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Peter Griffin is a fictional character in the Fox animated television show Family Guy. He is voiced 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 father of Meg, Chris and Stewie. His best friend is his dog Brian.
Peter initially worked as a production line worker at the Happy-Go-Lucky Toy Factory. Following its closure he became a fisherman. He has also worked as a jouster, Sheriff and folk singer. His favourite pastime is watching television, particularly the original series of Star Trek.
In the episode "Peter Griffin, Husband, Father... Brother?", Peter discovered he had a pre-Civil War era black ancestor named Nate Griffin. Furthermore, he was a slave owned by a Pewterschmidt family ancestor. His father-in-law paid Peter $20,000 in reparations, which Peter then squandered turning his house's living room into a replica of Pee-wee's Playhouse.
In an earlier episode, "The Son Also Draws", Peter claimed to be Native American in order to regain Lois's gambling losses at a casino. The casino managers told Peter to go on a vision quest to prove his claim. Peter did, and his spirit guide turned out to be Fonzie.
When a toad-licking drug trend started at Meg's school, Peter went "undercover" as a Fonzie-inspired character called Lando Griffin, and nobody questioned his assumed identity as a high school student not related to Meg. Meg was at first mortified, but when Lando became cool by smashing a jukebox in the cafeteria, Meg asked him to the dance. With a song and dance routine, he inspired the students to "give up the toad now." ("Let's go to the hop"). Lando took Connie Demico to the dance, but declared that he had been rejected by Meg, and promised to kill himself by driving his motorcycle off a cliff. When police declared they were too lazy to look for Lando's body, Peter safely put this behind him.
Peter is insanely jealous of ex-boyfriends of Lois, and he will attack any man who expresses the slightest interest in her. One notable exception is when he learned Lois had had sex with a member of his favorite band, KISS, he was very proud of her. "My wife did KISS!", he boasted.
Peter is often transformed by traumatic experience, 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, after experiencing a pain as great as that of childbirth, Peter became extremely sensitive to the point of becoming effeminate. To bring him back, Lois fought with another woman, restoring Peter.
Comparing Peter to other cartoon fathers
Because Peter Griffin is such a lazy, fat and stupid character who heads a household consisting of a level-headed mother, intelligent daughter, under-achieving son and a baby, comparisons to Homer Simpson—of the FOX animated television show The Simpsons—are inevitable. In one episode of The Simpsons Peter Griffin is shown amongst a crowd of Homer Simpson's clones, implying that the Simpsons creators believe Peter to be a clone of Homer. Unlike Homer, whose destructive acts are played as the result of ineptitude or (more frequently) ignorance, Peter's are just as frequently willful as unintentional.
Both Peter and Homer display occasional effeminate tendencies but react with fear or anger when they see such tendencies or signs of tendencies in their firstborn sons. In the episode "The Son Also Draws", Chris gets advice from Meg on how to tell Peter that he does not want to be in the Scouts anymore. Meg said that whenever she doesn't want to hurt Peter with bad news, she sits on his lap, snuggles up to him, and gives him a kiss. Chris tries this, and Peter calmly gets up and tells Chris they will never speak of that incident again.
Peter is not violent towards Chris in the way that Homer is towards Bart.
The fathers of both Peter and Homer were indifferent to them as children, but their attitudes towards their fathers as adults are quite different. Homer dumped his father off at a retirement home, happy to forget him, while Peter insisted that his father come live with him after retiring (in the episode "Holy Crap"). Peter is eager for his father's approval, while Homer is not.
While both Peter and Homer occasionally indulge in casual blasphemy, Peter generally comes across as more respectful of religion and its institutions. In the episode "Holy Crap", Peter decides that the way to fix his relationship with his father is by kidnapping the Pope.
Both Peter and Homer have hosted birds in their house at one time or another, Peter hosting a white-rumped swallow in his beard and later the three fledglings ("Brian Wallows, Peter's Swallows"), and Homer hosting a flock (murder) of crows. Both Peter and Homer have put up with bothersome endangered animals, Peter with the aforementioned white-rumped swallows and Homer with the screamapillar.
Comparing Peter to Hank Hill is tenuous, though there are a few points of similarity. Both Peter and Hank have a human best friend who lusts after their wife (Bill Dauterive makes himself a simulacrum of Peggy Hill, while Glen Quagmire gets Chris to bring him Lois's hairbrush so he can add real hair to his simulacrum of Lois). Both of them show pride in their particular region of the U.S.
See also
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