Philip J. Fry, commonly known mononymously by his surname Fry, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the animated series Futurama. He is voiced by Billy West using a version of his own voice as he sounded when he was 25. He is a delivery boy from the 20th century who becomes cryogenically frozen and reawakens in the 30th century to become a delivery boy there with an intergalactic delivery company run by his 30th great-grandnephew, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. He is the best friend and roommate of Bender and the boyfriend and later fiancé of Leela.
Character overview Fry was born on August 14, 1974 in New York City.Leela gives Fry's age in the first-season episode "My Three Suns". He is a pizza delivery boy who, during the first few seconds of 2000, falls into a cryogenic tank while delivering a pizza to Applied Cryogenics. He remains frozen until the last day of 2999. He then meets the one-eyed cryogenics counselor Leela, as well as the cigar-smoking, alcoholic, kleptomaniac robot Bender. Together, they are employed by Fry's distant nephew, the senile and demented old scientist Professor Farnsworth, as the crew of his delivery company Planet Express.
Fry's parents are Yancy Fry Sr., a strict Republican who believes in conspiracy theories, and Mrs. Fry (née Gleisner), an avid New York Mets fan. It was later revealed that Fry's family on his father's side is from New Mexico. Fry had an older brother named Yancy; a dog named Seymour; and an ex-girlfriend named Michelle Jenkins (who dumps him in the first episode, "Space Pilot 3000", just before he is frozen). Fry had a lifelong sibling rivalry with his older brother Yancy, due to Fry's perception that Yancy steals everything from him and vice versa; in "The Luck of the Fryrish", however, it is revealed his brother loved him dearly, and later named his son after him.
After dropping out of Coney Island Community College, Fry got a job as a delivery boy at Panucci's Pizza. Depictions of Fry's family in early episodes showed them as extremely dysfunctional, with an inattentive mother and borderline-abusive father. Later seasons, however, depicted them as much closer and, while still dysfunctional, more loving and attentive, with Fry's father treating him harshly to ensure he grew up tough.
Personality and abilities Fry is characterized as lazy, gullible, and none-too-bright, but also innocent, playful and kind-hearted. Fry regards the robot Bender as his closest friend, despite the latter's mean-spirited, selfish nature and constant abuse. He also has strong feelings for Leela, has difficulty properly articulating his emotions to her. Throughout the early seasons of the show, Leela is shown to have feelings for Fry that she is reluctant to act on due to his immaturity. It isn't until the movie Into the Wild Green Yonder that she admits to loving him back. At the end of that film, they are seen sharing a kiss as they enter a wormhole, and subsequently begin dating.
Despite his below-average intelligence, Fry has a soft and tender heart, frequently going the extra mile to help his friends, even if he is oblivious to their problems. Fry has a strong sense of justice and is far from afraid of standing up for himself and his friends and family. He has shown remarkable skill playing video games, (even mastering the 31st-century's version on the Internet), and in "Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV" is seen successfully playing a game despite not looking at the screen. This skill carries over to using Planet Express Ship's laser gun.
Owing to these elements of his personality, Fry also exhibits remarkable bravery and self-sacrifice on occasion and has even displayed flashes of intuition. He has even proved to be a competent fighter in "Law and Oracle" and "Fun on a Bun", the latter episode showing that Fry is skilled enough to hold his own against Leela in direct physical combat. He has also survived a heart attack intentionally caused by Bender.
In the episode "The Why of Fry", Leela's seemingly oblivious pet Nibbler reveals himself as the reason for Fry's freezing. Due to a time-travel incident in "Roswell That Ends Well", Fry became his own grandfather, but this genetic defect also means that Fry lacks the Delta brainwave that enables conscious thought, his mind instead consisting of an apparently random assortment of other waves that function as a working mind (Leela compared it to a dress made out of carpet remnants). As a result of this defect, Fry can withstand the intellect-draining onslaught of the evil Brainspawn and is immune to the Dark One's mind-reading in Into the Wild Green Yonder as well as the mind-controlling power of the Hypnotoad.
Due to this quirk, Nibbler's race, the Nibblonians, dub him "The Mighty One". Through prediction (on the eve of 1999, as the Nibblonians lack the ability to travel through time), they guessed that Fry would be the one to save the world from the evil Brainspawn. Because his natural lifespan would not extend to the right millennium, however, Nibbler is sent to make the aforementioned delivery call to push an unsuspecting Fry into the cryogenic tube, to re-emerge December 31, 2999. When Fry learned of this, he briefly allowed the Brainspawn to send him back in time to stop Nibbler from sending him to the future, but after confirming that Nibbler hadn't come back in time and was acting only to protect the future, Fry chose to let his past self fall into the tube to preserve the timeline.
In several episodes, he feels nostalgic for the 20th century and attempts to convince his coworkers of the greatness of the century.
