Futurama (1999) - 15 questions

Question: Was it true that Futurama was on hiatus around 2002 before it was finally cancelled? If so, what is the reason for the hiatus?

Answer: The hiatus and the cancellation were for the same reason, a dispute over ownership between Matt Groening and Fox. Fox actually own the majority of the interest in the Simpsons, but their stake in Futurama is much more limited. This gives Groening more bargaining power with the show, and unfortunately Fox were unhappy with this so put the show on hiatus and then cancelled it.

Question: Whenever Amy speaks in Chinese, does she actually say anything or is it gibberish?

Answer: As the commentaries say, she's actually saying something that's relevant to what's going on.

Question: Sometime during the third season, the animators changed their alien substitute code for a more difficult one. I can't remember what it was called (Modulator 6? Something like that.) but I remember that each symbol could represent any letter depending on the letters/symbols that came before it. I still want to translate the secret messages myself, but could someone please explain to me (in layman terms) how this new code works?

Answer: Each symbol in the second alien alphabet (AA2) corresponds to a number from 1-26, so you'll end up with a series of numbers. The first number corresponds directly with an A-Z letter on another lookup table, but each subsequent letter is the corresponding number from the original numeric series subtracted from the number preceding it. The lookup tables and a tutorial on decoding AA2 is available at http://tfp.killbots.com/?p=aa_02

Question: Does anyone know the name of the episode where Leela kills a bunch of people?

Answer: You are thinking about episode 20 of series 2 – "Anthology of Interest I". She technically never kills anyone, but in the episode she ask a "What if machine" (one of the Professor's inventions) what would happen if she was more impulsive. The machine then shows the more impulsive Leela killing off the Professor to get the money from his will and thereafter killing Hermes, Bender, Scruffy, Cubert, Nibler, Amy and Zoidberg to cover it up. Finally she does something really impulsive with Fry.

Question: Does Leela have super strength? I've never seen it explicitly stated, but the are quite a few instances in which she is shown to be much stronger than the other characters, or where she'll do something that requires great strength.

Answer: No I wouldn't say she has super strength (besides the one episode where she actually does have super strength) but she is fit and adept in some form of martial arts. Besides the rest of the Planet Express crew are pretty pathetic, physically speaking.

Question: What does everyone at Planet Express do there exactly (except Fry, Lela, Bender, and Dr. Zoidberg)?

Answer: Well the Professor is the owner, so he does as he pleases, most of his time is spent inventing though. Hermes is the accountant and bureaucrat. Amy is an intern and an engineering student, although this seems to be all but forgotten in the later seasons. (The Professor does mention though that he likes having her around because they share the same blood type). Scruffy is the janitor and Cubert is a kid and presumably goes to school.

Question: Did Leela ever find out that Fry has feelings for her?

Answer: Yes Leela knew from early on that Fry had feelings for her. They were pretending to be a couple in 'A Flight To Remember' from season 1 and Fry tried to get on dates with Leela ever since. She just didn't show signs of the feelings maybe being mutual before some of the later episodes.