Awakening Machine

The Awakening Machine is exactly what its name promises: a piece of futuristic hardware built to rouse someone from sleep, stasis, or suspended animation. It appears exactly long enough to do its one job, delivering its function in a flat, matter-of-fact mechanical voice before the plot moves on without it.

It's a classic Futurama background gag — a machine with an absurdly literal name doing exactly what it says on the tin, no more and no less. Billy West, who voices half the show's robots and gadgets, gives it just enough deadpan personality to be funny for its one line before vanishing, which is the whole joke.