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Bait And Switch / Family Guy

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Bait-and-Switch examples in Family Guy.


  • Used as an Overly Long Gag in the episode "The Fat Guy Strangler". At his physical, Peter keeps getting faked out by Dr. Hartman awaiting the results.
    Dr. Hartman: He'll be dead within a month.
    Peter/Lois: What?!
    Dr. Hartman: Oh, Hägar the Horrible, if you keep up that lifestyle, you'll be dead within a month.
    • And so forth.
  • In "Saving Private Brian", Stewie warns Brian, "You can't run away from the Army. They'll come after you, like Peter went after that hockey coach." After a pause: "What, no clip? Thought we had a clip."
  • In one episode, Chris mentions the time when Peter hit a deer with his car. Not the deer itself, but the (anthropomorphic) deer's car.
  • In another episode, when Peter launches himself with a catapult. We get a scene of a man in a room, going over a list of all the precious, easily breakable things that are in that room (including his hemophiliac newborn son). Of course, Peter lands... right outside the window to the room, and proclaims "Those are all nice things!"
  • A more classic example happens when Peter tries to deviate a parade to his house for Stewie's birthday party. He waits ahead at a fork for the parade to come holding a Detour sign... then he slams it on the parade leader's head, knocks him out, steals his uniform and leads the parade to his house.
  • In "Three Kings", Peter shows the viewer retellings of the works of Stephen King, starting with Stand by Me and Misery. Before the third story, he makes it seem like he's about to cover The Shining, only to say that it's The Shawshank Redemption.
    • In that segment, Red (played by Cleveland) goes on a rant against parole board members, calling them jerks, bringing mothers into the situation, and insisting that he hasn't changed a bit from serving his time...and he's approved anyway.
  • In "Brothers & Sisters", Mayor West tells Carol he has aides, leading Carol to think West meant the STD. West points to two men that are his aides and then says they have AIDS.
    Robert Loggia: NOT OKAY!
  • There's another episode where Adam West is looking for a sign to warn people about his ferocious dog. You would think he's looking at the "Beware of Dog" sign, but he's actually looking at the "One Way" sign, so that people will know that there's only one way they can go to get away from his dog; "...In a bodybag. From dog injuries". Classic Adam West!
  • "Brian in Love":
    • Brian confesses to Peter that he's in love with Lois. Peter looks at him and says, "Oh my God!" Then he pauses and adds in: "You can talk!"
    • In a Cutaway Gag, Peter thinks back to when he was potty trained. The flashback starts by showing Peter as a kid, but the camera zooms out revealing it was only a picture showing a full-grown Peter running up to Lois saying, "Lois, I did it!"
  • In another Cutaway Gag, a Japanese man gets a parking ticket and then gets splashed by a car with mud, wondering how his day could get any worse. The man looks up and sees something falling on him from the sky and he utters "Oh... my... God!" The gag is dated on the same year that the United States bombed Japan but instead of a bomb falling on the man, it's just a rabid baboon.
  • In "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", the Griffins have a reality show set up in their house. Peter speaks to the executive producer and says, "This is what I think of your contract!" As he says this, he holds the contract as if he's going to tear it in half, but he doesn't. He just sets it down and says that he thinks the contract is stupid.
  • Towards the end of "Prick Up Your Ears", Lois tries to think of a way to get into Chris' school, which she had been banned from, and the school is safely guarded by security. Naturally, Peter has a plan. Cut to a very tall man in an overcoat, who's head clearly looks like Peter's and legs look like Lois', but then the camera cuts back to show Peter and Lois still hiding behind the bush. Peter says that guy in the overcoat is large enough for them to get behind him and sneak in.
  • In "Road to Rupert", Peter places a dollar on the ground underneath an anvil he is hanging by a rope in a tree, he waits to drop it on someone who picks up the dollar, but only seconds later, he falls for his own trick by saying, "Ooh, a dollar!" and going after it only to smash himself.
