Futurama was the name of the famous General Motors exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair that depicted a futuristic landscape.
Bender's apartment door number is 00100100, which is binary for the number 36, and 36 is the decimal number in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange table for the dollar sign ($).
The sound of the Hypnotoad is a recording of a turbine engine played backwards. The sound effect, titled "Angry Machine," was included with the Avid editing program used by the staff, and was originally just used as a placeholder, but they liked it so much they kept it in.
According to Matt Groening, viewers were able to decipher the alien language that is sometimes seen in the background the same night as the pilot episode aired. The only primer for the code in that episode was a sign that read "Drink Slurm." The sign appeared once with the word "Drink" written in the alien code and once in plain English. This resulted in the producers creating a second, more complex alien code to be seen in the background of later episodes.
Zapp Brannigan was specially written for Phil Hartman. When Hartman was murdered, the role was given to Billy West, who impersonated Phil Hartman when he did it.