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's famous quote to Meg Griffin whenever she says something cute and nice.

"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 describing her father when she ends up getting tired of him.

Peter Griffin (born July 22, 1955) is the titular main protagonist of the FOX animated comedy series Family Guy. However, he is not as nice a character as some may imagine; in fact, throughout the course of the series Peter has caused much misery for those around himself: often this is due to stupidity but there have been times when Peter has deliberately caused harm or misfortune on others to better himself which mostly only backfires, leaving Peter stuck with the raw end of the deal.

Peter is not alone in this respect as he was shown to have an "evil" brother named Thaddeus Griffin and later revealed to have a sister named Karen Griffin who bullied him, suggesting antagonism runs in his family and explains the behavior of his own sons Chris Griffin and Stewie Griffin (though in fairness, Peter does have some moments of being a caring individual though they are quite exceedingly and increasingly rare).

He was 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, especially Meg and even with Lois he has shown a great deal of disrespect towards, cheating on her on several occasions.

Most of his time is spent with his drinking buddies, getting wasted and going wherever he wants, doing whatever they want, and costing thousands of dollars of damage with his 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 his wife. Peter almost always takes her for granted despite him being considerably lucky to have her due to the fact that Lois was the daughter of a billionaire named Carter Pewterschmidt, was very attractive and had the affection of several others around her who were arguably better than Peter. There have been more than enough instances to show Peter has been cheating on Lois such as when he admitted on television he knew the names of every pornographic star, even those who had joined an hour before and had openly been shown to either have attractions for other women and former sexual partners during his marriage with Lois.

He is also shown to be an absolutely manipulative, atrocious and cheating father, demeaning, demoralizing, pranking and downright abusing his family, especially Meg. 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, having good times with them, getting some laughs, and even taking them to fun amusement parks of parties.

