Tropes A to E | Tropes F to J | Tropes K to O | Tropes P to T | Tropes U to Z
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U
- Ultimate Job Security: Steve's teacher in "Toy Whorey":Teacher: [pointing to "Tenure" written on board] And that's why it's virtually impossible for me to get fired, no matter what I do. [flying-kicks a student in the face]
- Uncertain Doom: Played with when Steve and his friends parody the classic Bolivian Army Ending, only to find that they can't take any of their opponents out with them.
- Uncool Undies: Season 6 episode Brains, Brains and Automobiles has Steve, Barry, Snot, and Toshi immediately picked on by the other guys at summer camp, because they were wearing "whiteys a-tight", which designated them as geeks. They go off to purchase boxer shorts, but then get tricked by a shady saleman selling bikini-type underwear called "culos"note . They then wear the culos and think they'll be the coolest kids at camp, but are further humiliated by the other campers.
- Undiscriminating Addict: In "I Am the Walrus", Jeff and Hayley are held hostage by Principal Lewis who forces them to clear his house. Jeff has a bunch of pills that cause paralysis, but as they are planning how to trick Lewis into taking them, he appears, takes the pills from Jeff, says "What's that, drugs? I'll take it, I don't care what it does!" and swallows them.
- Undressing the Unconscious: In "Vacation Goo", Steve traps the family in suspended animation. They eventually wake up and find themselves almost completely naked, leading to this exchange:Hayley: You undressed me?
Steve: Uh, no, Toshi did.
Toshi: I was not gentle. - Un-Evil Laugh: Francine tries to do an Evil Laugh in "Spelling Bee My Baby". Keyword being "tries."
- The Unfair Sex: In "Bullocks To Stan", Hayley spends the whole episode switching between Bullock and Jeff, and dumping them in the most callous manner (as well as endangering Stan's career and the family's upbringing in the process). The Aesop is about Stan not treating her with enough respect.
- The Unintelligible: Inverted with Toshi. He only speaks Japanese, but it's subtitled, so the audience can understand him while none of the characters can. This is lampshaded a few times, such as when Toshi mentions that he is haunted by the disembodied spirit of a 12th-century samurai. When the spirit talks to him in Japanese, Toshi can't understand it properly.
- Unpleasant Parent Reveal: In the episode "Con Heir", Stan's real dad, Jack Smith, reappears after being gone for 20 years. He's eventually revealed to be a jewel thief who wants to recruit Stan to help him steal art and other artifacts.
- Unreliable Narrator: In "The American Dad After-School Special", Stan becomes ludicrously overweight despite exercising and sticking to a strict diet, and the viewer is led to believe that this is due to his family sabotaging his efforts in order to teach him a lesson about not hating fat people. Just before the commercial break, it's revealed that the episode's events were actually seen from Stan's point of view, and he is in fact ludicrously underweight, due to developing anorexia. His family was actually trying to keep him from starving himself to death, and the personal trainer who prescribed his strict routine was just a hallucination.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Hayley credits this as the reason behind Stan and Roger's hostility in "A Piñata Named Desire", telling them to just fuck already and get over it. At the end of the episode, the two get arrested for public indecencynote and, as they're being carted off, praise one anothers' acting talent. Hayley smugly tells Francine that she was right that their hostility was just sexual tension.
- The Un-Smile: In one scene of "The Life and Times of Stan Smith", Stan enters the kitchen, where Francine appears to be preparing breakfast. She casually notes to Stan that there's actually nothing in the bowl she's using and she's just pretending to stir. As Stan leaves, he turns off the kitchen light at Francine's request, and she continues to pretend stir in the dark while staring blankly ahead with a creepy smile, singing in an eerie, monotone voice "La-la, la-la, la, la..."
- Unstoppable Rage:
- In "Pulling Double Booty", Hayley is shown to throw exceedingly violent temper tantrums whenever she gets dumped.
- "1600 Candles" shows Hayley viciously destroying the house after becoming hormonal as a result of going through puberty. Her rage was so traumatizing to her parents that they become convinced they should somehow prevent Steve from aging.
- Stan went violently paranoid about the neighborhood criticizing him.
Klaus: This man is crazy!
Stan: Would a crazy man drink you?! [begins drinking from Klaus' bowl] - The Un-Twist: Played for Laughs. In the end of the episode "Roy Rogers MacFreely", the titular Roy Rogers turns out to be...Roger.
