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Good news, everyone!

–Hubert J. Farnsworth

Hubert J. Farnsworth (born April 9, 2841), better known as Professor Farnsworth or the Professor, is the proprietor of the Planet Express delivery service. Professor Farnsworth is pushing the limits of even the 31st century at the old agе of 173.

Professor Farnsworth is one of six living relatives of Fry, together with his own clone, Cubert, as well as his only son by means of his sexual relations with Mom while he worked for her, Igner, Farnsworth has a brother named Floyd, also Farnsworth's parents are still alive. He is Fry's ×30 nephew. Though never stated, he is therefore logically the descendant of Fry's only sibling, his brother Yancy Fry, Jr. However, since it is revealed that Fry is his own, and therеfore Yancy's, grandfather due to his time-traveling exploits, Professor Farnsworth is logically in fact Fry's direct descendant via his brother/grandson Yancy. So the six include: himself, Cubert, Igner, Floyd, Velma and Ned Farnsworth.

Biography

Professor Farnsworth is a senile, deranged, and unpredictable old man who is both a maniac and a genius who was born in prison as mentioned in "Overclockwise". He has a gift and passion for the creation of Doomsday Devices and Atomic Supermen, and is a danger to himself, his employees, and the universe in general. He has put at least one parallel universe in peril with his inventions, and, for some reason, his eyes are never seen. There are only two episodes in which he has ever taken his glasses off. In the episode "Mother's Day", he is shown from the side when he does it, and Mom comments "Your eyes were always such a beautiful color of... milky white." (still not giving away the specific color of his eyes). In the Episode "Amazon Women in the Mood", he removes his glasses after Fry mistakenly states that Zoidberg is dead (though the "corpse" is only Zoidberg's empty shell) but promptly covers his eyes with his hand in order to sob.

When he was a teenager he was put in a mental institute but got out 25 years later. Professor Farnsworth formerly worked for Mom's Friendly Robot Company and taught at Mars University; he currently spends the majority of his time inventing ridiculous devices and coming up with equally ridiculous and suicidal missions for his crew members.

Abilities

Farnsworth's greatest ability is his exceptional intelligence; however, it is hampered by his senility. However he does have more unusual "abilities": Being part of Fry's bloodline, since Fry's existence is cyclical, Farnsworth himself is an anomaly in the universe. Also, ever since "The Late Philip J. Fry", Farnsworth has become an out-of-universe observer. It is unknown how this may manifest itself in the future, but logically nothing that happens as a result of time travel in the current universe can affect him, since he is not a part of this universe.

Catchphrases

Professor Farnsworth is characterized by his catch-phrase "Good news, everyone!" frequently followed by very bad news; often one of his semi-suicidal missions. Another is his exclamation of surprise, "Sweet Zombie Jesus!", which is noted to be clumsily censored on some networks. Also, though not a catchphrase in general, he often says "Wha?" when unaware of the situation, or when someone questions a statement he has just made, showing his senility. Also, he often completely contradicts himself; he told his crew they were to gather "ordinary honey. Just ordinary honey." When one of his crew asked about the mission, he suddenly turned serious and said "This is no ordinary honey!" Another catchphrase he uses is "...Wernstrom!", which he says whenever he sees Professor Wernstrom his scientific rival and "Well I am already in my pajamas....."

Age

Professor Farnsworth's amazingly advanced age manifests itself in senility and general physical decrepitude. While generally friendly, he is sometimes prone to sudden fits of bitter contempt for random things. The Professor is also known for his inclination toward exhibitionism and does not hesitate to appear naked in public, stating that, like pine trees and poodles, the "primitive notions of modesty" of the 20th century are long gone. He also mentions that, being 160-years-old, he is old enough to rent and purchase "ultra-porn". Beyond that, the professor's occasional brief verbal digressions about his own life imply a somewhat colorful sexual past, which he often concludes with a nostalgic "Ah, yes...". He also mentions in Bender's Game that people sometimes call him "The Catman" for his ability to land perfectly on his feet after falling from a high balcony.

