all of the voice recording stuff from Bender was actually Billy West’s original recording being altered around with.
*There was more Ndnd lines that were cut out.
*There was going to be a long backstory with Lrrr as a young boy who also had a human pet, Neil Armstrong VIII. He kept him until he was 50, where he got all cranky and horny, so his father forced him to kill and eat him.
*There was going to be a song at the end called ‘’Turn Out Your Butt Light’’….yeah. By Butt Turd Overload/Neil Diamond Phillip.

Fry and Leela’s Big Fling

*The zoo plot was thought of for years, some thoughts being to have it as a normal human zoo, another thought having it being a way for aliens to study human seduction, with them throwing Zapp Brannigan in the zoo with Fry and Leela to see the reaction.
*Zapp was also thought of instead to ruin Fry and Leela’s vacation instead of Shawn, even having Shawn being very Zapp esque when first written for the role.
*Matt’s been pushing for a lot of nudity this Season.
*David X. Cohen played alto sax in middle school (loose use on the word ‘’played’’).
*There was going to be more of traveling around the city on Simian 7, like going on the Swing Ways.

The Inhuman Torch

*Was originally just a concept by Dan Vebber about Bender starting fires and being a hero stopping them, but then mixed with plot about the crew going to the sun.
*In the scene where Bender gets his medal, there was supposed to have been an orphanerium of baby models burning.
*The writers got very interested in vampires at the end of Season 7 with this and Meanwhile. Also, Dan Vebber jinxed this being the final Season, thanks Dan.

Saturday Morning Fun Pit

*Matt Groening came up with Regretto.
*Was made as episode 19 because at the time, they were running out of ideas (half laugh from everyone in the commentary).
*At the time, it wasn’t decided yet whether to air it as the Season finale or not.
*The “reuse in every episode” frame joke is wrong because that’s where Fry’s nephew lives, but the gang goes to a different place in every episode.
*Discussed whether or not to have Hermes as Fred or just regular Fred because they have Frank Welker.
*Wrap around with Nixon wasn’t in first draft. At first it was going to be the FCC, with their president Norton Anthology.
*Purpleberry Pond originally had a “In the News” parody with Morbo.
*A School House Rock parody was starting to be written, but wasn’t finished because the Simpsons did it.
*Because David wanted to have some sort of script to do a table read with the next, and Patric didn’t have anything for the 3rd Act, he wrote something in exactly 45 minutes, which the writers immediately tossed out the next day.
*G.I. Zapp was written in just one day just having the writer’s room make jokes and commentary.
*G.I. Zapp had no table read.

Calculon 2.0

*Bottle based on I Dream of Genie. Robes based on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
*There was a sequence before the play where Calculon had a series of acting adjusters in his chest that would change his acting abilities, such as a Shatner level. The sliders were also going to be in the play, with Calculon going back and forth between 12 voices and acting personalities.
*Already said before, but Calculons play was originally written by Mike Rowe for The Butterjunk Effect for the start of the episode during Fry, Leela, Amy, and Kif’s date. After 8-9 good months floating around, it was eventually reused in this episode.
*There was originally a rule that robots couldn’t blink on the show, but it does happen with Calculon for his acting purposes or if robots try like winking.
*It makes sense that the director and actors didn’t recognize Calculon because there are other robots that are the same model as him.
*Originally, it was going to be Fry and Bender who say bad things about Calculon to make him sad enough to act, but was changed due to how much they loved and supported Calculon in previous scenes.
*Did follow the rules of Ghost in the Machines because technically, it was Calculon who killed himself.
*David suggests a plot where Calculon haunts the theater.
*The Walk of Fame was put in NNY to make it easier instead of having them fly back to Hollywood.

Assie Come Home

*The original draft had the first act being much longer, including Fry and Leela going through a gang initiation and killing members of the gang one by one.
*Matt admits Simpsons episodes first acts used to introduce the main story, but are now completely just throwaway.
*Originally they did show a scene with Bender getting bot jacked by a hand in the window.
*Bender originally was only going to be a mouthpiece after getting bot jacked, with his eyes sold to Ms. Aster for an ocularium, including Betty Davis eyes.
*There was a cut out joke with the Porno Dealing Monster yelling at Leela, saying she’s standing on a carpet made of scrotums.
*Matt changed the 50 uses of the word ass in the episode with synonyms for it.
*There’s a brick shoot on the design of the circuitry of Benders rear end.
*Tarquin is a play on words of Quin from Jaws and a French word.
*There was a scene cut out with the trio and Tarquin talking on the ship.
*There was a scene cut out where they try to find the location of the ship wreck and it’s found on a map on Fry’s hand that was a wart or something.
*Ken Keeler came up with the title of the episode.
*Ken also was the one who put in the Bible passage said by Tarquin, remembering it out of thin air.

