Religion in Futurama - Godfellas

Godfellas

The episode "Godfellas" explores several religious themes in a more earnest and thought-provoking way than any other episode, and without explicitly referencing or parodying any particular religion. Bender is accidentally cast adrift in space and unwittingly becomes a god figure to a race of tiny people (Shrimpkins) living on an asteroid that impacts his body. Bender attempts to answer their prayers, but ends up harming the Shrimpkins. Meanwhile the Shrimpkins who have migrated to Bender's backside, out of his sight, grow frustrated that their prayers go entirely unanswered. Eventually the two factions of Shrimpkins wipe one another out in a miniature nuclear war.

After Bender's unsuccessful attempt at godhood, he encounters a god-like entity in space. Bender first wonders if the entity is God, because of its awesome power or a computer because it thinks in binary. The entity responds "Possible, I do feel compassion towards all living things" and "Possible, I am user-friendly" respectively, adding "My good chum" to the end both times. Bender eventually theorizes that the entity may have, in fact, been the remains of a satellite that collided with God, to which the entity replies "Probable". The conversation between them touches on the ideas of predestination, prayer, and the nature of salvation, in what Mark Pinsky referred to as a theological turn to the episode which may cause the viewer to need "to be reminded that this is a cartoon and not a divinity school class". By the end of the conversation, Bender's questions still have not been fully answered, and he is left wanting more from the voice than it has given him. The character/entity returned, albeit briefly, in the first of the direct-to-DVD installments, Bender's Big Score.

The episode also sees Fry turning to religion to help locate Bender. Seeking guidance, he visits the First Amalgamated Church. When this fails to help him, Fry visits the "Monastery of Teshuvah" to use the radio telescope of a sect of monks who are attempting to find God in the universe (Teshuvah is a Hebrew word meaning "repentance" and "answer"). This subplot takes religion much more lightly, referring to the monks as a "crazy sect" and suggesting that prayer is usually unreliable.

The episode also makes reference to The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke.

The book Toons That Teach, a text used by youth groups to teach teenagers about spirituality, recommends the episode "Godfellas" in a lesson teaching about "Faith, God's Will, Image of God".