Honestly, the closest comparison I could think of to the scrapped “Futurama” episode is actually Jason Robert Brown’s musical, “The Last Five Years,” where a relationship is examined with one person moving in chronological order after the couple first meets and the other told in reverse chronological order, beginning the show at the end of their marriage. The idea might not have made for comedy, but David X. Cohen wisely knew not to scrap the idea completely, borrowing an element for the series’ finale. “The climactic moment of that episode was the forward moving in time people met the backward moving in time person and time froze, and they were finally able to interact,” he told the audience. “So we took that idea and used it in the finale tonight, so there you go.”
That series finale, “Meanwhile,” sees Fry and Leela’s timelines meeting together, after time is frozen throughout the universe for everyone and everything except the two of them. They marry, spend decades roaming the frozen world, and grow old together. Eventually, they agree to reset the timelines knowing that they’ll be zapped back in time without any memory of their lives together during the time stoppage, bringing the show to the timeline that would kick off the new revival series on Hulu.