Futurama’s Fry Looked Too Much Like One Simpsons Character In Early Designs

Even if you didn’t know who created “Futurama” or “The Simpsons,” you could probably tell from the animation style that there was plenty of creative overlap between them. For whatever reason, Matt Groening’s shows love to design their characters with distinct overbites and give the male characters round stomachs. The main difference is that the Simpsons have schoolbus-yellow skin, whereas the human “Futurama” characters are much closer to people’s real-life skin tones.

Originally, the “Futurama” cast looked even more like “The Simpsons” — particularly its main character, Fry. As animation director Rich Moore explained in the new book, “The Art of Futurama,” the show “had trouble designing Fry. Matt pointed out the problem was he looks just like Bart with teenage hair. So Matt gave him a second bump on his nose. Now it’s original. Now it’s Fry! That’s the thing about Matt, it can be one little change that tips it into being original and makes everything work.”

Of course, the Fry we know today still sort of gives off Bart vibes if you look closely, but the differences are clear. Not only does Fry have a distinct nose, but he also has a clear hairline and a smaller head-to-body ratio. (Check out this Tumblr post from 2016 for a fun compare-and-contrast between the “Simpsons” and “Futurama” characters.) The result is that “Futurama” feels different enough from “The Simpsons” to not feel like a knock-off.

Still, “Futurama” and “The Simpsons” are close enough in style that when they did a crossover episode in 2014, the different character designs blended together pretty seamlessly. Yellow skin aside, it’s easy for viewers’ eyes to accept the Planet Express crew and the Simpson family within the same frame together. Meanwhile, the Simpson family just sort of looked off during their crossover with “Family Guy” from the same year, in a subtle yet unsettling way. It was only in a later “Family Guy” scene, where Peter and Homer interact at the “Bob’s Burger” restaurant, that the colliding casts didn’t look awkward. 

The Bart/Fry similarities check out, because Fry is very much the Bart of the Planet Express crew. Lazy, childlike, with the occasional bouts of earnestness, there’s no doubt that Fry and Bart would get along great. Some fans may think that Fry’s more like the Homer of the gang, because they’re both the main characters, but it’s worth remembering that Bart basically was the main character for the first two seasons of “The Simpsons.” He was the break-out star who got all the attention; it wasn’t until season 3 that the series shifted focus to Homer as the main star. 

Then again, you can make the argument that Bender is the real Bart of the gang, especially since his character was also supposed to have more Bart-like qualities in his design. As creative director Bill Morrison explained in the book, “Some early drawings of Bender show him wearing Bart’s clothes — T-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes — and Mickey Mouse gloves for some reason. And he had three antennae.” Although, looking at the drawing on the right below, I’m getting far less Bart vibes and far more Database vibes. (Matt Groening famously hated Database, a nerdy kid in Bart’s class, so I can see why this look for Bender changed.)

Overall, I’ll agree with Groening himself and say Bender is the obvious Homer of the group; he’s the drunken oaf who’s constantly consumed by some new passion he just discovered ten minutes ago. Whereas Bart and Fry are usually constricted from fully indulging in their worst impulses — Bart because he’s a kid and Fry because he’s a regular human in a dangerous futuristic world — Homer and Bender are typically free to drink and cause as much chaos as they want. Bender may be a robot from the future and Homer might be a suburban dad from the present, but when it comes to stirring up trouble for their family and friends to clean up, they’re both one and the same.