I've seen a bundle of Futurama timelines around the place and I found them all to be inadequate, firstly because they don't, by a long shot, include every conceivable dated event from the show, and secondly because they don't show sources. It's easy to guess at dates from things like "Pine trees went extinct eight hundred years ago" but that seems to be the limit of effort put in; no episode is quoted. So I went through, watched the whole 72-episode run again - yes, this is entirely my own work - and took notes in preparation for this, my considerably more exhaustive Futurama timeline.

Update 2008-03-21

Information from "Bender's Big Score" has now been incorporated into the timeline.

Notes

The Timeline

A question mark indicates that a date is probable, but not known for definite. A tilde (~) indicates that the date is approximate.

Conclusions

I found the Futurama timeline very rewarding to construct because it turned out to be significantly more internally consistent than I originally believed it would. If we arrange the episodes in order of production code, then bolt on the known dates, we find that the undated episodes fit the existing pattern extremely well - at least, for the first three production seasons. Only "The Cryonic Woman" messes things up - it should be set around September 3001, but Fry states that it's the year 3000, most likely to avoid confusing viewers.

It's during the fourth production season, 4ACV, that everything goes to pot. The Fox network was screwing everything up for the writers at this point during the show's production, to the point that four production seasons were eventually aired over the course of five broadcast seasons. This meant the show timeline got borked. "Love & Rocket" (4ACV03) should have taken place around Valentine's Day 3003, but a caption during the episode gave Omicron Persei 8 as "247 days without invading Earth", which is clearly meant to correspond with "The Problem With Popplers", which is nominally set in mid-3001, placing Love & Rocket in Valentine's Day 3002. This is not an anomaly beyond repair, but then "Bender Should Not Be Allowed On TV" also occurs in 3002, and so does "Where No Fan Has Gone Before". Then "Bend Her" leaps forward to the 3004 Olympics, followed by "Obsoletely Fabulous" which jumps back to 3003! While there are no direct contradictions created by these shenanigans, it does seem to result in there being twice as many episodes set during 3002 as there should be, and almost none in 3003 or 3004. Ordering these later episodes using their airdates instead of their production codes has not proved much more useful.

Still, Futurama has a pretty rich timeline which is much more complete and consistent than most people would imagine. I do not believe that this is unintentional. I believe that David X. Cohen knew full well that millions of science fiction fans would scrutinise Futurama as closely as they ever did Star Trek or The Simpsons. For this reason I think he set out to create a universe which, unlike certain lesser continuities, rewarded rabidly intense analysis with interesting new discoveries, rather than punishing it with continuity errors. Speaking as both a Futurama continuity freak and a time travel nut, I feel like Bender's Big Score in particular was a personal gift to me, sam512.

There is one other thing I like in my television shows, and that is closure. Futurama is nearly over now, and I have high hopes for its conclusion.

Stay tuned.