Leela and the Genestalk

*David said fucking…or bucking, I really couldn’t hear it that well.
*A shout out to Australian fans by Cohen himself.
*The western bar scene was wasn’t written until the end, with the writers focusing on a way to make Leela’s hand get sticky.
*Fairy tale stuff was written after getting the genetic engineering plot made.
*The bean selling guy originally had pointier shoes and skinnier legs (jeggings).
*The window where the beans are thrown through was originally about 50 ft. higher in the buildings normal design, but they just went ahead and moved it down.
*The porcupine was gonna be microwaved and filled with syringes.
*The scene where Fry and Bender find out where Leela is was gonna be longer, with Leela dropping pebbles out of her cage spelling out that she needs help.

Game of Tones

*Tone uses devils interval.
*Inspired by Close Encounters and Inception.
*Fry’s neighborhood inspired by where Eric Kaplan grew up in his childhood.
*Monkey Fracas Jr. a Ken Keeler joke. (from Space Pilot 3000).
*There was a version of this episode where the aliens on the ship were not the Nibblonians, and the aliens lost a treasure room with walls made of ruby’s, which turns out to be the elevator in the cryogenics lab building.

Murder on the Planet Express

*David’s bugged by Farnsworth’s line about seeing someone about ground beef since cows are extinct in the future.
*The hitchhiker eating Dan McMasters from behind is inspired by the movie Deep Blue Sea where Samuel Jackson makes a big inspirational speech and is suddenly eaten from behind.
*Things like the panic room and some hallways were added to the PE ship for this episode, while things like the game room (right outside the panic room), were revamped from their original appearances.
*Originally, the mouse that Hermes and Zoidberg find in the ships air vents was Nibbler, who made a speech and said some opinions on the whole thing, but was cut out for time.

Stench and Stenchibility

*There was a cut out opening where the crew was watching a parody of the honey badger video with Hypnotoad, with Randy making a comment saying “He don’t care”, but their Internet bandwidth gets used by Zoidbergs video date, making them get mad at him.
*After David said the Zoidberg storyline might not cover enough time for a full episode, he suggests what Bender is doing while this is happening, followed by Ken Keeler blurting out tap dancing.
*Originally was gonna have each of the tap dancers introduce themselves and say why they’re there, but was just cut to a pan.
Tanya’s name based on ice skater Tanya Harding.
*Scenes like the montage of Zoidberg giving nice smelling things to Mary Ann and the tap dancing at the end with Tanya and Bender were cut out, but were put back in for the final edition of the episode.
*Randy was originally drawn as an old man back when first used as the angry man in the mob, but later changed when John did that sassy voice.
*Dr. Cahill accidently drawn first with her flat chested Neutopia design.
*If this is the end of the series, then this is a happy ending for Zoidberg.

Meanwhile

*Kens written thoughts about the finale (was in Kentucky at the time of recording). Leela should’ve never slept with Zapp. Fry should’ve had the meeting with Leela at sunrise. In Jurrasic Bark, Bender should’ve spent more time swimming in the lava. He misses all of the voice actors and writers. And he can’t wait to be here again in another few years.
*The time button came from an idea from Matt Groening about a time machine that could go back 10 seconds.
*A first draft thought for the episode was for Fry to ask Leela on a date 50 times, failing at the first 49 times, but succeeding at the 50th time, rewinding with the time button for each time.
*Ken wrote a 10 page explanation of the button in the script, with the Professor explaining why the time shelter doesn’t move back after the buttons pressed.
*Ken wanted the meeting with Fry and Leela to be at sunrise mainly because it’s called the vampire state building and to keep them alive.
*David disagreed with this, saying it’d be weird for the building to open 5 in the morning, a sunset would be a more romantic setting, and the lighting would be difficult with the sun just rising, so forced Ken to change it to sunset.
*In an earlier version of the script, instead of running with the time shelter for 10 seconds at a time, the crew would dig up a tunnel made of time mud under the shelter 10 seconds a time, taking them weeks to make it to where Leela and Fry are.
*In an animatic, after Fry splats on the ground, Leela is covered with Fry’s blood. Also, a lot more blood comes out of her hand when her hand is cut off by the clam.
*There wasn’t a table read for the last act of Meanwhile.
*Suggested shot for Fry and Leela’s honeymoon was they walking through a tunnel of snow.
*They can walk on water, but when they drink it, it moves like normal water.

Writers Room of Tommorow

*Their office is located by the writing room for shows like New Girl, Homeland, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
*Plots for episodes on cards:
*Bender’s Plot to Steal God’s Treasure. “Bender, you killed God.” “He was coming right at me, you saw it!”
*Delivery to New Year Eve’s Planet Where a Year is Just As Long As “Auld Lang Syne”.
*Mobius Strip Club. Neverending Nudity. Infinite Drink Minimum.
*Has 2 screens, 1 for looking at finished animation, other looking at the script for it.
*Matt Groening sometimes signs his name as Mike Groening to fans who annoy him.