Here’s ‘The Simpsons’ Joke That Probably Triggered ‘Family Guy’s Most Messed Up Clap-Back
Comedy is all about heightening the bit. For instance, if someone jokingly accuses you of being a plagiarist, you react by raping and murdering their fictional family.
The comedy cold war between The Simpsons and Family Guy is, perhaps, the foundational conflict of animated television. Ever since Seth MacFarlane first introduced his own white, middle-class family with a lazy alcoholic father, a hot nagging wife who’s too good for him, a similarly stupid oldest son, a middle daughter who the audience vaguely disdains and a baby who is trapped in an endless, floating timeline infancy, Simpsons fans have been unfavorably comparing Family Guy to its famous predecessor, and the two shows’ respective writing staffs have kept up an occasionally unhealthy competition. And, while the two animated comedies would eventually make up in the 44-minute long and entirely underwhelming 2014 crossover “The Simpsons Guy,” the Family Guy versus Simpsons rivalry used to be one of the most bitter and asymmetrical wars on TV.
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In 2005, The Simpsons aired “The Italian Bob,” an international episode that contained playful jabs at both Family Guy and MacFarlane’s newly started side series American Dad!, setting the table for the most disproportionate response in the history of rape jokes.
As the above Simpsons fan indicated in their mega-viral tweet, less than two years after the airing of “The Italian Bob,” MacFarlane and his writers, presumably incensed by The Simpsons calling them plagiarists, plotted their revenge with a 75-second sequence in the episode “Movin' Out (Brian's Song)” that began as a Simpsons chyron ad featuring Marge that Quagmire quickly crashed by dragging Marge offscreen and sexually assaulting her.
In case that wasn’t horrifying and unfunny enough, Quagmire and Marge returned to the screen moments later as Marge moaned about how much she actually enjoyed getting raped by Family Guy’s favorite rapist. The two then returned to the Simpsons’ house in Springfield for an extramarital affair that the audience could hear Homer interrupt before Quagmire pulled out a gun and murdered the entire Simpsons family one by one.
MacFarlane’s reaction to The Simpsons’ plagiarism joke effectively ended the tradition of the two rival comedies trading barbs on the same network, as Fox executives would swiftly intervene and place a moratorium on either show poking fun at the other in response to understandable fan backlash following the airing of “Movin’ Out (Brian’s Song).”
This meant that MacFarlane secured the last — well, not laugh… gasp? — in his feud with The Simpsons simply by massively overreacting to an utterly innocuous, Italian-flavored dig at the similarities between Family Guy and The Simpsons that everyone had had already identified during the Family Guy pilot. But, ultimately, MacFarlane’s extended rape scene did prove The Simpsons wrong. If Family Guy really did commit “plagiarismo” against The Simpsons, MacFarlane’s clap-back would have been funny.
