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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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."