Family Guy/YMMV

• Acceptable Targets: Everyone and everything that ever existed.
  • Acceptable Political Targets: The Republican party has long since been one but it was really amped up after Donald Trump became President. "Trump Guy" even featured Peter getting into a chicken fight with Trump. Though it does try to take a few potshots at the Democrats, painting them as an ineffectual group of argument lovers who can't solve anything.
  • Acceptable Religious Targets: The show has a very dim view on religion, Christianity in particular, painting most religions with a Science Is Bad mindset who would repress knowledge and allow people to die from curable diseases to enforce their world view. This clip summarizes it perfectly.
  • Bullies don't get much love from this show being presented as one-dimensional Jerk Jocks and Alpha Bitches who can't take what they dish out, totally shutting down, if not going right to suicide, if someone fires back at them.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy:
  • As divisive as Brian is, his death in "Life of Brian" proved heart-wrenching for many.
  • Even Quagmire's haters couldn't laugh at what he goes through during "Quagmire's Quagmire."
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Does Lois try to do the right thing for her children and husband or has Flanderization turned her into absolutely nothing short of a monstrous shrew?
  • Peter Griffin: an idiotic, but idealistic, man who doesn't know any better, or a cruel and hypocritical sociopath?
• Anvilicious: Whenever the show takes a Liberal position on a hot-button issue. As Stewie summarized when the show took a stab at the anti-vaccination movement "This whole thing has been a lecture from Liberal Hollywood."
• Ass Pull: Several episode have a Hand Wave be the solution with no build up at all. To quote Peter Griffin "We don't know how to end these shows anymore so we just do nonsense."
• Badass Decay:
  • Stewie is considered to have undergone this by many during the show's later seasons. A quick example is Halloween on Spooner Street, wherein Stewie not only cries after some bullies steal his Halloween candy, he also wonders if he's gone too far promptly after shooting a rocket at them. This is in complete contrast to his characterization in the earlier seasons.
    • However, his earlier characterization seems to have returned in season 10, especially Leggo My Meg-O. Ironically, this was the same season where he lampshaded that he'd fallen victim to this.
  • Joe has pretty much been reduced to a joke about the handicapped with rage issues. Few people seem to remember he was a pretty efficient cop who just so happened to be in a wheelchair.
    • That aspect of him returned in Season 9, however.
  • Carter went from Manipulative Bastard to a clueless old man who's barely more functional than Peter. He can still be the villain if the episode needs, but he's nowhere near as dangerous as he was in the early seasons.
• Base Breaker:
  • Brian and Stewie.
    • As a duo, are they the show's Breakout Characters with their episodes being the best of the bunch or are they a Spotlight-Stealing Squad?
    • Brian. A Deadpan Snarker Only Sane Man or an Anvilicious Author Avatar? There are also those who feel sorry for him because of how pathetic he is, and those who hate him because of how he Took a Level In Jerkass.
    • Stewie. Is he still the show's best character, and one of the ones that the fans relate to most, or is he a joke that's been milked for all it's worth?
  • Meg to a lesser extent. Is her abuse just a gag to laugh about or has it long since stopped being funny?
  • Peter is starting to become one of these as well. His idiocy and assholery is either hilarious or just insufferable depending on who you ask.
  • Fans also seem divisive as to whether turning Quagmire into a Self-Deprecation avatar counts as an Author's Saving Throw or the complete destruction of his character.
• Better on DVD: No censoring and more Crosses the Line Twice alternate / Deleted Scenes.
• Big Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The Chicken Fights.
  • "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Conway Twitty!"
  • Given the show's humor and writing style, the show is notorious for having random flashbacks and cutaway gags that have no bearing on the plot and no one mentions ever again. Most, if not all episodes, feature at least one Big Lipped Alligator Moment.
• Broken Base: As far as the entire show goes, you're either in the "Family Guy is the Best Show Ever" camp or the "What The Hell Happened After They Brought It Back?" camp.
  • "The Peanut Butter Kid". An Anvilicious attack on child acting or Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped about child acting?
• Cargo Ship:
  • Parodied in the episode "I Dream Of Jesus", where, after Peter loses his "Bird is the Word" record, he goes on a rant and lets slip the fact that he had sex with it.
  • Also this:

Peter: I'm going to go microwave a bagel and have sex with it. Quagmire: Butter's in the fridge!

• • Peter and a cardboard standee of Kathy Ireland.
