Futurama Actors You May Not Know Passed Away

Matt Groening and David X. Cohen's animated sci-fi sitcom "Futurama" has come back from the dead three times now. Originally running on Fox from 1999 to 2003, it returned as a series of four direct-to-DVD movies from 2007 to 2009, then had two seasons on Comedy Central from 2010-2013, and came back once again in 2023 with new episodes on Hulu. Fans might debate the relative quality of each incarnation of the show, but many aspects of it have stayed consistent over the past 25 years. This includes the exceptional voice cast, with the lead actors all sticking with the show throughout its strange lifespan.

While all the main "Futurama" actors are still alive and working on the Hulu episodes, a number of guest actors who've appeared in the series have sadly passed away. Some of these guest stars played original characters, while many others played themselves — typically preserved a thousand years into the future as heads in jars. A number of these guests loved working on "Futurama" so much that they returned to the show multiple times. We might not have head-preserving jars yet in our universe, but revisiting old episodes of "Futurama" can help preserve the memory of these luminaries of science, sports, music, comedy, and acting who are no longer with us.

Artis Leon Ivey Jr., better known by his stage name Coolio, had the most frequently recurring role of any "Futurama" guest star on this list. The rapper, best known for his hit song "Gangsta's Paradise," was the voice of Kwanzaabot, one of three December holiday representatives in the series alongside Robot Santa and the Chanukah Zombie. First introduced in the Season 3 episode "A Tale of Two Santas," Kwanzaa-bot helped save Earth in "Bender's Big Score" and had a segment in Season 6's "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular."

Coolio died on September 28, 2022, due to suffering cardiac arrest at a friend's house. He was only 59 years old at the time of his death. An autopsy later revealed that his heart attack was caused by an accidental overdose of fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine. 

Coolio recorded one more guest appearance for the Hulu revival of "Futurama" before his death. The episode will be dedicated to his memory. Producer David X. Cohen told TMZ, "Coolio was one of my favorite guests. He was always totally upbeat and genuinely enjoyed coming in to record as his character Kwanzaa-bot."

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Bea Arthur was an icon of both theater and television. On stage, she won a Tony for playing Vera Charles in the 1966 musical "Mame," a role she reprised for the 1974 film adaptation. On the small screen, her "All in the Family" character Maude Findlay was instantly popular enough to get her own spinoff series, and playing Dorothy Zbornak on "The Golden Girls" further cemented her legacy as one of the all-time comedic acting greats.

In the "Futurama" Season 3 episode "Amazon Women in the Mood," Arthur was the voice of the "Femputer," an artificial intelligence that rules over the Amazons and sentences Fry, Kiff, and Zapp to "death by snu-snu." Bender discovers that the "Femputer" is actually a fembot pretending to be a femputer, who forged this anti-male society after escaping a world ruled by a misogynist manbot pretending to be a manputer.

On April 25, 2009, Arthur died from lung cancer at the age of 86. The lights of Broadway went dark in her honor three days after her death. In her will, Arthur bequeathed $300,000 to the Ali Forney Center, which offers housing and other services to homeless LGBTQ+ youth in New York City. The Center's Bea Arthur Residence officially opened in 2015.

Comedian Jan Hooks was one of the repertory cast members of "Saturday Night Live" from 1986 through 1991. Already connected to Matt Groening's Fox cartoons as the original voice of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon's wife Manjula on "The Simpsons," she guest-starred on "Futurama" as the fembot Angleyne in the Season 3 episode "Bendless Love." Angleyne is the ex-wife of Bender's goateed doppelganger, Flexo. After Bender meets Angleyne doing scab work during a strike, he impersonates Flexo to try to figure out her true feelings — only for his ridiculous plot to end up reigniting her love for her ex.

Though Hooks continued to take infrequent acting work up until her death in 2014, it became harder for her due to health problems. While she survived leukemia in 2009, a throat tumor in 2014 proved unresponsive to chemotherapy. Given the choice between a total laryngectomy and hospice care, she chose the latter, dying at the age of 57 on October 9, 2014. "The Simpsons" and "SNL" both paid tribute to her in the week following her death.