- Unusual Euphemism: In "Iced, Iced Babies" Stan says that when Francine goes through menopause her "uterus will fall like Saigon, and Steve was the last chopper out."
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
- Nobody seems to particularly care that Klaus and Reginald, a goldfish and a koala respectively, are capable of talking.
- In the fifth Christmas special, "Season's Beatings", Steve is possessed by the Anti-Christ early on, causing his eyes to turn red, his head to face the wrong way, and giving him the ability to climb on walls. After approximately five seconds since the possession, the only reaction this gets from anyone is Francine telling him at one point to "stop babbling at [Hayley] in Aramaic. It's a dead language."
- The episode "Fart-break Hotel" opens with a montage of Francine's daily goings-on as a housewife. As she cleans the living room, Stan (wearing hunting gear) drags a bloody, struggling, full-sized deer into the house by the antlers, and then proceeds to blow its brains out with his pistol. Francine reacts with complete and utter disinterest.
- In "Don't Look a Smith Horse in the Mouth", Stan uses the CIA's brain-switching technology on himself and a race horse. With Stan's mind in the horse's body and vice versa, Stan's body takes on the mannerisms of a horse. Klaus doesn't seem fazed when he tries to strike up a conversation with "Stan":Klaus: Hey, brother. Chewing on hay? Yeah, that's cool.
- In the episode "Adventures in Hayley-sitting", no one in the room (besides the killer and his daughter) seem to be phased at all by the fact that a man suddenly got his head blown clean off with a shotgun. Steve and his friends (all roughly 14 years old), along with Hayley and Jeff, simply walk away from the scene while the shooter has an emotional breakdown and his daughter weeps in shock.
- In "Vision: Impossible", Roger wakes up in the hospital after suffering a coma. When he asks the nurse for something to drink, the patient he's sharing the room with announces that he has telekinetic powers, and uses his mind to give Roger a glass of orange juice. A motorcycle then bursts through the wall, and the man float through the air, onto the bike, and rides off (despite having no legs and no arms). Roger's reaction?Roger: [pushes glass of juice away] I'm not gonna drink from the same glass as him. He's gross.
- Unwanted Assistance: In "Hurricane!", despite Francine's pleas, Stan continues to try and save his family from the disaster...only it makes things worse, such as bringing in a bear to kill the shark that is attacking them, since they are "natural enemies", but the two predators work together instead.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In "Best Little Horror House in Langley Falls", Stan finds his haunted house being outdone by his neighbor Buckle's, so he uses his CIA influence to pull in five dangerous criminals to his house. The criminals fail to scare anyone so Roger tries to make them scarier by ripping off Francine's nun costume in front of them, leaving her in her underwear (which gets them riled up and horny) and then lets all of them loose, causing them to go on a killing spree, leading everyone in the house to run for their lives!
V
- Verbal Tic:
- Klaus mainly speaks English, but sometimes replaces words with their German equivalent in a given sentence (usually "meine" in place of "my", "nein" in place of "no", and "und" in place of "and").
- Chuck White, Stan's neighbor, inserts "Ha-ha!" at seemingly random times when he talks.
- Very Special Episode:
- Subverted. Some episodes give the appearance of this before descending into chaos, as seen in Season 2's "The American Dad After School Special", where Stan forbids Steve to date Debbie because she's overweight, then Stan realizes that he's fat too and becomes anorexic; and "A Jones for a Smith", where Stan becomes a crack addict and eventually goes to rehab, but his son, Steve, is still pissed at him for ruining his chances with sleeping with a hot high school girl whose father was willing to let Steve be her first, and Hayley's pleas to be let into rehab for her marijuana smoking go unheeded.
- Parodied (but played out very realistically) with "A.T.: The Abusive Terrestrial", which shows Roger's new friendship with a nine-year-old boy play out like someone being in an abusive romantic relationship.
- Vicarious Gold Digger: In "Longest Distance Relationship", Stan Smith is insistent that Hayley should marry millionaire Matt Davis, simply so he can enjoy the perks of having a rich son-in-law.
- Villain Protagonist:
- In "Dope & Faith", Stan acts as the main antagonist, as he tries to get Brett to believe in god by ruining his life, eventually driving the poor man to suicide.