• Clueless Aesop:
  • Arguably any episode with gay rights as the topic, most prominently Family Gay, can come across as homophobic since every gay character is presented as remarkably stereotypical.
  • Episode 420, an episode meant as a vehicle for preaching the merits of legalizing marijuana is not the best place for constant stoner jokes. Especially bad after Brian's speech on how "productivity is skyrocketing and crime is minuscule" is right after a newscast in which the anchors were too stoned to even do their job.
• Crazy Awesome: Mayor West.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Stock in trade, apparently. Especially notable is "Terri Schiavo: The Musical". It's a short musical starring preschoolers... about Terri Schiavo. And did we mention it was mere days before the fifth anniversary of her death? That moment crosses the line billions upon billions of times, but eventually lands on an even number.
    • To be fair, the musical is not mocking Terri Schiavo but mocking that society think it's more humane to pay billions of dollars to keep someone in a vegetative state rather than humanely let them die.
  • Quagmire's Dad manages to cross this at the very end, his dad had a sex change operation with Peter, Glenn and others not being particularly understanding or funny until Brian meets "her", not knowing that Glenn's dad had had the operation, sleeps with her and finds out the next day when Stewie tells him. He's totally grossed out, taking a cold shower and everything, at the same time Quagmire reconciles with his new mom and his "mom" tells him that she found someone and proceeds to tell Quagmire. Quagmire absolutely freaks out and beats the shit out of Brian, but then just as Quagmire is leaving, Brian picks himself off the floor extremely injured and quips, deadpan "I fucked your dad" and slams the door.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: "Bag of Weed," the FCC song, Peter's rendition of "Shipoopi".
  • Any of the "special" credits themes, and all of the themes to the "Road to..." episodes
  • "Mr. Booze"
  • "Gonna Buy Me a Rainbow"
  • Everything in "In Harmony's Way", but especially "Pop Tart."
  • The Family Guy: Live in Las Vegas album as a whole.
  • Let's face it, even people who don't like the show can't deny it has some very talented songwriters.
• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: For those that see the show as nasty instead of funny. A logical occurrence given perceived Flanderization of the characters, namely with a great many of them becoming Jerkasses and weakening their ability to have an audience sympathize with them.
• Designated Hero: It's a Sadist Show. It happens a lot. A good example is Lois in "And I'm Joyce Kinney." True, what Joyce did was wrong but considering what Lois did to provoke her, and the massive jerkiness levels she took over the years, not many felt that Lois was the party to root for.
• Designated Villain: Well maybe not an outright villain, but the show has been trying to push for a Grey and Gray Morality with regards to Quagmire and Brian's rivalry but Quagmire is so spiteful and vindictive in each episode that it's very hard to see Brian as a bad guy. At the very worst, Brian comes off as He Who Fights Monsters.
• Die for Our Ship: A literally example in the 9th season premier where many Brian/Jillian shippers probably cheered on Derek's death.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Some of Stewie's fans are really eager to overlook his early attempts at world domination and matricide.
  • Believe it or not, Lois has some fans who defend her abuse of Meg, justifying it on the grounds that everyone else does it. Might hold more weight if Peter and Chris weren't total morons who, unlike Lois, are literally too dumb to know better.
• Dude, Not Funny: In-Universe in When you Wish Upon a Weinstein. (Which is ironic, since said episode was banned for awhile.)

Cleveland: Peter, not every Jewish person is good with money. Peter: Well yeah, not the retarded ones I guess. But-but why would you say that? For shock value?! Geez Clevland, there's 'edgy' and there's 'offensive'.

• Family Gay can be very disturbing if you're LGBT, or even a straight ally.
  • Even some hardcore fans of Family Guy thought the joke about Quagmire raping Marge Simpson then killing her entire family went too far. It almost ruined Matt and Seth's friendship and Seth admitted they went too far.
  • The 9-11 jokes wouldn't be too bad if there weren't so many of them. This makes it even more jarring when you couple that with the fact that Seth just barely avoided being one of the victims. (Though it's also possible he uses the jokes to cope with what almost happened to him...)
  • Most of the Meg-Bashing especially if it is presented as "comedy".
  • In And I'm Joyce Kinney, there's a news segment about a boy named Angus Reed, who has cerebral palsy. Tom Tucker says that he looks weird, and asks his co - anchor Joyce about the life expectancy of people with cerebral palsy. Her response? "You never see a gray - haired one."
  • In Stew-Roids, Chris mentions that he became popular by beating up a Jew.
