‘Futurama’s Original Cast Was Almost Identical to ‘The Simpsons’

Matt Groening’s second most beloved animated comedy was nearly a lookalike of the OG — and he had the nerve to call Seth MacFarlane a plagiarist.

Ever since Groening emerged as the greatest animation mogul of his generation, audiences have always been able to tell just by looking at any animated comedy whether or not he was the show’s creator. From The Simpsons to Futurama to Disenchantment, Groening has always had a hard-on for drawing characters with underdeveloped chins, bulging, overlapping eyes and, if they’re a slightly lazy leading man, a perfectly round paunch of a belly. Like most great artists, Groening has a distinct style, but also like other legends, he needs to be very careful that he doesn’t repeat himself, lest some Simpsons fan should suddenly think that one of Homer’s various long-lost relatives is now a 31st century delivery boy while flipping through the channels.

As many of Groening’s animators revealed in the legendary creator’s new book, The Art of Futurama, the prototypes for Fry and the rest of the Planet Express crew were so similar to the Simpsons characters that, in the early drafts, Fry looked shockingly like Bart as a teenager. I guess hair starts to get less spiky when you hit puberty.

In the book, perennial Simpsons and Futurama animation director Rich Moore noted how, early in the planning stages for Futurama, the original art team “had trouble designing Fry. Matt (Groening) 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!” 

Moore praised his boss for the simplicity of his style, writing, “That’s the thing about Matt, it can be one little change that tips it into being original and makes everything work.”

While there’s certainly some of Bart’s boyishness in Fry, the Futurama protagonist hardly has the sense of swagger and mischief that makes Bart such a spark plug on The Simpsons. In fact, the book notes, many artists working on the new show felt that Bender was far and away the most Bart-like character on Futurama, and that notion was reflected in the preliminary sketches. “Some early drawings of Bender show him wearing Bart’s clothes — T-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes — and Mickey Mouse gloves for some reason,” Futurama creative director Bill Morrison added in the book, “And he had three antennae.”

Eventually, the creative team settled on a cast of characters who certainly had some aesthetic similarities to The Simpsons but were entirely their own in style and in personality. Now Family Guy on the other hand…