Howdy! For censored and deleted Family Guy scenes,
we have a challenge!
And that great challenge is?
Can we possibly discuss these scenes
while remaining in... somewhat good taste?
Well, I dunno. But I’m sure gonna try.
But for more sensitive viewers, I do recommend
giving this one a skip.
As a warning ahead:
there may be some scenes ahead that might be
triggering or unpleasant for some viewers.
But as always, I’ll try and discuss these scenes
with as much respect and care as possible.
And if I don’t have the official reason the scene was deleted,
I’ll do my best to give my own personal speculation.
So with that said, let’s check out the
10 Censored or Banned Family Guy Episodes!
For number ten...
‘The Splendid Source,’ for the world’s dirtiest joke scene.
This one’s a very cheeky joke.
t’s basically about Peter, Joe, Cleveland and Quagmire
taking an adventure to find the source of the
world’s dirtiest jokes.
And the deleted scene was, unsurprisingly,
Peter telling said “dirtiest joke in the world.”
- So this chick goes on a date with this guy that she
wants to [quack!] but she’s worried because
she’s got like a huge [quack!]
from [quack!] so many other guys...
- You see, until the deleted scene in the end of the episode,
we’d only ever heard the punchline of the joke.
This one only managed to get one airing before the censors
pulled it from television completely.
And instead, we got a video of a monkey... scratching himself.
And when I heard the joke... well,
I kinda got why it was removed.
- So she puts the liverwurst in her [quack!],
goes home with the guy, [quack!] him,
everything seems fine.
- It’s very dirty, has a ton of adult themes, and lots of swear words.
But the episode as a whole is actually
pretty funny and interesting.
I'd call this a decent modern Family Guy.
It’s very well-paced and it’s a genuinely intriguing
mystery to find the source of these dirty jokes.
And honestly, it’s just great to see Peter, Cleveland, Quagmire
and Joe go on a trip together again.
How long has it been since that?
And for the nineth deleted scene...
‘Spies Reminiscent of Us.’
I think Family Guy cutaway jokes can be very... hit or miss.
Sometimes these cutaways are so unexpected
they’ll give me a very good belly laugh.
But quite a lot of the time, they just leave me
cringing, grossed out, or in some cases even outright
rage quitting the episode.
- Here is Russian cutaway gag.
[In Russian.] - Who's the idiot who came up with a sandwich with porcupines?!
- This deleted cutaway... well, you could probably guess,
it isn’t their best.
In the story, Brian and Stewie follow
Chevvy Chase and Dan Acroyd to Russia.
- Holy crap! Dan Acroyd and Chevvy Chase!
- But when Stewie declares it’s a bad idea, we cut away to,
well... let’s let Stewie say it, shall we?
- Coming to Russia was a worse idea than a
Leper colony doing the Hokey Pokey.
- What proceeds is something that is, to be fair,
a very bad idea for everyone involved!
# You put your left leg in, and you leave it there #
- But, well... at least this poor Leper colony
seems to be making the most of it.
# You put your right arm in, and you come back for it later #
- You go, guys! Live it up!
And for number eight...
'Stewie Kills Lois.’
Seth himself actually claimed this scene to be among
his top five most offensive jokes on Family Guy.
And as you can probably imagine,
that’s against some stiff competition right there.
- Don’t make us go “Good Cop, Developmentally Disabled Cop” on ya!
- Um...
- The story here isn’t far from the title.
Stewie apparently kills Lois, she goes missing
and Brian vows to expose him.
- Did you kill Lois?
Of course I didn’t, Brian! Remember what you said?
- So what was the cut here?
Well, quick background for the deleted scene here.
Pat Tillman was a footballer turned soldier
who tragically died in Afghanistan due to friendly fire.
And with that background in mind, here’s the joke.
- When you see the Taliban come over the horizon,
you open fire immediately!
- Okay, so when I see Pat Tillman
come over the horizon, I shoot him?