The 2008 "Futurama" movie "The Beast With a Billion Backs" was one of the final acting roles for Brittany Murphy, who previously starred in such films as "Clueless," "Girl, Interrupted," "8 Mile," and "Sin City," as well as the animated series "King of the Hill." In "The Beast With a Billion Backs," she voiced Colleen O'Hallahan, a polyamorous police officer who dates Fry before ultimately becoming the one true love of the interdimensional tentacle monster Yivo.

The circumstances of Murphy's death by cardiac arrest on December 20, 2009, remain a subject of controversy to this day. The coroner's autopsy report said that her death was the result of a combination of pneumonia, iron deficiency, and drug intoxication, although both her mother Sharon Murphy and her husband Simon Monjack denied that she used drugs. Monjack died under the same circumstances in the same house on May 23, 2010. Sharon came to believe both deaths were due to toxic mold in the building. Brittany Murphy's father, Angelo Bertolotti, claimed that his daughter was deliberately poisoned with heavy metals, which Sharon denied. The controversy was covered in the HBO Max docuseries "What Happened, Brittany Murphy?", which got negative reviews from critics, many of whom found it exploitative.

Depending on your age, you probably knew Estelle Harris best as either George Costanza's mother (also named Estelle) on "Seinfeld" or as the voice of Mrs. Potato Head in the "Toy Story" movies. In the "Futurama" Season 7 episode "Near-Death Wish," she played Velma Farnsworth, the 210-year-old mother of Professor Farnsworth. Velma and her husband Ned (voiced by "Futurama" regular David Herman) live in the virtual reality matrix on the space retirement home known as the Near-Death Star. When Fry reawakens Velma and Ned on a visit, the Professor is not happy about it, but the Farnsworths are eventually able to reconcile their differences.

Harris lived a long and happy life, dying of natural causes on April 2, 2022, just weeks before what would have been her 94th birthday. Writing about her death on Twitter, George Costanza actor Jason Alexander described his "tv mama" as "one of my favorite people," and said, "The joy of playing with her and relishing her glorious laughter was a treat. I adore you, Estelle. Love to your family. Serenity now and always."

The honor of being the first of many guest stars in "Futurama" went to none other than Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy. The "Star Trek" actor, director, and writer was the first 20th-century celebrity that Fry met as a head in a jar in the show's pilot episode, "Space Pilot 3000." Nimoy's head was later granted a full body by an evil alien Trekkie in the Season 4 episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before," which included the full main cast of the original "Star Trek," with the exception of James Doohan and the already-deceased DeForest Kelley.

Nimoy was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a form of lung disease linked to smoking, in January 2014. The actor had quit smoking 30 years earlier, and spent his final year urging others to quit. He went into a coma on February 25, 2015, and died of COPD complications two days later, at the age of 83. Loving tributes poured out from his "Star Trek" co-stars — "I loved him like a brother," said William Shatner (via HuffPost) — and the many people inspired by his work, ranging from astronaut Buzz Aldrin to President Barack Obama.

Like her "Star Trek" co-star Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, whose role as Uhura broke major ground for Black women on television, made two guest appearances on "Futurama." One of these was alongside Nimoy in the aforementioned "Star Trek" parody episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before." The other was in "The Un-Freeze of a Lifetime" segment of Season 2's "Anthology of Interest I," where she was part of Al Gore's team of "Vice Presidential Action Rangers" dedicated to protecting the space-time continuum.

Following a stroke in 2015 and a diagnosis of dementia in 2018, Nichols retired from acting and went on one last tour of the fan convention circuit. Her living conditions in her final years were the subject of controversy, with multiple legal battles fought over her conservatorship. She was 89 years old when she died of heart failure on July 30, 2022. After a lifetime of inspiring generations of astronauts both through her acting and her volunteer work with NASA, Nichols' ashes are set to be sent into outer space alongside those of fellow "Star Trek" actress Majel Barrett-Roddenberry and effects artist Douglas Trumbull.

Renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking was a huge fan of Matt Groening's cartoons, calling "The Simpsons" "the best thing on American television" on BBC's "The Culture Show" (via YouTube). He played himself in five episodes of "The Simpsons," and in two episodes of "Futurama," plus a movie and video game.

The first of his "Futurama" appearances was as part of the Vice Presidential Action Rangers in "Anthology of Interest I." He returned as a head in a jar in "The Beast With a Billion Backs" movie, and in the video game-themed "Future Challenge 3000" segment of the Season 6 finale "Reincarnation." He even recorded dialogue for the "Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow" mobile game released in 2017, a year before his death.

