Acronym Definition
Futurama PJF: Philip J. Fry the protagonist of the animated television series
Futurama
Philip J. Fry is the protagonist of the animated television series Futurama.
Fry is voiced by Billy West.
He is usually referred to by his family name, "Fry."
Fry is a 20th century pizza delivery boy who awakes to life at the dawn of the
31st century after being cryopreserved since the first few seconds of the year
2000. According to the Volume 1 Futurama DVD, he was born on August 9, 1974 (the
day of Richard Nixon's resignation), in Brooklyn, New York City, New York. He is
25 at the time of the first episode.
Billy West, mentioning jovially that he bases Fry on himself, also jokes that he
fell in love with Katey Sagal, the voice actor of Turanga Leela, while working
on the Futurama voices.
The name "Philip" was given to Fry by Matt Groening as an homage to the then
recently murdered Phil Hartman, for whom the role of Zapp Brannigan was created.
The "J" is akin to the "J" in Bullwinkle J. Moose, and Homer J. Simpson, in
tribute to Jay Ward, creator of "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show".
Character
A great source of humor in Futurama is Fry's lack of intelligence and
unabashedly pathetic lifestyle. He lives with his best friend, Bender, rarely
thinks more than five minutes into the future, and frequently injures himself.
He enjoys watching TV shows that follow the form "the world's blankiest blank"
and singing "Walking on Sunshine" while showering, though the only lyrics he
actually knows are "I'm walking on sunshine", so he hums the rest.
Fry is childlike and unpretentious for the most part. Although he is largely
self-absorbed, he almost always does the right thing when confronted with the
consequences of his actions. He sacrifices for his friends and (usually) has a
good heart. His overall appearance contains his red hair that's styled into
having two tufts of his hair spiked up in front, and his two cowlicks on the
ball of his head, a white t-shirt covered by a red jacket (unzipped), blue
jeans, and black sneakers.
In the episode "Roswell That Ends Well", Fry travels to 1947 and becomes his own
grandfather. Much to Fry's disbelief, Enos, the man Fry thought was his
grandfather, unconsciously indicated himself to be a closeted homosexual. Fry
ended up killing Enos by accident, and, having incorrectly concluded that the
now-deceased man's girlfriend could not possibly be his grandmother, proceeded
to have sex with and impregnate her, thus becoming his own grandfather (much to
his absolute horror), as well as the father of his very own father Yancy Sr.
When reminded of this by the Nibblonians, he proudly notes that he "did do the
nasty in the pasty". Because of this "past nastification", as Nibbler puts it,
he has a genetic anomaly that causes him to lack the delta brainwave. This helps
him save the universe twice from a malicious race of disembodied brains, dubbed
the "Brainspawn" ("The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" and "The Why of Fry"), as the
Brainspawn's primary weapon, the intellect-draining "Stupefaction Ray",
interferes with the delta wave.
Fry is the deciding factor in the galactic conflict between the Nibblonians and
the evil Brainspawn. In fact, the Nibblonians were responsible for Fry being
frozen: their sages foretold that he would be needed to defeat the Brainspawn in
the 31st century, but he would naturally have died long before then, thus they
had to freeze him ("The Why of Fry"). He also Served as a Soldier in a war with
Giant Alien Bouncing Balls. Fry has also lost a considerable amount of limbs.
The first was both of his hands while feeding a T-rex. After that he had
prosthetic hands, but in the other episodes he has his real hands. The second
time he lost his right arm while refusing to fight Zoidberg, but Zoidberg
severed his arm anyway. At that moment Fry yelled obscenities at him. He had his
arm reattached, but Zoidberg reattached it on his left shoulder, only to have
his legs severed instead of the arm. The third time, Fry lost his own head in a
crash, but his head was still alive, only to have it reattached to Amy, then
reattached back to his own body again.