- In "The Most Adequate Christmas Ever", Stan's selfish actions lead to him accidentally killing himself. He goes to heaven, but finds out that his family would die because of his last actions on Earth. His reaction is to hold God at gunpoint and demand that he changes what is going to happen. God calls Stan out as a serious control freak, states that the very behavior that has brought him to this point is what has caused all of his problems, and points out Stan isn't even slightly sorry for his obviously evil actions. Cue Stan's My God, What Have I Done?, in which he realizes he was responsible for everything that went wrong in the episode, and owns up to his mistakes. This display of humility ultimately earns him a second shot at life.
- Virtual-Reality Warper: In "I Ain't No Holodeck Boy", Stan is trapped in a virtual simulation that causes him to relive his old memories. Steve decides to mess with his dad by mixing the program's code with a horror game's, causing a zombie to spawn and attack Stan.
- Vocal Evolution:
- In the pilot episode Steve, Stan, and Klaus had prominently deeper voices. Steve and Klaus's voices slowly increased in pitch, while Stan's became more refined in quality.
- Roger's Paul Lynde basis was more noticeable in early episodes.
- Klaus's German accent was a lot thicker in early episodes.
- Volleying Insults: A running gag in "Stannie Get Your Gun":Hayley: That was before I knew dad was a gun-toting maniac!
Stan: Beatnik!
Hayley: Warmonger!
Stan: Chupacabra!
Hayley: I'm the Mexican Bigfoot?
Stan: You heard her, she admitted it!
W
- Walk on Water: Toshi runs over water in "Best Little Horror House in Langley Falls".
- Wallet Moths: A variant in the episode "Dope and Faith", where a moth flies out of Stan's address book to discredit his claim that he has real friends.
- Waxing Lyrical: "Anything you can do I can do better" claims Stan; "No, you can't" rebutts Roger. According to Francine this happens often.
- We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Twice in "Bar Mitzvah Hustle" - first, Steve falls out of Roger's attic while pitching his plan for revenge. It immediately cuts to a Technical Difficulties screen, then replays the scene with a badly injured Steve. Later, Stan and Francine come in to retell their misadventures on the way to a pitch meeting. Stan then points out Plot Hole after Plot Hole in his story, then gives it the Screw This, I'm Outta Here into another Technical Difficulties screen. Both times, it's made to look like the cartoon is being shot on a sound stage.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!:
- In "Frannie 911", Roger is forced to become nice, but when the family discovers that being nice is actually harming his health, they beg him to go back to being a jerk.
- In "The Boring Identity", Francine tries to change Stan's personality after he gets Easy Amnesia. It goes horribly right, as he dumps her because she had become the jerk in their relationship.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy:
- Steve tries to get his dad to respect him multiple times, with mixed results.Steve: Are we having a father/son moment?
Stan: (hits Steve in the crotch) We were. You ruined it by mentioning it.
...
Stan: I'll coach my boy's team!
Steve: You called me your boy!
Stan: (hits Steve in the crotch again) Quit ruining moments! - In the episode "The Devil Wears a Lapel Pin", Hayley plots to sabotage the CIA's promotional calendar, as revenge for the fact that Stan never told her he was ever proud of anything she did. When Stan actually does tell her that she did a good job on the calendar, she's so happy that she breaks into a song and dances about it.
- Steve tries to get his dad to respect him multiple times, with mixed results.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: In "Of Ice And Men", Svetlana, the Russian mail-order bride, marries Toshi after he steals her away from Snot. She's never seen again. This is lampshaded in a later episode when the topic of girls comes up and Toshi says "Didn't I use to have a wife?"
- What Does She See in Him?: In early episodes, Stan is more malevolent and chauvinistic, often leading Francine to suffer or be belittled in his antics. The smitten Klaus asked her this question multiple times and at one point was close to wooing her in a new human body.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: In "Con Heir", Stan beats up an elderly guard he believes to be a terrorist, and the narrative explores this trope to make it worse. Fortunately, the guard lives.[a voiceover of a lighthearted flashback plays as Stan pummels the elderly man]
Lady: Dad, you're 76, just retire! Mark and I would love for you to live with us!
Guard: Well, I can't leave the museum, Sheila, they need me!
Lady: But these are your golden years! You should be enjoying life with your family!
