Interesting video I saw on YouTube which definitively shows whether Nibbler’s shadow was in the original airing of the pilot. Skip to 23:50 for the answer.
Answer: yes. It was there.
Meanwhile, Disenchantment seemed like it was written episode by episode. I guess it all tied up in the end, but I didn’t care about 90+ percent of the arcs, so the whole series felt half-baked to me. I enjoyed it, but something felt off, by miles.
Disenchantment’s plot felt like a D&D campaign where the DM winged it every week.
There’s a reason why most D&D campaigns aren’t adapted into TV shows
I’m glad you mentioned it. I had a whole rant about how we cheer for Fry, because he’s stupid and means well, and we despise Elfo, because he’s an underhanded little prick.
We stopped watching it when Netflix pulled their no families bullshit
Did it all tie up? The whole steamland plotline got dropped completely by the end and that was basically half the show’s worth of plot.
I am not sure, I was just guessing it did. The last episode just had me going, “oh, OK. Fair enough.” and didn’t really provoke any more curiosity out of me. I think between the general fractured feel of it all and duration between seasons… Should have named it Disengagement.
I kid, sort of.
Yeah, “tied up” just means it had an ending. I’m not sure I really even understood what really happened in that show. It felt like a new arc started before the previous was halfway through and then different subtle parts of previous arcs sorta mattered for the current, but not in any meaningful way.
The only constant was that Magdar would show up at the last and first episodes of the season with a new random evil plan.
The whole thing was such a mess.
Yeah, it was really a disappointment. The humor never quite landed so I was primarily there to see what they would do with the story. While I know it ended earlier than they planned, what/how they wrapped it up showed there wasn’t too much there to begin with.
Pretty much, you had the Magdar plot twist at the end of season 1 but everything afterwards became: Magdar is doing something bad I guess.
Tangent! ;)
Very different show runners.
IIRC Nibbler’s shadow was in the storyboard for the pilot. Shown on the DVD extras
Mystery solved? I see comments mentioning Netflix so maybe it’s a generational thing but that’s been common knowledge to futurama fans for decades.
tl;dw?
- In season 4, an episode shows a character going back in time to the events that occurred during the pilot episode. Even though the character was not in the pilot episode, this S4 episode implies that they were there in the background, off-camera, the entire time, and playing a pivotal role in the events that kicked off the series.
- If you watch a certain scene in the actual pilot episode, you can briefly see that character’s shadow in the background, implying that the creators had actually planned these time travel shenanigans from the beginning.
- Many fans claim that the shadow was not actually in the pilot when it was first aired; that it was only added in reruns and home releases after that S4 episode was written. Other fans claim to have a home-taped recording of the very original broadcast and that they do see the shadow.
- The person that made this video came across a social media post where a user showed off a pre-release promotional tape of the pilot episode. They contacted the user and purchased the tape for an undisclosed amount.
- After a drawn out sequence detailing their multi-camera setup used to record the tape playing on their TV (in an attempt to prove nothing is being faked), we see that the shadow does indeed appear in the scene just as it does in all reruns, etc.
tl;dr
This person shows the shadow on a supposed pre-release promotional tape of the episode, so the answer is probably a yes.
Tl;dr?
Nibbler
Tap for spoiler
The shadow is there
Instead of a half-hour video, it could have been a single word.
Strong agree
it could have been, but then it’d just be some guy claiming it was there without presenting the evidence, and it wouldn’t have settled the debate at all.
People prefer succinct bullshit over the truth. That’s why the world is the way it is today.
Aliens!
Or the number of times I’ve heard that Chinese drones are flying over New Jersey recently is baffling. One guy was telling me they were probably trying to scope out property to buy up.
Much cheaper to get a realtor or check the satellite views on Google Maps/Earth if you ask me.
They could at least have led with it, but then I guess it wouldn’t be clickbait.
Yes.
I thought this was well known? Or an I just a nerd for checking myself many years ago?
The issue was that the only way to know for sure was to watch a recording of the original airing, the episode could have been modified in reruns.
They were released almost 4 years apart. There were plenty of copies available everywhere to reference back when this first happened. I think this is more of the show finding a new audience who now doesn’t have access to those recordings. When this originally happened streaming services weren’t even really a defacto thing like they are today.
Edit: The original episode is over 25 years old. The first season would have been released on DVD 3 years before the Nibbler reveal. But there were also VHS recordings and DivX/XviD copies available online.
Season 1 was released on DVD and VHS in Jan of 2002, season 4 started airing in Feb of 2002.
They did a minor retcon later. The scene is shown again and as well as the original shadow (And nibbler’s eye in the bin), you see Fry’s shadow too, since he time travels back there in the Why of Fry. Unfortunately I can’t remember which episode this is in at the minute
Jurassic Bark.
And for reference, the pilot,
Nice! Clearly I blocked it out because of the trauma of the ending