  • In an earlier episode, there's a Cutaway Gag where Peter cuts a cake but ends up accidentally slicing a woman inside the cake (who was supposed to surprise the guests by jumping out of it). Peter yells, "Ah, crap!" but not because he killed the woman; it was because the cake was coconut flavor.
  • "Killer Queen" has a Running Gag where Brian comes up with many creative ways to get Stewie to see the giant robot on the cover of Queen's News of the World album, which scares him to death. At one point, Stewie walks into his room and sees an unopened Jack-in-the-box. At this point, Stewie thinks he's onto Brian thinking the robot will pop out. He turns the crank anyway, and it turns out to be just a normal clown. Stewie sighs of relief, but turns around only to see that Brian painted the robot on his wall.
  • When Peter comes across his old bicycle, he remembers how much fun he had with it when he was a kid. Cut to a young Peter having a tea party with his bike.
  • At the end of "Baby Not on Board", when Stewie sees the rest of the family returning home after they accidentally leave him home, he exclaims "Mommy! Daddy! Chris! Dog! Brian! They're home!" Ordinarily he uses "Dog" to refer to Brian, but due to Rule of Funny here he used it to refer to Meg.
  • In "If I'm Dyin', I'm Lyin'", before Peter walks into a TV executive office, a woman at the desk says, "You can't go in there." Peter responds, "Oh yeah? Watch me!" and then he hits a brick wall. Turns out that's why the woman said he can't go in there then directed him to the door next to it, which is what he should have used.
  • In "The Peanut Butter Kid", when Lois tells Peter she is returning his metal detector, Peter tells Lois that buying that metal detector was the best thing to ever happen to him, then he looks at Lois with a face of love and says, "Well...the second best." But then it suddenly cuts to a Cutaway Gag with him at an Usher concert he wasn't even supposed to be at where he gets pulled onto the stage by Usher.
  • In "Running Mates", Lois ends up winning the position of school board president by default due to her opponent quitting, but she refuses to rehire a beloved teacher of Peter's from when he went to high school, so then we then see him lifting an ax over her head and saying, "Well, then I'm just going to have to kill you..." then the scene transitions to their front yard as he uses the ax to pound in his own lawn sign, stating "...in the race for school board president."
  • "Dammit Janet!":
    • One scene has Peter talking at the bar with his friends and griping how Lois wants a job. He then says, "I've got a job for you, baby; Right! Here!" As he points to his penis while saying it and then continues on, explaining, "See? The damn zipper's been broken for a week! I was hoping you could fix it."
    • A later scene has Peter in Australia poking a sleeping crocodile with a stick. The crocodile eventually wakes up, but once it does Peter instead gets attacked by a koala jumping on his face out of nowhere.
  • "Ready, Willing, and Disabled":
    • Stewie threatens Brian by saying that he'll do to him just what he did to John Lennon, which then shows a cutaway of him introducing John to Yoko Ono.
    • In the same episode, Peter helps Joe train for the Special Peoples Games (a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of the Special Olympics), and he goes on to win a gold medal. At a big event celebrating him, Joe thanks everyone who helped him succeed, particularly his good friend Peter...Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary. He then thanks Mr. Griffin...comedian Eddie Griffin. Finally, the person to whom he owes everything, "the fat guy"...celebrity chef Paul Prudhome (who remarks "Wow, I didn't even do anything!") At this point Peter has had enough and calls Joe out in front of the entire town.
  • "And the Wiener Is..." has Meg (once again) trying to impress the "cool" kids, and she pulls out the answers to a test. When questioned about how she acquired this, she explains that she spent the night with their teacher. However, the Cutaway Gag shows the teacher sleeping while wearing a garlic braid and clutching a cross, with Meg watching him with a stake and hammer; he wakes up and thanks her for helping him to "ward off evil" (presumably vampires) for another night.
