This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
|
“ | There's far more money to be made in treating a disease than in curing it. Why cure someone of cancer in a day if we can treat them for a lifetime and bill them every step along the way? | „ |
~ Carter revealing that he kept the cure for cancer secret from the public just to maximize profits for himself. |
“ | Drink my diabetic blood! | „ |
~ Carter Pewterschmidt. |
Carter Roosevelt Pewterschmidt is the main antagonist of the Family Guy franchise.
He is a wealthy industrialist who is the owner of U.S. Steel and Pewterschmidt Industries and father of Lois Griffin, Carol Pewterschmidt-West and Patrick Pewterschmidt, father-in-law of Peter Griffin, grandfather of Meg Griffin, Chris Griffin and Stewie Griffin, husband of Barbara Pewterschmidt, and the ocassional arch-nemesis of both Peter and his pet dog and best friend Brian H. Griffin.
He is voiced by the show's creator Seth MacFarlane, who also voices Peter Griffin, Stewie Griffin, Brian Griffin, and Glenn Quagmire in the same show, Roger Smith and Stan Smith in American Dad!, Mike in Sing, and Max Chilblain in Logan Lucky.
Appearance[]
Carter has persimmon like skin, gray hair, including a mustache, a blue suit, with a white collared shirt under it, and black shoes. In his past debuts, he has been shown with brown hair instead of gray. When he is not wearing his usual tuxedo, he will often wear a light blue collared shirt and tan khaki pants.
Personality[]
“ | Is money all that you care about? | „ |
~ Lois upon learning how greedy her father truly is. |
He is gleefully cruel, heartless, manipulative and sadistic - particularly towards Peter, and is shown to keep a Rancor in a pit below his house. To Carter, having money is the secret to happiness, and he will go through criminal lengths to expand his already massive wealth, even if millions of people have to die in the process (although he briefly reconsiders this when he briefly becomes penniless and Peter tries to help rebuild his fortune). He hates Peter and, at one point, offered him $1,000,000 to stay away from Lois when leaving him in the ocean to drown failed. When that didn't work, he later paid a woman to set up Peter and trick Lois into breaking up with him. He also tried to outright kill Peter several times. In the 19th century, Carter's family owned Peter's ancestor Nate Griffin as a slave. He is good friends with Michael Eisner, Ted Turner, and Bill Gates, playing poker with them regularly. He has owned CNN via a poker game, and following his remarriage to Babs, who had married Turner briefly following a lawsuit that left Carter poor. He used to own a race-winning greyhound named Seabreeze. However, she became pregnant with Turner's babies, but the father wasn't known until after the birth. When this was realized, he disowned her. Recently, Carter has shown signs of leniency towards Peter, going so far as to say "You're alright, Griffin."
Biography[]
When Carter first meets Peter in a flashback in "Death Lives," Peter fails to make a first impression on him. Carter knocks Peter out with a table statue and has his men fly him to the middle of the ocean before dropping him into it, intending for Peter to drown. When Peter survives and returns however, Carter bribes him with $1,000,000 to stay away from Lois. However, Peter declines the bribe.
In "Peterotica," Peter decides to write his own erotic novels, and asks Carter to lend him some money to get his business open. Instead, Carter gives him five dollars at the bottom of a jar filled with salt and barbed wire. Peter is able to properly invest that five dollars to get his novels off the ground, and his books are then published by "Carter Pewterschmidt Labels." Peter's erotic novels become a success, earning money for Carter and Peter and eventually getting published on audiotape.
However, Carter runs into trouble because a driver was taking his shirt off while listening to one of Peter's audiotapes, which distracted him and caused him to crash through the Kool-Aid Man's house. Despite the driver being at fault, Carter is then sued, as he was the one who underwrote Peter's erotic novels. A lawyer, Scott Greenberg, comes by Carter's house to inform him of the lawsuit and confiscate all of his assets. Carter turns around and asks that he can if he can survive Rancor. Carter quickly hits a switch, causing the lawyer to fall through a cement block and into the chamber where the Rancor is. However, the lawyer is able to survive and kill the Rancor.