Guard: [laughs] I never stopped enjoying it Sheila... In a way, those paintings are my family... - Whispered Threat: In "Don't Look a Smith Horse in the Mouth", Stan swaps bodies with a horse, though he retains the ability to speak English. When a boy starts harassing him, Stan retaliates by whispering that he will trample the youngster's parents, causing the child to run away screaming in fear.
- Whole Episode Flashback: "Fellow Traveler" is spent entirely in 1947 and focuses on just exactly how Roger came to be on Earth and how he came across his disguises.
- Whole-Plot Reference:
- In Irregarding Steve, Steve and Roger's plot is a parody of Midnight Cowboy, and the B-story recreates What's Eating Gilbert Grape with squirrels.
- The episode "Hot Water" is Little Shop of Horrors with a soul/R&B theme, where Cee Lo Green stars as a murderous hot tub.
- Lampshaded in "Return of the Bling", which is a parody of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Roger bites Stan's finger off after the plot has already been resolved and they're literally ten seconds away from the credits, with the only reason being "It was in the movie."
- Besides the addition of a school election and revenge plot, the episode Escape From Pearl Bailey High is an homage to the cult 1979 movie The Warriors, complete with Principle Lewis taking place of the DJ informant.
- The Whole World Is Watching: In "Tearjerker", the titular villain (Roger) plans to make the world cry themselves to death with his film Oscar Gold, about a mentally-retarded Jewish boy hiding from the Nazis with his cancer-riddled puppy. Indeed, once it premiered simultaneously around the world, people around the world are sobbing (except those in Iran, who are laughing their asses off). Fortunately, Agent Stan Smith and Sexpun T'Come (Francine) save the world by unleashing something more alluring than a Holocaust movie: photos of celebrity babies!
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
- Early in The Magnificent Steven, Steve expresses an irrational fear of moths. Later on, he has to face a swarm of moths, which gets lampshaded by him saying, "Why did it have to be moths?"
- Stan has a bizarre aversion to seagulls.
- Why Don't You Marry It?:
- Stan snaps this about Best Buy when a guy talks about the the pay benefits they gave.
- Francine says this when Stan abandons her for Fussy the puppy.
- Wig, Dress, Accent: Roger has an extensive collection of wigs and dresses, and learned to mimic multiple accents after living on Earth for decades. This gets displayed when he chooses a disguise from an automatic rotating wardrobe full of outfits, and again in The One That Got Away, when Roger changes into about a dozen of his characters in half a minute.
- Wife Husbandry: Subverted. Unable to find dates for the prom, Steve and Snot clone two girls, who rapidly age into their teenage years. The two boys soon developed parental feelings for the clones, and find themselves unable to follow through with the date.
- Women Are Wiser: Downplayed. Francine and Hayley are still incredibly flawed human beings, but the male Smiths are usually depicted as far more dysfunctional and problematic, with the girls usually displaying more clarity and intelligence in addition to other female characters. Most evident in "Rapture's Delight", where Stan's selfishness costs him his rapture, while Francine is considered pure enough to become Jesus Christ's girlfriend.
- In general, Francine tends to be depicted as The Ditz, but generally more rational and level-headed than Stan, who is somewhat more intelligent, but is also a Know-Nothing Know-It-All whose overly strict and irrational nature causes far more problems than it solves. "Son of Stan" states that the two balance each other out - Francine's laid-back, no-discipline style of parenting causes Steve to turn into a lazy Fat Slob Jerkass, while Stan's strict, high-discipline parenting turns his clone into a violent, cunning sociopath.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Roger is so evil because his species releases a bile that kills them if they don't "let their evilness out". Made worse when it is revealed the reason he is trapped on Earth is that the others of his species wanted to get rid of him. In addition, there are moments where he really seems to care about his adoptive family. It is implied that Roger only acts that way because he was made to be evil, and not by choice.
- Would Hurt a Child: Roger tried to kill an infant for accidentally breaking a leg off of one of his collection of crystal spiders.
- Writers Cannot Do Math:
- In "100 A.D.", the viewer is told that 100 characters would die as a celebration for the 100th episode. Halfway through the episode, a bus full of minor characters crashes, which accounts for 96 of the 100 deaths. Problem is, if one stops and counts all the characters on the bus, they'll see that there are less than 50 passengers.
