Gerald Ford's Head

In the year 3000, history's dead are kept alive as heads in jars, and Gerald Ford's is one of them, installed as President of Earth. He speaks in genial, folksy non-sequiturs, radiating harmless authority while presiding over a government that clearly isn't paying him much attention.

The joke is the gap between the office and the object: a bodiless jar of a famously unremarkable president running the planet. Maurice LaMarche plays him with warm, oblivious sincerity, never winking at the absurdity, which is exactly what makes Futurama's background-gag universe feel so fully, deadpan alive.