Character
Harold Zoid
Harold Zoid in Futurama (1999), played by Maurice LaMarche.
Harold Zoid is a impossibly ancient Hollywood director, a relic from the twentieth century revived long past his natural span, still puttering around movie sets with an ancient wristwatch metabolism. He speaks in slow, wheezing bursts, prone to keeling over mid-sentence, only to be casually revived by whoever's nearby, as if this is simply how his days go now.
The joke is structural: Zoid's near-death is a running gag rather than a plot point, and Maurice LaMarche plays him with a papery, distracted grandeur that never winks at the audience. He's funniest for how unbothered everyone around him is by his constant expiring and reviving, treating his fragility as mundane office furniture.
Harold Zoid is the eccentric, over-the-hill celebrity uncle of Planet Express employee John A. Zoidberg. Zoid enjoyed a successful career as an actor, as well as later (and less succеssfully) as a director in the comedy and drama movie businesses respectively. Like his nephew, Zoid was born on the Planet Decapod 10.
Played by
Appears in
Futurama1999