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Ssi 5 The contents of this article or section are considered to be non-canon and therefore may not have actually happened/existed.


You know you're eating mostly horse hooves and tallow, right? You're cool with that?
―Brian talking to Santa's Little Helper

H. Brian Griffin is the Griffin family's talking dog and one of the two deuteragonists (alongside Lois Griffin) of the FOX animated series Family Guy. He is a struggling writer/author who was born on a farm in the rural areas of Austin, Texas. He also possesses various anthropomorphic qualities, such as the ability to speak intelligently, drive a car, and walk bipedally.

He is strongly disliked by his sex-crazed neighbor, Glenn Quagmire but he is able to maintain a relationship with his best friend, Stewie Griffin. On the Family Guy episode "Life of Brian", he is killed by an oncoming car and replaced by another dog named Vinny. Two episodes later, he is brought back by Stewie via the return pad for his time machine.

Biography[]

In the episode Homerland, Brian appeared in the ending credits, which had a reprise of the episode's couch gag, where The Simpsons, along with the characters for a bunch of other FOX TV shows such as Family Guy, American Dad!, The Cleveland Show, and Bob's Burgers were all having a 25th season of The Simpsons party.

In the episode "The Simpsons Guy", Brian had to leave Quahog because Peter made an offensive comic that got his entire family run out of town by angry feminists. Brian and the rest of the family went to Springfield, where they lived among The Simpsons for a few days. When he was there, unlike how he's treated at home, Brian was treated like a regular dog, being sent into the kitchen to eat from a food bowl. There, he befriended Santa's Little Helper, who he was pretty disappointed in, believing that he could be more free to do whatever he wanted. Later, he was walking Santa's Little Helper with Chris, and unhooked his leash, setting him free. However, Santa's Little Helper took off, running extremely fast and out of sight. Brian and Chris chased after him, trying to get him back, but they lost him. He and Chris had to cover for him being gone, but eventually, he did come back, just in time for them to leave and go back to Quahog.

Appearance[]

Brian is a white Labrador retriever who usually stands on his hind legs, using his front legs as arms. Like any dog, he is very short, being about twice the size of Stewie. He wears a red collar with a golden, circular tag on it.

Personality[]

Brian Griffin is a highly intelligent, mature and sophisticated dog. He is the most human member of the entire family, despite being an animal. He serves as the voice of reason to the entire family and is usually the one who stays calm in moments where everyone else is bouncing off the walls and acting crazy. Brian is very poetic and philosophical and he thinks a lot about everything. He's a self-proclaimed writer for a series of books that he's looking to get published and he takes events from his everyday life and puts them into words. Although he seems to be very flawless and perfect, as the series progressed, it is shown that deep down, Brian is a very self-centered, egotistical man who sees himself as a much better person than he is, and thinks very little about the feelings of others. He is a pretentious douchebag who likes to describe himself, using flowered dialogue, in attempt to make other people see him as an amazing person in order to receive that kind of respect. A lot of the time, he just uses this persona in order to get women to sleep with him. He'll often times to go a bar or a restaurant and use a bunch of douchey, cheesy, cringe worthy pickup lines on them, and try to woo them over with his self-righteous descriptions of himself. He claims to love women for their personalities, but it's obvious he only wants to have sex with them. Sometimes, he doesn't even know what it is he's talking about and just acts like he does because his ego feeds off of the appreciation of others. In his defense, though, his egotistical need to be appreciated could come from the fact that he barely had any time to spend with his mother and father, so he never received any appreciation from them. That, and he is often being ignored in his current family no matter how right he is. Because the way politics work in the Griffin family is that when stupidity faces off against intelligence, stupidity always wins big time. Despite being a douchebag, Brian does do the right thing while caring deeply about the Griffins as considers them a family and helps out if they needed, making up his faults/mistakes and it's possible that he yearns for true love deep down while trying to achieve his goal of being a successful writer.

Episode Appearances[]

Trivia[]

  • Seth MacFarlane uses his normal speaking voice, when voice acting for Brian.
  • The specific breed of dog he is, is a Labrador retriever.
  • He is 8 years old, which is considered to be 56 in dog years.
  • Brian drives a Toyota Prius.
  • In early seasons of the show, it was a running gag for Brian to express human mannerisms, due to him being a dog. Now, Brian has become way more attached to his human mannerisms. So it's now a running gag for Brian to express dog mannerisms.
  • The "H" in Brian's middle name is a self-proclaimed middle initial that does not stand for anything. Brian just gave it to himself to make himself sound deep and sophisticated, but many fans say it just makes him sound like a pretentious douche.
  • Speaking of his name, his last name, isn't "Griffin", since he's technically not a member of the Griffin family. Griffin was just a courtesy that was extended down to him by his adoptive family as a way of showing gratitude for him being so loyal and prominent in their family household. So, to be very technical, Brian's full legal name is literally just "Brian".
  • Brian is Seth MacFarlane's favorite character. Brian's personality, character traits, and beliefs even reflect those of his.
  • In Futurama, Seymour Asses, Fry's dog, who was voiced by Seth MacFarlane in an episode, sounded identical to Brian, even holding a martini.

Gallery[]

External Links[]

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