It’s been a rocky road for everyone’s favorite soon-to-be-retro-futuristic prime-time cartoon show, what with the cancellation, the network changes, the semi-return, and then the full return. But Futurama is finally coming up on its 100th glorious episode, and, as you can see, someone’s planning a party.

(The rest of this post contains plot spoilers for this week’s upcoming Futurama episode. On the other hand, if you click through, you’ll be able to grab a desktop-sized version of the image above. Choose wisely.)

Sharp eyed (eared?) Roberto Baldwin of MacLife.com caught a bizarre discrepancy between the on-air showing of this week’s episode of Futurama, and the one that was posted online afterward: the audio of the final joke of the show was completely removed.

The last joke was the only one in the show that was specifically about… uh. Well, I guess it’s kind of a punchline, so we’ll talk about it after the jump.

Last year, Fox announced that up to 26 additional episodes of Futurama would be produced for Comedy Central, which had then aired the show’s most recent fifth season (originally released as four direct-to-DVD movies).

With the sixth season finally just around the corner, what are we to expect from the one-hour premiere on June 24th? Comedy Central has posted a preview clip from the episode, in which Professor Farnsworth recounts to the temporarily-amnesiac Fry how their spaceship passed through the Panama Wormhole.

The scene then takes a turn toward the meta. Take a gander for yourself below:

DeviantARTist Moosecake has done a nice job of reworking the humanoid members of the Futurama crew as South Park characters. (Although as one commenter astutely points out, they’re all children. Creepy.)

Incidentally, just today, Comedy Central Insider released the first teaser still from the first episode of the much-anticipated Futurama relaunch, which will air on Thursday, June 24th. Spoiler alert: It involves skeletons. Even Scruffy’s.

Anyone watching South Park last night may have noticed that there were at least a few more audio bleeps than usual, as well as some unfamiliar censorship blocks. That’s because, as the New York Times reports, the subject matter is making for some warmer water than South Park Studios is typically used to, thanks in large part to their depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.

Last week, South Park aired their 200th episode. Without getting too into the plot details, the episode sent up a number of past storylines and controversies, most notably the depiction of the Islamic Prophet. Bear suits were involved. You get the idea. Though it wasn’t the Prophet’s first appearance, it was, however, the first time an episode resulted in what are being called death threats toward series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Things you will still be able to count on, for at least a few more years anyway: death, taxes, and The Daily Show covering a presidential election.

After a fairly tumultuous first half of 2010 in the late night world, one short week after Conan O’Brien announced he will be taking the helm of a cable late night show, Comedy Central’s parent MTV Networks made a move to secure its highest profile talent for another few years. Both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will continue hosting their current shows through 2012.

Potentially good news for sports and comedy fanatics: Comedy Central just announced they’re picking up the pilot for The Onion Sports Network for a ten-episode run. The series is named after, and based on, the sports section of fake news pioneer The Onion.

After seven years on TV Ice-Catraz, Futurama is coming back to Comedy Central in June, with 26 episodes on order. Earlier today, comedycentral.com posted a 30-second teaser trailer for the relaunched series which, while it might not send fans into paroxysms of laughter, will at least elicit some nostalgia.

With that nostalgia lighting our hearts afire, at least until we remember Bender’s Game, we thought we’d revisit the eight best minor characters from the original run of Futurama:

Futurama is coming back to Comedy Central in June, and the very first promotional trailer is out. It’s 30 seconds long, and very Comedy Central-centric (the giant TV from the classic title sequence has a big ol’ Comedy Central ad on it), but the glimpse of Bender and Zoidberg saying new things that they have not said before will probably sate most fans. Hopefully, the new series is more in the vein of Futurama up to 2003 more than the Futurama movies.

Trailer after the jump: Hypnotoad commands you to watch it. (Yes, we used that exact same joke the last time we wrote about the new Futurama, but it still applies.)

We rejoiced when we heard that Futurama might come back to TV, but now we know for sure, and we’ve got a date: Comedy Central will air the first of 26 new episodes of Matt Groening‘s sci-fi cult hit in June.