Although there have been a number of friendly and even not-so-friendly rivalries between animated shows over the years, one person who’s always been supportive of his competition is Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Shortly after Beavis and Butt-Head debuted on MTV in 1992, Groening said, “You don’t know how happy I am that Beavis and Butt-Head are on the air, because all the heat is off of us…The Simpsons used to be responsible for the downfall of Western civilization.” He was evidently even looking to get the characters to make a guest appearance on his show in those days, but that never came to fruition, for some reason.
As time went on, Groening was also complimentary of other animated shows that would later be compared to his, including South Park and even Family Guy. Despite The Simpsons and Family Guy taking shots at each other in the past, both Groening and Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane insisted during a joint interview in 2014 that there was no animosity between the two of them. “I have more in common with Seth than I do with everybody I work with,” Groening joked to Entertainment Weekly at the time. He went on to say, “I like cartoons. I want there to be more cartoons. Both shows make fun of stuff, so we have to make fun of the guy next door.”
When asked what his favorite animated show was back in 2007, however, Groening told Playboy, “South Park at its best is some of the most astonishing TV ever made.” With regard to Trey Parker and Matt Stone doing their two-part “Cartoon Wars” story arc attacking Family Guy the previous year, Groening said, “I’m glad South Park went after somebody other than us. They can be vicious.” In response to Stone telling people, “It’s not like we’re Biggie and Tupac,” Groening expressed some relief, saying, “Thank God cartoonists are wimps. If you make a cartoonist angry, you’re going to wind up in a cartoon. There are usually no drive-by shootings.”
That doesn’t mean he didn’t have his concerns about Bart Simpson being dragged into all the “Cartoon Wars” drama, though. In an interview with the New York Post in 2009, Groening revealed that when those episodes aired, he “watched with great apprehension, and was just grateful they didn’t chop Bart’s head off, because Cartman and his pals would blow Bart out of the water.”
As far as The Simpsons vs. Family Guy goes, Fox apparently told the two shows to stop going after one another at one point. The characters were eventually brought together for “The Simpsons Guy,” a special crossover episode from Family Guy’s 13th season in 2014. Family Guy and South Park, on the other hand, appear to still be mortal enemies to this day.
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