Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy was getting compared to The Simpsons from the moment it first hit the airwaves back in 1999. Before long, the two shows began taking shots at one another, with varying degrees of irreverence.
In the 2005 Simpsons episode “The Italian Bob,” for example, an Italian book containing profiles of American criminals is shown at one point. As a pair of policemen flip through the book, they come across a photo of Peter Griffin with the word “plagiarismo” written underneath, followed by a picture of American Dad!’s Stan Smith, who’s accused of “plagiarismo di plagiarismo.”
The plagiarism joke in particular seemed to have gotten under MacFarlane’s skin, and he retaliated with a brutal gag of his own in the 2007 Family Guy episode “Movin’ Out (Brian’s Song).” While Peter and Lois are having a conversation with Brian in one scene, we see what appears to be an ad for The Simpsons at the bottom of the screen, with Marge waving to the viewers at home.
A few seconds later, Quagmire runs over and tackles Marge to the ground, attempting to rape her as she tries desperately to fight him off. Quagmire then chases Marge off-screen with his pants around his ankles and the two return shortly afterward, with Marge admitting that the experience was “fantastic.”
Fox Reportedly Cut a ‘Family Guy’ Joke Because It Made the ‘Simpsons’ Feud Too Personal
From there, we cut to the outside of the Simpsons’ house, where we overhear Marge complimenting Quagmire on being able to have sex three times in a row. The lights are shown going on, and Homer can be heard telling Quagmire to get off of his wife. Their confrontation is cut short by the sound of a gunshot, after which Marge threatens to call the police on Quagmire and ends up suffering the same fate herself—as do Bart and Lisa.
Finally, we hear Maggie sucking on her pacifier, and although a brief pause indicates that Quagmire is considering sparing her, he ultimately decides to shoot her as well:
According to the episode’s DVD commentary, once the network executives saw the show, they called up MacFarlane and told him that he couldn’t use the Simpsons gag. When pressed on why, MacFarlane was told that it felt personal and that they wanted to put an end to the Simpsons–Family Guy feud for good.
MacFarlane accused them of being afraid of Simpsons showrunner James L. Brooks, but it didn’t stop Fox from removing the offending sequence from initial airings—as evidenced by the fact that early reviews made no mention of it whatsoever. It was later included on the DVDs and in subsequent reruns on Adult Swim, among other places.