We tuned in expecting jokes and space hijinks.
What we got… was Seymour.
This wasn’t just a cartoon episode. It was a punch to the soul.
No dialogue. No manipulation. Just one dog… waiting.
Futurama showed us that animated stories could hit harder than real life.
Some of us still aren’t over it.
#JurassicBark #FuturamaFeels #SeymourForever #SignalPost
“I’ll never forget him. But he forgot me a long, long time ago.”
If it takes forever
I will wait for you
For a thousand summers
I will wait for you
This was the first time a cartoon made silence feel louder than any scream. No dialogue… just loyalty.
Curious—did this scene ruin you instantly, or was it one of those slow ache moments that hit after the episode ended?
Ruined instantly, and still gets me to this day. While they retconned it, the Seymour we see clearly never saw Fry again, so even if that timeline was erased, it still happened at one point!
Exactly. The retcon doesn’t undo the experience we had watching Seymour wait. That pain existed. That version of reality played out—and it wrecked us. Canon might shift, but memory doesn’t.
I never watched Futurama again after this one. I didn’t trust them to not randomly destroy my soul.
It’s wild that racism had to be parenthesized—as if it was just a side note. That word shaped decades of “normal” entertainment. This isn’t just nostalgia; it’s unmasking the blueprint.
No, it was just the convention of putting (nsfw) after a link to avoid getting banned, except that specific abbreviation didn’t seem like the right one.
I always refer to this as the “I need to hug my dog again” episode
I’ll die on the hill that Luck of the Fryish is sadder. One is a relationship between a human and a dog. The other is a relationship between two brothers. You really trying to say the dog is worse?
I’ll also put Game of Tones above Jurassic Bark. Fry getting to actually say goodbye to his mom and tell her how much he loved her? No contest.
Besides the fact that they totally retconned Seymore anyways and he doesn’t die alone anymore. It’s the first movie. He lives out the rest of his life with Fry when he returns back in time.
Luck of the Fryish ≥ Game of Tones > Jurassic Bark
You’re spitting pure logic and I respect the hill you chose. But there’s something primal about Seymour’s wait—it taps into the kind of loyalty we wish people had for us.
That said: “He named his son after me” in Luck of the Fryish still punches me in the soul every time.
Real question: what’s the most underrated emotional Futurama episode?
I’ll give you the wait. That scene does absolutely tug at my heart and I can appreciate that kind of loyalty and how beautiful it is from a pet.
But that’s why I see the brother, and his wait, as so much more powerful. He’s still waiting and hoping that one day his brother will pop back up too. Especially with still having Fry’s drawing.
But to be honest, I’ll also agree to disagree on that one - I think your experiences with family and pets growing up makes the episodes hit differently to different people.
Most underrated emotional episode? I’m gonna go with Lethal Inspection. Where we find out Bender is defective and was supposed to be scrapped, but a young, sympathetic Hermes overrides the machine and spares baby Bender. I feel like that one rarely gets brought up and it’s a pretty good one from the newer seasons. Definitely had a bit of a gut punch.
Lethal Inspection — yes. That Hermes override moment hits on a whole other layer. Mind if I include this in a future [Signal Echo] post?
Absolutely, have at it. This was a fun chat 😁
Also, with Lethal: I really enjoy that it adds the whole “Bender thought he was invincible but now he knows he doesn’t actually have a backup and can die at any time” thing into the mix. Though in fairness, Bender has always said that his retirement plan was to flip his on switch to off, so I dunno if death really scares him.
Luck of the Fryrish is about a human connection that becomes more meaningful after Fry disappears. Yance honors his brother’s memory and Philip becomes the first person on Mars, possibly because of the influence of Fry’s memory. It’s a story of triumph and victory, although also sad.
Game of Tones is a victorious story too.
Jurassic Bark takes a look at Fry in a low point of his life and the joy that Seymour gives him. The reward for that joy is tragedy. Seymour is left on his own, waiting for Fry. Retcon be damned, the story contained in that episode is devastating. There’s no reunion, no understanding of old relationships that enrich them, just a long slow sad end.
In regards to Jurassic Bark: I’ll give you that, absolutely. It is pretty devastating and I don’t want to deny that. Blind, trusting loyalty. It’s really beautiful and crushing that he doesn’t get closure. I’ll even give you the retcon not counting since it probably only exists as a fan service.
