Peter Griffin

"Remember what I always tell you, if I come home in the middle of the day and catch you having sex with someone I'll kill you both."

- Peter Griffin to his wife Lois Pewterschmidt-Griffin. "Shut up, Meg."

- Peter to his daughter Meg Griffin. "You are a fat, lazy, abusive blue-collar Irish-Catholic dad who drinks way too much and barely makes enough money to support his family."

- Meg accurately describing her father when she ends up getting tired of him.

Peter Löwenbräu Griffin Sr. (born July 22, 1955) is the titular protagonist of the FOX animated comedy series . He is a man in his early 40's who lives in the fictional town of Quahog, Rhode Island. However, he is not a nice person as some would imagine; in fact, throughout the course of the series Peter has caused misery for those around himself: often this is due to stupidity but there have been times when Peter deliberately causes harm or misfortune on others to better himself which mostly backfires leaving Peter stuck with the raw end of the deal.

Peter is not alone in this respect as he is shown to have an "evil" brother named Thaddeus Griffin and later revealed to have a sister named Karen Griffin who bullies him, suggesting antagonism ran in his family and partially helped explain the behavior of his own sons Chris Griffin and Stewie Griffin (though in fairness Peter does have moments of being a caring individual despite the fact that they are increasingly rare).

He is voiced by, the creator of Family Guy.

Personality
Although not exactly villainous or evil Peter is shown to be a stupid, rude, crude, moronic, short-tempered, stubborn, selfish, reckless, egotistical and argumentative person who causes misery to a great deal of people around him, rarely feels affectionate towards his children and even with his wife Lois Pewterschmidt-Griffin whom he has shown disrespect towards, cheating on her on several occasions.

Most of his time is spent with drinking buddies getting wasted, going wherever and doing whatever they want and costing thousands of dollars of damage with the oft-combined forces of their drunken or quasi-sober tomfoolery. He had also been willing to do much more for his friends Glenn Quagmire, Joe Swanson and Cleveland Brown than his family as well.

Another example of his negative aspects is how terrible of a husband he is to Lois. Peter almost always took her for granted despite him being considerably lucky to have her due to Lois being the daughter of a billionaire named Carter Pewterschmidt, very attractive and having the affections of others around her who were arguably better than Peter. There had been more than enough instances to show Peter was cheating on Lois such as when he admitted on live television he knew the names of all pornographic stars, even those who had joined beforehand and was openly shown to either have attractions for other women and/or former sexual partners during his marriage.

He is also shown to be an absolutely manipulative, atrocious and cheating father figure, demeaning, demoralizing, pranking and downright abusing his family, especially his daughter Meg Griffin and pet dog Brian Griffin. In fact, Peter actually left Meg behind when she was in mortal danger, saying that he and Lois had decided if they needed to leave a child behind it would be Meg. Along with this he openly admitted to everyone that he hated the kids simply because they did not do anything or were not entertaining. However, there have been moments in other episodes where Peter has been there for his children and the rest of his family, having good times with them, getting some laughs and even taking them to amusement parks or parties.

While earlier episodes and scenes depicted him as a good-natured oaf in later seasons this was no longer the case. He was at the crunch a childlike selfish jerk whose destructive influence and violent tendencies pretty much made him bad. In the cruel and bizarre world of Family Guy every character had their share of maliciousness. However, Peter took the cake in being a bully. The few scenes where he was portrayed as sympathetic paled in comparison to his nastiness.

