Who-Ask Machine

A background gadget glimpsed in passing on Futurama, the Who-Ask Machine is exactly what its sign promises: a device that answers a question nobody posed. It sits in its corner of the frame, doing its small deadpan job, indifferent to whether anyone is listening or cares.

It works because it barely tries to — a throwaway sight gag elevated by Tress MacNeille's flat, matter-of-fact delivery, which treats the absurd premise as the most ordinary thing in the world. That commitment to a joke this small is very much the show's sense of humor in miniature.