  • Patriot Games pulled a subversion of this trope: after watching Celebrity Boxing with Mike Tyson, Peter remarks "You know, Mike Tyson beat his wife once. (Beat) But there's nothing funny about that."
  • One of the latest episodes had a one off gag about school shootings. You don't see anything because Peter is listening over the phone, but you can hear a gun going off and people screaming.
  • There was a joke about Elizabeth Smart — a real life victim of child molestation — getting raped during her nine-month captivity. The punchline of the joke is that Elizabeth is so deeply traumatized by the ordeal that she's constantly thinking about rape, even when she's playing the piano. Fortunately, the real Elizabeth seems to be handling it quite well.
  • The Teaser from Fore Father, where the family watches a Little House On the Prairie episode where they play pranks on the blind daughter.
  • Peter bashing an old man with cataracts with a baseball bat to steal his bingo board.
  • The random jab at autistic kids in Tea Peter.

Tom: Autism; is it a real disease or just a lame excuse for kids to forget their manners?

• Ear Worm: Parodied and played for laughs on the I Dream Of Jesus episode with the Trashmen's "Surfing Bird". Peter's obsession for the song quickly degenerates into a nightmare for the rest of the family, with Stewie and Brian eventually stealing and destroying the record.
  • A bag of weed, a bag of weed! Oh, everything is better with a bag of weed!
  • Friendship is the best thing ever!
  • Don't mess with Mr. Booze!
  • What about the theme song?
  • Give it up! Give up the toad now! Its no joke!
• Ethnic Scrappy:
  • Jerome wasn't always one, starting as simply a Nice Guy who had once dated Lois, but he quickly became a walking African-American stereotype.
  • Mr. Washee Washee. Take every negative stereotype you can possibly think of relating to Asian Americans, roll them into one and you have this guy.
  • Consuela the maid.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • There's a Facebook group based around one-off character Sneakers O'Toole and Mayor Bee.
  • Ernie the Giant Chicken (whom even Matt Groening has expressed fondness for), Death, the Evil Monkey, Ollie Williams, Seamus, Herbert, Greased-up Deaf Guy, and Bruce (the Performance Artist that has "Oh no!" as a Catch Phrase) are all popular among fans. They were also one time characters before cancellation but due to their popularity they became Recurring Extra's soon after.
  • And the phony. The big fat phony.
• Evil Is Cool: Yes, Stewie is many people's favorite character.
• Family-Unfriendly Aesop:
  • Peter-assment: "Sexual harassment is forgivable and OK if the harasser is just lonely".
  • Seahorse Seashell Party has a truly disturbing one: "Victims of abuse should stay in their abusive relationships/households for the good of other people, especially their abusers". Mr. Enter claimed this one line was enough to turn him off the show for good.
• Fan Disservice: Are so many shots of Peter and Chris naked really necessary?
  • The Greased Up Deaf Guy himself is another example.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • The most obvious one is with The Simpsons. Everyone will accept that Family Guy was inspired by The Simpsons. The argument is whether Family Guy is a Shallow Parody that deserves no love or whether, following the The Simpsons undergoing Seasonal Rot, Family Guy is now a better show, usually based off the argument that Family Guy has adapted to socio-cultural changes better, with The Simpsons frequently being accused of having Were Still Relevant Dammit episodes.
  • Originally, there was no hate, and barely any awareness between the Family Guy and South Park fans but after an article mentioned the two in the same breath, Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of South Park) made "Cartoon Wars", a rather merciless parody of 2006 Family Guy, sparking a rather brutal online war.
  • When American Dad! first started, it was incredibly friendly with Family Guy, if not as popular. However, when Family Guy began undergoing a Seasonal Rot yet still continued, the American Dad fans felt that their show was getting the short end of the stick in favour of, what they view as, an inferior product that overstayed its welcome. And the rivalry only got worse when American Dad began long hiatuses starting in 2018. Though there are many fans who adore both shows so this one is very much YMMV.
  • There's sort of a faux-feud between Family Guy and Robot Chicken, as they represent different parts of the adult animation spectrum, but it's only Played for Laughs since Seth MacFarlane frequently voice-acts (even cameos) on Robot Chicken and, well, Seth Green gets part of his paycheque from Family Guy.
  • Hardcore fans of Danny Phantom seem to have nothing but disdain for this show. Most Family Guy fans seem to have never heard of Danny Phantom.
• Fandom Specific Plot:
  • Meg gets some form of power and stands up for herself, such as Attack of the 100 Foot Meg Griffin. Or she simply kills her family and/or herself.
