Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has opened up about one controversial joke from the show that he regrets.
The long-running animated sitcom first premiered on January 31, 1999, and is still going strong after 23 seasons.
The popular show centers around the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois, their children, Meg, Chris, and Stewie, and their talking pet dog, Brian.
Having been on our screens for more than two decades, it’s safe to say that Family Guy has no boundaries when it comes to who it will offend with crude jokes.
The beloved sitcom has been the target of backlash and indecency complaints for its pop culture references, dark humor, and violent and disturbing images.
While most of these jokes have stood the test of time some, however, have not - and even the show’s creator himself can admit that.
Back in 2012, MacFarlane, now 51, admitted during his appearance on Out of Character with Krista Smith that there's one gag he wishes the envelope-pushing animated hit had not aired.
“There have been jokes that I would have rather we not have done. The JFK Pez Dispenser was something I would probably not do now," he said, per Entertainment Weekly.
In case you don't remember, the joke was from the first season of Family Guy back in 1999 and was deleted from some subsequent airings.
In the scene, from the the episode titled ‘A Hero Sits Next Door,' a kid runs out of a store excited about his new John F. Kennedy Pez Dispenser. The toy’s head is then shot off by a police sniper so the kid reveals another Pez Dispenser and says: “Good thing I still have my Bobby Kennedy Pez Dispenser.”
The scene references the chilling moment former president John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he drove through downtown Dallas on 22 November 1963. Five years after JFK's murder, his brother Robert F. Kennedy - who was known by the nickname Bobby - was also assassinated in June 1968.
Watch the controversial scene below:The creator isn't the only one to take issue with some of the jokes told on the series as he once disclosed that actor Adrian Brody "got very upset with [him] at a party about a joke" the show made about him.
“I felt horrible," he said, per the outlet. "Because I actually think he’s a tremendously gifted actor. If you’re going to take a stab at somebody - even a celebrity, it can’t be just mean, it also has to be funny or they have to really, really deserve it.”
Actress Chloe Grace Moretz also revealed that a meme about her body on Family Guy led to her becoming a “recluse".
"This photo got manipulated into a character from ‘Family Guy’ with the long legs and the short torso, and it was one of the most widespread memes at the time," she told Hunger Magazine. “Everyone was making fun of my body... I just remember sitting there and thinking, my body is being used as a joke and it’s something that I can’t change about who I am, and it is being posted all over Instagram."
“I basically became a recluse,” Moretz continued. “It was great because I got away from the photographers and I was able to be myself and to have so many experiences that people didn’t photograph, but at the same time, it made me severely anxious when I was photographed. My heart rate would rise and I would hyperventilate.”
MacFarlane explained to the Los Angeles Times that there is much more to the humor of Family Guy, saying: "Audiences can smell the difference between social media virtue signaling and real offense."
"If it’s real offense, you didn’t get away with the comedy," he said. "One of the things that 'Family Guy' has really tried to do every step of the way is to look at every joke and say, 'OK, if we were called on the carpet, could we defend this in an intellectual way, and say, this is the point we were making?'"
"There's an earnestness to that approach that I think has created sort of a shield around the show that continues to this day," he added.
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