Same creator, and more usefully the same writers' room method: Groening and David X. Cohen built Futurama out of what The Simpsons had established, which was that an animated half hour could carry dense joke-per-second writing for adults and still have a family at the centre. The inherited structure is the dysfunctional workplace-as-family, the satirical present dressed as something else, and an emotional episode once a season that the show has earned the right to.