  • Seemingly taking inspiration from Meg's speech in "Seashore Seashell Party", someone from another property sees how Peter and Lois treat Meg and they either rescue Meg and/or call Social Services to arrest Peter and Lois.
  • Someone, usually Stewie or Deadpool, beats up Quagmire as revenge for beating up Brian while giving him an epic "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Fanon: Some fans believe that the real Griffins, the ones with empathy for each other and other people, are still in that motel in "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", and explain the Took a Level In Jerkass as the actors who are portraying them on the reality show.
• First Installment Wins: The pre-cancellation era is generally regarded as the superior of the two.
• Forced Meme: Stewie Just Said That.
• Fridge Brilliance: At one point, Stewie is seen on video auditioning for the Real World. He then shows off his dancing skills and ends up just saying "Look at my fanny, look at my fanny!" While an American audience would think that Stewie was a little boy who was talking about his butt, as many do, "fanny" is female genitalia in Britain, adding a whole new meaning to his video.
  • There's another example of Fridge Brilliance (mixed in with Cerebus Retcon): in "Jerome is the New Black," Quagmire tells Brian that Cheryl Tiegs was the love of his life who left him and the subsequent break-up is the reason why Quagmire is a sex addict. Two past episodes had clues that pointed to this (but seemed like they were insignificant at first glance): in "Emission Impossible," during the scene where Chris shows Quagmire all the things he found on the scavenger hunt, there's a poster of Cheryl Tiegs on Quagmire's refrigerator (you can probably see it better if you have a widescreen TV or a DVD player that can zoom in on pictures and move them to the left or right to see a lot of background sight gags that you can't catch on TV), and in "Barely Legal" (the one where Meg becomes obsessed with Brian after Brian stands up for her at a school dance), Quagmire has the Shel Silverstein book, The Missing Piece and tells Meg that he reads it whenever he feels like he needs to find that piece he lost in his life (which would be Cheryl Tiegs).
    • Also, when the gang is shipwrecked, when discussing being blind Glenn says "Every girl I'd do would be Cheryl Tiegs."
  • More like Fridge Squick, but if the flashbacks concerning Peter Griffin's heritage are legitimate, then he's married Lois more than once.
    • Which explains a lot about the family, when you think about it.
  • Stewie isn't gay. He suffers from gender dysphoria. He seems to wear dresses and behave in a feminine manner rather often.
    • Or it could just be that he's a baby and he hasn't quite come to terms with his sexuality just yet.
  • In one episode, a joke is made about 90% of Monty Python's jokes not being funny. A lot of Monty Python's sketches were funny, but the humor was visual or only made what little sense it did in the context of an extended sequence. The few sketches that everyone remembers (dead parrot, lumberjack song, etc.) are the short, quotable one-liner based bits that get stuck in your head like a catchy pop song - i.e. the exact kind of humor that Family Guy uses constantly, which obviously would appeal to its creators.
    • Not to mention humor that only holds relevance to those that are familiar with 60s British politics and obscure cultural areas.
• Fridge Horror: The Battle of Endor from It's A Trap! is a lot more disturbing than what's shown in the actual film, but all they did was avert the Bloodless Carnage trope from the original film. The Ewoks still behave the same as they did in the original film.
  • Remember that episode where they're stuck in the panic room? When Peter sets off the sprinklers, filling the room with water, he hands the rest of them parachutes, explaining "They're supposed to distract you while I put on the one scuba suit." Funny enough, but when you think about it, there was no reason to have parachutes there. In fact, there was no reason why Peter would include parachutes rather than more scuba suits. Unless it was deliberate. He plotted his own family's death.
  • All the one-off jokes about Meg, Chris, and Stewie having deceased siblings. Knowing Lois's and Peter's flanderized bad parenting skills, they could all be true.
  • In "Big Man On Hippocampus", when Lois is about to have sex with Quagmire, there's a lump in the bed that you think might be his knee, but then when Lois tells him that she trusts him, he gets scared and looks under the covers...and when he puts them back down the lump is gone...
  • In "Back to the Pilot", when all the different Brians and Stewies show up from their respective timelines, one pair was trapped in barber poles, revolving endlessly. Then they puke and it fills up their tube... Apparently, that's how life is in their timeline. One would have to wonder why or even how such a thing could happen.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment:
  • The episode where Mayor Adam West is actually a sleeper agent for the former Soviet Union (whose purpose was unwittingly activated by Brian and Stewie with gibberish that was in fact the sleeper code to activate him) and nearly causes a war before being de-programmed becomes less funny after the incident in March 2012 where, during talks with former Russian President Medvedev regarding narrowing his missiles, Obama implies that he might do it against America's back after re-election when he "has space" which was broadcast on a live microphone without his knowledge.
