"Rebirth" directly follows the ending of the final Futurama film Into the Wild Green Yonder, in which the entire crew enter a wormhole.
The episode begins with the Planet Express ship crash landing on Earth, killing many of the main characters.
The crew leave to celebrate as the Futurama theme plays, ending the episode with Zapp rapidly emerging from the rebirth machine.
On June 9, 2009, 20th Century Fox announced that Comedy Central had picked up the show for 26 new half-hour episodes to begin airing in mid-2010.
According to Phil LaMarr (who voices Hermes on the show), the cast's invitation was retracted by Fox because of a dispute over the salaries.
[7] The Toronto Star confirmed, announcing on their website that the original cast of Futurama have signed contracts with Fox to return for 26 more episodes.
[8] Similarly, an email sent to fans from Cohen and Groening reported that West, Sagal, DiMaggio, LaMarche, MacNeille, Tom, LaMarr, and Herman would all be returning for the revival, set to air in June 2010.
[10] Two episodes were in the process of being voice-recorded at that time, with an additional "six scripts ... in the works, ranging in scale from 'it's a crazy idea that someone's grandmother thought of' to 'it's all on paper'.
[10] Cohen's original concept for the return episode involved continuing directly from the end of Into the Wild Green Yonder.
[11] However, Matt Groening suggested that they instead write a story quickly bringing the characters back to Planet Express in order to more fully depict that the series had returned.
[11] Cohen agreed, feeling that a quick return to the settings of the series would help viewers unfamiliar with the previous films adjust with little difficulty.
[11] Bender's plot where he always needed to be partying was challenging for the production team, who attempted to make his actions diverse in different scenes to keep it interesting while simultaneously trying to avoid being too distracting.
During the episode there are references to Huey Lewis and Star Trek as well as Frankenstein, Saturday Night Fever, The Outer Limits, The Terminator, Karma Chameleon and Studio 54.
[12] The rebirthing process is very similar to The Outer Limits episode "Resurrection" where an adult human is born in a lab.
[14] Robert Canning of IGN gave the episode a 7.5 calling it "Good" and also stated "While the big laughs may be few, "Rebirth" still delivers an interesting story."
"[16] Danny Gallagher of TV Squad said in his review "The story itself also felt a little too forced with its tied up ending, but it still had a great sense of surprise and shock that worked like a perfect 'Twilight Zone' parody".