On Sunday, Nov. 9, following a popular National Football League game that saw the Green Bay Packers beat out the Chicago Bears 55-14, the network aired a long-awaited crossover episode of "The Simpsons" and its sister series "Futurama" to critical acclaim, becoming the top-rated broadcast entertainment series of the night.

Matt Groening has laid claim as the sultan of Sundays since "The Simpsons" -- the longest-running American sitcom and the longest-running American animated program -- debuted on Fox in 1989.

The Fox staple pulled in 6.6 million viewers; it also faced a significant ratings boost among adults 18-49, rising full point to a 2.9 in live-plus-same-day ratings, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Entertainment Weekly reports that the night's runner-up was none other than ABC's "Once Upon a Time," which had 7.4 million views, but only a 2.5 rating in the demo.

However, the "The Simpsons," "Futrama" crossover failed to meet the success or attract the same attention of the hour-long "Family Guy" crossover episode featuring "The Simpsons," which kicked off the season in September; it was 4.5 in the demo.

However, that's not to say neither the creator nor the staffs of the show rested on their laurels either. The episode saw the Springfield tribe and the Planet Express posse go head-to-head in one of the most memorable episodes of the popular animated sitcom yet.

Spoilers below:

Things go topsy-turvy and get a little wonky after the 4th grade class of Springfield Elementary High School places a usual set of items in a time capsule (a surveillance shot of Nelson's dad, a suspect a large; Millhouse's lucky rabbit's foot; Bart's stale sandwich) and bury them at a special ceremony. Everything appears to be well until Bender arrives via a time machine to execute a member of the Simpsons family after an outbreak threatens the promise of an apocalypse.

Although the episode brought out the best of both shows with one of the most idiosyncratic and suggestive "couch gags" in recent history, Time writers noted that even at the start, "Futurama" was not the next "The Simpsons," and that "Family Guy," which was also cancelled and revived, would be Fox's next big animated hit. Both premiered in 1999. However, as a workplace sitcom and darkly cynical sci-fi odyssey, it gained a cult following unparalleled to any.

Yes, there were the catchphrases that viewers have all come to love and great zingers -- "Blade Rummy," "Ah, motherly love -- why did we outlaw that?" "A robot with a catchphrase!" -- but it stood in a league of its own, bringing two clans together for a night of laughs.

Spoilers below:

Marge and Leela's initial meeting was hilariously awkward, Scruffy loses his mustache and commits suicide, and Bender may look like a metallic Homer with a visor and an antenna, but his near-sociopathic moneygrubbing charlatan celebrity is what made the character the Bart Simpson of the cult space-show to begin with. Plus, even though it made no sense at all that Panucci's Pizza is actually in New York City and not in Springfield, audiences got to see Fry's 21st century pup Seymore -- who waited outside of Fry's job persistently after his master was cryogenically frozen (and later awoken in the future).

At the climax of the episode, when Bart's slithery vesper bunnies are tossed into the fathoms of space by giant slingshot, a disgruntled Bart quips, "You realize you're cheering the deaths of millions of my children," suddenly it becomes apparent on the cultural importance of these two night and day animated sitcom sibling.

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