  • "Family Guy Viewer Mail No. 2", in which a segment paying a sardonic tribute to Robin Williams, reran on BBC Three minutes before that channel announced Robin Williams' passing.
• Glurge: Joe's visit to the poor family of the thief is just sickeningly too much.
• Growing the Beard:
  • "Road to Road Island" for establishing Stewie and Brian as Heterosexual Life Partners.
  • Season 8, especially when compared with Season 7.
  • For example, "Dog Gone" which shows that the show can indeed have emotional depth, and "Quagmire's Baby" showing that, while the show can bring in a few Crowning Moments of Heartwarming, the show still has its tasteless magic.
  • Season 9 shows that the writers are now going out of their way to improve the show as much as possible, as the show is now in HD, the stories are much, much better written, there are now actually pretty emotional moments every now and then, and the humor has been stepping up in quality as less and less recycled gags are used. Compared to the travesty that was Season 7 (with terrible humor, terrible stories, terrible writing, and most of the production interrupted by the WGA strike) the show has clearly improved quite a bit.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the banned episode "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein," Peter expresses how badly he needs help from a Jewish person. Later in season 8, in the episode "Family Goy," it's revealed that Lois and her kids are Jewish.
  • One of the cutaways makes fun of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, with the narrator unsure just what ethnicity he was (in real life, Dwayne Johnson is black and Canadian on his father's side and Samoan and Hawaiian on his mom's side). After that episode aired, he went on to voice a WHITE guy in the movie Planet 51 and he sounded pretty white to the point where you likely wouldn't have guessed it was him.
  • Miley Cyrus is revealed to be a robot in "Hannah Banana", her 2010 album Can't Be Tamed actually features a song called "Robot". The lyrics just make it even more funny.
  • In the episode "Family Guy Viewer Mail #1", Peter tells Diane and Tom Tucker to "Make like a Siamese twin and split, and then one of you die." Diane was Killed Off for Real in the ninth season premiere.
  • In the episode "Running Mates" there's a cutaway gag involving Peter boxing with a chicken. In "Da Boom," this would be the beginning of a long-running recurring gag.
  • Early episodes took a lot of potshots at Ted Turner, particularly "Screwed the Pooch", which paints him as Too Dumb to Live and willing to have sex with a dog. Guess who owns the network that rescued FG from cancellation?
  • In "Emission Impossible" (the 11th episode), Brian catches Stewie wearing lipstick (It Makes Sense in Context) and says "Boy, the evidence is really piling up." This was well before his characterization shifted from Evil Genius to walking gay joke.
  • In "Don't Make Me Over," The Griffins become musical guests on an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Jimmy Fallon. The episode first aired around the time that FG was returning from cancellation (around 2005-ish). Jimmy Fallon wouldn't host an actual episode of SNL until six years later (in 2011), and unlike how the episode depicted him, Fallon never once ruined a sketch by cracking up (he almost did during the "Beethoven's Band" sketch, but he caught himself, and he even admits that his cracking up ruined a lot of good sketches in the actual episode's monologue), but he did make out with a girl who looked younger than he did (it was Rachel Dratch, who is in her 40s in real life but can pass for a teenager eerily well. Also, unlike the FG depiction, it was part of the sketch, as Fallon and Dratch were reprising their roles as the Boston Teens).
  • In Episode 3, Peter gets Stewie a birthday cake with a naked man on it. A few seasons later, what did the higher ups confirm Stewie as?
  • In the early sessions, Stewie would often build some large device to get rid of something highly trivial or petty as the B plot. This would more often then not solve the A plot the Peter and other family members found themselves in.
  • Remember Meg and the hot dogs in Stewie Kills Lois? How might that play out with Jeremy Lin?
  • In a precancellation episode Brian comes home depressed because his date was an idiot. A few years later, his girlfriend for an entire season was Jillian, a female ditzy Man Child.
  • Kevin Smith took a swing at Seth in Clerks, where it was suggested that Seth's idea of comedy is "Let's put them on Gilligan's Island and make gay jokes!" Five years later we get "The Perfect Castaway", where Peter and co. are stranded on a desert island and have a gay orgy (and a passing cruise ship calls them "fanny bandits").
