Seth MacFarlane based the voice of Peter Griffin on a security guard he knew while going to college at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
Seth MacFarlane has admitted that the family's constant abuse of Meg is a result of "a bunch of male writers not knowing how to write for a teenage girl."
The show's Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2009 marked the first time since Los Picapiedra (1960) that an animated series earned such a nomination.
The show has been canceled three times, once following the second season, which caused the show to not air a new episode for a year, and the second (and longest) being between the third and fourth seasons, from 2002 to 2005. The program was the first to be brought back to air due to successful home media sales. In 2023, it was cancelled indefinitely for the third time due to the WGA (Writers' Guild of America) strike, following the twenty-first season's finale. It was brought back after the strike ended.
When Drew Barrymore was preparing the documentary Choose or Lose Presents: The Best Place to Start (2004), she contacted Seth MacFarlane to appear on it, and asked him to do a guest voice on the show. MacFarlane enjoyed her work so much as Mrs. Lockhart in season four that he offered Barrymore the regular role of Jillian.