List of 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.
 * 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 can 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 had resulted in fourteen deaths. The FBI had eventually learned that 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 says "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 Mayor Adam West. However this was in order to help Meg get more readers as he believed that the Adam 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 is what transformed Peter into the abusive man he is known today, Meg helps Peter fight Karen during a boxing match, managing to knock Karen out with a chair and putting her in a coma. A grateful Peter thanks 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 in "The Peter Principal".
 * Another person that Peter abuses is his wife 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. 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 she's going to the bathroom, which caused 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 the help from Death, Peter 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 teenage 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 how to 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 that 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, and helping his son lose weight, but when he used the liposuction to add some muscle, he began to forget Chris several times, especially when Peter joined the Handsome Guys 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.
 * In "Petarded” Peter found out he was mentally retarded, and also found out 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 can get his kids back, only to be put on trial for custody of his kids which he loses.
 * 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 on 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", Quagmire gets a cat, Peter, Joe, Cleveland, and Brian sneak into his house while he is out and decide to shave his cat as a prank. But Peter kills the cat with a straight razor (this was an accident, but he is unconcerned about it) and he adds 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.", in the same episode Peter does a cutaway gag saying that he used to lure sailors to their deaths with his 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"), 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/destroys the restaurant which falls on Peter, breaking his legs.
 * In "Stew-Roids", he put Stewie on steroids after Stewie was beaten up by Susie Swanson.
 * In "The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou", when he finds out that Chris is being bullied by a teenager named Kyle, he decides to go to Kyle's house to try to talk to him but he beats him up after losing his temper. Though Peter only beats him up out of anger and was never willing to do so, this is still a serious crime because Kyle is only 13. And also, being an adult, he should know better than to lose his temper. Later, upon realizing how good it feels to bully people, he then starts bullying his family and friends.
 * When he realized that he was like his high school bully, Randy Fulcher, he went to see Fulcher to bully him. However, it turns out that when Fulcher was growing up, he was suffering with multiple sclerosis which lead him to be physically disabled. But instead of feeling sorry for Fulcher, Peter attempt to beat up a disabled Fulcher, only to be beaten up by Chris. After being beaten by Chris, Peter finally realizes that bullying is wrong and he stops 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 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 whalecome" to a horrified crowd.
 * It is shown in "Fresh Heir”, Peter is holding a hairless twin hostage in his storm shed, 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 involves Peter attempting to marry Chris, who is made the heir of Carter's will.
 * At the beginning of "Herpe The Love Sore" he menaces 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 that he pays off his shenanigans by (frequently) robbing a bank. After Meg accidentally kills the bank manager, Peter tells 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 yells at her and forces her to say her age, which causes her to run away crying after she says she's 50.
 * In "He's Bla-ack!" when Lois and Donna had an argument on parenting, the two banned Peter and Cleveland to see each other again. To try to get Lois and Donna to be friends, so Peter and Cleveland can continue their friendship, they performed various, and rather questionable, stunts to bring their wives together. One of them was show Lois and Donna multiple pictures of babies. However, Cleveland questioned why Peter had all these picture of babies in questionable positions, in which a lot of them were taken long before they made this plan. This indicated that Peter may have been a pedophile at one point. After realizing this, Peter burst into tears and admits that he has problems.
 * 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's 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 Swanson 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 defecates on Angela's desk after resigning from his job.
 * In "A Shot In The Dark", he shoots Cleveland's son, Cleveland Brown Jr. in the arm and is arrested and charged with a hate crime. However, he did not mean to shoot Cleveland's son because while he was in the neighborhood watch, it was dark and thought Cleveland Jr was a robber 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 steals the Nielsen boxes and ruins 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 they 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 becomes a patriot and convinces his boss to check workers if they are legitimate USA citizens, only to find out he is an immigrant himself, after which he is fired. He starts looking for a new job. He cycles through many jobs and a scene of his job as a nanny is shown. In it he falls through a window killing two children by falling on them and shows no remorse, and he is only disgusted as he pukes. After which he proceeds to push the children's corpses under the bed in the room with the top of his umbrella. And in an earlier scene, when he was doing his job as a maid, he enters a motel room even though the person specifically tells him not to enter.
 * In "Brian’s a Bad Father" he shoots Quagmire just to prove the gun is not in safety mode, 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 seduces 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 Lois attempts to explain that it is not right to be cheating behind Brian's back, Peter simply says Peter loves her more, and Brian is simply a dog, demeaning him as simply a pet instead of an actual, deserving husband.
 * In "Hot-Pocket Dial" he becomes furious when he learns that Quagmire loves Lois. Unable to control his jealousy, he ignores Brian's suggestion in ignoring it and gets into a fight with Quagmire. Later, Peter, still angry at Quagmire flips him off when he's moving away. He even blames Lois for Quagmire loving her.
 * In "High School English” he drove his car into some rich guy's house and broke into his library where he decided to tell the stories of Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He tried to escape from the police while hiding in the attic, but was then apprehended and battered by them at the end of the episode.
 * In "Veteran Guy" he beats an innocent boy to death so he can steal his jetski.
 * In "The Woof of Wall Street", while he and the guys are temporarily in charge of the Drunken Clam, Peter brings a real bull into the Clam for entertainment which only destroys the bar and the only portrait of Jerome's mother who passed away recently resulting in Peter later being attacked by Jerome.
 * Although he doesn't actually do anything, in "You Can't Do That On Television, Peter" it's implied that he's interested in raping 3-year old girls.

Trivia

 * In many respects, Peter Griffin is similar to Homer Simpson and seems like an "average Joe". However, there are differences as while Homer usually has a tendency to feel guilt and remorse, Peter Griffin hardly does so as often. He helps others only for personal gain and abuses his family, most notably Meg. He has at one point abused pretty much every other character in his vicinity.
 * While earlier episodes and scenes depicted him as a good-natured oaf, in later seasons this was not the case. He is at the crunch a childlike selfish jerk whose destructive influence and violent homicidal tendencies pretty much make him bad. In the cruel and bizarre world of Family Guy, every character has had their share of maliciousness. However, Peter Griffin takes the cake in being a bully. The few scenes where is is portrayed as sympathetic pale in comparison to his nastiness.