Villainous Acts

 * In "E. Peterbus Unum" Peter proclaimed an independent micronation that involved the ownership of his home as soon as he knew this did not formally belong to the United States and called it "Petoria". He became anti-American and proceeded to invite the leaders of several countries hostile to the United States (including Slobodan Milošević of Yugoslavia, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Osama Bin Laden of Al-Qaeda, Kim Jong-il of North Korea, Fidel Castro of Cuba and Ali Khamenei of Iran) over for a pool party and barbecue using his pool stolen from Joe's backyard after annexing it.
 * Probably his most villainous act was in "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing"; his attempt to get a promotion at work by blowing up a billboard advertising a rival brewery. Unfortunately, he had placed the explosives in the wrong building which just so happened to be a children's hospital. When Peter had his boss, Angela, look out the window to watch the billboard explode, he had caused the destruction of the hospital instead. Though Peter was initially shocked by what he had done, he quickly got over it when the resulting fire began to burn the billboard. By the end of the episode, when Peter had passed the third grade and was eligible for a promotion (so he could use the Executive Bathroom) Angela refused to give it to him. Her reason was that nobody had forgotten the burning of the children's hospital which resulted in fourteen deaths. The FBI eventually learned it was Peter but he was only sentenced to seven days in prison.
 * Peter constantly abuses his teenage daughter Meg, whether talking down to her, farting in her face, beating her up, telling her to shut up, carelessly nearly drowning her and in a cutaway gag from "Peter's Daughter" shooting her simply because she said "Hi Dad."
 * In "The Story On Page One" he even went to Meg's school to create a false story that Luke Perry was gay and burned Meg's story about Quahog's mayor Adam West. However, this was in order to help Meg get more readers as he believed the Mayor West story would put people to sleep.
 * There's even some occasion where Peter even forgets Meg. In "Screwed the Pooch" Peter and Brian bring up a man named Stan Thompson who they claim is Meg's real father.
 * Occasionally seen in cutaway gags of trying to abandon Meg.
 * However, it is revealed in "Peter's Sister" that the true reason behind Peter's mistreatment towards Meg was because he was severely abused by his older sister Karen as a child. Upon learning of this and realizing that Karen's treatment was what transformed Peter into the abusive man he was known for being Meg helped Peter fight Karen during a boxing match, managing to knock Karen out with a chair and putting her in a coma. A grateful Peter thanked Meg for her help, even genuinely apologizing for his mistreatment towards her and admitting that he was stupid to take out his pain on her. Ever since then Peter starts to show some respect and care for Meg, even defending her from bullies, an example being in "The Peter Principal".
 * Another person that Peter abuses is Lois. He sometimes shows little to no respect towards her. He would sometimes ignore her and would make her do several things against her will.
 * One example is in "Baby You Knock Me Out" when Peter and his friend are attending a woman's boxing match on his birthday. After watching the match and the announcer asked if any woman wanted to fight the champ Peter forced Lois to enter the ring and fight. After witnessing Lois beating the champ, he then forces her to enter into more boxing matches so he can get rich.
 * In "Sibling Rivalry" Peter ruthlessly insults Lois for gaining weight, at least until he discovers the wonders of fat sex. Then he encourages her to gain weight which is even worse than him putting her down. He insists she get fatter and literally stuffs her face with cake. She gains so much weight that she has a heart attack and almost dies. But that does not stop Peter from having sex with her.
 * In "Lois Comes Out of Her Shell" Lois starts to feel insecure about getting older but during a surprise birthday party with all of her friends Peter refers to her as a plow horse whose only use is menial labor and sex; something which sends Lois on a midlife crisis.
 * In "The Courtship of Stewie's Father" Peter learned about Stewie's real interest in tormenting Lois; in a successful attempt to bond with Stewie he helped the latter pull deadly pranks on Lois (such as smashing a glass jar of pickles on Lois' head, spraying Lois with a gardening hose while going to the bathroom which caused her to to fall down the stairs and pushing her unconscious body into a lake nearly drowning her).
 * In "Dammit Janet" he convinces Lois to keep a flight attendant job which she hates due to uptight passengers only because he gets free plane flights.
 * Peter once wrote hate letters to his family though on that occasion he did not realize what he was doing was wrong.