- No! No no!
- No...!
Although the joke was intended to make fun of the Army
rather than Pat Tillman, I think it’s another
of those jokes that was just too soon, while many were
understandably still in shock and mourning.
- Okay, I shoot Pat Tillman then run over the horizon?
- No, he’s on our side!
- Though with or without the deleted scene,
it’s actually one of my least favourite episodes.
Mostly because I just get so bored of the
whole “Stewie kills Lois” schtick.
- What are you... wh... what are you doing with a gun?
- Something I should have done a very long time ago.
- To me, they’re like the Moe suicide jokes.
I just never think they were that funny to begin with.
I way prefer modern Stewie
who actually has a personality beyond that.
But anyway, what was nice to see was
Pat Tillman’s brother actually laughed when he heard the joke.
Because it showed how incompetent the military could be.
And deepest respects to Mr. Kevin Tillman
for taking the joke with a smile.
That takes character and boldness, sir.
Number seven...
‘He’s Bla...’
Sorry, Cleveland.
You might remember in this episode,
our good old buddy Cleveland returns to Quahog with his
new family. And his lovely wife, Donna.
- Whassup?
- Oh, hey Cleveland.
- Unfortunately, Lois and Donna don’t get along. At all.
- You’re a terrible parent!
- I’m a terrible parent?! You’re a child abuser!
- However, Cleveland and Peter are thrilled to see each other again.
So in this deleted scene, Peter and Cleveland
secretly meet up in a cabin.
And every time they meet, they try and top
each other in how heavy their drugs are.
- Lois know you’re here?
- No clue. I brought beer!
- I brought pot.
- They start with beer, pot, move onto acid and...
then crystal meth.
And then, because this is Family Guy, who knows no shame,
they move onto chemotherapy at the top!
- I think we may have gone too far.
- Anyway, you can probably see why this scene would be censored.
If I were to hazard a guess, which is always a good way
of sticking a foot in my mouth,
I’d say Fox said "no" to the chemotherapy joke.
And without the joke’s punchline, the joke lost
all of it’s impact so they had to scrap it.
I’d say for a subject as sensitive to so many people as cancer,
it’s probably a bit further than Fox is willing to let Family Guy go.
As for the rest of the episode?
Well, Cleveland’s one of my favourite characters in the show.
Probably because he seems to be the one of the only
decent human beings in Quahog without a sociopathic streak.
So it was nice to finally see an episode revolving around him.
I gotta say though, I was disappointed to see they turned
Cleveland’s wife Donna into a character as obnoxious as
Loretta, Cleveland’s ex-wife.
- Cleveland! Get in here! And pull your pants down!
[Slapping and Cleveland exclaiming.]
- In the early Cleveland show,
I thought Donna would end up being a much kinder wife
who genuinely loved Cleveland.
And the two seemed on equal footing in terms of decision making.
That was nice. But I guess Quahog has a way of turning
everyone who’s entered it except Cleveland and Bruce
into bloodthirsty monsters.
- Sorry, Cleveland. It’s gotta be authentic!
- Number six...
‘Quagmire’s Mom.’
Apologies in advance if I look slightly green
while discussing this one.
It... eh... it’s a very grotesque subject.
- Did you have sex with this underage girl?
- I don’t wanna go to jail, but I really wanna take credit.
- When we get into an episode about the history of a...
criminal/sexually active individual like Quagmire,
well.. the writers sometimes found themselves
writing over themselves, continually stumbling
upon their scenes being censored.
In this case, the episode actually had a couple of deleted scenes.
One of which where we learn Quagmire’s mum had, uh...
personal pleasure attained surprisingly prematurely
after the child birth of Quagmire. Repeatedly. Ew.
Fortunately, the censors seem to draw the line
when it comes to putting minors in situations of
sexually explicit content.
Luckily even characters like, eurgh... Herbert
never seemed to manage to actually hurt minors like Chris.