Thanks to the lawsuit, Carter loses his money, his wife, and his lifestyle. He then goes to kill Peter at his doorstep with a rifle, only to be convinced not to by Lois as he is allowed to move into the Griffins' house. Peter then tries to make Carter feel better by showing the life of an average American. When this fails and Peter realizes that his life sucks, the two try several different ways of making money (most of them being illegal), with every attempt failing. Afterwards, just when Carter had learned a life lesson about money, Babs returns and tells Carter that she divorced Ted Turner and that they are rich again. Peter thinks that he will get a share of their returned wealth and celebrates with them, only for Carter to abandon their friendship and tell the "fat peasant" to go to Hell. He then leaves with his wife, happily leaving Peter and the others poor as they were. Lois tries to cheer Peter up by explaining that money doesn't matter. However, she ends up confessing that Carter offered them $10,000,000 ten years prior and that she turned it down, and she happily states that she'll always turn it down upon Peter's shock. So instead of listening to her view of happiness, Peter has vivid thoughts of murdering her for turning down all that money behind his back.
Despite the fact that Carter often locks horns with Peter, he treats Meg, Chris, and Stewie well as his grandchildren, even offering to help out when Lois appeals to her father to use his influence to get Chris admitted to a private boarding school in "No Chris Left Behind." His own children are treated a little less kindly at times. Although he uses endearments like "pumpkin" with Lois, he refused to pay a ransom to free her from kidnappers in "Let's Go to the Hop," even when she said that they were going to kill her if he refused. When his son Patrick was locked into a mental institution after seeing Babs cheat with Jackie Gleason, he refuses to support him or visit him. He even keeps his existence a secret from his daughters. He also notes that his youngest daughter, Carol, has "weird boobs" in "Brothers & Sisters."
In "No Chris Left Behind," Carter reveals to Chris that every week, he torments an orphaned boy with his desire to be adopted and have a puppy while keeping his car door locked before driving off.
In "Stewie Kills Lois," Carter commits perjury by falsely testifying against Peter in court. And in his reenactment of the crime scene, when the Asian hooker he hired to play Lois asked for her payment, he instead killed her before looting her purse. He even tries to justify killing her by stating that she swindled him out of $60. However, both of his crimes took place in a simulation that Stewie was in, therefore they never actually happened. However, that doesn't mean that Carter wouldn't actually commit perjury or murder.
In the episode "Padre de Familia," upon Peter learning that he's an illegal immigrant and getting fired from his job because of it, Lois convinces Carter to employ Peter as a servant on his estate with other illegal immigrants. However, Carter fully abuses Peter by making him do things such as forcing him to drink his blood under the threat of being fired. On Cinco de Mayo, Carter crashes the celebration and demands everyone to call it off and return to work. Peter however convinces the other servants to rally against Carter. In order to save himself, Carter offers Peter US citizenship if he calls off the rebellion, but he refuses to give US citizenship to anyone else upon Peter's demands. Despite Peter's protests, he is convinced by Gerardo (one of Carter's servants) to take the offer, telling him that they'll find their own way.
In "Ocean's Three and a Half," he refuses to help Joe pay off his loan shark solely because he thinks it would be a lot funnier if he refused, so he instead puts the twenty grand Joe needs into a blender and drinks it in front of Peter. It is also revealed that Carter owns an iPod and enjoys rubbing it in Bill Gates's face. He also has a high-tech vault in which he stores his (and sometimes others') money. The times the vault is at its richest is when Carter hosts his gala. It has four Locks: a combination lock, foiled by Reese Witherspoon's chin; a voice identifier, foiled by Cleveland Brown's impressionism skills; a penile identifier, broken by Glenn Quagmire's penis; lastly, a question: "What is the least appealing male first name?" to which Peter responds with the correct answer: "Keith." At the end of the episode, Lois ends up getting the money for Joe upon telling Carter that she needed money for a divorce lawyer. Her silently refusing to tell Peter whether or not she's joking worries him.
In "420," Carter loses money from the timber industry due to the legalization of marijuana, so he teams up with Peter on a smear campaign—but only after he sends his men to violently beat Peter up, even having them give Peter a second beating after their conversation. It is then revealed that he had sold his Bangles records, halting his project on learning the song lyrics. We also learn that Carter has a liking for Diet Rites, and keeps a whole stack of them in his car. When his plan with Peter fails, he bribes Brian to support the re-illegalization of marijuana by publishing Brian's book, Faster Than the Speed of Love. However, after Brian gets the mayor to make the drug illegal again, he becomes distressed when literacy critics universally panning his book result in not a single copy being sold, meaning Carter made him give up his beliefs for nothing. It is unknown how the book's failure affected Carter or if he intentionally caused it to fail.