  • In "Family Guy Viewer Mail No. 2", in the segment where Peter gets the ability to turn people into Robin Williams, Stewie, the only one unaffected, notes that Disney's copyright prevented Genie from appearing. Fast forward a few years and Disney now owns Fox, including Family Guy itself.
  • As the show notes, they called Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn Jenner.
• Hannibal Lecture: "Christmas Time is Killing Us!" from Road to the North Pole appears to be this in musical form, combined with Ear Worm.
• Idiot Plot: True, Quagmire slept with a minor in "Quagmire's Mom" but she lied about her age. As Chris, of all characters, lampshades, why wasn't she in court?
• Incest Subtext: Done mostly for laughs. Mostly. At last count, Peter/Meg, Peter/Chris, Lois/Chris, Lois/Meg, Mr. Pewterschmidt/Lois, Chris/Meg, and Stewie/Chris, the last one doubling as Darth Vader/Luke.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many people just watch for Stewie and Brian having epic adventures.
  • "The Simpsons Guy" drew some Simpsons viewers who ordinarily don't watch Family Guy. And some Family Guy fans who don't care much for The Simpsons just watched for Peter vs. Homer.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Killing off Brian. As Seth MacFarlane himself said, they'd have to been high to permanently axe him.
• Magnificent Bitch: Diane Simmons in the Season 9 opening.
• Memetic Loser: Both In-Universe and out, "Shut up Meg."
• Memetic Molester: Quagmire of course.
• Memetic Mutation: Mostly spawned by those mocking the show, most famously South Park and its supposition that the show is written by manatees with words scrawled on balls; the idea caught on enough that the Family Guy writers, in DVD commentaries, refer to weak jokes with comments such as "The manatees were kinda off that day".
  • In the episode "Mother Tucker", Peter dies from watching a video from Mannequin, a parody of The Ring. This clip became popular on YouTube, with the uploader replacing the Mannequin video with something unpopular.
  • "Stewie just said that" is quickly becoming this, though it may just be a Forced Meme.
  • IRAQ LOBSTER!
  • "Oh my god, who the hell cares?!"
  • BUTT SCRATCHAAAAA!!!
  • Giggity.
  • "Shut up Meg." Mila Kunis even gets it in real life.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Stewie asking (and finally convincing) Brian to clean out Stewie's diaper when they are trapped together in the bank vault... by eating Stewie's shit. Which causes Stewie to puke, and then he asks and convinces Brian to eat that, too. Be right back, throwing up.
  • Anytime someone vomits onscreen. Special mention goes to Peter, Stewie, Brian and Chris puking violently after drinking ipecac in "8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter".
  • In "New Kidney in Town", Stewie has an emotional breakdown and rivers of snot burst forth his nostrils. He then tries to cling to Brian, much to the latter's dismay.
• Never Live It Down: Quagmire having sex with Marge and murdering the whole Simpsons family when they find out. The incident even threatened to ruin Seth MacFarlane and Matt Groening's friendship.
• Nightmare Retardant: Bitch Stewie and Bitch Brian melting is unsettling but Stewie and Brian dryly commenting on what a bad investment of their time this whole thing was and Brian saying that he'll be eating the remains rather undoes any queasiness.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Seems to go out of its way to invoke this about themselves. Special credit has to go to the Season 8 finale "Partial Terms of Endearment", an episode which examined the abortion debate, which was banned from being shown on Fox. Indeed what riles up people who haven't seen it is the fact that Fox didn't air it, rather than its content.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • "Movin' Out (Brian's Song)" was a milestone in Brian and Jillian's relationship. It's remembered mainly for that infamous sequence where Quagmire rapes Marge Simpson, Victim Falls For Rapist and then Quagmire kills the Simpsons after Homer finds the two together.
  • Downplayed for "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven". There's still some Just Here for Godzilla feelings thanks to Stewie hanging out with the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation but it's largely known for its A-plot which was yet another Anvilicious attack on religion. The episode promoting Belief Makes You Stupid was bad enough on its own but it also featured Meg converting to Christianity, finally becoming happy as a result, before Brian shattered her faith on the basis that she was too intelligent to believe in the Bible and that God couldn't exist because she was ugly and her parents were shitty people. As you can imagine, Christians viewers were not amused, and neither was a good chunk of the general fanbase.
