Hey, viewers, remember the time we talked about the worst Family Guy
characters? ….No cutaway gag? Oh. Well, don’t worry–we’ll tell you all about it!
Not everyone in Quahog can be as funny as Peter Griffin, as nice as Cleveland Brown,
or even as wacky as Adam West. These are the major
Family Guy characters who do the least things that make us laugh.
I’m Brad with WickedBinge, and these are The WORST Family Guy Characters–and why they suck!
With that being said, let’s start off with Meg Griffin. Honestly, Meg is mostly just on this
list as a formality. One of the most famous running gags in Family Guy–especially in the
later seasons–is the whole cast bullying poor Meg. It’s not that there’s anything particular
about Meg that makes her deserving of this, aside from her stupid face and dumb pink hat and–Peter,
get out of the writer’s room! As we were saying, Meg is mostly a normal teenage girl. She can
certainly be irritating at times, often coming off as downright insane and extremely egotistical,
but a couple bad and/or wacky character traits are par for the course for a show like Family
Guy. If we had to peg why she sticks out–aside from the obvious running
gag–it’s probably because Meg isn’t AS funny as many of the other characters to counteract
how annoying she can occasionally be. She does have her moments, though–and she is beloved by
many fans of the show, which is why she isn’t any higher. But however you feel about Meg,
one thing’s for sure–a list like this would NOT be complete without her.
Next up, let’s move on to our first gag characters: Vern and Johnny. Similarly to Meg,
these two are on the list mainly as a formality. There was a running gag in the
earlier Family Guy seasons where oftentimes, Vern would show up to make some fast-paced
observations about whatever was going on–followed by a catchy piano riff by Johnny. Pretty innocent,
right? Well…apparently some fans didn’t feel the same. In the season 5 episode
“Saving Private Brian,” Stewie just…straight up kills these two, breaking the fourth wall
to assure the audience that they won’t return. This suggests that many fans of Family Guy,
at least at the time, were annoyed by this running gag. In all honesty, we kinda liked it–but we have
to respect the masses. Oh, also, their ghosts appear as a cameo later, and it’s revealed that
Johnny went to hell on account of the fact that he…err...liked little boys. Soooo….yeah, we don’t
feel too bad about putting him here, at least. Sorry to you, though, Vern–you did your best.
We honestly feel pretty bad for putting Vinny the dog on this list, since he didn’t necessarily DO
anything to deserve his placement. When Brian was killed off in the season 12 episode “Life
of Brian,” Vinny came in as his replacement. He’s got a fun Italian mob guy schtick,
he was willing to sacrifice his place in the Griffin family to reunite Stewie and Brian,
and honestly just seems like a genuinely nice guy all around. Unfortunately,
while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with Vinny himself, he represents one of the most infamous
Family Guy moments of all time: the death–and almost immediate revival–of Brian Griffin. And
despite being a fine enough character on his own, the fact that he replaced a character fans had
grown attached to over the course of 12 seasons left a bad taste in the fans’ mouths. Honestly,
though, our biggest problem with Vinny is that he only lasted for THREE EPISODES.
Replacement or not, Vinny was a good dog–and he deserved much better than what he got.
Next up, we have Neil Goldman. While a character designed to make the audience cringe can be fun
to an extent, they’re still…well…going to make the audience cringe. It takes some great skill
to keep a character like Neil on the funny end rather than the annoying end–and unfortunately,
he often falls over the line. Neil is a rarely occurring character, usually just on
the sidelines, but his creepy, stalker-like obsession with Meg makes most of his appearances
less than welcome. He’s totally fine with his father buying Meg as his girlfriend,
and exploits an image of their kiss to sell merchandise–a kiss which,
mind you, was a pity kiss given in what they believed to be their last moments alive.
Another side-character student from James Woods High, Connie d’Amico is up next. The
stereotypical “mean girl” of the ensemble cast, her role in the show more or less begins and
ends as Meg’s bully. The best moments involving Connie are those in which she
gets a taste of her own medicine–like when Brian went off on her in “Barely Legal,”
or even being beaten up by Peter in “Peter’s Daughter.” Okay, maybe they were a bit brutal,
but…come on. Nobody likes a bully, and to make things even worse in Connie’s case,
she’s not even particularly funny. For a Family Guy character, being funny is
very important– so an unfunny character is naturally worth some points taken off.
