The One Family Guy Joke That Seth MacFarlane Regrets

There have been a lot of tasteless jokes on the adult animated series “Family Guy” over the years. There are the jokes about the parents’ willingness to abandon or sacrifice their daughter Meg (Mila Kunis) over their sons Chris (Seth Green) or Stewie (series creator Seth MacFarlane). There’s also the episode where Peter (also MacFarlane) tries to marry Chris in order to get an inheritance. Let’s not forget the entire existence of Peter’s neighbor and friend Quagmire (also MacFarlane), a serial sex offender whose horrific assaults are played off as jokes. But according to an interview with Krista Smith for her USA Network series “Out of Character with Krista Smith” (via Entertainment Weekly), MacFarlane says there’s one main joke that really sticks out as one he regrets. 

The joke revolves around the assassinations of both President John F. Kennedy and his brother and Democratic primary nominee Bobby Kennedy, and while it’s definitely skirting the lines of good taste, it’s far from the worst thing the series has ever done.

According to the interview, MacFarlane regrets one particular joke from the very first season, saying: 

“There have been jokes that I would have rather we not have done. The JFK Pez Dispenser was something I would probably not do now.”

In the episode from all the way back in 1999, a child runs out of a store in the middle of a tense police standoff, holding up his new John F. Kennedy Pez dispenser and saying how excited he is to have it. It ends up getting the head shot off, much like the real John F. Kennedy, but the boy is not too upset, pulling out another one of the collectible candy dispensers. “Good thing I still have my Bobby Kennedy Pez dispenser!” he exclaims, with the joke being that Bobby Kennedy was also assassinated by a shooter some years after his presidential older brother. 

The joke was apparently cut from some reruns of the episode, though there have been much nastier JFK jokes in the series, like a season 7 re-enactment of the assassination where JFK is played by Mayor McCheese, the McDonald’s mascot with a cheeseburger for a head. Yikes.

MacFarlane’s sense of humor has matured some over the years, and thankfully, he doesn’t seem to be quite as willing to take his jokes to their edgiest conclusions, especially if his surprisingly great “Ted” streaming series is any indication. Instead of trying to do the most shocking or controversial thing possible, it seems like he might actually be trying to tell stories along with his mile-a-minute jokes, and it’s honestly refreshing. Now if we can just get him to do something about Quagmire…