Train Captain

The Train Captain is one of Futurama's passing background figures, a minor functionary presiding over some brief ride or excursion with the flat, bureaucratic confidence of someone who has said the same announcement a thousand times. He appears, delivers his bit of business, and moves the plot or the joke along without fuss.

David Herman, one of the show's reliable utility voices, gives him the dry, unbothered cadence that makes Futurama's smallest characters land — a guy doing a job, unimpressed by the century's absurdities around him. It's a tiny role, but that deadpan is exactly the show's house style in miniature.