Because “Futurama” is set 1,000 years in the future, show creators David X.
Cohen and Matt Groening had to invent a sci-fi conceit that would provide an organic reason to include celebrity cameos.
Thanks to a special fluid, human heads can be kept alive in jars more or less indefinitely.
In the very first episode, the head of Dick Clark hosted a televised New Year’s Eve special to ring in the year 3000.
Clark played himself.
Since then, multiple other celebrities have played their own severed heads, including the Beastie Boys, the cast of “Star Trek,” Al Gore, Conan O’Brien, Beck, Lucy Liu, Penn Jillette, and most recently, Bill Nye. Of course, Cohen and Groening were more creative than merely storing severed heads in jars, and multiple other notable actors have continued to appear on “Futurama” as robots, aliens, space deities, and other sci-fi creatures.
John Goodman, for instance, played the homicidal…
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