The Mom Detail From Futurama That Has Fans Scratching Their Heads

Oh, Mom. She's the sweet old lady of the Futurama universe, who is simply trying to make the world a better place ... yeah, right. 

That's just what she wants you to think. Mom is an interesting character, to say the least. She parades around to the public like she's a lovable grandma-type, wearing the kind of dress that would only be seen more than a century before our own time. To the average citizen, she might seem kind and warm and absolutely harmless, but once Mom strips off her costume, she's none of those things. In essence, she's the ruthless business mind and CEO behind Momcorp, the 31st century robot company. Her company, of which she's the majority shareholder, has a monopoly on all things robot in the future where Futurama takes place. Amassing wealth and power is Mom's primary goal, and she would never shy away from assuming total control of the planet, which she tried to do with a robot takeover in the episode "Mother's Day." 

The character is pretty developed, with many nuances, but there's one aspect of Mom's history that has fans scratching their heads.

According to the Futurama Fandom, Carol Miller, AKA "Mom," is at least 120 years old, and she probably would've had many more years to terrorize the universe if the show hadn't ended in 2013. That's pretty old for someone whose children are only in their thirties. Professor Farnsworth explains in "Bender's Game Part 2" that he was working in Mom's laboratory "30 odd years ago." The subsequent flashbacks showed Mom's children — as one young kid, and one infant. Mom has three children, so presumably, one of them wasn't even born yet. This means that she would've had to be well over 70 when she became a mother, far past the average age of menopause. 

Confusing? Well, what's awesome about fictional worlds like this one, that seemingly have no hard rules of reality, is there are several possibilities for things just like this. For example, it could be that with the advanced medical procedures available in the 31st century, that Mom has simply been modified — chemically or surgically — to have babies in her 80s. 

Also possible? That these flashbacks are just the ravings of mind wracked with dementia. Farnsworth is well over 150 years old, and has had loopy, inconsistent flashbacks since season one. He forgets where he is half the time. He couldn't remember that he'd presented his "Death Clock" to the Academy of Inventors' annual symposium the previous year, and had to rush to invent something new before he was asked to present. So, he conceptualizes the "smelloscope," which he's revealed to have also built the year before. Basically, Professor Hubert Farnsworth's mind isn't exactly a trustworthy source of information. 

Either way, it's fun to speculate. Now, if someone can just confirm that theory about Fry's hands ...