 * In "Death Lives" Peter was attended a golf game during their anniversary, but to prevent Lois from knowing he set up a fake anniversary scavenger hunt so he can play a game a golf with his friends. This one moment nearly ruined their marriage, but with help from Death he managed to save their marriage.
 * In "Family Goy" he attempts to shoot her while imitating Amon Goeth when he learns she is Jewish.
 * He crosses the Moral Event Horizon in "Brian Griffin's House of Payne" when he threw an unconscious Stewie with heavily infected head wounds underneath Lois' car so she would run him over after weeks of no medical treatment just so she would not ask how Stewie got hurt.
 * Peter also abuses his son Chris as well:
 * In "If I’m Dyin, I’m Lyin" Peter pretended that Chris was dying so he could save a cancelled TV show, and after being confronted by the city, claimed he cured Chris, causing everyone to call him God, which arouses the anger of the real God who plagues the Griffin House. Despite everyone demanding he tell the truth, Peter refuses to, until Chris almost dies. Peter would have crossed the Moral Event Horizon if he had not plead forgiveness.
 * In "Long John Peter" Peter made Chris lose his girlfriend by giving him bad advice on how to date a girl and act around her.
 * In "And the Wiener Is..." Peter always thought that he's better that Chris in every way, but when he found out that Chris had a bigger "junk" that he did Peter got jealous and tried to prove he has the bigger "junk" and even unintentionally tells Lois that Chris' "junk" was the reason why he's trying to become the bigger man.
 * In "He's Too Sexy Fat" Peter and Chris try to lose weight and find out about liposuction. Chris refused to take the procedure but Peter takes liposuction to make himself skinnier. At first he was still interacting with and helping his son lose weight but when he used the liposuction to add muscle he began to forget Chris several times, especially when Peter joined the Handsome Guy's Clubs.
 * In "Hannah Banana" Peter attempted to ruin Chris' life by disguising as Chris and saying that he's gay all because the Evil Monkey was more of a father figure toward Chris than Peter is. Chris retaliates by luring Peter into a log trap using a hat as bait. Of course Peter falls for the trick causing Chris to cut the rope restraining the logs which brutally smashes Peter's face.
 * In that same episode before they found out the Evil Monkey was real both Peter and Quagmire placed Chris' fingers into a bowl of water causing Chris to urinate in his pants while Quagmire punched him in the face to give him a black eye before leaving.
 * In "Petarded" Peter found out he was mentally retarded and also that no charges would be held against him if he did anything wrong, he decided to take advantage of the situation. He went into the ladies' room and kick the doors while women were going onto the bathroom and destroyed some of Lois' plates after he finished dinner. When he went to a fast food restaurant he grabbed a fryolator and burned Lois.
 * And because there was no mentally-sane adult Meg, Chris and Stewie had to live at Cleveland's house. So Peter put seven prostitutes into Cleveland's house so he could get his kids back only to be put on trial for their custody which he lost.
 * In "Jerome Is the New Black" Peter is angry in finding out that Lois slept with Jerome, Cleveland's replacement; he flies into a jealous rage and spends the rest of the evening drinking. Stopping by Jerome's house, Peter throws his bottle through a window and hits a lamp accidentally causing a fire which burns the house down.
 * In "420" after Quagmire got a cat Peter, Joe, Cleveland and Brian sneak into his house while he was out and decide to shave it as a prank. But Peter killed the cat with a straight razor (this was an accident but he was unconcerned about it) and added further insult by stealing Quagmire's beer afterwards. At the end of the episode Quagmire asks where his cat is outside of the Griffin household and before Peter slams the door on him he apathetically says "I killed your cat." Earlier in the same episode Peter does a cutaway gag saying that he used to lure sailors to their deaths with siren songs while dressing up as a mermaid.
 * In "April in Quahog" Peter's comment seconds before the supposed "end of the world" expressing shame and disgust for his children ("I just hate being around the kids") was uttered deliberately in thinking that he will have no price to pay. How sadly mistaken he is once the April Fools Day hoax passes without incident... and even Peter's heartfelt apology is fruitless — Meg, Chris and Stewie are still very mad at their father. In the end he buys back their love with an Xbox 360.
 * In "No Meals On Wheels" the Griffin family run a restaurant but Peter refuses to allow Joe and his other cop friends in because they are "gross cripples" to which they respond by forming themselves into a giant robot which attacks and destroys the restaurant which falls on Peter breaking his legs.
 * In "Stew-Roids" he put Stewie on steroids after he was beaten up by Joe's daughter Susie Swanson.
