Characters / American Dad! - Stan Smith

American Dad! Main Character Index
Smith Family (Stan Smith, Roger Smith) | CIA | Pearl Bailey High School and Other Teens | Smith Extended Family | Neighbors | One-time Characters

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"We can't choose our fathers, but we can choose our father figures. I chose my mother. That set me back a bit."

Voiced by: Seth MacFarlane

Debut: "Pilot"

The man of the house, a CIA agent later promoted to Deputy-Deputy Director. Although an extreme right-winger to the point of parody with a tendency to forget the lessons he's just learned, he still loves his family.

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Tropes A to H

• Abusive Dad:
  • Stan openly admits to disagreeing with everything Hayley stands for even when he understands when they are right. On top of which, he literally made her middle name Dreamsmasher.
  • He constantly tries to raise Steve to be just like him, and despises the fact that his daughter is a liberal while his son is a geek instead of a jock or even a fairly normal kid. He's usually either neglectful of Steve or obsessive over any coming-of-age obstacle in his way, like getting his first kiss, learning about sex, or going to a school dance. It is even revealed once that Stan is threatened that Steve may one day become the man of the house, but is calmed down when he remembers that the true man engages in intercourse, and Steve is a hopeless virgin.
  • In "Failure is not a Factory-Installed Option", he concocts a perfect plan of revenge that includes having his family go broke, Steve losing a chance at sex because the repo men took the cars back, and Hayley selling her body so they can survive. On the ride home, Stan happily gloats about how good it feels to win while his family looks on with trauma.
  • His idea of shooting down Hayley's or Steve's beliefs is to fart on them (as shown in the first episode, as well as "The Missing Kink"), and giving Steve a charlie-horse for no reason (as seen in "Vacation Goo"). He once even wakes Steve up by scaring him in his dreams. The reaction is Steve jumping out of his window and twisting his arm.
• Acrofatic: Stan's got a rather large gut (although, he alternates between this and a hunky physique, depending on the episode), but doesn't stop him from doing handsprings and being a proficient CIA agent (though he sucks at free-running).
• Action Dad: He is in the CIA as a field agent after all.
• Aesop Amnesia: A significant portion of the episodes' plots wouldn't be possible if Stan actually bothered to remember the dozens of times he learned that lying is wrong, to accept other groups such as gays and foreigners, to never listen to Roger's "advice", and to accept Steve and Hayley the way they are. It's even been lampshaded on more than one occasion that Stan is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes; Stan himself even acknowledges it (multiple times, no less):
  Stan: Lying is wrong! I'd know that if only I'd paid attention to anything that's ever happened to me before!
  
