Year 10,000 Man

Glimpsed for a few seconds at a time, the Year 10,000 Man is a cyborg fixture of a ruined, half-mechanical future Earth, offering flat, matter-of-fact commentary whenever the Planet Express ship passes through his era. He wants nothing from the plot — he is simply there, monotone and unbothered, marking time.

He is a running joke built entirely on economy: a few seconds of screen time, a deadpan line, and gone. David Herman plays him with total sincerity, no mugging, which is exactly why the brevity lands — the show trusts the audience to remember him and laugh at the recognition rather than the joke itself.