Love life
Leela Leela is Fry's main love interest and later wife. His love for her is a major plotline throughout the series. Fry first begins to show a serious interest in her from the second season onwards, although she constantly turns him down for dates due to his immaturity, although she says that she loves his boyish charm. Leela initially sees Fry as a friend and nothing more, but deeper affection for him appears occasionally, such as on the numerous occasions when he risks his life for hers ("Love and Rocket", "The Sting", "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences").
Fry's feelings for Leela are openly displayed throughout the series. In "The Sting", Fry throws himself in front of a baby Queen Bee to protect Leela, resulting in the bee's stinger completely penetrating his torso. In "Love and Rocket", upon noticing that Leela's oxygen tank was running on "critical", he attaches her oxygen tube to his tank, giving her his oxygen and almost asphyxiating himself. In "Parasites Lost", Fry becomes infected with symbiotic "worms" which enhance his muscles and intelligence, allowing him to attract Leela's romantic attention. However, fearing that Leela was attracted to him only for his worms, he rids himself of them in a failed bid to begin a genuine relationship. In "Time Keeps on Slippin'", Fry moves the stars to write a love note to Leela, but the message is blown up before she can read it. In the final episode of the initial run, "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings", Fry trades hands with the Robot Devil in order to compose an opera about Leela in which they fall in love. When Fry returns the Robot Devil's hands to prevent him from forcing Leela to marry him, the opera deteriorates, causing the audience to leave. Fry sadly walks off the stage. Leela is the only one who remains behind, asking Fry not to stop because she wants to hear how it ends. He picks up his holophonor and composes a crude ending in which the stage-Fry and stage-Leela share a single kiss.
In the film Futurama: Bender's Big Score (later divided into three episodes), Leela falls in love with a seemingly perfect man, Lars, and they soon become engaged. However, Lars leaves Leela on her wedding day explaining later that as a time paradox he is doomed, and so he dumps her.Through this, he then reveals that he is in fact the time paradox duplicate of Fry, who had undergone physical changes due to an explosion and become more mature through 12 years of age and experience.
At the end of the film Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder (also later divided into three episodes), Leela openly admits to loving Fry, and they commence an openly romantic relationship from the episode "Rebirth" onwards. In "The Prisoner of Benda" they have "sex", albeit with their minds in different bodies.
The on-again, off-again nature of their relationship causes Leela to leave Planet Express and Fry in "Overclockwise", however by the end of the episode, Leela returns to Planet Express and seemingly reunites with Fry. Bender reveals to both Fry and Leela their "ultimate fate" that he learned while he was overclocked. The audience is never shown the contents, but through their facial expressions, it is clear that while the journey for them may be bumpy, Fry and Leela will ultimately end up happy.
In later episodes, such as "The Butterjunk Effect" and "Fun on a Bun", Fry and Leela are shown to be in a relationship, though the events of the series precipitate frequent arguments and breakups. These issues are usually resolved within the episode, leaving Fry and Leela still together at the end.
During the season finale "Meanwhile", Fry decides that it is time for him to propose to Leela. Wanting the moment of his proposal to last longer, he steals Professor Farnsworth's time machine remote that turns back time every 10 seconds. When Leela is late, he thinks she has rejected him and attempts suicide by jumping off the building; he sees her arriving just in time, however, and presses the reset button over and over again to keep from hitting the ground. He accidentally breaks the remote and freezes time, leaving himself and Leela as the only unfrozen beings in the universe. Leela accepts Fry's proposal, and they have a long, happy unofficial "marriage". After spending decades traveling the world, they return to the spot where Fry was planning to propose. As they toast to their life together, the Professor shows up and repairs the time machine but informs them it will reset their lives to the moment before he invented the machine, leaving them with no memory of the life they spent together. Fry asks Leela if she wants to go around again with him, and she replies that she does.
The first part of the eighth season, picking up ten years after time was frozen, shows a young-again Fry and Leela continuing their relationship.
Michelle Jenkins Michelle Jenkins (voiced by Kath Soucie in the first appearance, Sarah Silverman in the second appearance) is Fry's on-and-off ex-girlfriend from the 20th century. Shortly before Fry is frozen, she dumps him for a man named Constantine (called Charles in "The Cryonic Woman"), whom she later marries. They eventually split up, and she decides to freeze herself to try again in the distant future. She wakes up in 3002, meets Fry again, and restarts her relationship with him. However, she fails to fit into the 31st-century life to which Fry has become so accustomed, and so asks him to freeze himself with her for another thousand years. This plan fails, as does the rekindled relationship, so Fry leaves her. She later is shown in a limousine with the recently unfrozen Pauly Shore. In the episode "Proposition Infinity", she is again shown with Pauly Shore, and the implication is that they are now married.
Amy Kroker (née Wong) During a trip on the luxury starliner Titanic, Amy Wong passes Fry off as her boyfriend to avoid being set up by her parents with an unattractive potential husband. Unfortunately, Leela was also passing Fry off as her fiancé to ward off the attentions of Zapp Brannigan. Potential embarrassment is averted by catastrophic damage to the ship, and Amy wins the battle of the bogus boyfriends.