# Ernie the Giant Chicken

Ernie the Giant Chicken is a fictional recurring character in the animated television series Family Guy. He is voiced by series writer Danny Smith. He acts as a rival towards the main protagonist, Peter Griffin.

## Role in Family Guy

Ernie is an actual giant chicken (as opposed to a man in a costume) who appears in several episodes, usually interrupting the storyline of the episode and engaging in a lengthy fight scene with Peter. These fight scenes involve the pair traveling across the whole city and causing extreme amounts of damage to themselves and the surrounding areas. The scenes resemble a blockbuster action film with several dramatic explosions and fight scenes which parody the likes of Die Hard. Peter has won every fight to date and always leaves Ernie for dead, only for Ernie to show some sign of life, implying that he and Peter will fight again. After every fight, Peter returns to what he was doing, injuries and all, as though nothing had happened.

## Appearances

Ernie first debutted in the episode "Da Boom", after a store worker in a giant chicken costume offers Peter a coupon at a grocery store. Peter rejects the offer, remarking, "I don't accept coupons from giant chickens. Not after last time." This goes to a flashback gag of Peter attempting to use a coupon given to him by Ernie. When Peter learns the coupon has expired he leaps through the window and begins to brawl with Ernie. The fight ends with them both falling out of a skyscraper window, although the chicken breaks Peter's fall. Initially, the chicken appears dead; however he moves as the scene ends. While the story in "Da Boom" is outside the continuity of the series, the feud nevertheless became a running gag seen in regular episodes, resuming briefly in "Blind Ambition". In "No Chris Left Behind", the chicken is identified as "Ernie", and he is given a wife named Nicole, another giant chicken. In the episode, Peter encounters the chicken once more; however, during their fight, the two seem to have forgotten about the expired coupon over which they were fighting. The two then make up and go out to dinner with Nicole, only to resume fighting over who pays the bill. Ernie makes a brief, non-fighting appearance in the time travel themed episode "Meet the Quagmires", in which Peter unwittingly assaults the giant chicken at an 80s dance, retroactively providing Ernie with a grudge against Peter. Ernie also makes a cameo appearance with no lines as one of the angry mob coming for O.J. Simpson in "The Juice Is Loose!", albeit obscured by at least one person in the mob at all times. In "Big Man on Hippocampus", Ernie causes Peter's memory to come back, after Peter "snubs" him a hello due to Peter's amnesia. Ernie, being upset, then proceeds to hit him several times, alternating between giving him his memory back and giving him amnesia again. Peter later says "I'm just lucky he had an odd number of objects." It was revealed in the ninth season episode "New Kidney in Town" that Ernie was accidentally created by Dr. Hartman in an attempt to clone a regular chicken, and had escaped from the laboratory.
Ernie the Giant Chicken appeared as the final boss of Family Guy Video Game!.
Ernie also appears in the Star Wars parody episode "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side," as the infamous bounty hunter Boba Fett, nemesis of Peter's Han Solo. Peter, upon seeing him comments on the giant chicken being Boba Fett.

## Promotion and reception

A tshirt with Ernie the Giant Chicken as Boba Fett was released as part of the Something, Something, Something, Dark Side collector's set, along with a lunchbox of the main cast in the episode.
Ahsan Haque of IGN listed Peter's second fight with the Chicken as eighth on his the "Family Guy's Top 10 Fights" list, along with his first fight as his second favourite and his third fight as number one, calling the first fight "creative and elaborately put together". IGN also said Ernie was their eighth top Family Guy character, and said that Ernie was one of the characters they most wanted to join Cleveland on his new show. Ahsan Haque also praised No Chris Left Behind's extended chicken fight scene, going on to note, "Like every other encounter with the Giant Chicken, this was highly entertaining, incredibly creative and just the type of sequence the Family Guy needs more of." PopMatters' Kevin Wong commented on the fight scene between Peter and the Giant Chicken in Blind Ambition as "a cartoon action sequence to end all cartoon action sequences: vehicles explode and limbs flail as Peter and the chicken beat each other senseless."
In contrast, Brett Love of TV Squad found the chicken scene in No Chris Left Behind to be too long, stating, "there are only 22 minutes per episode [...] Taking a quarter of that for the chicken fight is just ridiculous." Blind Ambition's fight was criticized by Mike Drucker of IGN, who found that "the long fight with the chicken in Blind Ambition was funny once before, but borderline tiring here".