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Bender's Big Score part 11:  that's unwrapped

It seems necessary to summarize the entire discussion of Bender's Big Score, the Futurama movie that has held our attention for the past several weeks; it also seems impossible.

It began at the end, since it seems most probable that the Bender who carried the code from the end of the movie to put it where it would be found originally got it elsewhere after the Scammers had been defeated.  His motivations for doing so become irrelevant, since ultimately he takes the code to the past simply because he knows he has already done so.

Our first encounter with time travel as viewers of the film introduces the Futurama approach to temporal duplicates, which involves the paradox-correcting code destroying the wrong copy, leaving the one which paradoxically cannot exist because its history was erased.  This would create a large number of infinity loops, but that the first one prevents the existence of all the others.

When Bender steals the Mona Lisa, he begins a strangely interactive collection of anomalies, since to come forward in time he must hide in a cave with all of his other selves until it is time for him to emerge.  This creates a large number of interlocking sawtooth snaps as his duplicated selves interact with each other, learning about their own futures and modifying what they have not yet done.  Ultimately he changes all of these into infinity loops by converting all the duplicate Benders into paradoxical versions.  And thus as his first trip becomes his last trip, he makes every trip possible and impossible.

The situation with Herme's head needing a body is entirely different, but even more problematic.  No theory of time can explain why the detached head still exists in the future when Bender returns with the body stolen from the past.

The chase is complicated by two infinity loops, as both Fry and Bender duplicate themselves, one of each is cryonically sent to the future, and the others continue their pursuit until Bender believes he has killed Fry, but has actually created Lars.  Lars cannot recognize himself as he does in the film, because he has not yet met himself; but were history able to reach the end he would remember on the replay having seen himself in the future.

Along the way, Bush becomes President instead of Gore, which changes the sequence of Presidential succession, erasing the original history and giving us instead the one we know, including Obama's election, probably altering the future more than any other event in the film.  The Planet Express Delivery Company is unlikely ever to have existed once this change filters through the world.

It is all impossible, at almost every turn.  But then, that's what we expected when we started this analysis.  Futurama never took anything seriously, especially not itself.

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Webmaster of Temporal Anomalies in Popular Time Travel Movies, M. Joseph Young is cited and consulted by philosophy professors, film critics, and scriptwriters. His other works include Multiverser, several other books, and many Internet articles.

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