- "Less Money, Mo' Problems" has Stan betting that he and Francine can live on minimum wage for a month. When he returns home and accepts defeat, Hayley mentions that he has only been gone for less than two days. Except that it was shown to be night three times before he returned.
- Wrongfully Committed: In "American Fung", Stan forgets about his wedding anniversary and decides that the best course of action is to forcibly commit his wife to a psychiatric hospital so she doesn't find out. However, the doctors quickly realize that there is nothing wrong with Francine and release her, prompting her to immediately lash out at Stan for being a horrible husband. In an ironic twist, the hospital staff interprets her outburst as an anger disorder, wrongfully committing her once again.
X
- X Days Since: At the dentist's office Stan goes to in "All About Steve", a sign out front reads "Taking pride in not molesting unconscious patients since 1978."
Y
- Yandere:
- Hayley. If she's the one who breaks up with her boyfriend, no big thing. If she gets dumped, she will go berserk. It's gotten to a point where the police have issued Stan an ultimatum: If Hayley gets dumped and goes nuts one more time, she's going to prison.
- In the episode Love, American Dad Style, Roger becomes one to Hayley, shooting her in the chest because he's "nervous", tying her to a bed to "get closer", and then gruesomely removing Jeff's skin so he can wear it and be with Hayley.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: If there's even the slightest hint that Steve may get the girl, something always happens to ruin it. In "Best Little Horror House in Langley Falls", he goes trick or treating with Akiko, but doesn't bring her back home in time, prompting Toshi to hunt them down in an effort to kill Steve. Through the chase, it seems the two are developing feelings for one another, and when they finally convince Toshi to back off, Akiko reveals she's already got a nine year old boyfriend.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: In "The One That Got Away", Klaus is zapped into another dimension at one point. When he returns moments later, he claims to have been gone 60 years (and become the king of whatever place it was that he was visiting).
- You Do NOT Want To Know: In "Shallow Vows", Roger (in his "Jeannie Gold, wedding planner" persona) rambles to Stan about a website he's created:Roger: Stan, remember: the first rule of any wedding is the bride is always beautiful. The second rule you can read on my website. You have to be 18 to log on. I have some sexy barnyard stuff on there that is not for everyone; I could get in a lot of trouble. If you do decide to check it out you're gonna have to clear your history right away— you may need to uninstall your browser. I'm telling you, scrub that thing clean. If you think you're being too cautious you're not. They will take us both to jail.
- You Jut Told Me: In the episode "The Fellow Traveler," CIA agent Avery Bullock (Sr.) catches the alien, Roger, who was in disguise as an angel. Bullock said he knew Roger wasn't an angel, causing Roger to lament that it was because his costume lacked wings. This confirms Bullock's suspicion, as he wasn't 100% certain until Roger admitted he was wearing a disguise.
- Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: In "The 42-Year-Old Virgin", it's revealed that Stan has never actually killed anyone. All of his CIA-mandated kills, which he's taken credit for, have actually been someone else's doing. The rest of the family despises him for it, except for his peace-loving daughter.
- Your Favorite:
- Stan and Francine's absolute favorite soda is Mr. Pibb, to the point that they feel like their 20-year marriage is partly based on their mutual love of the soda.
- For Steve, peanut butter.Steve: Peanut butter is my favorite thing in the world! If it were for Io, the ice moon of Jupiter, it'd be my favorite thing in the solar system!
- Your Mom:
- In the episode "Bully for Steve", Stan bullies Steve to make him tougher. He makes several Your Mom comments (worded as "Yeah, that's what your mom said last night!") towards Steve as he torments his son. Differs from most examples of the trope in that everything he said is very plausible.
- In "Great Space Roaster", Roger forces the members of the family to insult each other. Steve tells Francine:Steve: Mom, you are not smart. I don't tell "yo mama's so dumb" jokes. I tell "my mama's so dumb" jokes. Example: my mama's so dumb, I don't tell "yo mama's so dumb" jokes. I tell "my mama's so dumb" jokes.
- "Spelling Bee My Baby" sees Francine attempting to sabotage Steve's relationship with Akiko so that Steve can focus on winning the regional spelling bee. When Akiko tries to explain:Steve: Look who decided to show up.
Akiko: It's not what you think! Your mother—
Steve: Your mother!
Akiko: Steve, let me explain—
Steve: YOUR MOTHER!
