Family Guy: 10 Worst Things Peter Has Done

We can’t help but love Peter Griffin. The oafish patriarch and main character on Family Guy has been serving up nonstop laughs for over twenty years. He’s taken us on adventures, provided us with countless quotable one-liners, and made us smile more times than we can remember.

Nevertheless, we cannot deny that Peter has had some ethical (and legal) slip-ups over the years. For all the joy he brings us, it seems unfair to call Peter a bad person, but at the same time, the record is irrefutably hard to argue with. Here are ten of the worst things he has ever done.

10 Driving Under The Influence

Peter is an alcoholic. He spends an inordinate amount of time drinking beer at the Drunken Clam and usually comes out intoxicated. For better or worse, Peter’s drunkenness has led him to all sorts of wild places over Family Guy‘s eighteen seasons. Unfortunately one of those wild places happens to repeatedly be the front seat of his car. Peter has driven under the influence on multiple occasions. He does not always get caught, and sometimes he even makes it home safely. However, his foolishness has gotten him into more than a couple of accidents. Every time he decides to drive drunk, he puts himself and so many others in danger.

9 Abusing Drugs

Alcohol is not the only drug that Peter has abused on Family Guy. Throughout the series, we’ve seen him do cocaine, smoke crack, and take ecstasy. He’s also used steroids and crystal meth. While Peter’s narcotic escapades create reliably hilarious jokes for us viewers, we cannot deny that they leave him morally compromised. In the best of circumstances, these drugs mellow Peter out to uncharacteristic extremes. In the worst cases, though, they make him overly hyper and violent towards those closest to him. Either way, Peter should probably stay sober if he wants to be his best self.

8 Cheating On Lois

Peter and Lois Griffin had been married for years before the show premiered in 1999. That being said, neither side of the relationship has been one hundred percent faithful throughout. Each has gone behind the other’s back at some point and both have slept around. Peter, for one, has cheated on Lois with the likes of several women as well as a few men. Oftentimes, Peter doesn’t go so far as to consummate his nefarious relationships, but it does not stop him from leering at younger women, an action that is unquestionably icky, especially when done unapologetically before his wife’s very eyes.

7 Neglecting His Children

Even though the title of the show is Family Guy, Peter is a pretty reprehensible husband and father. On top of his disloyalty to Lois, he has also mistreated his children. He’s engaged in pointless hostility with Chris, all but ignored Stewie, and degraded Meg in seemingly every episode.

In the season eight episode “Brian Griffin’s House Of Payne,” Peter confesses to having frequently dropped all his children throughout their infancies. Then, in the series’ very next episode, he admits to not caring for or about them at all. This is utterly heartless, but hardly surprising considering how absent Peter is from his kids’ lives.

6 Assaulting Quahog Residents

The Griffin children are not the only people that Peter has physically harmed over the course of the show. He’s lashed out at many Quahog citizens throughout the years. Sometimes, he’s just throwing punches; other times he gets in full-on brawls. Regardless, it’s pretty juvenile. The worst is when he attacks people more defenseless than himself. In the episode “The Tan Aquatic With Steve Zissou” he assaults a teenage boy and in “Mind Over Murder” he strikes a pregnant woman. To be fair, in the former circumstance he was defending his son.

5 Stealing Millions Of Dollars

No one can say for sure how much money Peter has stolen in his life, but odds are it adds up to millions. Throughout the series, we’ve seen Peter rob banks, mug people, and even break into his own father-in-law’s security vault. In fact, the show’s very first episode focuses on Peter committing insurance fraud, setting a clear criminal precedent for the character. Sometimes Peter learns from his crimes and gives the money back by the end of the episode. On other occasions, though, he pockets it for a gag never to be returned to.

4 Causing Immense Property Damage

Whether he is in the middle of a fight with Liam Neeson, Donald Trump, Homer Simpson, or a giant chicken, Peter Griffin is a transparently destructive force. During his elaborate battles, Peter has derailed vehicles, abolished edifices, and decimated entire landscapes.

Over the years, he’s probably caused well over a billion dollars in property damage from his theatrical scuffles alone. That’s not even taking into account all the little things he’s done outside the fights like punch through walls, crash cars, set items aflame, and obliterate his neighbors’ homes (most notably Cleveland’s).

3 Blowing Up A Hospital

As aforementioned, Peter’s property damaging antics are not limited to his grandiose fights. Seth MacFarlane has provided more than a few outstanding examples of the titular character demolishing places and things completely independent of other incidents. One of the most harrowing examples of this comes in the season seven episode, “Tales Of A Third Grade Nothing,” where he blows up an operating children’s hospital across from his workplace. Granted, the damage was unintentional; he really wanted to blow up a billboard of his brewery’s rival beer company. However, given that the billboard was right next to the hospital, we cannot excuse Peter’s harmful stupidity on this one.

2 Bombing A Bridge

Another example of Peter causing conspicuously violent damage stands out in the season eleven episode, “Turban Cowboy.” In this instance, Peter blows up a local bridge as part of a terrorist attack. It’s one thing for Peter to cause some collateral destruction in a fight, but getting involved in a terrorist organization brings on a whole new level of horrible. Once again, the ultimate act of bombing the bridge was an accident, and by the time it happens, Peter has given up his terrorist identity. Still, this is a deadly mistake that can’t be forgiven or forgotten too easily.

1 Committing Murder

Blowing up buildings and bridges are not the only ways that Peter has taken lives on Family Guy. Intentionally or unintentionally, he’s killed many people over the show’s 309 episodes. He killed his father by falling on him, drove his car through the Boston Marathon field, and even alluded to being responsible for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. He also accidentally killed Cleveland’s first wife, Loretta. Perhaps “murder” isn’t always the correct legal term for Peter’s killings, but more often than not, such semantics do not negate the severity.

About The Author