Though they’ve gotten really uncomfortably close
in some episodes.
- The things that seem the most dangerous,
turn out to be the most fun!
- Are you a paedophile?
- The other deleted scene?
Quagmire’s mum claims in court that she had an affair
with Stephen Hawking.
And she gave him the idea for... black holes.
And this parody of Stephen Hawking goes on to
explain these black holes in... great detail.
Am I the only one who just thinks this is a really dumb joke?
Well, I guess that was why it was removed.
I don’t think I need to mention that this scene
was not banned because Mr. Hawking was talking
about astrophysics.
nd honestly, that’s probably all you need to know
about this kinda trashy, low-rung Season 13 episode.
It’s definitely not Family Guy at its smartest.
- It’s a boy, Mrs. Quagmire!
- Ah, that’s wonderful!
- How do you feel?
- Horny. Really horny.
- Number five...
‘Turban Cowboy.’
Yeesh. This joke was so abhorrently received,
the entire episode was just canned by Fox altogether.
Indefinitely.
And I can definitely empathise with why it left a poor taste
in many peoples’ mouths.
The episode itself is a simple enough story about Peter
meeting a Muslim man named Mahmoud.
He meets him after getting in a... skydiving accident.
- ...self back in such situa-- oh, [quack!] ground!
Gaaah! Damn it!
- In general, you might be thinking Fox removed this episode
because of some of the racial jokes they made.
But interestingly, the cause of the deletion was actually at the
very start of the episode before Peter even meets Mahmood.
You see, while skydiving, Peter states that he hasn’t had a rush
like this since he won a marathon.
- Holy crap, this is awesome!
- I haven’t felt a rush like this since I won that marathon!
- Leading to a really distasteful cutaway of Peter
committing mass genocide at the Boston Marathon.
Urgh...!
- And when there was a guy in my way, I killed him.
- This rapidly became in even worse taste when the
Boston Marathon bombings occurred a month later.
So Fox promptly removed the entire ‘Turban Cowboy’
episode from Fox.com, Amazon and Hulu.
Apparently, the network has no plans to broadcast the
episode again.
And... I think I'm okay with that.
Unfortunately, somehow things escalated still,
and managed to be in even poorer taste.
Because this led to an even grosser story
about the sad clickbait nitwits on YouTube.
Whom edited in bombs in the footage to make it
look like Family Guy predicted the Boston bombings
Needless to say, Seth was absolutely appalled,
and called it “abhorrent."
And Mr. MacFarlane, we can definitely see eye to eye there.
On a personal note, I apologise if I seem a little shaky
talking about this one.
As a ten year marathon runner,
this scene cut me a lot deeper than I thought it would.
For those who don’t know, for runners,
the Boston Marathon for many is seen as one of the greatest
privileges to run in.
People train for years to get into this.
But more importantly, this tragedy took the lives of so many people.
And this is just my opinion, but I’m personally glad
that Fox had the good taste to remove it.
The episode’s not that great to begin with,
so I don’t think it did them any harm.
Number four!
‘Road to Rhode Island.’
Hey, alright! This is actually one of my favourite
Family Guy episodes of all.
It’s the original Brian/Stewie team up.
And it really builds on that nuanced Brian/Stewie relationship.
So what controversial deleted scene could
possibly be removed here?
Well, do you happen to remember Dr. Amanda Rebecca?
She’s the uh... relationship counsellor
on the tape Lois picked up.
- Make sure your wife is out of the room.
- And you might remember, her tactics for selling tapes
were a little bit unorthodox?
- That’s what I thought.
Man, you’re making me so hot.
- Of course, the counselling thing’s just a front for her
to deliver pornographic videos of herself.
Much to Peter’s surprise.
Anyway, the deleted scene we missed was the
good doctor going... a little bit further.
In fact, she goes to the extent of nude
literal softcore pornography.
Where’s the deleted scene cut at?
