Roger Smith

"God, who do you have to probe around here to get a Chardonnay?"

- Roger

Roger is (from time-to-time) the main antagonist in the animated comedy series American Dad!.

He is a grey alien living with the Smith family, Roger is sarcastic, surly, and speaks in swish. Speculation exists regarding Roger's sexuality, but the discussion might be moot, as he is, after all, an alien. (His name may come from the word Andrognous which means having both male and female traits) Roger came to live with the Smith family after saving Stan Smith's life in Area 51. He has lived with the Smiths for four years. He is possibly based on Dr. Roger Adelson, one of MacFarlane's former professors.

He was voiced by Seth MacFarlane.

History
Roger's flamboyant speech pattern is a parody of Paul Lynde, although many thought it was akin to Family Guy's Cleveland Brown. Due to the similarities between Roger and Cleveland, some incorrectly thought Roger was voiced by Mike Henry or Dee Bradley Baker, not MacFarlane. He can speak Spanish (though not very well). On his home planet, he was a greeter at a Wal-Mart-analogue store called Philaxido. His favorite baseball team is the San Diego Padres. His favorite movie is Miller's Crossing.

Little is known about Roger's past; his planet is never seen or described in-depth, though according to him, it sounds fairly similar to Earth, although Roger claims the climate of his home world is 400 degrees colder than most ecosystems of Earth, with the possible exception of Antarctica. In "The Best Christmas Story Never", he says he landed on Earth sixty years ago at Roswell. In "Of Ice and Men" he mentions that snow reminds him of his home planet, and figure skating apparently exists there; he has also commented that the planet has stores like Wal-Mart (he was once a greeter at one of these places) and colleges. Likewise why he came to Earth is never explained: he does state that the reason he came was to collect a sample of hepatitis, although since arriving he seems to mostly be mooching, and seems in no hurry to go back home (in the pilot he was supposed to try to contact his home world, but got distracted by an "I Love The 80s" marathon). This led to the possibility that Roger is marooned on Earth and his homeworld does not know of his whereabouts. Though it was finally revealed in the episode "the Weiner of Our Discontent" that he believes he came to earth to be "The Decider", seeing of the planet was worth saving or to destroy it. This belief was crushed horribly when he discovered in his spaceship a note that stated that the ship was a test model and he was in it as a "crash test dummy", meaning his own species abandon him on the planet. It is also known that Roger "invented" disco and became a millionaire in the 1970s after he discovered a cassette tape from the future, thereby creating a time paradox, but he lost his fortune after disco died.

Four years prior to the series, he was incarcerated by the CIA in Area 51, when Stan Smith, then an intelligence officer, was on duty at the base. Tired of living in a laboratory, he escaped his holding cell, thus triggering a lockdown investigation. Stan tracked him down in a kitchen and was about to kill him before Roger pleaded for mercy, but the security team riddled the room with gunfire, from which Roger pulled Stan to safety. They slid down a laundry chute into a waiting truck just as a thrown grenade blew up where they previously had been standing. Grateful to Roger for saving his life, Stan offered to repay him in any way at all, obviously leading to his being added to the family. As a means of convincing the family to let him stay, Stan presented him as a birthday present to Steve for his tenth birthday. Hayley and Francine were horrified of him at first sight, as was Klaus, but Steve was delighted to have his own alien. By the start of the series, however, the family seems to have come to terms with him.

In earlier episodes, Roger was unable to leave the house because he was an alien but after putting on a disguises in later episodes, he is able to leave the house anytime he wants. Roger loves disguises, but some disguises change his personality, creating various personas that Roger is sometime unable to control until he takes off the disguise. Some of these personas are sometimes the reason Roger acts as a villain in some episodes, a notable persona being Ricky Spanish.

In one episode, it was shown that Roger's species need to be mean to others or it would slowly kill them...though it doesn't always excuse what he does.

Villainous Acts

 * In the episode Tears of a Clooney, he adopts several foster kids and forces them do to hard labor without caring about them at all. Haley eventually came with Child Protection Services and took the kids away from him.
 * In Great Space Roaster, Roger goes on a killing spree after being roasted by the Smith family and eventually traps them in space. Roger then forces the family to roast each other but it was then revealed Roger felt that way because he didn't consider himself part of the family.
 * In Virtual In-Sanity, Roger ran over and killed five innocent people just because they didn't pay him twenty dollars. It was also revealed he killed six other people just for eight-teen dollars. Many would say that Roger crossed the Moral Event Horizon because of this.
 * In Four Little Words, he takes over the persona of Kevin Bacon and acts like a complete jerk to everyone. He ruins the real Kevin Bacon's name without the slightest bit of remorse.
 * In Spring Break-Up, he knocks out a guest and was even excited when someone died.
 * In The Phantom of the Telethon, he sabotages Stan's telethon just because he stole his idea. However, this villainous act can be justified since Stan didn't give Roger credit for coming up with the telethon idea.
 * In Roy Rogers McFreely, he takes on this persona of the same name to get back at Stan just for not picking up grenadine at the store.
 * In Shallow Vows, one of his alter-egos Valik cuts Steve on the chest and even hunts Steve and Haley down to Argentina.
 * In Ricky Spanish, possibly his most evil alter-ego Ricky Spanish was seen for doing numerous of things. Nere the end of the episode, just as it appears he has redeemed himself, he frames Steve for a crime and even gets away from it. It has been stated that even Roger hates Ricky Spanish.
 * In Stan's Best Friend, Roger showed no sympathy for Steve's dog "Kisses" and was even excited to see the dog dying. When Stan showed everyone the "new" Kisses, Roger laughed and even liked the now monstrous-like Kisses.
 * In Love AD Style, Roger falls in love with Hayley, kidnaps her and crosses the Moral Event Horizon by trying to flay her in order to wear her skin. At the end, Roger unsuccessfully attempted to become like Jeff so Hayley would love him, by flaying Jeff and wearing his skin and acting like him.
 * In Naked to the Limit, One More Time, Roger commits one of his most severe acts of villainy when he throws Jeff into the tractor beam of an alien spaceship meant to take Roger back to his home planet, just so Roger wouldn't have to be the one to leave. This would lead to Jeff first becoming a slave on alien ship and then lost in space from Lost in Space onwards, and then to Hayley wasting her entire life waiting for Jeff's return in an alternate timeline in The Longest Distance Relationship.
 * It was revealed in Lost in Space that Roger slept with Emperor Zing's (his alien species' ruler) love in the past, which is what drove Zing to become a slavedriving tyrant who enslaved captured aliens aboard his ship and had their genitals removed.