• Parody Sue/Purity Sue: In the episode The Man With Two Brians, Peter buys a new dog under the name of New Brian after Lois says that Brian is getting old. New Brian is polite, perfect, multi-talented and instantly befriends everyone (sans Stewie, who sees him as a Replacement Scrappy), who rightly realizes that he's Brian's "replacement". New Brian goes on to improve everyone's lives and supplant Brian completely. However makes his fatal mistake when he... gets a little intimate with Rupert the teddy bear.
• Real Women Never Wear Dresses: The reason of why Straw Feminist Gloria Ironbox disliked Lois was because she seemed to be happy as a housewife, and not having a "real" job. Lois then replied saying that feminism is about women being free to choose what they want to be.
• Recycled Script: The Life of Larry pilot (the first one) had many gags that would later be used in Family Guy.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Vinny, the Griffins' new dog after Brian died.
  • After Brian's death was undone, he became this to Vinny who was without a doubt one of the nicest guys on the show while Brian remained the Liberal Douche.
  • In 2020, among the George Floyd protests, Mike Henry (the white male who voices Cleveland) announced that he would no longer voice Cleveland so an African American could voice him which many fans viewed as Political Correctness Gone Mad given that the whole point of Cleveland's character is that he's a caricature of how a white man views African Americans. When the new voice, prominent YouTube voice impersonator Azerrz, was cast, these sentiments died down quite a bit, given that Azerrz is a huge Cleveland fan, but the stigma of the "Cancel Culture" does persist a bit online.
• Rescued From the Scrappy Heap:
  • Later episodes have been trying to show to us that Brian isn't this perfect Author Avatar that everyone agrees with, but is actually the most flawed character on this show and not as smart or important as he believes.
  • Peter too. During seasons 6-7, he was a Jerkass of epic proportions, never got any punishment for his actions, and everybody forgave him instantly, and continued loving him like they weren't living with a Psychopathic Manchild. However, it seems that, as for season 8, the writers realized of this, and although Peter is as jerkass as before, now people react more realistically towards his behavior, and he even apologizes for it.
  • Vinny, who was initially Brian's Replacement Scrappy, got a lot more love when he helped Stewie go back in time and prevent Brian's death, understanding just how much of a bond that Stewie and Brian had.
  • Quagmire's transgender father Ida Davis in "Trans-Fat". After the show aggressively marketed Ida as the greatest thing ever simply for being a transgender character, who subscribed to a lot of stereotypes about them, Ida makes an impassioned speech about the very real struggles that pre-operation transgenders can go through, earning her more love.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Glenn Quagmire. Sure, he's really far from being a saint, but he's extremely demonized by Brian fans after his feud with the latter started. Although there are genuinely good reasons to dislike him, such as the fact that he's a potential rapist or that he's willing to do anything to get in some girl's pants, nobody minded this until Season 8, when the eponymous feud started.
  • Connie D'Amico. She is the shallowest Alpha Bitch you could find but to hear the Meg fans talk, she's a sociopath who spends her every moment planning Meg's demise. May be somewhat less fanon after "Connie's Celica."
• Scapegoat Creator: As can be seen on this very page, Seth MacFarlane is often blamed for just about everything wrong with the later episodes. With a few exceptions, he really hasn't written written or directed an episode in a long time.
• The Scrappy:
  • When Quagmire called Brian out for his actions, Quagmire became a Scrappy himself. The best example is Season 17's Adam West High. Discounting that earlier in the season, Quagmire had sworn off his hatred, but here he decides to run for mayor, not because he has the town's best interests at heart, but simply to spite Brian. And when Brian offers him a legitimate compliment, Quagmire snubs him.
  • Jasper is loathed by LGBT fans.
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped:
  • "Road to the North Pole".
  • Peter's "Why are we not funding this!?" line in "McStroke" about stem cell research.
  • What Rush Limbaugh tells Brian at the end "Excellence in Broadcasting". There's nothing wrong with a debate of ideas or wanting to be in the popular party, but stay true to who you are and your own beliefs. Also, just because two people have differing political beliefs, it doesn't mean they can't be friends or, at least, respectful of one another.
  • "Friends of Peter G". Keep your addictions in moderation and don't let them control your life.
  • Though the people of Quahog didn't listen, "The Simpsons Guy" and "The D in Apartment 23" make clear that, sometimes, people in the media and on the internet are just making a joke, and those jokes can sometimes fall flat, especially with those who aren't their target audience. This is not an invitation to turn it into a political affair, nor justification to start sending death threats to those people.
• Squick: Peter breastfeeding Stewie.
  • The morbid humor of keeping Stewie's severe head injury in secret.
