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Peter Griffin

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Template:Family Guy character

Peter Lowenbrau McFinnigan Griffin is a fictional character in the American animated television series Family Guy. His voice, which has a thick-as-chowder Rhode Island accent, is produced by the show's creator and lead writer, Seth MacFarlane. Peter is the head of the Griffin household and the central character in the show. He is married to Lois, and is the father of Meg (although a throwaway joke in the episode "Screwed the Pooch" suggests that her biological father is a man named Stan Thompson), Chris, Stewie and Bertram, although he and the family (with the exception of Stewie and possibly Brian) are unaware of Bertram's existence, because he was the result of one of several "donations" Peter made to a sperm bank. His best friend is his dog, Brian.

Life

Template:Spoiler Peter Griffin was born in Quahog, Rhode Island, 42 years ago, to Mickey McFinnegan and Thelma Griffin. He was baptized in the Roman Catholic faith as a baby, but did not grow up to be very devout, much to his step-father's (Francis's) chagrin and resentment.

According to Peter's doctor, Peter is a Cancer; more specifically he was born in July, meaning he was born between July 1 and July 22.

He was a member of the folk-singing group Simon & Garfunkel, where he pitched ideas for "Here's To You Mrs. Fleckenstein" (the last name of a Family Guy writer's assistant) and "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Lawry's Seasoning Salt". When Simon & Garfunkel turned down these ideas, he said "Screw you guys, I'm goin' to 'Nam". Shortly after, it appeared Peter really did go to Vietnam, though dressed as a clown because "they're gonna be looking for Army guys."

Around the early 1980s, Peter worked at a country club/resort in Newport, RI, as a towel boy, where he met Lois Pewterschmidt, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Lois and Peter got to know each other better at a party for the resort employees that Lois snuck off to. Peter dropped the girl he was dancing with to the floor and started dancing with Lois to "Do You Love Me?" by the Contours.

Peter and Lois also have their own song. When they fell down a hill and onto the middle of a road, they started to make love, and when a truck drove along and swerved to miss them, he crashed, causing the song "Baby I Love Your Way" by Peter Frampton to play loudly. Lois said "Peter, I hear music," to which he replied "You know what, you're right. From now on, this will be our song."

Her father, Carter, objected to Peter because he considered him to be of a lower social class, while Peter's Step-father objected to Lois because of her religion. Carter tried to keep Lois and Peter apart by having his servants toss Peter into the ocean. Unfortunately for Carter, Peter was rescued by a nearby Navy ship, aboard which Peter met his future neighbor, Ensign Glenn Quagmire. Glenn helped Peter pull into a port in Florida. There he met Cleveland Brown, another future neighbor, who gave him a ride back to Newport and Lois. However they were soon chased by the Ku Klux Klan which Peter believed to be ghosts. Upon returning, Carter Pewterschmidt offered Peter a check for $1 million not to see Lois again, but Peter turned it down. When Peter and Lois got married, Francis Griffin (Peter's 'Step-Father') amended the "Just Married" banner to read "Just Married - to a Protestant whore."

Peter worked as a production line worker at the Happy-Go-Lucky Toy Factory from at least 1977 until the plant was torn down a couple of decades later, after owner Mr. Weed died.

When a toad-licking drug trend started at Meg's school, Peter went "undercover" as a Fonzie-inspired high school student under the name Lando Griffin (in part an homage to Lando Calrissian from Star Wars). Meg was at first mortified, but when Lando became cool by single-handedly turning the entire school off drugs, Meg asked him to the dance. Lando took Connie D'Amico to the dance instead, but declared that he had been rejected by Meg, and promised to kill himself by driving his motorcycle off a cliff. Peter has himself tried a number of drugs, including LSD (which he believed to be a cheeseburger) , marijuana, anabolic steroids, cocaine, ecstasy and opium.

