In a season that is positively heady with the smell of cheap cartoon crossovers, The Simpsons will not only have the encounter with Family Guy so eagerly anticipated by people who enjoy bright colors moving around, it will also have a slightly more tonally appropriate meeting with Futurama. Now Entertainment Weekly has supplied both the first look at and first details from that November 9 episode, “Simpsorama,” which will bring the characters of the canceled (again) series into Springfield and The Simpsons’ timeline. “We’re always looking for things that are compatible with us, and I thought, ‘Well, what’s more compatible?’” Simpsons showrunner Al Jean said he asked himself, this time at least.
The episode will reportedly involve a “Simpsonized” tweak of the Futurama opening credits, plenty of Futurama inside jokes and Easter eggs (including a couple that Jean just straight-up spoils for you), and they even threw in a plot:
The crossover—which features Futurama voicecast members Billy West, John DiMaggio, Katey Sagal, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr, Tress MacNeille, and Maurice LaMarche—will unspool a complex, Terminator-esque story that involves Bart blowing his nose on a sandwich that he places in a time capsule. When that mixes with Milhouse’s rabbit’s foot and some radioactive ooze, it creates a global catastrophe in the future, prompting Bender to travel back in time to kill Bart and prevent this mega-mess.
As you can see from the preview image above, Bender’s mission seems to include killing (or at least maiming) anyone else who gets in his way, all to correct a horribly mangled timeline for which the Simpsons are so carelessly responsible. Still, anything to undo the terrible events of “That ’90s Show.”