Brian Griffin

"Whose leg do you have to hump to get a dry martini around here?"

- Brian's most famous quote

Brian Griffin is the tritagonist from the animated television series Family Guy. An anthropomorphic dog, voiced by series creator Seth MacFarlane, he is one of the show's main characters and a member of the Griffin family.

He first appeared on television, along with the rest of the family, in a 15-minute short on December 20, 1998. Brian was created and designed by MacFarlane himself. MacFarlane was asked to pitch a pilot to the Fox Broadcasting Company based on The Life of Larry and Larry & Steve, two shorts made by MacFarlane (the second one at Hanna-Barbera for Cartoon Network's What-A-Cartoon project) which featured a middle-aged character named Larry and an intellectual dog, Steve. After the pilot was given the greenlight, the Griffin family appeared on the episode "Death Has a Shadow" on January 31, 1999.

Brian is a member of the Griffin family. He is best friends with Peter Griffin. He primarily worked in the series as a struggling writer attempting essays, books, novels, screenplays, and newspaper articles. His appearance was a redesign of the protagonist Steve from MacFarlane's previous animated short films. He has been featured in much of the Family Guy merchandise, including toys, t-shirts, and video games, and has made crossover appearances in the other MacFarlane-produced shows, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show.

In the Season 12 episode Life of Brian, he dies after being struck by a car. However, two episodes later in Christmas Guy, Stewie soon saw his past time traveling self and was able to steal his return pad and transport back to the point where Brian was killed. He pushed him out of the way before the car could hit him.

Personality
Initially, Brian is a comparatively more grounded and reasonable character, acting as a decent foil towards Peter. However, as with many Family Guy characters, Brian has started to show more of an atrocious side as the series progresses. He became very egotistical and severely egomaniacal (This may be because of his bad behavior (which he continously blames on somebody else rather than himself) and being very obsessed with his failed book Faster Than the Speed of Love and then his best-seller Wish It, Want It, Do It), inadvertingly turning even more into Lois's father Carter (both of whom are ironically voiced by MacFarlane) in later seasons.

However, some of his old personality almost remains and still acting sometimes empathic on the Griffin family, mainly Stewie for protecting reasons. He and Stewie are the most intelligent of all of the members of the Griffin family.