After being laid off from the toy factory, Peter bought a boat and became a fisherman. When his boat sank during a trip to Pelican's Reef, Peter and his drinking buddies were stranded on an island for a number of months. After being lonely for a long time, Peter and his friends decided to have a gay sex orgy (which was found very uncomfortable and unsatisfying by all involved; none were aroused by it) which was sighted by a cruise ship. Upon their rescue by the cruise ship, Peter returned to Quahog to find that Lois had married Brian following his disappearance. Showing up naked at the Spooner Street house one day, he managed to win back the affections of Lois, who reached a mutual agreement to divorce Brian and remarry Peter.

Peter worked at the Pawtucket Patriot brewery for a few months, during which time he drank himself into a stupor in his first five minutes of work. However, in an earlier episode, "Wasted Talent", the brewery was presented as a 'Willy Wonka'-type factory, complete with 'Oompa Loompas' (called 'Chumba Wumbas' in this episode). In the episode "Wasted Talent" the brewery had restricted access, and Peter was thrown out. This is explained by the line, "Wow, this place sure has changed since Pawtucket Pat sold it."

Peter once played as a center in the New England Patriots as the number 68. He was chosen when he bulldozed at least eighty people trying to go to the bathroom. He was fired for his end-zone showboating at a game and was traded to the London Silly Nannies. Peter decided to get back at QB Tom Brady, and called him to schedule a football game. As the kickoff started, the whole London Silly Nannies team left except for Peter; Brady thought Peter was a man to stand up to the entire New England Patriots singlehandedly.

In the movie, Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, Peter became a local celebrity when he hosted an Action 5 News segment titled "What Really Grinds My Gears" (a reference to a line from Planes, Trains and Automobiles) in which he ranted on topics such as the lack of new priest and rabbi jokes, Lindsay Lohan's teasing, parents who don't control their children, not being able to find droids you're looking for (like the Imperial Stormtroopers in Star Wars), and people in the 19th century. He lost the job when Tom Tucker brought to the station a tape of Stewie driving while intoxicated. And then said "You know what really grinds my gears?" "You, America. Fuck You! Dianne?" And then he gets kicked out.

Like Homer Simpson, Peter has had a wide variety of jobs. See List of Peter Griffin's jobs.

Peter is related to an African American man, named Nate Griffin, who was a slave for Lois's parents, the Pewtershmidt family. This is shown in season 3, in an episode called "Peter Griffin; Husband, Father... Brother?!", during which Peter was briefly known as "Kitchwa Tembo", claiming that Peter is his "slave name". However, he soon changes back to Peter when he is given twenty thousand dollars in reparation money, by Lois's father.

In Recent News, Peter's father (Francis Griffin) was not his real father. His father is an Irish man named Mickey McFinnigan who only believed Peter was his son because Peter beat him in a drinking contest.

Personality

Peter's favorite pastime is watching TV. His favorite shows include the following:

Notably, one of his favorite episodes of Diff'rent Strokes is the "episode where Arnold and Dudley get sexually molested by the guy who owns the bike shop." In "North By North Quahog", he also watches Passion of the Christ, but does not like it. Because of his obsession with television, Peter often has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, and will often assert that events that took place in television or films were his own, inserting himself into them in humorous ways. Peter is otherwise very crude and lowbrow: He enjoys Pauly Shore movies and the Ricki Lake Show, and enjoys other activities such as going to up-market tailors and farting inside the suits.

Peter is insanely jealous of Lois' ex-boyfriends, and he will attack any man who expresses the slightest interest in her; he even punched an orca at Sea World after it "kissed" Lois, and his own reflection after Lois said, "Well, look at that handsome man!" Two notable exceptions to this include: upon learning that Lois had been sexually involved with Gene Simmons, a member of his favorite band, KISS, he was proud of her, even boasting, "my wife did KISS!" and that he "feels like he did KISS too". Also, when the Griffin's neighbor Quagmire was caught peeping at Lois, Peter sided with Quagmire and told Lois she should take peeping as a compliment and to forgive him.