In "Family Goy," it is revealed that Carter is anti-Semitic and made Babs convert from Judaism to Christianity upon getting married. Lois was unaware of this until she discovered in the hospital that her mother was a Holocaust survivor. It is also revealed that Cater pranks Babs for being Jewish.
In "Go, Stewie, Go!", he plays Russian roulette with Meg while she’s driving, which rightfully makes her feel nervous. He is however aware enough to point out a stop sign.
In the parodies Star Wars movie episodes, "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side" and "It's A Trap!", Carter assumes the role of Emperor Palpatine. In "Blue Harvest," Carter played the role of Owen Lars, having the much simpler lifestyle of a moisture farmer.
In episodes such as "Bill and Peter's Bogus Journey" and "You May Now Kiss the...Uh...Guy Who Receives", it is made clear that Babs and Carter married because Carter was rich. However, in "Welcome Back, Carter," it is revealed that Babs and Carter had fallen in love before they married. Carter is also revealed to be a war veteran, and he and Babs exchanged letters. When that ceased, Carter was presumed dead. At a party Babs and her new fiancé Roginald attended, Carter crashed it, and the two reaffirmed their love, sealed by a marriage proposal. However, in the latter episode, Carter was caught in an affair by Peter. And when he blackmails Carter into doing whatever he says, he accidentally lets it slip in front of Lois and Babs. And despite Babs' demand for a divorce, the two still live in the same household. When he tries to win her back, she says that he'll need to earn her trust again. Despite claiming that to be too much work, he says that he'll try anyway thanks to Peter. It is also hinted in the same story that he abused Lois as a child, as when he is woken up by Babs, he mumbles that he is just taking Lois' temperature.
The Pewterschmidt family considers retirement after Carter falls asleep behind the wheel of their car in "Grumpy Old Man." Carter soon becomes bored and listless, needing to be returned to his office at Pewterschmidt Industries to reach a full recovery.
In "Tea Peter," he holds a rally to shut down Quahog’s government. He manages to rally enough supporters (including Peter) to force Mayor West to shut it down. His main purpose for shutting down the town's government is revealed when Brian shows the Griffins how much pollution Pewterschidt Industries is causing now that there's no authorities to report the company to, with the cloud of pollution threatening to eventually reach Spooner Street. The lack of a government also causes basic services to become inaccessible, and the entire town soon becomes flooded with panic within the span of five days. Carter turns down Peter's request to restore the government, knowing it would end Pewterschidt Industries' pollution, but Carter is ultimately stopped when Peter reforms the government as an "entirely new thing," albeit without getting the praise that he was expecting.
Portraits of Babs and Carter hang in Peter and Lois' bedroom, notably in "Family Guy Viewer Mail No. 2."
When Stewie travels to the 1960s and falls in love in "Valentine's Day in Quahog," he learns that the infant he kissed is really his mother when Carter arrives to pick her up.
In "The Old Man and the Big 'C'," Carter is told by his doctor that he is dying of terminal cancer and has at most two weeks to live, which is overheard by Brian. He returns and tells Stewie, who confirms it via an online camera he had previously installed in the Pewterschmidt house. Brian then tells Lois, who rounds up the family and heads for her father's home, but when they arrive, they find Carter in good health and Brian loses his credibility.
Convinced that the Carter they saw was an imposter, Brian and Stewie try to find evidence to support their theory by breaking into his lab. Overhearing the mention of Specimen Z, they assume it to be Carter's body. However, they instead discover that it's the cure for cancer and that Carter used it to cheat death and cure himself. Carter catches them and admits that some guys he hired came up with the cure for cancer back in 1999. He then threatens to arrest Brian for trespassing, but Brian demands Carter to reveal why he's been keeping "the holy grail of modern medicine" hidden from the world. Carter admits that he was keeping it buried out of greed alone, because he thought that he'd make far more money treating and billing someone with cancer for a lifetime than curing them of the disease in a day. Brian tells Cater what he's doing is insane and announces his intent to tell the world, but Carter confidently tells Brian that no one will believe him. He then has both Brian and Stewie kicked out of the lab, being unaware that Stewie swiped Specimen Z.
