Peter Griffin (seasons 8-present)

Peter Griffin is the titular main protagonist of the FOX adult animated comedy series Family Guy; however, he is not as nice a character 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 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.

Peter is not alone in this respect as he is shown to have an "evil" brother known as Thaddeus Griffin, suggesting antagonism runs in his family, that explains about his son, Stewie (though in fairness, Peter does have some moments of being a caring individual, though they are rare).

He is voiced by the show’s creator, Seth MacFarlane.

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

Why He's Not Our Family Guy Anymore

 * 1) His character in particular hit a heavy flanderization compared to all the other characters in Family Guy and arguably suffered one of the worst flanderizations in any piece of media; he originally started out as a somewhat dimwitted yet friendly father, but nowadays, he is shown to be a stupid, rude, crude, moronic, short-tempered, immature, stubborn, selfish, reckless, egotistical, psychotic, and argumentative person who causes misery to a great deal of the people around him and rarely feels affectionate towards his family, especially Meg, and even with Lois, who he has shown a great deal of disrespect towards, cheating on her on several occasions.
 * 2) He has lost all of the original personality and charm he had in the prior five seasons (and to a lesser extent, Seasons 6-7) and is yet to see the light of redemption though it varies whether he was in character or not in Seasons 6-7.
 * 3) 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 than he has for his family as well.
 * 4) 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, 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.
 * 5) 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, Peter actually left Meg behind when she was in mortal danger, saying that he and Lois had decided if they needed to leave a child behind, it would be Meg. Along with this, he openly admitted to everyone that he hated the kids, simply because they didn't do anything or weren't entertaining. However, 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.
 * 6) He has murdered several innocent people for no reason 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.
 * 7) Speaking of "Blowing up hospitals", he's also committed serval acts of terrorism, like that time he blew up another hospital while imitating the Joker, or that time he blew up a bridge after he befriended an Islamic terrorist, which was another incident.
 * 8) He is frequently very cruel to animals such as when he killed Quagmire's cat with a straight razor in an attempt to shave it, strangled a tortoise in Fiji, when he eviscerated a whale with a forklift, and when he killed a family of squirrels by cutting down a tree with a chainsaw. Even Brian isn't safe from Peter's cruelty (Though he doesn't deserve to be safe), as in one episode, Peter threw Brian into a fire hydrant with his car, causing him to lose his teeth, and in "High School English", Peter kills Brian in a pig form with a knife, This isn't taken seriously, as Brian meeting his demise in all three stories in that episode.
 * 9) Hypocrisy: He always hates it whenever people try to hurt Meg, which is understandable, yet he does the same exact thing but it's even worse than everyone else does in the family. Even Connie and Lois of all characters never physically hurt Meg.
 * 10) Like Homer Simpson, his stupidity has gone from being enjoyable and hilarious to being annoying, and sometimes outright unlikable since Season 8, though Peter became far less likable than Homer.
 * 11) In two episodes he had child pornography, which is illegal and a serious crime. 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 children's penises. He has also shown a sexual attraction to Meg's bully Connie D'Amico.
 * 12) In "Hot Shots", when Brian 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 or understand the criticism he gets.
 * 13) Peter has made tons of irredeemable acts so much, it's so noticeable to see how badly butchered he was, with "Seahorse Seashell Party" being arguably the worst offender. Other examples include:
 * 14) He once tried to marry his son Chris just for his money in "Fresh Heir, which is wrong on so many levels!
 * 15) In "Lottery Fever", he shot Joe in the eye and Quagmire in the throat.
 * 16) In "Family Goy", he overreacted to Lois being Jewish, proving that he's anti-Semitic.
 * 17) 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.
 * 18) He once dressed up as a member of the Ku Klux Klan to get rid of Jerome (who is black) which is extremely offensive.
 * 19) In "And Then There's Fraud", he and Chris started scamming people with sports equipment signed by famous people.
 * 20) In "Boys and Squirrels", he tells some teenagers to kill themselves because the teens thought he was Slenderman.
 * 21) In "April in Quahog", he states that he hates his kids and says that they don't serve any purpose to him.
 * 22) In "Better Off Meg", he tells Lois to stop crying now that Meg is gone, what a great father!
 * 23) 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.
 * 24) 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).
 * 25) 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 the voiced, despite the fact that he is iconic and MacFarlane still provides his voice.
 * 26) Overall, Peter’s Flanderization completely damaged the reputation of his character as a whole, it's to the point where people who used to find him as one of their favorite characters in Family Guy (or cartoons in general) now dislike him and consider him as one of the worst characters in the show's history. It's even to the point where a few fans and haters started to dislike his character as a whole, despite the fact he was likable in the first seven seasons.

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, including Meg, which makes his flanderization much sadder.
 * 2) There are funny moments with him sometimes like this.
 * 3) He can sometimes come across as likable, can be seen bonding with his family and can even be temporarily reverted back to his original personality in some episodes.
 * 4) * 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.
 * 5) His voice does sound funny and is still great, thanks to Seth MacFarlane's performance, along with his character design remaining good over the years.
 * 6) Sometimes, he receives comeuppance for his sinful deeds and shows remorse, like when he accidentally shot Cleveland Junior.
 * 7) * At times he tries to fix his mistakes. For example, when he ruined the internet, he tried everything that he could to fix it.
 * 8) In more recent seasons, he began reconciling with Meg, thus his abuse of her began to dial down.
 * 9) His abuse of Meg stopped in "Peter's Sister" when his daughter saved him from losing by knocking his sister unconscious with a chair.
 * 10) His rivalry with Ernie the Giant Chicken is still funny and memorable.
 * 11) 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.
 * 12) He has admitted on occasions that he does deeply love and care for his family and friends, he just doesn't show it as much as he should.
 * 13) * He, along with Quagmire, help Joe find the criminal that crippled him after he escaped from jail.
 * 14) * He hates whenever someone picks on his daughter, Meg, despite doing the same.
 * 15) * He (although he didn't care at first) and Lois did not approve of Meg attending a foot fetish party.
 * 16) * He, Cleveland, and Quagmire were upset when they found out Joe wanted to kill himself.
 * 17) * 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.
 * 18) * He and Lois once protected Meg from Quagmire in "Quagmire and Meg".

Reception
Whilst Peter was a loved character during the first seven seasons, in later years, Peter has become one of the most hated Family Guy characters since Season 8 and is often considered to be the character who has suffered from one of worst flanderizations in any pieces of media, along with other flanderized characters such as Brian and Lois. Although, his character has received a cult following and there are still a handful of fans who still like him, even after his flanderization.

Trivia

 * He has spawned a ton on internet memes.

Videos
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