Peter is often transformed by traumatic experiences, and then restored to "normal" by a simple, almost trivial experience. For example, after shock therapy administered by Brian, Peter became like a wealthy, snobbish socialite and bid too much money at an auction. To snap Peter back to reality and his "normal" self, Brian broke one of Peter's Star Wars collectibles. Another example of Peter's malleable persona is in the episode "I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar". After experiencing a pain as great as that of childbirth ("stretching your bottom lip to the back of your neck") at a women's retreat, Peter became extremely sensitive and effeminate, and tried to breastfeed Stewie. To bring him back, Lois accidentally got in a homoerotic fight with another woman, the same one who sent Peter on the women's retreat. Peter also reverted to childlike behavior in the episode "Mother Tucker;" learning to ride a kiddie bike, using a training toilet, and being carried around by surrogate father figure Tom Tucker.

File:Giant Chicken.JPG
Peter's nemesis: The Giant Chicken

Peter's arch-nemesis is a man-sized chicken who gave him an expired coupon. He fought him throughout Rhode Island in the episode "Da Boom" (although this conflict took place in flashback), and again in "Blind Ambition".

His ego can get inflated by the most minuscule of achievements. For instance, in "Petarded," he barely wins a game of "Trivial Pursuit" (in which he was unknowingly given questions from the Preschool Edition) and begins to talk down to everyone. He views a news program about the Middle East and observes one man commenting: "I find the President's plan for peace in the Middle East to be shallow and pedantic." He later tells Lois he finds her meatloaf shallow and pedantic.

His mental shortcomings and clumsiness have resulted in several human and animal deaths, such as the episode Blind Ambition, where Peter falls off the roof of the Drunken Clam and lands on Joan Cusack, inevitably killing her. (Incidently, Cleveland had told Peter he would be famous if he landed on Joan Cusack earlier in the episode.)

Peter is apparently a very capable musician in several different areas. In the episode "Fast Times at Buddy Cianci Jr. High," he plays a trombone and Lois remarks that he took lessons in junior college. Also, in the episode "Wasted Talent," he was revealed to be a concert-level pianist, but only when inebriated and only when playing the theme music to television shows (e.g. The "Lonely Man" theme from The Incredible Hulk, the main theme from The X-Files, and "Love is All Around" from The Mary Tyler Moore Show). Peter was also part of a barbershop quartet which sang at hospitals, delivering bad news to terminally-ill patients. He also sings solo in numerous other Family Guy episodes, and plays other instruments like the guitar. Music in general is a major part of the series. While Stewie was watching Mr. Belvedere, Peter demonstrated that he has perfect pitch by tuning his guitar to B with no external reference. It is shown in one episode that he was incapable of conducting a Tusken Raiders choir. However, this is not a surprise!

Peter occasionally displays homosexual and bisexual tendencies. In "One if By Clam, Two If By Sea", Peter dreams of Richard Jeni giving sitcoms, even remarkign that he has "a sweet ass". During the episode PTV, it is implied that Peter engaged in sexual activity with another male at his 16th birthday party (a parody of the ending of the John Hughes film Sixteen Candles). In the episode "The Story on Page One", Peter expresses a willingness to have sex with Luke Perry to attempt to prove that Perry is gay. Peter has also engaged in homosexual activity against his will. In "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz", it is revealed that he lost his virginity after being tackled by an opposing player during a football game. The other player, while lying on Peter's back, asks Peter, "Want to get some breakfast?"

Peter sometimes seems to show that he hates Meg. This can be deduced by several episodes. Examples:

  • In Model Misbehavior, Peter assertively kicks Meg out of the house when she said she would pleasure herself to Lois' modeling photos with Peter and Chris. Then, later, she says, "How could you be okay with Mom parading herself around like this? I mean, she's half naked! It makes all women look bad!" Peter's only response to that is, "Meg ... who let you back in the house?"
  • In Breaking Out Is Hard To Do, while escaping in a van, Meg calmly says "I wonder where we are going?" which results in Peter hitting her and yelling "Calm down!"
  • In Peter's Got Woods, Peter spits milk at Meg twice: when Brian tells Peter that he has a date and can't go to the Clam to play darts, and when Lois finds out that Brian's crush is Meg's teacher. Also, later on in the episode he treats Meg like a dog when Brian's out on a date, and Meg replies, "I'm not a dog, you fat bastard!"
  • In Jungle Love, when Chris says that Peter has just chosen to live in the village to escape his problems at home, to which Peter replies: "What du you mean? Meg's right there!"
  • In The Fat Guy Strangler, after Peter has told his family that he's fat, he continues: "Of course this is nobody's fault—Meg ..."
  • In PTV, when Lois tells Peter that he must see Meg's play instead of seeing the Emmys, he says, "But Lois, Meg sucks! Everything she does is so freakin' terrible and depressing!" and a cutaway shows Meg in a 1st grade play portraying Robin Hood, and Peter saying, "Uh, just so you know, you guys are not sucking me into the story at all. I, I'm very aware that I'm watching a play right now."
  • In Petergeist, when the family is in the car ready to escape their haunted house, Lois realizes they forgot Meg. Peter says, "Oh yeah, like I'm going back for Meg!" They argue until she comes into the car and screams, "YOU BASTARD! HOW COULD YOU LEAVE ME IN THERE?!" followed by Peter saying, "Okay, see? It resolved itself." And at the very end of the episode, after Lois rolls the TV outside, Peter puts it back in and replaces it with Meg.
  • In Untitled Griffin Family History, While investigating the noise downstairs, Peter hits Meg with a baseball bat after she comes out and over an extended period of time asks many questions. Peter then says "Meg, don't scare me!" Later, after getting everyone to spit on Meg, Peter sends Meg downstairs to go get them food. Peter then tells Meg to use the other mustard on his sandwich over the PA system, alerting the burglars. After Lois tells the burglars that Meg is their daughter, not their son, Peter turns the screen of Meg in the kitchen off, saying it is distracting. At the episode where she is to be arrested, he just waves and says "Have Fun at the dance honey."
  • In Saving Private Brian, a cutaway showing Peter in therapy has him telling Dr. Katz, "Every time my daughter opens her mouth, I just wanna punch her in the face; she's really annoying."
  • In Hell Comes to Quahog, Peter says "I can't believe this is coming out of my mouth..." and says "I love..." but before he can finish, Stewie and Brian use the tank to destroy the Superstore USA. Back at home, Meg says that he was going to say something in the store. Peter doesn't think so until she tells him that he was going to tell her that he loves her, and Peter tells her to not get cocky. He also threw eggs at Meg "for stealing jobs from hard working people", giving her a message: "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!"

However, in Road to Rupert, Peter loses his divers license and must resort to hitching a ride with Meg. During one trip, Meg has to chauffeur Peter, Quagmire, Cleveland, and Joe after a night at the bar. Peter and the gang begin to taunt Meg until Peter deliberately sets Meg's hat on fire. Quagmire extinguishes the flame with his beer leaving Meg drenched. Meg immediately puts on the breaks and is rear ended by a man who confronts her by calling her various obsenities. To Peter and the gang's astonishment, Meg explodes by punching the man in the face and pummeling him to the ground. Peter is so impressed by this that he begins to enjoy Meg's company and he tells her that he realizes that she is a really wonderful daughter. Eventually, however, Peter has his license given back to him. Meg expresses her worry that Peter will go back to treating her with disrespect. Peter tells Meg that although he will appear to still treat her badly in front of the rest of the family, he now secretly considers Meg his best friend.

Peter's need for television can be extreme to the point of near physical dependency. When the broadcasting dish supplying TV to Quahog was accidentally destroyed, resulting in a town-wide television blackout, Peter constructed a cardboard cutout of the front of a TV screen, held up at eye-level with a brace around his waist, to simulate looking at a TV screen. Despite his obsession with TV, he doesn't seem to grasp several concepts. Whilst the family were the subject a reality TV show, he complained that the replacement Meg was taking all the screen time so he wouldn't be able to get his spin-off where he's a retired baseball umpire running a bar... at the center of the Earth. Not only is the idea utterly ridiculous and something Peter would no doubt complain about being on air, but he doesn't seem to grasp what the concept of a "spin-off" is.

Peter can be sentimental at times, and also worried. For example, he cries when hearing the song "Up Where We Belong". After he reluctantly agrees to take Lois to a chick flick, he cries and becomes obsessed with chick flicks to the point of trying to make one himself. He also believes that only women are capable of becoming fat; a quote from "Sibling Rivalry": "Men aren't fat; only fat women are fat."

