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About

Family Guy is an American animated TV sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane and premiered on Fox in 1999. The series revolves around Peter Griffin and his family, Lois, his wife, Meg, Chris, and Stewie, their children, and their talking dog, Brian. They are set in the fictional city of Quahog in Rhode Island. Much of the humor in the show is in the form of cutaway gags that often sarcastically criticize American culture.

History

The family was conceived by MacFarlane after developing two animated films, The Life of Larry and Larry & Steve, redesigning the film's protagonist Larry, and his dog, Steve, and renaming them Peter and Brian. In May 1998, a seven-minute pilot of the series was pitched to Fox and given the green light for production. On January 31st, 1999, the series premiered on Fox with the pilot episode "Death Has a Shadow," right after the broadcast of Super Bowl XXXIII, which drew 22 million viewers and immediately caused controversy over its adult-themed content.

Reception

The show was met with mixed reception and ratings, in part due to being placed in a series of tough time slots and inconsistent airing schedules, and after its three seasons run, Fox announced the cancellation of the series in 2002. However, favorable DVD sales and high ratings for syndicated reruns on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim convinced the network to renew the show in 2004 for a fourth season, which began airing on May 1st, 2005. Since then, Family Guy has been nominated for 12 Primetime Emmy Awards and 11 Annie Awards, and has won three of each. In 2009, it was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series.

Death of Brian Griffin

In November 2013, Brian Griffin, the talking family dog, was "killed off" from the series after suffering a bad injury in a car accident in the episode "Life of Brian,” aired on Sunday, November 24th, 2013. Given the overwhelming popularity of the character, many fans of the show responded to Brian's death with calls to bring the character back alive, including a Change.org petition titled “Seth MacFarlane, and Fox Broadcasting Company: Bring Brian Griffin back to Family Guy” and a Facebook petition named "Petition To Get Brian Griffin Back," which have garnered more than 62,500 likes an 2,300 likes, respectively. Meanwhile on Twitter, a similar protest took place under the hashtag #BringBackBrian.

The Return of Brian Griffin

On December 15th, 2013, three weeks after "Life of Brian" aired, the character was resurrected from the dead in the episode titled "Christmas Guy," wherein Stewie, still grieving from the loss of his canine friend, runs into an alternate version of himself from a different timeline and borrows his time machine to travel back and prevent the fatal collision from happening (shown below).

Following the broadcast, Seth MacFarlane tweeted a message revealing that the writers had never intended to kill off Brian permanently:

And thus endeth our warm, fuzzy holiday lesson: Never take those you love for granted, for they can be gone in a flash.

— Seth MacFarlane (@SethMacFarlane) December 16, 2013

Related Memes

Family Guy Effect

The Family Guy Effect is a postulated phenomenon asserting that when Internet memes are showcased on the animated television show Family Guy, the meme will see a brief burst in popularity, followed by an immediate sharp decline. Prior to being associated with Internet meme overexposure, the Family Guy effect was used to describe how a joke becomes less funny when repeated over time.

Damn Nature, You Scary!

"Damn Nature, You Scary!" is an online expression typically associated with videos depicting the destructive side of the mother nature, including amateur-shot footage of natural disasters and documentary films about wildlife animals.

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears

"You Know What Really Grinds My Gears" is a memorable quote from the 2005 animated comedy film Family Guy Presents: Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story. On the web, the expression is used to preface an airing of grievances in an advice animal image macro series featuring Family Guy protagonist Peter Griffin.

I Need An Adult!

"I need an adult" is a catchphrase used to express one’s feeling of discomfort or disapproval towards something that’s been said or posted by another user.

Giggity

"Giggity" (also known as “Giggity Giggity Goo”) is a sexually-oriented catchphrase popularized by the character Glenn Quagmire.

Pepperidge Farm Remembers

Pepperidge Farm Remembers is an image macro series based on a tagline used in an advertisement for the commercial bakery Pepperidge Farm. The series features a still-shot from a parody of the commercial as seen in the animated television series Family Guy and captions reminiscing about outdated relics and practices from the past decades.

Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man

Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man a commercial from the 2005 Family Guy film Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story featuring Al Harrington, the President and CEO of Al Harrington’s Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man emporium and warehouse, who offers the viewers a discount for the inflatable tube after being accidentally overstocked as a result of a shipping error.

Family Guy Pipeline Incident

The Family Guy Pipeline Incident is a "related search" algorithm glitch on TikTok started by Family Guy clip accounts that used oddly satisfying videos of a metal pipe being filled with cigarettes and carrots, purportedly to avoid copyright strikes. Due to both visuals of the Family Guy clip and the pipeline video in one TikTok video, the algorithm recommended the search query "family guy pipeline incident" in the comment section. This started in mid-November 2022 and garnered interest as to what the algorithm-invented "incident" was.

The "Family Guy Pipeline Incident" then became associated with a trend called Family Guy Jumpscares, referring to a phenomenon on TikTok when parody Family Guy clip channels added random jumpscares of creepy imagery into the seemingly innocent videos to catch the viewer off guard. The bait-and-switch media trend became prominent in late 2022 and ultimately made fun of the secondary "ADHD video" underneath most Family Guy clips, often showing mobile app gameplay or ASMR adjacent content.

Family Guy and Subway Surfers Overstimulation Videos

Family Guy and Subway Surfers Overstimulation Videos, also known as Family Guy and Mobile Games Overstimulation Videos or Family Guy ADHD Videos, refers to split-screen videos (primarily posted to TikTok) that show a Family Guy clip in the top part of the screen and mobile app gameplay in the bottom half of the screen (among other oddly satisfying content such as DIY repair videos) in order to avoid copyright strikes as well as keep the viewer's attention via multiple competing visuals, alluding to a low attention span in the viewer akin to ADHD. The most common mobile app games present in the Family Guy clips are Subway Surfers and nameless Chinese video games. Family Guy clips channels garnered many parodies that played with the visual format, leading to the Family Guy Pipeline Incident and jumpscares in late 2022. Going into early 2023, Family Guy clips and mobile games overstimulation content led to discourse and memes on Twitter and elsewhere as many highlighted the content's absurdity and likened the genre to Gen Alpha and iPad kids.

Boring Ahh Family Guy Episode

Boring Ahh Family Guy Episode, originally known as Movie Long Ah Hell, is a participatory trend in which meme creators take a photo of themselves doing an activity while watching Family Guy on their phone. They then write in text overlay that the activity is "boring ahh" (akin to the slang "goofy ahh"), essentially implying that they are enacting Family Guy overstimulation content in real life. The trend started on Instagram in late 2022 with a photo showing Family Guy on a phone in a movie theater playing Avatar: The Way of Water in the background. Going into 2023, the "movie long ah hell" photo inspired photoshops and ultimately led to different photos with the same premise but in different settings.

Family Guy Sunroom / Screened Porch

The Family Guy Sunroom, also known as the Family Guy Screened Porch, the Family Guy Screen Porch, the Family Guy Side Door or the Family Guy Extra Room, refers to an enclosed porch, or sunroom, on the outside of the Griffin family home which many online claimed they'd never seen the inside of. Although the sunroom had been featured in various episodes, it was still a rare occurrence, leading to statistical speculation and conspiracy theories over what goes on in there. The concept started on Reddit in the late 2010s but spread rapidly in early 2023 on Twitter, iFunny and Instagram.

Search Interest

External References

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