Sparky

Sparky turns up as one of the many small, odd faces that populate New New York, a minor figure who exists mostly to deliver a line or a joke before vanishing back into the crowd. The show introduces him lightly, without ceremony, in keeping with its habit of treating background characters as fully formed even in passing.

The pleasure here is Maurice LaMarche himself, an actor who can drop a fully-realized voice into a single scene and make it land. Futurama trusts its bit players to be funny on their own terms, and LaMarche's craft turns even a fleeting character like Sparky into something that sounds lived-in rather than filler.