Right here.
We instead immediately cut to Peter staring in shock.
- Yes, please.
- Then you’ll have to order my next tape.
- And you might be surprised where I
had to look to find even this much.
But interestingly, this fully nude scene wasn’t deleted
because of the censors.
It was deleted because it was just an extra part
made by the team for fun.
It was made by the Family Guy team just for laughs,
it was never meant to be on the air.
Technically, they never released the nude scene,
but it still managed to get leaked on the web.
Though I think over the last few years, Fox has
worked really hard to remove this one from the web.
[Rewinding sound.]
- You shoulda told me.
[Rewinding sound.]
You shoulda told me.
- And for the third censored Family Guy episode...
'Peter's Sister.'
- And everyone’s just standing around doing nothing.
Like the whole world during the Holocaust.
- When I heard what this deleted scene was about,
I went into this scene with my teeth clenched
expecting the worst.
Surely any joke even slightly involving the Holocaust
would be in terrible taste.
Though actually, I found myself a relieved of what could’ve
been a much, much worse joke.
The episode itself is about Peter’s sister
coming to visit for Thanksgiving.
But she can be just awful to her brother.
And while I don’t feel much sympathy for Peter
at this point as I don’t like him...
- Mom, have you seen my Trapper Keeper?
[Farting.]
- I gotta say, she humiliates him pretty bad here.
- Ohhhh...
- And while this is happening, Meg opens to a
cutaway gag for the Holocaust:
- Like the whole world during the Holocaust.
- Too true. Never again.
- It’s an interesting cutaway because it opens up with
viewers clenching for the most untasteful joke in Family Guy history.
But the tension is released when we see Peter’s
simply agreeing with Meg what an absolute tragedy it was.
The actual punchline begins when Peter cuts away
to an anti-semetic pigeon.
[Pigeon cooing.]
- Alright, let’s go.
- When I saw this scene, it got me wondering.
How do Jewish viewers actually react to jokes like this?
- And now I shall continue the prayer.
- Kalima... Kalima... Kalima!
[Viewer giggling.]
- And it was nice to see, some people who happen to
be Jewish actually found some of these jokes really funny.
Or at least worth a smirk.
But honestly, I’m not the right person to be making judging on this.
I’d rather ask a person who’s Jewish.
But anyway, the entire scene was deleted from the episode’s airing.
Pretty quickly.
[Cooing and chirping.]
- This is why I hate going outside.
- And for number two...
‘When You Wish Upon A Weinstein.’
Because of lawsuits and controversy, this episode actually
sat in cold storage for years until 2003.
In fact, this was the first ever banned Family Guy episode.
Congratulations! Sort of.
The episode even led to some people
thinking that Family Guy was anti-Semitic.
- Peter, not every Jewish person is good with money.
- Well yeah, I guess not the retarded ones, but...
but why would you even say that?
- So why was it banned?
Well, the whole episode is just one big mess, really.
The story is, Lois tells Peter he’s bad with money.
So he sings a song about needing... a Jew.
- # Hebrew people I’ve adored #
# Even though they killed my Lord #
- Oh...!
In fact, Peter does an entire ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’
song parody about his desire for a money savvy
Jewish person.
So Seth and his team were bombarded with massive
lawsuits over both the title, and the song.
‘When You Wish Upon A Star,’ anyone?
I can’t imagine Disney was too thrilled with their iconic
song being even slightly associated with an
anti-Semetic song either.
So Cartoon Network, Fuzzy Door Productions,
and just Seth MacFarlane himself were all sued for damages.
But technically, it's a parody of the song.
So once again, Seth and his crew were safe, thanks to...
Section 107 of the Copyright Act (1976)!
Anyway, since eventually they won the case years later,
I believe the episode was made available on Hulu.
So you can probably check it out nowadays if you were curious.
I appreciate that as the episode goes on,
Max Weinstein, a Jewish accountant, better shows
how misinformed Peter is.