Diane Simmons of Quahog Channel 5 News is next. At first, she was a relatively harmless
character–as Tom Tucker’s co-anchor, the two tended to have some pretty funny banter on the
Quahog news. However, this all changed in the special murder-mystery episode
“And Then There Were Fewer,” in which–spoiler alert–Diane was revealed to be the murderer.
She intended to kill James Woods and frame Tom Tucker for it, to get back at the former
for breaking her heart and to ensure she would be the sole anchor of the Channel 5
News. It was sad to see a beloved recurring joke character fall so far from grace–and,
you know, literally fall off a cliff to her death at the end of the episode. But
hey, at least she was a big part of one of our favorite episodes of Family Guy.
John Herbert–or, as fans know him best, Herbert the Pervert, was probably the most difficult
character to place on this list. Honestly? We’d feel weird about it no matter where we put him.
One of the most iconic gag characters in the entire series, his schtick is that he’s a child
predator. That considered, it should go without saying why he’s on this list. Like Quagmire,
he treads a very fine line between hilarious and outright uncomfortable. Many fans find
him to represent the latter more often than not–quite reasonably, we might add. As to why
he isn’t higher, well…okay, to paraphrase Stewie in one episode: nothing’s been done about Herbert,
but it’s mostly because he’s so funny. We won’t deny that Herbert is a total creep and one of,
if not the most off putting characters in the cast…but he’s also one of the most hilarious.
For every moment he makes us absolutely grimace, there’s another like that really
funny “Somewhere That’s Green” cover he did in “The Courtship of Stewie’s Father.” It helps
Herbert’s case that he’s pretty consistently treated as nothing beyond a gag character who
isn’t meant to be taken seriously. Like we said, funny is worth a lot on this list…but
humor is subjective–and to some fans, Herbert never quite falls out of that “uncomfortable”
category. With that said, the middle of the list is just about the best place for him.
The closest thing Family Guy has to a main antagonist is Carter Pewterschmidt,
and he’s going to kick off the bottom half of our list. We’ll submit one thing about Carter:
he’s funny. That’s…it. But beyond that, Carter is just…plain awful. He’s an unfaithful husband,
having cheated on his wife several times over the course of the series. If that weren’t enough,
he also beat her upon first meeting her in the 20th century–not a very wholesome
way to start their relationship. He also constantly mistreats poor Peter,
who genuinely wants nothing more from Carter than to have a genuine relationship with him.
Knowing Peter’s awful parental figures growing up, this is even sadder. Worse
still is the fact that the show oftentimes tries to make Carter sympathetic–and unlike Quagmire,
he IS all bad. There’s no way to make us sympathize with a character who pranks orphans
into believing they’ll be adopted, only to run off at the last moment. Though he is pretty funny,
at least–that’s more than we can honestly say for just about any of the characters beneath him.
Up next is Joe’s wife, Bonnie Swanson. One of many characters in the series who fell from
grace as time went on, Bonnie started her legacy on the show as one of the nicer characters. She
was a sweet, supportive wife to Joe who loved and cherished him despite his handicap. But as
time went on,Bonnie changed significantly. The once sweet and amicable woman turned bitter and
spiteful. She’s incredibly passive-aggressive with Joe, even wishing death on him at times.
In the episode “Brian the Closer", she looks at a house near a steep cliff–heavily suggesting
that she planned to kill Joe. She also went to Paris just to have an affair,
and felt absolutely no remorse for it–heck, she even had an affair with ANOTHER GUY IN A
WHEELCHAIR. Have you no shame, Bonnie?! The one thing saving her from an even lower spot is that
Joe isn’t exactly a perfect husband, either…but he’s still a heck of a lot better than her.
Jeff Fecalman is a one-time antagonist from season 10’s “Screams of Silence: The Story
of Brenda Q.” His character can be summarized as Quagmire’s sister’s abusive boyfriend–and
soon-to-be husband. He’s an all around terrible guy who’s simultaneously treated as comical and a
genuine threat, which is a major part of why this is one of the more problematic episodes of the
series. We can’t say we feel sorry for him being killed by Quagmire and company in this episode;
he got what was coming to him. If he appeared more often, though, he’d almost certainly be higher.
Bertram, Bertram, Bertram...talk about wasted potential. In the early episode
“Emission Impossible,” Stewie meets him in Peter’s…er…private area while trying to sabotage
his and Lois’s attempt to have a new child. The two duke it out to decide whether Bertram will be
born, but Stewie ultimately relents, finding his newfound rivalry with Bertram to be fun.
