Peter Griffin (seasons 8-present)

This article has been reviewed by one of our administrators as one of the best articles on **Loathsome Characters Wiki**. To request an article to be featured, click here.

 This article contains potentially sensitive content that may be discomforting or upsetting to certain users. Reader discretion is advised!
 Reason: Countless adult oriented subjects like domestic abuse, assault, drugging, etc

"**Gosh Lois, this is even worse than that time I was flanderized in season 8 and put on Loathsome Characters Wiki.**"**-The real Peter's reaction when the writers flanderized him in seasons 8 onwards.**

**Peter Griffin** is the main character of Fox's long-running adult animated comedy series *Family Guy*. He is voiced by the show's creator, Seth MacFarlane. He is the husband of Lois Griffin, and the father of Meg, Chris, and Stewie Griffin. Usually, he's depicted as being innocent and stupid; however, he is not as nice as some may imagine. In fact, throughout the course of the series, Peter has caused much misery for those around himself; often, this is due to his stupidity, but there have been times when Peter has deliberately caused harm or misfortune on others to better himself, which only backfires, leaving Peter the raw end of the deal.

While he was generally likable in the first 7 seasons, he suffered an awful case of flanderization in season 8 and hasn't redeemed ever since.

## Why He's Not Our Family Guy Anymore

1. He has been flanderized beyond recognition to and has lost all the charm and likability he had in the first five seasons, though it varies whether he's in character or not in seasons 6, 7, and even the first half of season 8 (as his flanderization didn't kick into full gear until "Brian Griffin's House of Payne"). He, along with his wife Lois and dog Brian, arguably suffered the **absolute worst** flanderizations in any piece of media. He went from a somewhat dim-witted, yet good-hearted man that truly loved his wife and children at the end of the day to an even dumber, rude, crude, moronic, short-tempered, immature, stubborn, selfish, reckless, psychopathic, mean-spirited, psychotic, and argumentative jerk and flat out evil villain with little to no redeeming or sympathetic traits who causes a great deal of harm and misery to others around him and rarely feels affectionate towards his family, especially Lois and his daughter Meg, as he has shown a great deal of disrespect towards the former, cheating on her on several occasions, and even insensitively abusing the latter for the sake of laughs.
2. Most of his time is spent with his drinking buddies, getting wasted and going wherever he wants, doing whatever they want, and costing thousands of dollars of damage with his drunken or sober tomfoolery. He has been willing to do much more for his friends (Quagmire, Cleveland, and Joe) than he has for his family as well.
3. Another example of his negative aspects is how terrible of a husband he is to his wife, Lois. Peter almost always takes her for granted, despite him being considerably lucky to have her due to the fact that Lois was the daughter of a billionaire Carter Pewterschmidt (who dislikes him), is very attractive and has had the affection of several others around her who are arguably better people than Peter. There have been more than enough instances to show Peter has been cheating on Lois, such as when he admitted on television he knew the names of every pornographic star, even those who had joined an hour before, and has been openly shown to either have attractions for other women and former sexual partners during his marriage with Lois.
4. He is also shown to be an absolutely manipulative, atrocious, and cheating father, demeaning, demoralizing, pranking and downright abusing his family, especially Meg. In fact, in "Petergiest", Peter actually left Meg behind when ghosts came out of her, saying that he and Lois had decided if they needed to leave any of their children behind, it would be Meg. Along with this, in "April in Quahog" he openly admitted to Lois that he hated being around their kids, simply because they didn't do anything or weren't entertaining. What's even worse is that this is usually played for comedy, but since this is completely unfunny and tasteless, it's horribly out of character for Peter, as he never abused his children before the "Model Misbehavior" episode, and used to truly love them. Plus, there have been moments in other episodes where Peter has been there for his children, having good times with them, getting some laughs, and even taking them to fun amusement parks or parties. He was a way better character in the earlier seasons as mentioned below.
5. He has **murdered several innocent people for seemingly no reason other than the fact that the writers clearly wanted it to happen or second thought including children and elderly people.** After he does this he usually laughs or forgets about it, and usually goes unpunished for this, except for the time he **blew up a children's hospital, for which he served a sentence of week in prison, but although this was an accident he still expressed no remorse.**
