The first ever episode of Family Guy has been found by sheer chance after the pilot was considered lost for three decades.
The full 1998 episode of one of America's favorite cartoon families was considered lost forever, as only seven minutes, less than half of the full 16-minute episode, managed to make it onto the Family Guy Volume 2 DVD in 2003 as bonus content from the first season.
Fans of the animated TV sitcom have longed to see the prototypical pitch as viewers like to go back in history to the early days of popular shows, like The Simpsons, to compare how the animation and art style had changed over the years.
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Now, they can do exactly that as the full pilot was apparently randomly posted by graphic designer and animator, Robert Paulson, to his online portfolio.
Paulson, who apparently had worked on the OG episode, uploaded it to his website in 2022, though it wasn't discovered publicly until March this year when a user in Lost Media wiki's Discord happened to come across the footage.
Family Guy creator, Seth MacFarlane, compiled the pilot after Fox paid out $50,000 and went ahead with the production of the show which premiered in 1999.
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It had a formal opening pilot episode, 'Death Has A Shadow,' which followed most of the plot of the first 1998 version, which sees Stewie Griffin build a mind-control device while Peter Griffin gets drunk at a stag party.
Check out the full pilot episode below:
Although it's nice to see the characters have stayed true to themselves from the get-go, MacFarlane can be heard doing the voice of Chris Griffin as Seth Green had not been cast as the Griffin's son yet.
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The news comes as the Emmy Award-winning comedy is now on its 23rd season, after Fox announced in 2023 that it was renewed for seasons 22 and 23.
Over the decades since its first premiere in 1999, Family Guy has earned its stripes as a cult classic and one of the best prime-time animation shows of all time.
It also celebrates its own spin-off series, The Cleveland Show, which follows the story of the popular character, Cleveland Brown, which aired from 2009 to 2013.
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The 51-year-old creator and voice actor said last year that he doesn't see any 'good reason' to end Family Guy just yet, as per The LA Times.
MacFarlane, who voices Peter Griffin, Brian Griffin, Stewie Griffin and Glenn Quagmire, said: "People still love it. It makes people happy and it funds some good causes. It’s a lot of extraneous cash that you can donate to Rainforest Trust and you can still go out to dinner that night.”
“There was a time when I thought, it’s time to wrap it up," he continued. "At this point, we’ve reached escape velocity. I don’t know that there’s any reason to stop at this point unless people get sick of it. Unless the numbers show that people just are, ‘Eh, we don’t care about Family Guy anymore.’ But that hasn’t happened yet.”
Topics: Film and TV, History, US News
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