Futurama TMLH

Professor Farnsworth in Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles, as an artificially induced 37.5 years old

Professor Farnsworth is the oldest human being living on earth (excluding those who have been cryogenically frozen or are kept alive as heads in jars) a title he acquired upon turning 160. At this age, all humans are collected by the Sunset Squad Robots and sent to live out the rest of their days in isolation aboard the gigantic Near Death Star. After his crew rescues him, Farnsworth returns to Planet Express to resume the life he originally had before being removed by the Sunset Robot Squad. After swimming in the Fountain of Aging, reports that he is "Even older! Huzzahhh!".

Although being in his 160's, in Leela's dreamworld in the episode "The Sting", the Professor became quite shocked when Fry, who was technically 1025-years-old after being frozen for a millennium, accidentally died, remarking, "This makes me the oldest living member of my family!" and burst into tears at this realization.

Relationships

Relationship with his crew

Professor Farnsworth rarely worries about the safety of the crew, viewing them as a means to an end. After remarking that he was looking for a new crew for his intergalactic space ship, he was asked "what happened to your old crew?" His response was "Oh, those poor sons of b...but that's not important! What is important is that I need a new crew!" When Fry, Bender and Leela state that they have no career chips, he produces them from a bag labeled "Contents of Space Wasp's Stomach". He quite frequently sends them on dangerous missions even when he has the foreknowledge that they will probably not make it back alive. His missions are typically those other delivery companies won't take, such as delivering subpoenas to mob-controlled worlds or casual deliveries to virus-infested planets. Even the commercial that he had produced for his company makes several remarks to this effect, including, "When other companies aren't crazy or foolhardy enough..." and "our crew is expendable, your package isn't", the former showing the crewman running through a minefield and the latter a crewman being dragged away by a giant bird. When the crew and his ship are sent off to war, he immediately tries to hire another crew. When his old crew returns, he is clearly surprised they survived, remarking, "Oh God you're alive! I mean, thank God you're alive," then remarks to the applicants, "Come back in three days. A week at the most" indicating just how low he thinks their chances of survival are. When the crew was sent to retrieve space honey they found the remains of the previous Planet Express ship buried in the hive's honey. Even his family relationship to Fry doesn't do much, if anything, to reduce his ardor for particularly difficult and deadly delivery missions. His relationship is closest to Zoidberg who he values a good long time friend although Farnsworth is a speciesist. He employed Zoidberg because Farnsworth once saved his life from a yeti and at this time, Farnsworth was infected with Yetiism, which he mistook for hypermalaria. He made Zoidberg promise to mercy kill Farnsworth so he would not die of it and therefore Zoidberg was employed by Farnsworth for the sole purpose of carrying out this task. This promise was kept a secret and many lies and cover ups were made until the rest of the crew found out the truth.

Relationship with Mom

While at MomCorp, he fell in love with the CEO, Mom. Igner was born of this relationship. Farnsworth left Mom and MomCorp when she decided to weaponize his Q. T. McWhiskers toy, an anthropomorphic cat toy that shot rainbows from its eyes.

He and Mom have had continued relations since this time. In a plot to retrieve the Universal Robot Controller from Mom's bra, the Professor brings flowers to Mom's cabin in The Bronx where their love is rekindled ending in a "whirlwind of hot, dry sex". After learning of the plot Mom subsequently dumps him.

