After Sunday night’s episode of Family Guy, fans created a petition to get Brian revived and a hoax website was created for Brian.
On 11/25/2013, the latest episode of Family Guy killed off a character. The family dog Brian was killed when a car ran him over. The episode follows Brian and Stewie as they travel back in time and alter history. Stewie destroys his time machine, fearing that it has led them to danger too many times. Unable to fix the time machine, Stewie cannot bring Brian back and the family buries their dog in the back yard and welcomes another dog, Vinny, into their family.
Many fans have expressed their skepticism and mourning over Brian’s death. They wanted answers and E! Online spoke with executive producer Steve Callaghan about why they chose to kill off Brian.
“It seemed more in the realm of reality that a dog would get hit by a car, than if one of the kids died,” Callaghan said. “As much as we love Brian, and as much as everyone loves their pets, we felt it would be more traumatic to lose one of the kids, rather than the family pet.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, fan created a petition to bring the dog back and has already fetched over 100,000 signatures. The petition has a goal of 150,000 signatures. The petition on Change.org has a special note from the petition creator, Aaron Thompson.
“The writers of Family Guy didn’t just kill off one of their creations, they killed off the dog who has lived in our homes for the last 15 years,” the petition reads. “They killed the dog we all have come to love. They killed America’s dog! ”
Thompson created the petition within hours of the episode airing.
According to Deadline, another website was created announcing that Brian would make an announcement. 20th Century Fox announced, “The producers have confirmed that the ‘special announcement from Brian’ website is a hoax and was not created by anyone connected to the show, studio or network.”
The special announcement website had over 1 million hits within 24 hours of creation. The website was created by Socialvevo marketers in hopes of bringing more attention to the death of Brian.
“Dear Seth MacFarlane & Producers, We made this countdown website to gain attention regarding the death of our favorite character on the show. We as the fans, demand that you bring him back or at least, create a spin-off to keep Brian alive,” the message reads. “BRIANSANNOUNCEMENT has reached over 1 million visitors & over 350 us & international news media coverage during the past 24 hours. We will continue to fight and spread our petition around until we reach our goal of 5 million signature shares.”
The backlash from fans was large with many wanted their favorite Family Guy character back. Many fans have shown their support through the online petition, facebook and annoucement website. Some have gone as far as getting tattoos of Brian with the word ‘RIP’. E! Online asked Callaghan if he was concerned with the fan backlash.
“I’m not, only because our fans are smart enough and have been loyal to our show for long enough, to know that they can trust us. We always make choices that always work to the greatest benefit of the series.”
Family Guy airs Sunday nights at 9 PM Eastern on FOX.