"I'm gonna shove coal so far up your stocking you'll be coughing up diamonds!" - Santa Claus, "Xmas Story"
Matt Groening and the team at
Futurama wound up creating one of their most controversial characters when they decided to bring Santa Claus to life in two
Christmas-themed episodes of the series, "
Xmas Story" and "
A Tale Of Two Santas" They say that
the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and in the case of
Mom's Friendly Robot Factory they were right. In the 2200s the company decided to build a
robot Santa Claus that would hand out gifts to those it deemed
nice, but due to a programming error the robotic Kris Kringle invariably judges everyone as
naughty, thereby making innocent people a target for lethal termination. Santa spends the year in his heavily guarded ice fortress on
Neptune (security measures include saw blades, bombs, and angry guard dogs that bark "
Jingle Bells") while watching his large monitors for signs of naughtiness (such as picking one's nose, for example), starving his shrimpy Neptunian
elves, and making a list of all human "atrocities". Then, every
Xmas Eve, Santa makes the trip to
Earth in order to go on a bloody rampage: dropping bombs, launching missiles, and shooting people with toy-related weapons such as the bicycle gun.
Santa Claus was first introduced in Season 2's "Xmas Story" in which Santa (voiced by John Goodman) went on his yearly rampage through New New York, very nearly killing Fry and Leela. In an extremely rare case of judging someone as nice, Santa awarded a new pogo stick to Dr. Zoidberg who used it to aid in blasting Santa back to space until next year. The broadcast of Season 3's "A Tale Of Two Santas" was actually delayed one year because the FOX Network felt that it was too violent to air in the show's 7pm timeslot. The episode eventually aired at a special 9:30pm time, and in this sequel Santa (now voiced by John DiMaggio) became frozen in ice, leading to Bender taking over the Xmas duties. However, instead of a rampage Bender decided to hand out presents, resulting in him being attacked and arrested by the angry and fearful New New Yorkers. It was only after the real Santa appeared at Bender's execution that his good name was cleared and, as a reward, Bender was invited to help out with the annual holiday massacre.
Santa Claus has only made these two appearances on Futurama and rumor has it that the character was dropped due to the large number of complaints by angry parents over the image of a beloved robotic version of a classic Christmas character spreading death and terror throughout the world. Add to those complaints the issues that some viewers had with Christmas in the year 3000 being replaced with Xmas (that is, ecks-mas), a holiday devoted to commercialism and gift-giving rather than more traditional religious customs. Whatever the reason for his on-screen retirement, Santa seems to be gone... for now. Ho ho ho.
References:
Futurama Season Two DVDs