Family Guy: 28 Interesting Facts You Might Not Know

Family Guy is one of the funniest adult animation series that has beaming on our TV screens for more than a decade. There’s probably a lot that you don’t know about this series, but today I’m aiming to change that.

Here 28 Facts that you might now have known about Family Guy:

1. The TV show is the brainchild of Seth Macfarlane. He first came up with the show’s concept in 1995 (while he was studying design at the Rhode Island School of Design. Larry & Steve (a precursor for the show) aired on Cartoon Network in 1997.

2. Family Guy eventually premiered on Fox in January 1999, but was eventually cancelled after only 3 seasons on the air in 2001. When the show first aired, it made MacFarlane the youngest executive producer in all of television at the tender age of 24.

3. Family Guy‘s DVD’s sold more than 3 million copies. This impressed Fox and rekindled their interest in the show. They ordered new episodes and the show was back on the air with its fourth season in May 2005.

4. Seth MacFarlane voices three of the show’s main characters: Peter Griffin, Brian Griffin, and Stewie Griffin. He also does the voice for Glenn Quagmire. Alex Borstein voices Peter’s wife Lois Griffin, Asian correspondent Tricia Takanawa, Loretta Brown, and Lois’ mother, Babs Pewterschmidt.

5. Seth Green primarily voices Chris Griffin and Neil Goldman. Mila Kunis and Lacey Chabert have both voiced Meg Griffin. Mike Henry voices Cleveland Brown, Herbert, Bruce the Performance Artist, Consuela and the Greased-up Deaf Guy.

Watch MacFarlane doing his Family Guy voices on the Graham Norton Show below.

6. In 2009, Brian and Stewie made a joke about “Bruce Jenner’s vagina.” This was six years before Caitlyn’s actual gender reassignment.

7. Occasionally, the show will poke fun at Robot Chicken and Chris will get mad. This is because Seth Green, the voice of Chris Griffin, is the producer, lead voice actor, and co-creator of that series. Chris’ voice is actually based on the voice of Buffalo Bill in the 1991 film Silence of the Lambs.

8. Peter Griffin was raised a devout Catholic and, as a result, Chris Griffin’s middle name is “Cross.” That’s right. His full name is Chris Cross Griffin. Remember these blokes from the 1990s?

9. The voice of Peter Griffin was based on the voice of a security guard that Seth MacFarlane knew when he went to college.

10. During South Park‘s 10th season, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone decided to vocalize their disdain for Family Guy’s humor in the form of a two-part episode titled “Cartoon Wars.” In the episode, it is revealed to the characters in South Park that the writing staff of Family Guy is actually a group of manatees, and their ideas for cutaway jokes are generated by randomly pairing “idea” balls. When South Park ran the episode, they received flowers from the fine folks at The Simpsons with a message saying they were doing God’s work.

11  The main cast makes more than $225,000 per episode.

12. Seth MacFarlane was supposed to be on American Airlines Flight 11 (which crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the attacks on September 11th, 2001). Fortunately, he was late and he missed it. He was flying back from giving a speech at his alma mater. He still has the ticket.

13. Family Guy was the first animated program since The Flintstones to be nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series at the Emmys.

14. Quagmire voice is based on radio announcers from the 1940s and 1950s and his appearance was based on Bob Hope.

15. The big chicken who shows up from time time to have long drawn-out fights with Peter is named Ernie. The entire fight began over an expired coupon.

16. Every single Family Guy episode includes at least one utterance of the phrase, “What the hell.”

17. From beginning to end, a full Family Guy episode takes a year to make it to the small screen. Of course, they make multiple episodes at once.

18. Every episode has two versions. One for DVD and the other for TV. Obviously, the DVD version is the definitive version where they can really let loose with all the humor the censors won’t allow on TV.

19. The show contains numerous references to The Jetsons and The Flintstones. This is because MacFarlane was a writer for Hanna-Barbera before creating Family Guy and has a deep affection and familiarity with those characters.

20. Carrie Fisher began voicing the character of Angela, Peter’s hard-nosed boss at the Pawtucket Brewery, in 2005. She also provided the voice of Mon Mothma in Family Guy’s Star Wars parody, “It’s a Trap!” The beloved actress contributed to more than two dozen episodes before her passing in 2016.

21. Family Guy has been named the “Worst TV Show of the Week” 44 times by the Parents Television Council.

22. It Costs About $2 Million to Make One Episode. This may seem like a ton, but if you take into account the amount of people that need to be paid, that makes sense. In case you did not know. the voice actors in The Simpsons were making $400,000 each per episode at the show’s peak. The Simpsons episodes cost significantly more than Family Guy‘s episodes.

23. The next-door neighbor of the Griffins, Bonnie, stayed pregnant for around seven years. After such a long pregnancy, she gave birth to Susie and was voiced by Patrick Stewart (who also voices Stan’s boss in American Dad).

24. Seth MacFarlane actually does Brian’s voice by talking normally.

25. MacFarlane developed an obsession with death as he named several episodes with the titles from an old radio suspense drama from the 1940s. It was hilarious for the first few episodes, but it stopped being funny after around four episodes and they changed the names back to the conventional ones.

26. Meg’s full name is actually Megatron. Finding this out was not a big shock, seeing as she has two of the strangest parents in TV history. It turns out that after her mother named her Megan, her father took it upon himself to have her name changed to Megatron.

27. Quagmire’s age is discovered when his license is shown in one of the episodes. Despite being 70 he does not age on the show and it doesn’t look like he is even a day over 40.

28. Initially, cars and water were drawn by hand in the early seasons but have since transitioned to CGI for smoother visuals.

Well, there you have, 28 Facts that you might not have known about Family Guy. I hope that you’ve learned something that you did not know before. If you did, feel free to share this article with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Watch this space for updates in the Facts category on Interesting Facts.