In Loving Memory of Science
Born 624 BC • Died 2026 AD
The Professor attempts to create lab-grown meat so Fry can compete in the world hot dog eating contest.
Tropes:
- Anthropomorphic Food: Through the cloned hot dogs containing traces of his DNA, Brocky J is resurrected as a man made of hot dogs who competes in the contest.
- Anti-Climax: As Bender begins cutting into the glass case containing the hot dog Brocky J choked to death on, a guard approaches… who opens the case himself.Guard: Just take it. It’s disgusting. I hate looking at that thing.
- Art Shift: An ad for "Farn Dogs" in done in the style of old hot dog ads from the 1950s-1960s.
- Artificial Meat: The Professor switches to lab-grown meat after Fry is unable to bear letting the cloned cows get slaughtered for meat.
- Artistic License – History: The movie at the Coney Island hot dog museum claims frankfurters were invented in Hamburg while hamburgers were invented in Frankfurt. In reality, it is generally believed to be the other way around, although their exact origins are still in debated. Given that this is Futurama, this might be justified.
- Balloon Belly: Played for drama as the very skinny hotdog clone of Brocky J gets a distended belly during the hotdog eating contest and suffers a stomachache so painful he requests Fry eat him to end his pain.
- Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: After learning about slaughter, Fry has all the cows released so they would be safe. But as soon as they go outside, we hear sounds of cars crashing into something and the cows mooing.Randy: [offscreen] Somebody call a cow ambulance!
- The Bus Came Back: Tonya, an important character from “Stench and Stenchibility”, returns in this episode as a nonspeaking character who competes in the hot dog eating contest. In it however, she gets disqualified after she cuts open H.G Blob’s stomach with a tonfa after he takes the lead.
- Call-Back: This episode is a follow-up to two different throwaway gags: Fry having gone to Coney Island Community College in "Mars University", and Amy offhandedly mentioning cows having gone extinct in "A Fishful of Dollars".
- Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Parodied. After talking to the non-protestors about the hotdog eating contest, Fry is suddenly wearing a red tracksuit. Hermes asks if he just changed in the street, to which Fry replies he did.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Tonya cheats in the hot dog eating contest by smuggling a police baton and using it to cut open H.G Blob’s stomach to remove his big lead. While this causes H.G to be taken out of the competition, this also leads to Tonya’s disqualification from the contest as she is immediately dragged away by Cubert in a hot dog suit when Don Cunningham calls for security to take her away.
- Chubby Chaser: Fry puts on 15 pounds during his training for the hot dog eating contest, and Leela admits she is attracted to his new dad-bod.
- Disgusting Vegetarian Food: Subverted. With the extinction of cattle, all beef products including hot dogs have been replaced with substitutes made with plant matter. They look and taste like the original thing, with the only problem is that the coefficient to friction couldn't be replicated, causing Fry to choke on one as he tried to swallow it whole. They're also so filling that they put an end to hot dog-eating contests because the participants can only eat up to six or seven.
- Eating Contest: The plot involves Fry trying to win a hot dog-eating contest due to having lost to Brocky J back in 1999. But first, he and the crew need to bring back hot dog-eating contests by bringing back beef, as the veggie-dogs that replaced them were too filling and hard to swallow whole.
- Fake Shemp: Tonya returns from "Stench and Stenchibility", but because Tara Strong was unavailable to reprise her role, her few vocal effects are done by series regular Lauren Tom.
- Flipping the Bird: Tonya gives a blurred double deuce, which the crowd somehow finds adorable.
- Funny Background Event: At the start of Act II, the gravity pump the crew delivered to Coney Island is seen floating away past the Ferris wheel. Later at the start of Act IV, it is seen crashed to the ground when the Planet Express ship lands on top of it.
- Genetic Memory: Subverted. Brocky J's clone has the memories of the original despite being created just yesterday, something that even Fry notes is impossible. Brocky J explains he got them from an audiobook of his autobiography.
- Given Name Reveal: The recurring background fat guy is given the name "Slim Gluttonstein".
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: When the crew tries robbing the partly-eaten hot dog from the museum, a security guard practically just gives it to them, having gotten sick of looking at the meat. Bender tells him he's taking the fun out of it, so he just half-heartedly says, "Stop, thief. You'll never get away with it".
