13 Smart Futurama Jokes You Need a PhD to Understand

With a writers room containing three PhDs, seven master's degrees, and over 50 cumulative years at Harvard, it's no surprise that there are some smart jokes on Futurama. In fact, some are smarter than we are! Thankfully, over the show's 14-year run, it never failed to remain accessible.         

One of the great things about Futurama is that it works on so many levels. Whether you're a fan of complex mathematical theorems and references, or you just want to watch Bender drink and steal things, there's always something to enjoy.    

But for the really esoteric stuff, it definitely helps if you have a doctorate in physics or mathematics. Not to mention a lightning fast pause button! This list will help explain those jokes, and save you some serious student loan debt, so keep reading to see some of Futurama's smartest jokes. 

The movie theater the Planet Express crew frequents features an odd symbol. Pronounced aleph-null, it is the representation of the smallest infinite cardinal number, meaning the theater has a theoretically infinite number of screens. 

That’s a LOT packed in to a two second sight gag. 

After Zoidberg breaks the Professor’s model ship (classic Zoidberg), he tries to fix it with “Strong Force Krazy Glue."

Strong force is one of the four basic forces in the universe (the others being weak force, gravity, and electromagnetism), and as the name implies, it’s the strongest. It holds together subatomic particles at the nuclei.  

That sounds like something too powerful for almost anybody, let alone Zoidberg.   

Colleen’s shirt features a math equation that parodies the famous "I Love NY" campaign.  It basically translates to “for all X, I love X”.  Or “I love everything/everyone."

Very appropriate given the plot line featured what amounts to a planet-spanning orgy in "The Beast with a Billion Backs," and Colleen is a polyamorous character who loves everyone.     

In several episodes of Futurama, Bender and the crew visit Studio 1^2 2^1 3^3.  This adds up to 54, a reference to the famous Studio 54.  

Seems like a great place to get down (provided you can do exponential math).

The opening title card of "Prisoner of Benda" reads, “What happens in Cygnus X-1 stays in Cygnus X-1."  An obvious reference to “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," the joke here is that Cygnus X-1 is a black hole. So even light that gets to close will, in fact, never leave. And presumably any and all gambling.   

Ken Keeler invented a real mathematical theorem in order to explain the body switching featured in "The Prisoner of Benda." Keeler, in addition to writing for Futurama, holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics. Apparently, he included the joke to help popularize mathematics among young fans of the show.   

Officials use an electron microscope to determine the winner of a horse race in "The Luck of the Fryish." The officials declare the race a "quantum finish," and Professor Farnsworth complains, “no fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!” This refers to the observer effect, a phenomenon in physics that observing quantum particles can change their position. Which means all Futurama episodes might be different if they were played in an empty room. Food for thought.   

Fry and the copbot named URL capture Erwin Schrodinger, the famous physicist, in "Law and Oracle." On the front seat of his car is a box, which Schrödinger says contains, “a cat, some poison, and a Caesium atom." When asked if the cat is alive or dead, Schrödinger replies, “it’s in a superposition of both states until you open the box and collapse the wave function." 

This is a reference to Schrodinger’s Cat, the eponymous thought experiment from the famous physicist.

The inscription on the side of this mysterious crypt might appear to be a date, but it's actually an equation in Roman numerals.  So IIXI – (XXIII * LXXXIX) is 211 – (23 * 89), which equals 1. 

If we rearrange the equation, we get 211 – 1 = 2047.  This is a Mersenne Prime, in which a prime number is reached through 2p – 1 where p is any prime number.  The mathematical joke here is that 2047 isn’t prime, it’s the smallest number described by 2p – 1 that is not a prime number.  How could we have missed that one?

A six-pack of beer labeled “St. Pauli Exclusion Principle Girl” appears in a liquor store during the episode "The Route of All Evil."  This combines the famous St. Pauli Girl beer brand with the Pauli Exclusion Principle which states that two electrons cannot have the same four quantum numbers. It's nice to see that craft beer survives in the future.