And that people who happen to be Jewish are just like
any other human being.
But again, I’m not a Jewish person so I have
no idea how a Jewish person might feel about this episode.
If you do happen to be Jewish, I would be genuinely curious
of what you think of some of these jokes.
Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.
As for my opinion, it’s early Family Guy.
So I found it pretty harmless, with a couple of good cutaway jokes.
[Nuns shouting and Peter exclaiming.]
- Number one!
‘Partial Terms of Endearment.’
I know this episode makes it’s way onto a
lot of top Family Guy lists.
But honestly, part of the reason of that is there’s
just no topping how terrible some of these jokes are.
Apparently, Fox banned the episode
because of its controversial subject matter.
They were apparently concerned with the fact
that it discussed abortion as a subject.
- Not only is abortion murder, but it’s also larceny,
jaywalking and securities fraud.
- I mean, personally when I saw the episode,
I didn’t think the subject matter was any problem at all.
Perhaps it could be helpful to have a popular cartoon show
discuss a subject that some people might just never talk about.
I mean, when a subject like this is rarely discussed in
society, I personally think that makes it even more
important that shows talk about it.
- I’m a little uncertain about this.
- That’s perfectly natural, Mrs. Griffin.
And you should ask as many questions as you can
before you decide.
- My personal problem with the episode is,
so many of the jokes just stink.
And some of these really turn the
'Joke Offensive Meter' up to 10.
I mean, they even managed to shoehorn in...
a disabled baby joke.
- Florence Griffith Joyner and Stephen Hawking.
- Okay, I think that’s enough.
- Urgh! Really, guys? Anyway...
The story is, Lois is asked by an old college friend if
she’ll become a surrogate mother for her.
Lois agrees and undergoes vitral fertilisation.
However, since this is Family Guy, the biological
parents are killed in a car crash.
- A devestating pileup on i-95 has injured eight people
and killed two others.
- So Lois has to decide or not whether she wants
to terminate the pregnancy.
However, anti-choice activists take a
swipe at Lois through Peter.
And it’s legitimately uncomfortable to watch Peter
physically force Lois out of the clinic and start demanding
she makes decisions according to him.
Which basically means he wants to decide what happens
to a pin-point sized fertilised egg in Lois’ body.
Brian points out that self-gratification also
kills tiny alive sperm.
Leading to Peter also demanding no one can...
find their happy place.
Really?
Needless to say, Chris is a little worried by this.
Lois is put under tremendous pressure and it’s
hard to not feel bad for her.
Fortunately, in the end, she makes her own decisions
about what she decides to do with her body.
Good on you, Lois.
But the great part is, what I think doesn’t matter.
In many court of laws, what matters most is
what the individual decides.
And I hope it always stays that way.
Anyway, this final Season 8 episode was permanently
banned in all of USA and many other countries.
Apart from on DVDs, I don’t know if you can track this down
on any streaming service. None that I’ve seen.
Fortunately, since this episode, I feel shows like Bojack
and Big Mouth have also discussed the subject of abortion
with much more respect, care and thought.
So hopefully, people of all genders will tune in
to those episodes instead of this one.
- We’ve assembled this diverse panel of white men
in bow ties to talk about abortion.
- Because personally, I don’t think it’s taboo
what subjects we discuss.
I think it’s so important how we discuss them.
To once again quote Mr. Rogers:
“Anything that is mentionable, is manageable.”
If we treat a subject with respect, thought and care,
I think it gives us the potential to make people
feel a lot less alone, and replace
misinformation with information.
Anyway, I realised a couple of deleted scenes
didn’t make the list.
So if you feel there’s any I missed or should
have talked about, or have your own thoughts on these scenes,
I’d love to know.
Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below!
But anyway, thank you for watching!
And I’ll see you next time.
[Closed Captions by XenonHatcher. Commissioned by PhantomStrider.]