Family Guy has dealt with its fair share of censorship since it first hit the airwaves back in 1999. Season 2’s “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein,” in which Peter attempts to get Chris to convert to Judaism so that he’ll end up being smart and successful, was shelved for years because Fox executives thought people would perceive it as anti-Semitic. And the idea of Lois contemplating an abortion in the 2010 episode “Partial Terms of Endearment” is apparently still too controversial for the network, as it has yet to be shown on U.S. television. It eventually aired on BBC Three in the UK and was released on DVD later that year.
This is, of course, in addition to all the criticism Family Guy’s gotten over the years. The FCC actually received more than 188,000 complaints about the Season 7 episode “Family Gay,” due to a gag that suggests Stewie might’ve ingested horse sperm by accident. And on at least one occasion, a voice actor refused to do an episode because of an offensive joke. In 2019, Patrick Warburton told Digital Spy that he opted out of participating in an unspecified show over a cutaway gag involving Jesus.
The Deleted ‘Family Guy’ Jokes the Cast Still Talked About Years Later
Every aforementioned gag saw the light of day at some point, however, which makes you wonder how objectionable a joke would have to be to get completely cut. As fate would have it, the cast and crew went into some detail about a couple of deleted gags that were evidently too offensive for broadcast during a 2009 event at the Paley Center for Media.
One such joke that Alex Borstein—who voices Lois—was particularly fond of was meant to parody the popular Dentyne Ice commercials that often featured an attractive woman blowing smoke after popping the chewing gum in her mouth. The Family Guy version was supposed to be a commercial for Tampax Ice, which would’ve shown a side view of a woman opening her legs, with smoke coming out between them.
Another cutaway gag that, unfortunately, never materialized concerned the Hamburger Helper Helping Hand. Peter, needing help with something in this sequence, was to encounter the iconic mascot, who’d offer to give him a hand. “What kind of money are we talkin’ about here?” Peter would then ask him, to which the Helping Hand would reply, “The first one’s free. You tell your friends.”
You can listen to the Family Guy crew discuss the lost jokes in question in the clip below.
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