Hawking died peacefully in his home on March 14, 2018, at the age of 76. He lived much longer than anyone expected, considering the fact that he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the young age of 21 and was told at the time he had only two years to live. The disease gradually paralyzed his body, but he was able to communicate using a computer voice program. In the 55 years between his diagnosis and his death, he expanded our understanding of gravity, black holes, and quantum mechanics.

All of the Vice Presidential Action Rangers in "Anthology of Interest I," aside from former Vice President Al Gore himself, are no longer with us today (technically, chess-playing robot Deep Blue might have already been dismantled by the time the episode aired). In addition to Nichelle Nichols and Stephen Hawking, this includes Gary Gygax, the co-creator of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. In his guest appearance in "Futurama," he's comedically depicted as allowing the rules of his game to dictate his life, always needing to roll dice before every decision.

Gygax died at the age of 69 on March 4, 2008. His health had been on the decline since 2004, when he had two strokes and entered semi-retirement. His wife Gail confirmed he had also suffered an abdominal aneurysm before his death. When he died, the "Futurama" crew was busy at work on the direct-to-DVD movie "Bender's Game," which was about the characters playing D&D and getting sucked into a fantasy world. Fittingly, the film included a post-credits dedication to Gygax, featuring a clip of him from "Anthology of Interest I."

Henry Louis "Hank" Aaron, a baseball player for the Atlanta Braves and Milwaukee Brewers, had the unusual distinction of voicing two separate guest characters on "Futurama." In the Season 3 episode "A Leela of Her Own," he played both himself as a head in a jar and his great-great-etc-grandson Hank Aaron XXIV. Whereas Hank Aaron is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, his descendent is the worst blernsball player ever — at least until Leela ends up taking that dishonorable title from him.

The real Aaron died in his sleep of natural causes at the age of 86 on January 22, 2021. Upon his death, flags were ordered to half-mast in his memory in Georgia — where he spent much of his adult life, playing for the Atlanta Braves and eventually going on to work in their front office after his athletic retirement — and in one of his earliest statements following his inauguration, President Joe Biden described Aaron as "an American hero," who "was helping us chase a better version of ourselves."

TV and radio personality Dick Clark introduced countless rock 'n roll artists to the wider American public by hosting "American Bandstand" from 1956 to 1989. Beginning in 1973, he also started hosting "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve," which was for many years the most-watched New Year's broadcast on American television, becoming a staple of the holiday across the country. The "Futurama" premiere episode "Space Pilot 3000" envisioned Clark continuing to host the annual broadcast for over a millennium, eventually as a head in a jar.

In the real world, Clark had to give up most of his hosting duties following a stroke in 2004. Regis Philbin took over that year, while in subsequent years Clark made brief appearances on the broadcast but ceded the main hosting duties to Ryan Seacrest. Clark died of a heart attack at the age of 82 on April 18, 2012, a day after undergoing routine prostate surgery. CNN's obituary quoted singer Tony Orlando saying, "Only God is responsible for making more stars than Dick Clark." Clark's name is still attached to the Seacrest-hosted "New Year's Rockin' Eve."

Best known for starring in the delightfully campy live-action "Batman" series from 1966 to 1968, Adam West had such a larger-than-life presence that it only makes sense he'd end up playing himself in multiple cartoons. He frightened Bart and Lisa with his dancing in "The Simpsons," believed himself to be Catman in "The Fairly OddParents," and was Mayor of Quahog in "Family Guy." One of his final voice acting roles was in the "Futurama" Season 7 episode "Leela and the Genestalk," where West's head in a jar was attached to a bat body as part of one of Mom's experiments. Robin actor Burt Ward was also subject to experiments in the same episode, allowing the two friends and co-stars to reunite one last time.

West died from leukemia at the age of 88 on June 9, 2017. Ward commemorated his superhero co-star in a statement to Variety, reading, "I am devastated at the loss of one my very dearest friends. Adam and I had a special friendship for more than 50 years. We shared some of the most fun times of our lives together. Our families have deep love and respect for each other. This is a terribly unexpected loss of my lifelong friend. I will forever miss him. There are several fine actors who have portrayed Batman in films. In my eyes, there was only one real Batman that is and always will be Adam West. He was truly the Bright Night."