	* Speaking of blowing up hospitals, he's also committed serval acts of **terrorism, like the time he blew up another hospital while imitating the Joker or the time he blew up a bridge after befriending an Islamic terrorist.**
6. He is frequently very cruel to animals; a few examples are **killing Quagmire's cat with a straight razor in an attempt to shave it, strangling a sea turtle with phone cords, eviscerating a whale with a forklift, and killing a family of squirrels by cutting down a tree with a chainsaw.** Even Brian isn't safe from Peter's cruelty; in one episode, Peter threw Brian into a fire hydrant with his car, causing him to lose his teeth.
7. He is a massive hypocrite. For example, he always hates it whenever people try to hurt Meg, which is understandable since she's his daughter, yet he does the same exact thing to her, but it's even worse than everyone else does in the family. Even Connie and Lois of all characters never physically hurt Meg.
8. In the same vein as Homer Simpson, his stupidity has gone from being enjoyable and hilarious to being annoying and mean-spirited, though far worse than Homer.
9. He never gets any commeupance for his terrible actions, making him an **ultra huge** Karma Houdini (also an Idiot Houdini due to his stupidity).
10. In at least two episodes he had **child pornography, which is illegal and a serious crime, and can result in some or many years in jail in real-life.** In "The 2000-Year-Old Virgin", he even went as far as to throw his laptop into the ocean to prevent its discovery and in "He's Bla-ack", **it's implied he has many photos of boys' penises.** He has also shown a sexual attraction to Meg's bully Connie D'Amico.
11. In "Hot Shots", when Brian Griffin called out Peter because he's done a lot of worse things than Brian, Peter interrupted him and acted like it was no big deal, which shows that he cannot handle, understand the criticism he gets, and/or it could be both.
12. He has done so many unlikable and irredeemable things that it will most likely cause you to hate him with a fiery passion.
	* In "Fresh Heir", he once tried to **marry** his son Chris just for his money, which is wrong on so many levels and is incest.
	* In "Lottery Fever", he shot Joe in the eye and Quagmire in the throat.
	* In "Family Goy", he overreacted to Lois being Jewish, proving that he's anti-Semitic, **even going so far as to kill her.**
	* In "A Fistful of Meg", he shamelessly stripped naked in front of Brian for no reason and deliberately shoves his nudity in the dog's face, going so far as to actually **mail his penis to Brian**. But he did get what he deserved in the end, even if it is a bit too disturbing.
	* In, "Jerome is the New Black", he dressed up as a member of the Ku Klux Klan to get rid of Jerome which is *extremely* offensive.
	* In "And Then There's Fraud", he and Chris started scamming people with sports equipment signed by famous people.
	* In "Boys and Squirrels", he tells some teenagers to commit suicide because they thought he was Slenderman.
	* In "April in Quahog", he states that he hates his kids and says that they don't serve any purpose to him.
	* In "Better Off Meg", he repeatedly tells Lois and Brian to stop crying now that Meg is gone. What a great father!
	* In "Must Love Dogs", he steals Stewie's Halloween candy. It's also mentioned he stole candy from Chris when he was younger, which is very mean.
	* In "Pawtucket Pete", Peter gets Brian fired from being the mascot of Pawtucket Patriot Ale and nearly got off the hook for his actions, which is quite clear that he encourages bitter jealousy.
	* In "Internal Affairs", he almost ruins Joe's marriage with Bonnie by convincing him to cheat on her with another cop.
13. When he's not depicted as unlikeable, he can often be a butt-monkey for comedic purposes (the episode "Peter-assment" is arguably the worst offender of them all).
14. **His once iconic but now infamous laugh can get you on your very last nerve!**
15. He's also bland and boring due to the lack of expression and emotion on his face, which comes from how he is animated and voiced, despite the fact that he is iconic and MacFarlane still provides his voice.
16. He can sometimes be a Gary Stu.
17. For some reason by season 17, his abuse of Meg returned, making "Peter's Sister" a massive plot hole, but thankfully he didn't abuse her in season 21 (aside from "White Meg Can't Jump").
18. Overall, Peter’s flanderization completely damaged the reputation of his character as a whole, it's to the point where people not only consider him the TV equivalent of Annoying Orange (mid 2014-present) (in which both suffered heavy flanderization and did terrible, unforgivable and irredeemable things) but also where people who once found him as one of their favorite characters in *Family Guy* (or cartoons in general) now dislike him and consider him as the worst character (yes even worse than Brian, Lois, Jeff or Connie) in the show's history and one of the worst cartoon characters in general as a whole. Despite the fact he was likable in the first seven seasons, it's even to the point where a few critics, fans and haters started to dislike him for being a shell out of his well-meaning self, even his character as a whole. In other words, he gives the original Peter Griffin a bad name.