Peter is also noted to be a big fan of New England sports teams. As shown in "Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington", Peter sneaks his family off to the Red Sox opening game at Fenway Park. Also, when Peter tries to bond with Stewie, Peter and Brian go to see a Red Sox game, but accidentally leave Stewie in the car. Peter claimed that when he was drafted by the New England Patriots that he always dreamed of playing for the Patriots.

Peter is related to an African American man, named Nate Griffin, who was a slave for Lois's parents, the Pewtershmidt family. This is shown in season 3, in an episode called "Peter Griffin; Husband, Father... Brother?!", during which Peter was briefly known as "Kitchwa Tembo", claiming that Peter is his "slave name". However, he soon changes back to Peter when he is given twenty thousand dollars in reparation money, by Lois's father.

Health

Physically, Peter is in very good health, despite being fat and accident-prone. He successfully played pro football for the New England Patriots, can run down and beat up a mugger, and can sustain a lengthy and destructive fistfight with his nemesis, the giant chicken. He also ran surprisingly well in one episode while trying to catch Max Weinstein. Also, when Death was about to take him away, he told Death he ran two weeks of track when he was younger, and he ran away.

It has been suggested that both he and Lois may have contracted one or more STDs, but a lump in his chest turned out to be just a fatty corpuscle (which he at first confused with the late Fatty Arbuckle).

However, he does occasionally suffer from incontinence and flatulence at socially awkward moments and premature ejaculation with his wife. Peter's fertility was lowered (temporarily) when Stewie went in a microscopic ship into Peter's body and destroyed many of Peter's sperm in the episode "Emission Impossible." In "Sibling Rivalry" he had a vasectomy. Excessive consumption of alcohol has damaged most of his brain cells. (He has one left, whose glasses break in a reference to an episode of the Twilight Zone.) In the episode "Petarded" he was officially declared to be mentally retarded (which is hardly surprising, since he has done at least one stupid thing per episode).

Despite earning the 1965 trophy for Most Ticks, Peter does not appear to have suffered Lyme disease or related ailments. He claims to have been unable to use the toilet until sometime before the episode "Brian in Love", not to have passed gas until he was thirty years old, and in the episode "The King is Dead", he ripped the longest fart ever recorded on television. (He later tops himself in "PTV"). In the episode "Death Lives", Peter got struck by lightning and was told by Death that when he was struck by the lightning, he soiled himself. This also occurred in an episode called "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein", where Brian mentions that Peter soiled himself at the dinner party and it shows a flashback when the incident occurred. Later at the church he does it again, then later on he doesn't seem to notice it happening because he acts normal.

Peter lacks some very basic general knowledge. For a long time he thought dogs laid eggs, the plural of goose was sheep and (perhaps only said as a joke) for four years he thought that Meg was a housecat. In "Wasted Talent", it took him an entire scientific analysis for him to realize that with Joe having found one of Pawtucket Pat's four silver scrolls, there were only three left. In "There's Something About Paulie", he believed his own penis to be a growth. In "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea", he didn't realize that the most dangerous crook Joe ever put away was going to kill him, believing that the crook though they were zombies. However, his knowledge of some topics, including TV shows and KISS, is nearly encyclopedic.

Although he is capable of deductive reasoning, it sometimes takes Peter a long time to draw simple conclusions. For example, after watching an advertisement for the KISS-Stock tour passing through New England, as seen in the episode "Road to Europe," it wasn't until later at the dentist that he figured out that he could go to KISS-Stock. In the episode "Brian in Love", Peter suddenly realized that Brian could talk as he was telling Peter that he was in love with a girl (who was in fact Lois). On another occasion, it took him three days to figure out a single-panel cartoon in The New Yorker. On another occasion, Peter was taking a long time to decide between two Ernest movies where Ernest goes to the beach and one in which he doesn't go to the beach and panicked when it was announced that the video store was closing soon.

Peter seems to have a hard time making reasonable decisions as well as simple ones. In "I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar", when given the choice to choose receiving a free boat or prize from the mystery box, he picks the mystery box (which turns out to be free tickets to a night club), thinking he could get a free boat from it, instead of taking the actual boat itself. In "Petarded", he finds simple trivia questions (i.e. "What colour is a fire truck?") to be extremely difficult.