Later on, Bertram is born properly through a sperm bank mix-up–but his frenemy-rivalry with
Stewie is all but forgotten. He serves only as an antagonist to Stewie, and to make matters worse,
he only appears in TWO more episodes after his debut. After season 4’s “Sibling Rivalry,” where
he and Stewie have a playground war, he doesn’t show up at all until season 9’s “The Big Bang
Theory,” in which he goes back in time to kill Leonardo da Vinci, which will prevent Stewie
from being born and thereby stop the universe from being created…yeah, Family Guy lore is weird. We
would have loved to see a fleshed-out rivalry between Bertram and Stewie–maybe even how he
might interact with other members of the Griffin family like Peter, who is his biological father.
But he’s unfortunately killed off in his third and final appearance. It’s a downright shame that
a character with so much potential was wiped out so quickly, but there’s no denying the potential
for a great character was there, so we feel right putting him just outside our top three.
The bronze medal of worst Family Guy characters goes to Peter’s adoptive father,
Francis Griffin. Having died back in season 5, we didn’t see all that much of Francis before
he was taken out of the show–and honestly, that’s for the best. He’s a straight-laced
Catholic man–and let us assure you, there’s not even a hint of Jesus’s love in this guy. In fact,
he might just be the meanest character in the whole show; he’s incredibly cruel and
spiteful to Peter and his family. He’s bitter, overly critical, and just difficult to watch,
never failing to make us feel bad for Peter. He’s a bitter, nasty character,
and we’re glad he’s out of the picture–Carter might be awful, but at least he’s funny.
We hope that Cleveland Brown is proud to be divorced from Loretta
Brown, because we’re proud to put her in second place on our list. Those mainly familiar with
the later seasons of the show may not even remember her, but she was Cleveland’s wife
in the earlier seasons of the show. She would honestly be an entirely forgettable character,
aside from being generally naggy and mean, were it not for the episode “The Cleveland-Loretta
Quagmire,” in which she cheats on Cleveland with Quagmire. Surprisingly, it wasn’t even
Quagmire seducing Loretta–she went after him, wanting to have an affair with the reasoning
of Cleveland being too passive. When Quagmire is the more moral character in a situation,
you KNOW you’ve screwed up royally. Mistreating a character as sweet as Cleveland is a MAJOR mark
against Loretta; add on the fact that this is quite genuinely the only memorable aspect
of her character, and you have one of Family Guy’s weakest and most unlikable characters.
Taking home the gold medal of Family Guy’s worst character is Brian Griffin. Wait, wait–put your
pitchforks and torches away! Let us explain. At the beginning of Family Guy’s run, Brian was one
of the best, most important, and overall likable characters in the cast. He acted as Peter’s
conscience, giving him advice and a reliable ear to listen, but as time went on he developed his
own identity as a civil rights activist trying to find his place in the world. This all combined to
make Brian a memorable and pivotal character in the series–not to mention his hilarious dynamic
with Stewie. But as the show went on, Brian fell from grace–and he fell HARD. It’s no secret that
Family Guy has suffered from pretty bad seasonal rot, and while many characters went downhill as a
result, we have to say Brian got the worst of it by far. He’s turned into a pretentious, arrogant
jerk who is incredibly superficial. It now seems like every joke about Brian is either everyone
around him mistreating him and his achievements, or about how much of an awful person Brian is.
He only dates women for their looks, takes advantage of them frequently, reconnected
with his illegitimate son only to consequently go years without speaking to him at all, and…look,
we’d be here all day if we discussed every awful thing Brian has done. Just watch Quagmire’s roast
of him, honestly. What puts Brian at the top of our list is that what’s been done to him in the
newer seasons of Family Guy is a complete betrayal of his original character. A character who was
once the complex, sympathetic voice of reason–with strong beliefs, but basic respect–has become an
incredibly obnoxious egotist who believes he’s better than everyone around him. He’s not just
a character who lost his charm over the years–he’s a character who lost his charm AND was transformed
into something utterly unrecognizable from what he originally was. It’s truly sad to see,
and for that we have to say that the “new” Brian
Griffin is without a doubt the worst character in Family Guy.
But what do you guys think of this list? Did we miss any characters? And have you heard
about the bird? Oh, no–quick, end the video before Peter hears. Stay wicked, guys–seeya!