Madeline Albright's Head

A preserved-head cameo from the far future, floating in her jar at the White House or wherever the gag requires her. She turns up as a talking head among talking heads, one more former dignitary bobbing in fluid, treated with the same casual reverence as any other relic of twentieth-century politics.

Futurama's running joke of severed celebrity heads works because it never overexplains the premise, and Albright's cameo lands purely on the absurd dignity of a stateswoman continuing her business in a jar. Tress MacNeille's flat, deadpan line readings sell the joke by refusing to acknowledge how strange it is.