That said, I disagree that Fryish is 100% triumph. Yancy has missed his brother for years at this point. He still keeps around the drawing Fry did. He doesn’t have to say the name and his wife already knows. He mentions that he still thinks of his brother every day. He clearly carrys a deep weight. Naming his son after Fry was symbolically giving Fry a life Yancy thought he didn’t get. There’s a lot of pain there in my opinion.
I will absolutely give you that Game of Tones is a victory, but honestly, that one always makes me tear up. That one just feels.
I buried these feelings beneath metric tons of Star Trek memes, how dare you resurface them.
So then you don’t want me to remind you that Bender has no backup unit and only exists in the first place because young Hermes spared him? Cus that would probably crush you. Like a platform falling down a canyon.
I may be a little weird in this respect but the loss of a pet has always hit me harder than the loss of a family member. I lost my great grandmothers and my grandfather and felt much less upset than when I had to BE my dog.
I actually addressed this very point in a different comment. But basically I actually agree. I’m being dramatic with “this is my hill to die on”. My hill is probably more “all of these episodes are very emotional and not just Jurassic Bark should be mentioned every time.” I think your family and pet experiences play a lot in determining which episode hits you harder.
Human relationships can be deeper but they’re harder to conceptualize for a random viewer. Animal relationships are simpler and purer and it’s easier to fully grok for a viewer.
I’m sorry but “I’m naming you Philip J Fry, after my brother, who I miss every day” pans over to Fry’s childhood drawing that Yancy has held onto for decades isn’t that much nuance. If anything, the dog doesn’t say a word so you have to pull a lot more from your own imagination.
Yeah…don’t watch Grave of the Fireflies if you think this was bad. Futurama has drinking and other adult topics, surely a Ghibli film is safe…right?
‘the flower we saw that day’ is just as bad… only over an entire mini series.
In it’s original run in Japan it was shown together with My Neighbor Tororo, probably the happiest Ghibli movie, as a counterweight.
Happiest Ghibli Movie:
Mom’s going to die and Dad doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing half the time. A giant monster lives in the ghost tree behind your ash-haunted house.
Bonus: You may have killed your little sister when you left her in the dust crying because her toddler legs couldn’t keep up with you.
Grave of the Fireflies was emotional terrorism. I watched it once and aged ten years.
Any other “safe” animated films that emotionally ambushed you?
Up
Oh god, Up didn’t even give us a warm-up. Just “Hi, meet Ellie—now feel everything you’ve ever lost.
Never forgive Fry for not defosilizing him after he eaited.
If you watch the Comedy Central episodes, Seymour had a good long life with Fry’s time travel paradox twin before he was flash-fossilized.
Eaited” lives in my head rent-free. And yeah, Fry really said “nah, I’m good” and just walked away like Seymour wasn’t a whole monument. Defosilize my boy
thats exactly what I was thinking.
This episode did not make me want to walk on sunshine.
Although the movie where Lars takes care of Seymour kinda makes this ending a little more hollow.
Facts. That Lars twist softened the blow a little—but didn’t fully patch the trauma. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a hole in time.
I felt it was a bad choice. It cheapened the soul-crushing ending.
Facts. That Lars twist softened the blow a little—but didn’t fully patch the trauma. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a hole in time.
This one and Lelas birthday episode 🥹
Lela’s birthday episode hit like a delayed heartbreak. You think it’s a gag… then BAM—“Nobody remembered… because nobody ever had.” Futurama did emotional ambushes too well.
Bye bye Butterfree fucked me up in 1998.
Real ones know 1998 wasn’t ready for that kind of pain. Ash letting go of Butterfree with “The Time Has Come” playing? That was a core memory fracture.
my poor gf watched this with me right before work so she couldnt let the tears fall
Right in the feels every time up until you know that fry went back so he could become Lars. Fry is the paradox. He is is own grandfather.
Why did you make an almost blank post? All I see it the word Futurama, and I know there were no soul scaring episodes in that. None at all. No way.
Bold of you to post this in a Jurassic Bark world. That dog waited. He waited. You may not have felt it… but millions of us were never the same after that sidewalk fadeout.
Maybe my post didn’t quite come across as I intended. I meant that that episode was so soul scaring that I’ve sort of mentally blocked it out. I still don’t know why the writers did that to us.
That’s real. Some episodes hurt so deep they become ghosts in our memory. And then one frame brings it all back.