With the cure in hand, Brian is about to tell Lois Carter's dark secret, only for Peter to interrupt him to show him his false attempt of doing a somersault, giving Carter and his men enough time to claim the cure from Brian. Before Carter is able to leave with Specimen Z however, Brian tells Lois everything. Lois is appalled to hear that her father has been letting people die from cancer solely because the cure isn't profitable, but Carter refuses to show pity, even when she points out that he already owns a billion dollar company, making Lois realize that money is the only thing that matters to her father. However, when she brings up a what if scenario of some of his closest loved ones getting cancer, he promises to reveal the cure.
However, he crosses the Moral Event Horizon by going back on his word and releasing an edible brand of deodorant for the developmentally disabled called "Slow Stick" instead, which understandably enrages the Griffins. Lois calls Carter to find out why he betrayed her, the Griffin family, and everyone who has cancer, only for Carter to blow her off with the fact that he lied before hanging up on her. With both Lois and Brian being mad at Carter, Peter is quick to tell Lois that she can't stay mad at him despite Brian claiming that nothing can excuse what he did. In the end, Carter puts himself on the front of a Forbes magazine with the quote "Oh, Carter! You Devil!" like Peter said he would, tricking Lois into forgiving him. It is unclear what happened to the cure afterwards, but it was most likely either put on extreme security or destroyed since it wasn't brought up ever again.
This has shown to be Carter's most selfish, monstrous, and devilish act since he allowed millions of people to die from cancer since 1999 and is willing to allow millions of more people to die from cancer in the future, giving him one of, if not, the highest body count in the Family Guy Universe. Carter ultimately only cared about profiting off of people with the disease, not caring how many lives he allowed to end or be ruined in the process. And at the expense of everyone else, the only cancer victim he allowed to have access to the cure was himself.
In "Christmas Guy," Carter breaks into Santa's house through his chimney and starts putting his ash-coated hands everywhere to see how Santa likes someone else touching his stuff even though Santa was just doing his job.
In "Carter and Tricia," Carter buys the Pawtucket Brewery and once again submits Peter to humiliating tasks. However, he also plans to use toxic, unsafe metals in the beer cans just to save a few bucks, not caring that it would poison thousands of people and possibly lead to the brewery getting shut down. Overhearing this, Peter takes the story to Tricia Takanawa. Upon the two meeting, Carter falls for her and he ditches Babs in a mental institution. However, karma strikes Carter when Tricia gets him to admit his scheme, which she reveals to the public on live television on the spot. And with her investigation complete, Carter is heartbroken when Tricia confesses that her love for him was all a façade to earn his trust before leaving him. And with the public now knowing about the toxic metals, he loses custody of the brewery.
In "Scammed Yankees," Peter introduces Carter to the internet while supervising him, but the latter ends up losing a lot of money to a scammer with the false promise of being paid $1,000,000. The two travel to Africa to get Carter's money back, only to learn that it was spent on improving a local village. Upon being captured, Carter informs the villagers who he is and is claimed a hero. However, he then orders for the entire village to be demolished, even though doing so won't get his money back. When Peter stands in his way, Carter pays the villagers to imprison him. Carter was then about to have the villagers execute Peter via firing squad until Lois arrived. Upon Lois knowing that he's unhappy about not being trusted alone in his old age, he promises to fund restoring the village and apologizes to Peter.
In "The Finer Strings," Carter ignores the rules of a Country Club he's in by not using toilet paper to clean his rear end before going into a hot tub, with the rule being ignored by another member with him as well.
In "Regarding Carter," he gave Lois a gun, but he refused to let her give it back to him, even with Peter abusing it. When the gun accidentally fires on his head during their argument, he gets amnesia. When Lois helps him recover, she at one point brings him to his office. When he learns that he's the head of a big company, he asks if he's nice. However, she reveals several horrible crimes he committed, saying that he put pesticide in baby food, his chemical waste gave a town cancer, he burned down the entire Amazon Rainforest, he's the number-one producer of whale meat, he dumped lead in drinking water, his oil pipeline moved Native American tribes, his fertilizer plant exploded, killing 4,000, and he bought Vine and shut it down. After hearing all of this, he vowed to be a better man, but Peter and the rest of the family try to make him mean again since he plans to give away all his money, including the Griffins' inheritance. Once they accepted to just let Carter remain the way he is upon seeing how happy he and Lois are together however, Babs, having just returned from Antarctica, shot him in the head out of greed, which returned him to his evil self.