 * In "The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou" when he finds out that Chris was being bullied by a teenager named Kyle, he decided to go to Kyle's house to try to talk to him but beat him up after losing his temper. Though Peter only hit him out of anger and was never willing to do so this was still a serious crime because Kyle was only 13 while Peter was 43. And also, being an adult he should've known better than to get angry. Later, upon realizing how good it felt to bully people he started bullying his family and friends.
 * When he realized he was like his high-school bully Randy Fulcher he went to see Fulcher to pay him back. However, it turned out that growing up Fulcher suffered multiple sclerosis which led to him being physically disabled. But instead of feeling sorry for him Peter attempt to beat up a disabled Fulcher only to be beaten up by Chris. After being beaten Peter finally realized that bullying is wrong and stopped trying to beat up Fulcher.
 * In "A Fistful of Meg" he continuously torments Brian with his nude body. He only stops when Brian shaves his fur to reveal his hideous bald appearance which he uses to scare Peter and convince him to put his clothes back on.
 * In "The Juice is Loose" Peter accidentally murdered the fourth Griffin child (who was a baby at the time) by shaking him to make him stop crying. This seems like more of a misdeed since Peter did not mean it.
 * In "Peter Problems" he kills and eviscerates a beached whale with a forklift, trying to get it back in the ocean. To add insult to injury, he then carefully and gently picks up a seashell with the same forklift and says "You're whale-come" to a horrified crowd.
 * It is shown in "Fresh Heir" Peter is holding a hairless twin hostage in his storm shed and feeding him garbage. He also murders whom he thought was a boy who bullied Chris and presents his severed head to him, but as it turns out it was a deaf student. The main plot of the episode involved Peter attempting to marry Chris who was made the heir of Carter's will.
 * At the beginning of "Herpe The Love Sore" he menaced numerous people (including Meg, Stewie and even Cleveland) with a whip he received from the mail which was supposed to go to Quagmire.
 * In "Meg Stinks" it was revealed he pays off his shenanigans by (frequently) robbing a bank. After Meg accidentally killed the bank manager Peter told her to kill everyone else.
 * In "Brian's Got a Brand New Bag" while having dinner he, along with his family except Brian does things that will make Rita say her age. After they failed he yelled at her and forces her to say her age which caused her to run away crying after she says 50.
 * In "He's Bla-ack!" when Lois and Cleveland's new wife Donna Tubbs-Brown had an argument on parenting the two banned him and Cleveland from seeing each other again. To try to get Lois and Donna to be friends as well they performed various (and rather questionable) stunts to bring their wives together. One of them was showing Lois and Donna naked babies. However, Cleveland asked why Peter had pictures of them in suggestive positions and taken long before they made the plan. This indicated Peter may have been a pedophile at one point. After realizing this Peter burst into tears and admitted he had problems. He also intentionally crashed his car by driving it into a pole with him and Cleveland still inside, resulting in the latter ending up hospitalized and in critical condition due to only Peter being protected by the car's airbags; this attempt only further cemented the hostility between his and Cleveland's wives.
 * In "Underage Peter" when drinking becomes banned for people under 50 he manipulates Brian into buying him alcohol because Brian is 56 in dog years. When a police officer catches him drunk he tells on Brian, leaving him to do community service. Peter does not care about what he did to Brian and he still asks him to buy them alcohol when Brian is doing community service. Additionally, when Brian is doing community service he drinks alcohol, burps at him, litters and insults a glaring policeman making Peter do community service as well.
 * In "The Simpsons Guy", he got into an extremely long and violent fight with Homer Simpson that destroyed much of Springfield and killed or injured many residents (although this may be non-canon). However, the two thankfully made up by the end of the episode.
 * In "Brian the Closer" Peter desperately tries to get Brian's old toy rope, to the point when he ties the rope to his car and drives off in an attempt get it away from Brian. This greatly injures Brian, causing him to collide headfirst on a fire hydrant, making him lose all his teeth and break his nose. Peter uncaringly gives Brian the rope back, having grown bored of it.
 * In "Turkey Guy" Peter, as usual gets drunk and ends up eating the entire Thanksgiving turkey with Brian. The two head out to find a replacement turkey. Through Peter's stupidity, the two encounter bad luck and misfortune, some of which endangers Brian. When Brian cannot take anymore of Peter's stupidity, he yells at him, to which Peter reveals Brian had nothing to do with eating the turkey and he just framed him, so he did not have to take all the blame. He furthered this insult by telling Brian that he's a dog and that he could throw him off a bridge, and unless it hits a person, he is fine.