Peter also doesn't seem to realize when his family is referred to by others. In "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", he didn't realize that his family was the one being put upon stage on the shown Diane by Meg, when Diane Simmons calls the Griffins up. In "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea", he watched himself being arrested by the cops after falsely accused of burning down a British pub, believing himself and the rest of his family on television to be another family.

In the episode "Blind Ambition," Peter went blind after eating nickels and suffering nickel poisoning; he said he was aiming for the world record of the most nickels swallowed. After unwittingly saving Horace from a fire, a dead hobo's eyes were transplanted into him (ironically, Peter himself had accidentally killed the hobo).

He denied several times that his prostate was tested in "Stewie Loves Lois", believing Dr. Hartman to have raped him when he tried to reach into his rectum.

After handling several M80s strung together, Peter lost all the fingers of his right hand (in the episode "Whistle While Your Wife Works"). He was able to retrieve all his fingers and get them all re-attached, and appeared through the rest of the episode with his right hand bandaged.

In "Peter's Two Dads", he was able to hold his own in a drinking contest with his father Mickey McFinnegan, actually winning the contest, though becoming extremely incomprehensible and fainting seconds after his father.

Ancestry

In the episode "Peter Griffin: Husband, Father...Brother?," Peter discovered that he had a pre-Civil War era black ancestor named Nate Griffin, making him at least 1/64th black. Furthermore, Nate was a slave owned by a Pewterschmidt (Lois' family) ancestor. After learning this, Peter very briefly went by the name Kichwa-Tembo until his father-in-law, Carter Pewterschmidt, wrote him a $20,000 reparations check.

Peter has an evil twin brother named Thaddeus, who is basically a pantomime-villain version of Peter who dresses, acts, and talks like Snidely Whiplash.

In the episode "The Son Also Draws," Peter falsely claimed to be Native American, with an ancestor named Chief Grand Cherokee, in order to regain Lois' gambling losses at a casino. The casino managers told Peter to go on a vision quest to prove his claim. He did, and his spirit guide turned out to be Fonzie.

In "Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story", he seems to be the descendant of an African American singer, Ella Fitzgriffin, who performed with young Ray Charles. Her high notes caused glass to shatter and become embedded in Charles' eyes, resulting in his blindness. I CAN'T SEE!

Peter has many strange ancestors, some of whom were involved in important historical events, and who usually show up in throwaway gags. Silas Griffin, one of Peter's ancestors, owned one of the first dozen telephones (the third telephone, to be specific). Also, in one episode Peter says most of his family is husky because they are descended from Jabba the Griffin, who resembles Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars, but with Peter's likeness. Peter also mentioned once, that he has two indirect ancestors who were Siamese twins, and both fought on opposite sides of the American Civil War. He also mentions he's related to Adolf Hitler's brother, Peter Hitler (which would make him also related to Adolf Hitler as well). In one episode Peter says he had a relative who was one of the inventors of golf, going to a flashback of a Scottish man of Peter's likeness, saying "So we're all clear on the rules, no blacks and no Jews". Peter is also related to Moses, or "Moses Griffin".Bold text

In "Running Mates", Peter describes himself as a "self described Huguenot". A Huguenot was a member of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. However Peter is a Catholic so this is likely to be a very obscure in-joke. Many Hollywood stars claim to have Huguenot ancestry. However it is implied that Peter simply doesn't know what the word means.

In one episode, Peter's cousin is actress/comedian Kathy Griffin.

In the episode "Peter's Two Dads", Peter discovers that his real Dad is a guy in Ireland named Mickey McFinnegan. He resembles his son in every aspect save his red hair and facial hair and his aged face.

References

  • S. Callaghan Family Guy: The Official Episode Guide : Seasons 1 - 3 New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2005
  • A. Delarte, "Nitpicking Family Guy: Season 4" in Bob's Poetry Magazine, 3.January 2006: 10 - 26 http://bobspoetry.com/Bobs03Ja.pdf
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