- Handwave: Fry points out that the clone of Brocky J shouldn’t have the same personality and memories as the original, as it was effectively just created yesterday as a blank slate. Brocky J reveals he read his autobiography on the way to the contest. Fry then points out he shouldn’t know how to read, only for Brocky J to reveal it's an audiobook. The question of how the clone learned to speak and understand English is left unsaid, though.
- Ironic Death: Brocky J died from eating an undercooked hot dog, which is still preserved at the Coney Island hot dog museum.
- Ironic Name: At the Coney Island hot dog museum, the crew watches a movie explaining how hotdogs got invented in Hamburg, while hamburgers were invented in Frankfurt. Meanwhile, the origins of Vienna sausages remain a mystery.
- Lame Comeback: Fry gives one just before the present day hot dog eating contest starts.Hot Dog!Brocky J: (..) I'm ready to kick your ass a second time.
Fry: No one's kicking anyone's ass! Wait, I mean, I am-you're not. Can I start over?
Don Cunningham: No, we're behind schedule. - Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Hermes notes that he already hates Brocky J based on his wraparound sunglasses, while Fry calls him "the villain of this flashback".
- Mosquito Miscreants: The Professor attempts to clone cows by extracting DNA from mosquitos encased in amber, but instead ends up cloning swarms of mosquitos which attack the crew.Farnsworth: Jeff Goldblum made it look so easy as in the movie!
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: One of the contestants in the hot dog eating contest is named "Joey Butternut
". However, unlike his namesake, he hates hot dogs and gives up after a single bite. - No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: When Bender tries to steal the half-eaten hot dog from the museum, the guard opens the cage and just lets him take it. Bender then insists that he puts in some effort in resisting.
- Now You Tell Me?: After Fry can't bear to have the newly cloned cows killed to make beef and releases them into the streets, the professor says he could've just cloned the meat without cloning the entire cow after he realizes what they were cloning cows for.
- One-Word Title: "Beef".
- Parental Neglect: Mrs. Fry voices her preference for Brocky J when taking her son to a competitive eating competition both are taking place in.
- Piranha Problem: While looking for amber in the Amazon, Fry sticks his arm into the river, only to get piranhas biting onto it.
- Played Ball in College: Fry mentions that he took up competitive eating at Coney Island Community College and got so far as to finish in second place in the Hot Dog Eating Contest, losing only by one hot dog. He further elaborates that after he dropped out of school, he was training for the 2000 edition of the contest before he ended up cryogenically frozen.
- Saw It in a Movie Once: Scientists discovering fossilized mosquitoes was done because of how it was done in Jurassic Park.
- Second Place Is for Losers: Fry lost the 1999 hot dog-eating contest to Brocky J, who called him a loser for coming in second.
- Series Continuity Error: Apparently, cows weren't among the extinct species brought back to life by the Encyclopod, as the Planet Express Crew managed to clone cows from Brocky J's last hotdog, elevating them from total extinction to functionally extinctnote .
- Shout-Out:
- The crew's first attempt in resurrecting cows involves extracting their DNA from mosquitos preserved in amber Jurassic Park style. The original 1993 film even gets name-dropped by the Professor.
- Upon seeing all the cloned mosquitoes, Hattie randomly wanders into Planet Express asking, "Where's the Beef?"
- When the cows are successfully cloned, Bender declares, "We have the meats!"
- The Farn Dogs commercial features kid versions of the Planet Express crew in the style of the "Oscar Mayer Wiener" commercial singing a parody of the Armour Hot Dogs jingle. The Farn Dogs logo is also a parody of Oscar Mayer's.
- Shown Their Work: The brief gag where Zoidberg worries he gave malaria to a mosquito that bit him. In real life, mosquitos spread malaria by drinking blood from the person who has the disease caused by Plasmodium parasites.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Takeru Kobayashi XXXXIII spontaneously combusts during the contest.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Of course Dr. Carny would order his gravity pump for his relativity seminar, and not to rig all the games. And the community college would run the midway to subsidize the endowment, and not for sheer greed. Why? What would make you think that?
- Take That!:
- The Couch Gag is a swipe at how online misinformation has led to the growing distrust of science.
- The extinction of cattle led to acres of farmland in Brazil getting replaced by acres of rainforest. This is clearly a reference to cattle-farming being the primary reason for deforestation of the Amazon, resulting in climate change.
- Brocky J's autobiography was co-written with Tony Schwartz, the "ghost writer" behind The Art of the Deal.
- Vengeance Denied: Fry was unable to beat Brocky J in a rematch due to being frozen the next year… and Brocky J being dead, since a thousand years have passed.