 * In "Finders Keepers" he presumably beats an innocent boy to death with a shovel because he thinks he's after the treasure. And in the beginning of the episode, he disgusts his family with his putrid breath.
 * In "Lottery Fever" he torments Quagmire and Joe for his own amusement after becoming richer than them, he forces them to perform for him while he criticizes them and repeatedly shoots them with a BB gun with one pellet blowing out Joe's eye forcing him to get a glass eye, he tries to justify this behavior by saying that the money caused him to do it. Also he defecated on Angela's desk after resigning from his job.
 * In "A Shot in the Dark" he shot Cleveland's son Cleveland Jr. in the arm and was arrested by Joe and charged with a hate crime. However, he did not mean to shoot Cleveland's son because while in the neighborhood watch it was dark and he thought Cleveland Jr. was trying to rob Cleveland's house since was trying to get into the window; though at the end Peter confessed that he did something stupid and Cleveland "confessed" that he shot his son in the arm.
 * In "Ratings Guy" he stole Nielsen boxes and ruined television causing everybody to hate him.
 * In "Vestigial Peter" after he becomes annoyed with Chip, he attempts to use a dingo to eat him. This fails and Chip realizes that Peter wants to kill him so he angrily leaves the house. But after Chip saves Peter when he fell to the basement, Peter is grateful and they reconcile.
 * In "The Peanut Butter Kid" he and Lois forced Stewie to do a commercial which tired him and kept giving him drugs to keep him active and pressuring him to succeed as well as using Stewie's earned money they planned for his college fund for themselves instead.
 * In “Padre de Familia" Peter became a patriot and convinced his employer Angela to check workers if they were legitimate US citizens only to find out he was an immigrant himself, after which he is fired. He started looking for a new job. He cycled through many and a scene of his job as a nanny was shown. In it he fell through a window killing two children by falling on them and showed no remorse, only being disgusted as he puked. After that he proceeded to push the children's corpses under the bed in the room with the top of his umbrella. And in an earlier scene when doing his job as a maid he entered a motel room even though the person specifically told him not to.
 * In "Brian’s a Bad Father" he shot Quagmire just to prove a hunting rifle was not in safety mode and revealed he lost a Huey Louis CD in a game of poker making Quagmire end their friendship.
 * In "Perfect Castaway" once Peter returns from being lost on an island at sea he becomes distraught when he realized Brian married Lois. He then seduced Lois into having intercourse with him; while this could be considered less villainous since it was justifiable because they were previously married Peter still did not respect the marriage between Brian and Lois or Brian in general, secretly cheating behind Brian's back and when she attempts to explain that it is not right to do so Peter simply says he loves her more and Brian was simply a dog, demeaning him as simply a pet instead of an actual and deserving husband.
 * In "Hot-Pocket Dial" he became furious when he learned Quagmire also loved Lois. Unable to control his jealousy, he ignored Brian's suggestions of ignoring it and got into a fight with Quagmire. Later, still angry at Quagmire, Peter flips him off when he moves away. He even blames Lois for Quagmire loving her.
 * In "High School English" he drove his car into a rich person's house and broke into his library where he decided to tell the stories of The Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn and Of Mice and Men. He tried to escape from the police while hiding in the attic but was apprehended and battered by them at the end of the episode.
 * In "Veteran Guy" he and his friends impersonated military officials though they were arrested and charged and he later beat an innocent boy to death so he could steal a jetski.
 * In "The Woof of Wall Street" while he and the guys are temporarily in charge of the Drunken Clam he brought a real bull into the Clam for entertainment which destroyed the bar and the only portrait of Jerome's mother who passed away recently resulting in Peter later being attacked by Jerome after failing to evacuate himself from the Clam's premises as part of a ploy for him and the others to avoid being hurt by replacing themselves with straw-filled scarecrow replicas.
 * Although he does not actually do anything in "You Can't Do That On Television, Peter" it was implied he's interested in raping 3-year-old girls.

Trivia

 * In many respects Peter was similar to Homer Simpson and seemed like what people called an "average Joe". However, there were differences as while Homer usually had a tendency to feel guilt and remorse Peter hardly did so as often. He helped others only for personal gain and abused his family, most notably Meg. He had at one point abused pretty much every other character in his vicinity.