## Redeeming Qualities

1. In the earlier seasons of Family Guy, Peter was just a very charming dim-witted father that always meant well and was very affectionate to his children, not to mention he never abused Meg before the "Model Misbehavior" episode, which makes his flanderization much sadder.
	* He, along with some other flanderized characters, are slightly reverting back to their original personalities starting with season 21.
2. There are still a handful of funny moments with him. Examples:
	* His rivalry with Ernie the Giant Chicken is still funny and memorable.
	* "Toast House"
	* "I Swiched Seats"
	* "I Can Remember!"
3. He can oftentimes come across as likable, can be seen bonding with his family and can even be temporarily reverted back to his original personality in several episodes, especially the good episodes.
	* He comes across as sympathetic in "Peter-assment" (which is one of the episodes where he's not flanderized like he usually is), due to Angela sexually abusing him throughout the entire episode.
4. His voice does still sound funny and is still great, thanks to Seth MacFarlane's performance, along with his character design still remaining good over the years.
5. Sometimes, he receives comeuppance for his sinful deeds and shows remorse, like when he accidentally shot Cleveland Junior.
	* At times he tries to fix his mistakes. For example, when he ruined the internet, he tried everything that he could to fix it.
6. In more recent seasons, (mainly in seasons 15 & 16 and except season 17) he began reconciling with Meg, thus his abuse of her began to dial down.
7. His abuse of Meg stopped in "Peter's Sister" when his daughter saved him from losing by knocking his sister unconscious with a chair. but that's not saying much since his abuse of Meg came back in season 17.

    #Nowadays, he can still do heroic deeds, from time to time such as adopting Brian as a stray, saving his daughter, finding a missing kid, attempting to save Ernie the Giant Chicken while he was dying from the bird flu, etc.

1. He has admitted on occasions that he still does deeply love and care for his family and friends, he now just doesn't show it as much as he should.
	* He, along with Quagmire, help Joe find the criminal that crippled him after he escaped from jail.
	* He hates whenever someone picks on his daughter, Meg, despite doing the same.
	* In Peter, Chris, and Brian he wanted to spend time with Chris
	* He (although he didn't care at first) and Lois did not approve of Meg attending a foot fetish party.
	* He, Cleveland, and Quagmire were upset when they found out Joe wanted to kill himself.
	* In "Trump Guy" (although not at first) he and the rest of the family cared that Meg was sexually touched by Trump.
	* Just like on RQ#5, he felt bad about accidentally shooting Cleveland Junior and felt horrible when people started to threaten Cleveland and his son when the lawyer that Carter got for Peter made Cleveland Junior the bad guy.
	* He and Lois once protected Meg from Quagmire in "Quagmire and Meg".
2. His design is still great, memorable, and iconic.

## Trivia

* He has spawned a ton of internet memes.
* He is very similar to Eric Cartman from *South Park* as they are both selfish, abusive, racist, misogynistic individuals who would kill anyone just for their own personal gain. Coincidentally, both are overweight.

## Videos

EmbedVideo received the bad id "vlQJl2ipIoE&t=1s" for the service "youtube".EmbedVideo received the bad id "meSqeGYncMg&pp" for the service "youtube".