Personality

Though knowledgeable and prodigious inventor, Professor Farnsworth is also plagued by intermittent senility. In contrast to his endearingly inept persona, and while he's generally friendly mild-mannered, he has several negative character traits. These include arrogance, spitefulness, and a general disregard towards his employees and, at times, a tendency towards speciesism, especially towards Cygnoids. Being a scientist, Farnsworth is an active defender of scientific progress and education, and is prone to be aggressive towards anyone who express esoteric or religious viewpoints that contradicts his own opinion, as evident in "The Thief of Baghead" when he angrily claimed that life-force isn't the same as an ethereal soul (though he seems to not known the difference between one another, if any), and in "A Clockwork Origin", Farnsworth claimed that anyone that believes in creaturism over evolution to be ignorant, and went as far as to leave Earth when they refused to listen and see his theories and archaeological evidences. Despite this, Farnsworth is far from being Atheist. Rather, his spiritual faith seems to change from episode to episode, but (and peharps due to it) is generally a liberal one. In "The Farnsworth Parabox", when one of his experiments goes awry and nearly killed him, he start to desperately scream for help and shouts to several deities of different religions to do so, at one time asking Satan to save him because he owes him one. In Hell Is Other Robots, Farnsworth claimed that Vodoo and Oprahism are mainstream religions and expresses interest in them. In "Möbius Dick", when he comes to the conclusion that his crew has died on their mission, he decided to pray to Isis.

Also, Farnsworth has shown tendencies for nudism in "Near-Death Wish" when the Professor yells at his parents, then proceeds to strip and run through the city naked. This is expanded on in Anthology of Interest 1 by Hermes: "Let's see, Citation for public nudity, Conspiracy to commit public nudity..."

Family Tree

Mr. Gleisner──┬──Mrs. Gleisner     Philip J. Fry──┬──Mildred
              │                                   │
           Mrs. Fry───────────┬────────────Yancy Fry, Sr.
                              │
                    ┌─────────┴─────────┐                       ┬David Farnswoh
                    │                   │                       │
              Philip J. Fry        Yancy Fry──┬──Unknown (Many generations)      
                                              │                 │
                                       Philip J. Fry II──┬──Njörd(?)
                                                         │
                                                (Many generations)
                                                         │
                                                         │
                                    
                                               Grandma Farnsworth
                                                     (possibly)

                                Velma Farnsworth─────────┬────────Ned Farnsworh
                                                         │ 
                                                ┌────────┴──────────────┐
(?)Wernstrom────┬────Mom──────┬─────────Hubert J. Farnsworth     Floyd Farnsworth
                │             │                 │               
             ┌──┴───┐       Ignar        Cubert Farnsworth
             │      │         
            Walt   Larry

Trivia

  • The character's name was inspired by real-life inventor Philo Farnsworth, who invented the cathode ray tube television.
  • Professor Farnsworth has the same blood type as Amy Wong.
  • He has a "Thug Life" tattoo on his back, based on a tattoo that rapper Tupac Shakur had during his career.
  • His middle initial, "J", is the same as several of Matt Groening's other creations, Homer J. Simpson, Bartholomew J. Simpson, and Abraham J. Simpson from The Simpsons, as well as his own distant relative, Philip J. Fry. It is currently unknown what Hubert's middle name is.
  • He religiously invokes the name of Satan on a regular basis; his counterpart in Universe 1 proclaims the Bible to be the "real good news", suggesting he decided his religion on a coin flip.
  • According to him, Satan, Zeus, Buddha, and Jesus all owe him one.
  • He has had multiple relationships with Mom, who he had left and gone back to three times.
  • He taught himself to read while he was still in diapers, at about 8-years-old.
  • He must be the oldest man on Earth, except for those who have been cryonically frozen or preserved as heads in jars. In "A Clone of My Own" it is revealed that everyone is collected at the age of 160 except him.
  • The character Professor Putricide in the popular game ;;World of Warcraft is largely based on him. Putricide says such lines as "Just an ordinary gas cloud..... but watch out, that's no ordinary gas cloud!" and "Good news everyone! I think I've developed a plague that will destroy all life on Azeroth!".
  • His favorite Christmas tradition is streaking in the New New York City streets.
  • When he was a century and a half younger, he kept a mouse's head stitched on a frog's body as a pet, before it was carried away and probably eaten by an eagle.

Gallery

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