Villainous acts

 * In Yug Ylimaf, Brain uses Stewie's time machine to have sex with women he meets at bars. One of the women openly admitted to being fifteen, to which Brian responded by offering a Barnes and Noble gift card to keep her silence.
 * Brian once dated an abusive preschool teacher known as Miss Emily and looked past the abuse of the children, including Stewie, to continue being with her. He only reports her after he learns she has another boyfriend. This is considered his Moral Event Horizon by some.
 * In Killer Queen, Brian tormented Stewie with a Queen album's creepy imagery, almost driving Stewie to commit suicide over the trauma.
 * He once shot an innocent man and said to him, "Later Dink."
 * In The Thin White Line, Brian became addicted to cocaine. This led to some uncomfortable turbulence as he became more aggressive with his family.
 * Brian is in love with Lois Griffin, constantly flirts with her, and, in Play It Again, Brian, tries to show it by nearly raping her.
 * In another instance, Brian dates a blind woman and tries to hide the fact that he is a dog. When exposed, she breaks up with him for the lie. However, he is shown at the end of the episode taking advantage of her blindness by pretending he's another guy with a different voice with the implication that he will trick her into having sex with him.
 * In a cutaway gag, Brian accidentally runs over Dean Koontz and backs over him again once he found out he wasn't Stephen King.
 * Brian steals the Golden Clam Trophy due a fondness for shiny things, which causes great tension between the residents of Spooner Street (which led to accusations of theft), and sway them from learning the truth. He also presumably killed Rod Serling in a cutaway gag following this incident.
 * When Brian got a gag self help book called "Wish it, Want it, Do it" published, he became extremely selfish, ungrateful, and arrogant when the book became a success. Even though Stewie had helped him get the book published in the first place and had offered to be his publicist, Brian abused him many times. Such examples of this abuse included forcing him to return to their hotel alone just because they had eaten dinner in the back room of a fancy restaurant, blaming him because Brian was standing under an air vent, and firing him for forgetting to tell him about a change in a talk show. At the end, Brian still blames him for his own mistakes on said show.
 * Brian is also shown to have a nasty habit of being unreliable with paying up, such as with his bet with Stewie and setting up his date Ida to pay for drinks after promising he would cover it (although the former led to one of Stewie's more villainous moments when he tortured Brian multiple times over the bet).
 * When Stewie offered Brian one free punch, Brian used this to terrify Stewie, to the point where he beats himself up. In the end, Brian kicks Stewie into a Double-Decker Bus. However, considering Stewie viciously beat him up twice, shot him in both knees and torched him with a flamethrower in the same episode, they would be considered even.
 * During their attempt at doing Santa's job in Road to the North Pole, Brian and Stewie murder a little girl's parents to keep them from calling the cops.
 * Despite having good intentions in that he was trying to convince Adam West to revoke the gay marriage ban, Brian still held the man as a hostage at gunpoint.
 * While hanging out with Frank Sinatra Jr., he decided to live life at the fullest. But as a result, he became an alcoholic, abandoned Stewie, where he was attacked by man-eating deers and lost an ear, and even bit Peter.
 * In Stewie B. Goode, Brian gave Stewie alcohol and made him drunk, although it was originally to teach him a lesson.
 * In the same episode, Brian brought Stewie to the Drunken Clam, which is illegal to bring children to bars. Both Brian and Stewie drank so many martinis that they ended up crashing into the Drunken Clam, causing property damage, and, unintentionally, made Peter lose his job in You Know What Grinds My Gears?.
 * In the video game Back to the Multiverse, Brian is shown freely engaging in attacking, killing, and other atrocious acts, including a disgusting sense of "humor" when he ignores Joe's calls for help after the boss fight against Crippletron. He even assassinates Mayor MacCheese on behalf of "Evil Mayor West" in order to retain a favor in one dimension, and is really only concerned about Evil Mayor West backing out on his deal; although in fairness, Brian is trying to keep Evil Mayor West from providing weapons for Bertram's plot. He also has an odd Even Evil Has Standards moment when he considers Stewie "sick" for killing the Santa Claus of one dimension by dropping a TV set on him.
 * Brian has shown to be a hypocrite from time to time:
 * One example is when he says that the Cigarette companies were evil so he decides to quit smoking, but at the end of the episode Brian is still smoking.
 * A second example is in other episode which despite being liberal, he keeps a pistol (gun) because of protective reasons and pretends to be against using a gun itself over the "national tragedy at Combine".
 * Another example of Brian being a hypocrite is when he deliberately runs over a squirrel, which, unbeknowest to him, traumatizes Stewie. He also hires a hitman to kill Quagmire's cat. Also during a date in Love, Blactually, he mauls a rabbit at a pet store. These actions make him a hypocrite because in several episodes he supported animals rights and was against violence towards animals.
 * And the last example is his views on LGBT rights, which he violated in Family Gay when Lois is depressed that Peter is leaving her for another man, Brian then takes Stewie's idea for ending Lois's depression by kidnapping Peter to an ex-gay center to "Turn back to his old self".
 * In Brian's a Bad Father, Brian has neglected to visit his human son Dylan. But upon hearing he is a famous TV star, Brian sets to become a writer on his show. Dylan realizes Brian only took the job for his own advantage and pointed out what a bad parent he really is. Brian also steals a table of food from the studio. Fortunately, they make up later on thanks to Stewie.
 * In Herpe the Love Sore, he gives Stewie and Chris herpes by transmitting blood, knowing very well that he himself has the incurable disease and kept it a secret from them. The two exact revenge on Brian as a result.