John Hancock

John Hancock turns up as one of Futurama's many quick, one-scene gags — a figure borrowed straight from the history books and dropped into the show's future-New-New-York absurdity with a flourish and a name that's really just a punchline waiting to land. He is in and out before you can blink.

Futurama's best throwaway jokes work because the show trusts you to catch a reference without slowing down to explain it, and Hancock is exactly that kind of bit: a name everyone half-remembers from a textbook, deployed for a laugh rather than a plot. David Herman's flat, matter-of-fact line readings elsewhere in the show are the model — deadpan delivery selling absurdity without straining for it.