At the end of “Anthology of Interest I”, Professor Farnsworth is seen
sitting alone in front of the What-If machine as he says, “So that’s
what would have happened if I had invented the Fing-Longer. A man can
dream though, a man can dream.”
The suggestion here, as I see it, is that the entire Futurama storyline
is contained totally within the confines of the What-If machine from the
point of view of Professor Hubert Farnsworth. The key point being that
Farnsworth is in the room alone with no one else around at the end of
the episode.
Think about it. As you all know, the What-If machine shows you what the
world would be like if you pose it a what-if scenario. During the
preceding ****tions of this episode, Bender, Leela and Fry pose their
questions to the device and in each instance the professor uses a
Fing-Longer to activate it. However, the end clearly shows him sitting
by himself contemplating what would have happened if he had invented the
Fing-Longer! The contraption has shown him a scenario that included all
of the Planet Express crew and their questions to the machine. The
Professor views alternate scenarios involving these characters but in
the end the characters were never there.
The Professor’s invention shows tales that are “out of series canon” so
the ending seemingly proves my point that what Farnsworth has just
viewed is not “series reality”. The only thing that is real is the
solitary figure of Hubert Farnsworth in an empty room. Fry, Leela and
all the rest are only creations of the apparatus.
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