  • "Brian Does Hollywood":
    • One scene has Peter trying to invoke a Quip to Black when learning that Stewie's successful audition has won him and the family a trip out to Hollywood to appear on Kids Say The Darndest Things and expressing how people always say something clever before a commercial break. He looks at the camera in excitement to say something right before the break, but ends up in silent disappointment.
    • Later on while in L.A., Peter finds himself getting beat up by the LAPD, only for it to be that he and the cops were pretending to assault him for a photo that Lois was taking of the trip. Then it becomes subverted when after he thanks them and as they leave, one comes back and hits his with his club and brings him to his knees for good measure.
  • One episode has a cutaway where Peter reading The Bible to a group of young children and then expressing what a beautiful place Heaven is and that if they've been good, they'll go there after they die, to all of their delight. He then takes a beat, snickers and says "I'm only yanking ya chain; you just rot in the ground!" Cue their horrified faces.
  • "Let's Go to the Hop":
    • One scene cuts to Peter in the principal's office of Meg's school and saying immediately "And that's my plan!", which causes him to say that he was confused as he just came into his office, sat down and said "And that's my plan!" to him. Peter then apologizes which leads to a Gilligan Cut later where he did express his plan, to which the principal says that he doesn't like it, and Peter dejectedly leaves. Then later at home, the principal calls him up and says "...I LOVE it!" in what turned out to be a Bait-and-Switch Comment with an unusually long time delay.note 
    • Later at the high school dance where Meg is now popular due to her association with Peter's alias cool student, as boys are all lining up to dance with her, she goes to Neil, who was the only boy paying attention to her before her overnight popularity, and asks him to hold her purse while she dances with a cool boy.
  • In "Turban Cowboy", during the montage of Peter skydiving into various places, a woman is at home reading the newspaper and her horoscope tells her that an unexpected man will drop into her life. A ninja drops in and decapitates her with his sword, then picks up the newspaper and his horoscope tells him to be careful at work that day, which is when Peter drops in and lands on him.
  • "Married... With Cancer":
    • Brian talks about a time he was recognized by his fellow moviegoers after seeing The Peanuts Movie. You would think it was because they think he resembled Snoopy (which he also believed at first), but it was really because he had been caught peeing in his empty soda cup during the movie. He then cries like a Peanuts character.
    • Also during the The Fault in Our Stars inspired news vignette than Tom Tucker produced in honor of Brian and Jess, he starts to cry. While it looks like he's really touched about it and would humble himself to them, he instead says, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry to be a puss".
  • In "Dead Dog Walking", when Jess tells Peter she's having Brian euthanized, Peter reacts with horror and is shown getting his car and driving off, leaving the viewer to assume he's immediately going to save Brian... but first, he stops at a local library to look up the definition for the word "euthanize".
  • In a Cutaway Gag in the episode "Regarding Carter", Lois is surfing the web using Safari and says that it's better than Firefox until she notices the autofill is giving her problems. Peter then shows up armed with a knife and says, "You shoulda stuck with Firefox." Then he uses the knife to... kill himself!
  • "Dearly Deported" has a group of shady Mexicans ambushing Peter and the gang with guns. Peter then says that Donald Trump was right... about his daughter being a hot piece of ass.
  • In "Hell Comes to Quahog", Peter shoots a rocket out of a tank. It then cuts to a wife yelling at her husband to get a stump removed from their front yard. Then the rocket blows up the wife, and the husband is happy because the stump can stay.
  • "You Can't Handle the Booth" has Quagmire, Cleveland, and Joe making a rocking chair by hand. Instead of it collapsing as Quagmire sits on it, Joe's wheelchair falls apart.
  • In "The First No L", as part of the parody of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Stewie (in the role of Cindy Lou Who) mistakes Lois for Santa and asks why she's taking the Christmas tree. Instead of lying about taking the tree back to the North Pole to fix it like in the source material, Lois asks Stewie why he's inexplicably dressed in pigtails and a little girl's nightgown.
    Stewie: Okay, okay, maybe we both forget what we saw.

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