In "Absolutely Babulous," when the Griffin family arrives at his doorstep, he immediately puts Peter in a garbage bag, stuffs him in a garbage bin, and waits for a garbage truck to pick him up before telling the rest of the family to come in.
In Peter and Lois' story on how they got married in "Peter & Lois' Wedding," Carter urges for Lois to marry Tom Tucker after she broke up with Peter, but when Peter wins her back, Carter plots to set up Peter for another breakup. At the MTV Beach House, he pays Daisy Fuentes to sexually interact with Peter so that Lois would break up with him again. Peter then crashes Lois and Tom's wedding. When he fails to win her back, Daisy confesses to have kissed Peter under Carter's orders, ruining Carter's plan to keep Lois from marrying Peter.
In "Peterschmidt Manor," it is revealed that he got Lois' nanny Meredith fired by having an affair with her. Lois was led to believe that she quit until she learned the truth from Meredith's sister on the day of Meredith's funeral. She then scolded Carter for taking away the only person that was there for her during her childhood. On they way back to the mansion, he decides to call in a few favors and had the pond Lois and Meredith spent together reconstructed. However, just when they were bonding again, Carter learns that his former groundskeeper died and that he was hiding more secrets from Lois that he assumed in advance could be forgiven with another pond.
In "Adoptation," when he learns that one of his ships caused an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he tries to blame Peter, but Lois wouldn't let him. Instead of taking responsibility for the oil spill however, he decides to clear his public image by simply taking a picture with an orphan named Tatum. Originally planning to just leave her in the orphanage upon taking the picture, he instead ends up adopting her. When Lois hears of this, she starts to worry about Tatum when she remembers how poorly Carter raised her, with her being the most upset about not ever being taken to the zoo. However, her worries turn to jealousy upon seeing how much better Carter is raising Tatum. At the end of the episode, Carter admits to Lois that not spending time with her as a child was the biggest regret of his life. While he can't change it now, the closest thing he has to make up for it is to raise Tatum the best he can. However, he instead ends up sending her back to the orphanage solely because it's hard for him to talk to her at the lengthy dinner table when they could've just sat closer together.
Relationships[]
Family[]
- Silas Pewterschmidt (great-great-great-great-grandfather)
- Benjamin Pewterschmidt (paternal grandfather)
- Esterella "Nana" Pewterschmidt (paternal grandmother)
- Wilhelm Pewterschmidt (father)
- unnamed Pewterschmidt (maiden name Roosevelt) (mother)
- Lil Pewterschmidt (sister)
- Wilhelm Pewterschmidt, Jr. (half-brother)
- Jerry Pewterschmidt (brother)
- Barbara Pewterschmidt (wife)
- Lois Griffin (elder daughter)
- Patrick Pewterschmidt (son)
- Carol West (younger daughter)
- Peter Griffin (son-in-law)
- Mayor Adam West (son-in-law)
- Meg Griffin (granddaughter)
- Chris Griffin (elder grandson)
- Stewie Griffin (younger grandson)
Allies[]
- Lois Griffin
- Chris Griffin
- Ted Turner
- Stewie Griffin
- Meg Griffin
Enemies[]
- Peter Griffin (archenemy)
- Brian Griffin
- Lois Griffin (sometimes)
- Meg Griffin (sometimes)
- Chris Griffin (sometimes)
- Stewie Griffin (sometimes)
- Glenn Quagmire
- Joe Swanson
- Bonnie Swanson
- Cleveland Brown
- Mayor Adam West
- Roginald
Trivia[]
- Carter and Glenn Quagmire are the prime suspects for Brian's runover.
- Carter refusing to make the cure from cancer public could be considered even more evil since it was revealed by Lois that he gave an entire town cancer through his chemical waste. In other words, instead of curing cancer, he causes it.
- In Family Guy Video Game!, Carter once again accuses Brian of impregnating Seabreeze as well as violating his restraining order. Carter then bribes police officers to convince them that Brian is lying about being innocent and bribes them again to beat him up for not being Caucasian before having him tossed into jail. After escaping prison, Brian is able to prove that it was Quagmire that got Seabreeze pregnant.
- The episode “Throw It Away” reveals that Carter and Babs pay for the Griffins’ house.