  • Fresh Heir is pretty much nothing but this.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible:
  • Diane Simmons' short movie Lint.
  • Stewie's music video. To quote Brian "I'm not really following the story."
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Meg fans regard "Seahorse Seashell Party" and "Better Off Meg" as wasted opportunities to write Meg out of the show and give her a happy ending rather than invoke Status Quo Is God. Not helping is the writers' admission that they don't really know what to do with Meg.
• Ugly Cute: Some of Brian and Stewie's human-puppy hybrids in "Stewie is Enceinte" are cute in a weird way, especially Finn, the one who looks like a bald version of Brian.
• Unfortunate Implications: If there is a cutaway involving a woman the joke will either be about how "ugly" they look or something far worse. If it's a cutaway involving a man it'll be about everything else.
  • Or the fact that anyone shown to be gay or mentally handicapped is Camp Gay or an exaggerated down-syndrome sufferer.
  • Meg deciding to stay with her abusive family feels uncomfortably like Stockholm Syndrome. That fact that this is treated as a good and heroic thing makes it seem downright creepy.
    • Not to mention "They abuse me because they can't cope without me" is almost exactly how someone with Stockholm's thinks.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Quagmire following his rant to Brian in Jerome Is The New Black. What Quagmire says does have merit, but it's being said by Quagmire! A man who, no matter how much he denies it, is Brian's Shadow Archetype making him a monstrous Hypocrite. Combine that with the fact that Quagmire is an unrepentant Jerkass and Designated Hero in the face of Brian's sincere attempts to make amends and, not only does Quagmire fall victim to this, Brian becomes Unintentionally Sympathetic.
  • In the episode Brian the Closer, we're expected to feel bad for Quagmire because Brian swindled him even after Quagmire helped him. To an extent, people did thinking that Brian's actions might have constituted Disproportionate Retribution. But everyone agreed that Quagmire had it coming after all the shit he put Brian through for no reason.
  • To some, Brenda can be this in "Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q". She barely makes an attempt to get out of her relationship with Jeff and no reason is given for why she ever ended up with him in the first place, so it just makes her look dumber.
  • Angela spends most of "Peter-Assment" sexually harassing Peter and threatening to fire him if he doesn't obey her orders. After he escapes from her when she attempts to rape him, she attempts suicide via sitting in her garage and inhaling car exhaust. Peter saves her life and she reveals that the reason she's been doing this to him is that she doesn't have any lovers in her life and she just wants to be loved. Naturally, it's quite difficult to feel sorry for her because of everything she's done in that episode up to that point.
• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • Meg has much more fans than many people think. The most prominent example is Fanfiction.net. Just dare to say anything bad about Meg there.
  • Brian, though recently The Scrappy, is gaining sheds of this due to the overwhelming Kafka Komedy he falls victim to.
• Values Dissonance: In "The Fat Guy Strangler", Peter starts the "National Association for the Advancement of Fat People" which deconstructed fat acceptance groups. With the greater trend of fat acceptance since then, Peter's antics are less funny and more cringe-y.
• Vocal Minority: Some liberals and atheists despise this show because it makes them look bad.
  • The gay community has also been vocal; a whopping 49.6% of members of gay entertainment site AfterElton.com (and ALL of the regularly contributing writers) dislike the show, with an additional 18.2% being bothered by various episodes.
    • Here are two articles from that site complaining about Family Gay and Quagmire's Dad. Note that the Family Gay article does not complain about the use of gay stereotypes, but about the lack of originality in their execution.
• Weird Al Effect
• The Woobie: Some people feel sorry for Meg because of her extreme Butt Monkey status.
  • Brian, to the half of the fanbase that doesn't hate him, due to being the nearest to an Only Sane Man and an endless victim to Kafka Komedy.
    • Jerkass Woobie: But at the same time, he can be self-centered and unsympathetic.
  • Arguably Lois began as such due to being a closer-to-Earth character that put up with the rest of the family's obnoxious antics, whether she retained the role today however is debatable (though the fact she is partially responsible for some of the above Woobie's abuse kinda skews it a bit).
  • Charlie Brown in the "Peanuts Reunion" cutaway.
  • You will feel sorry for Brenda Quagmire.
  • Stewie, as of "Be Careful What You Fish For".
  • Jerkass Woobie: Glenn Quagmire, himself.
  • Strangely enough... Bitch Stewie. He's actually so nice, went to a birthday party in Stewie's place and he was very friendly with the kids there. He's just so helpless and his intelligence, little as it may be, deteriorates. Then he melts.