  Stan: There's something you should know about me by now, Roger. I don't learn lessons.
• Alliterative Name: Stan Smith.
• Amazon Chaser: Stan thinks it's hot when Francine discusses how she wants to kill someone and got an erection when Scarlett held him at gunpoint. He also got very turned on when Francine gained some muscles in "One-Woman Swole".
• Amusing Injuries: He suffers these and more often than not they're anus related. He has good butt insurance from Darkstar.
• Anti-Hero: Stan is the Pragmatic Hero at his best, and the Unscrupulous Hero at his worst.
• Assumed Win: His ego leads him to believe he will always win anything. In "Season's Beatings", he was convinced he'd be picked to play adult Jesus in the church's nativity play, on the grounds that he was "the most devout" member, only for Father Donovan to point out that he was unsuited due to being overweight.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Stan almost always wears his iconic blue suit.
• Big Beautiful Man: He fits in this tropes perfectly. He's tallest in the family, muscular (though it has been shown that he's slightly overweight), and there have been many women interested in him. Examples being episodes "Wife Insurance" and "When a Stan Loves a Woman"
• Big Eater: He has his moments. The episode "Anchorfran" had him binge-eating at Loco Larry's for several weeks (i.e, 16 burritos per day) to the point of developing intestinal blockage.
• Black Comedy Rape: When Stan was a boy, he molested his Catholic priest while away at a summer camp. And no, that wasn't a typo. He molested the priest. Which he casually reminisced about once. Though in Stan's words he claims he seduced the priest, and adds there was no actual fucking between them.
• The Bore: He has a habit of telling dull, boring stories that drag on and on. "The Never Ending Stories" shows the rest of the family hiding away rather than endure having to listen to them.
• Born in the Wrong Century:
  • It's been shown several times that Stan has wild west values and views (i.e, loves guns, has sexist views of women, is against non-heterosexual relationships, and believes that traditional masculinity must be publicly defined). In several cases, Stan is shown to dress like a cowboy or address the lifestyle. In "Familyland" he bases his clan around the Wild West as "Black Stan" and the "Italian Stallions". In "The Magnificent Steven" he forces Steve and his friends to be cowboys in order to prove their manhood.
  • Ironically, in "West to Mexico", where the series is reimagined as the wild west, Stan is actually out of his element because he possesses qualities that are unfit for the western lifestyle.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite his quirks, he seems to be very good at his job or at least competent enough to avoid being fired outright by Bullock.
• Calling Your Attacks: MEAT SLAP!
• Can't Take Criticism: The entire plot of "I Can't Stan You" revolves around this; within the episode, he ends up having everybody in his neighborhood, including his own family, deported to a roadside motel simply because they kept criticizing and insulting him.
• Caught Coming Home Late: Stan gets a three-fer. When he gets to the living room, Steve confronts him over having a black man pose as him at a CIA softball game. When he gets to the kitchen, Francine chews him out about the same thing. When he reaches the bathroom, he encountered a bruised-up Roger, who apparently got beat up by a taco.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "Oh my God!" He'll often say this whenever he learns a lesson in an episode.
  • Whenever he is caught off-guard when doing something bad as seen by others or when he narrowly avoids problems, he often says fast, "OOH!"
  • "What have I done?!"
• Character Development: He starts off the series as a Heteronormative Crusader, but by the time of "Daddy Queerest" he's a full gay rights supporter.
• Commander Contrarian: On more than one occasion he has admitted that he's against anything Hayley supports, sometimes even immediately contradicting himself when she is agreeing with him.
• Competition Freak: He has a habit of taking any contest or sport too seriously, from ordering a member of the football team he was coaching to injure Steve, his own son, to ditching Francine when he believes she's holding him back during a race around the world.
• Control Freak: Many episode plots center around him trying to control every aspect of his family's lives and freaking out when they won't do what he says. One episode even finds him in Heaven trying to save his family from dying on Christmas day, and after nothing goes as he planned, he ends up storming into God's office with a heaven gun that can kill angels, holds god at gunpoint, and demands that he at least be able to go back to Earth to do it himself. Despite this, he still insists he doesn't try to control everything at first.
  God: Stan, you're holding a gun to God's head. I mean, I can't think of a better metaphor than this.
• Crazy-Prepared: He's hidden guns all over the house, and went to such lengths as having it completely sealed in cause of a flood. Unfortunately, he also sealed up the drain track underneath the house, leading to it being torn off its foundation when Langley is flooded during a hurricane.
• Cross Dresser: Doesn't hide from his family the fact that he wears panties and if it was socially acceptable, would wear mascara because it makes his eyes "pop like firecrackers".
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: When on his game, Stan is nearly unbeatable.
• Depending on the Artist: When being seen shirtless, Stan is either depicted as either being in shape or having a visible gut a-la Zapp Brannigan.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • Stan's attitude towards his family varies from "A Jerkass because he doesn't understand what he's doing wrong, and tries to fix it when he finds out" to "Manipulative Bastard who's so callous that he'll often put them through some horrible Evil Plan for some incredibly trivial/stupid reason".
    Stan: "Lying is wrong! I'd know that if I'd paid any attention to anything that has happened to me before!"
  • His attitude towards his family is dependent on who he's interacting with at the time: Hayley is either daddy's wayward grownup daughter who he tries to keep on the right (his) path, or the displaced trouble child he simply gives up on because they have nothing in common. Steve is both his school-stud son who has hidden geek qualities (in his mind's eye), or simply a shake of the head as to where he went wrong raising that boy. Francine is possibly his air-headed housewife who is slightly clueless as to what goes on in front of her, or his air-headed housewife whose rager past is contained by the suburban shell around her.
  • Stan's competence also varies from episode to episode. In some episodes he is something of a Bunny-Ears Lawyer, and despite his shortcomings is a somewhat competent agent whose stunts ultimately prove his worth, or a completely hopeless excess of a human being who is actually far less capable of surviving than his family.
  • In most episodes where the topic of religion comes up Stan is depicted as deeply and sincerely religious (albeit often with a comedic level of ignorance about his own faith) and the entire plot of "Dope and Faith" revolves around his fears that his atheist friend will go to Hell due to his lack of belief. In "May the Best Stan Win" on the other hand, Stan appears to have no belief in any sort of spiritual afterlife, planning to be cryogenically frozen after death.
• Determinator: Stan, at times, is so adamant about being right, that he absolutely refuses to admit defeat even in the face of overwhelming adversity. A good example occurs in "Less Money, Mo' Problems". Stan makes a bet with Jeff and Hayley— if Stan and Francine can survive for a month on Jeff's minimum-wage salary, Jeff and Hayley have to move out of the Smith's home. Mere days into their journey, Stan and Francine are living in a cheap car with only rice and potatoes to eat. Francine gives up and goes back home, but Stan continues the bet. He's eventually hit by a car, but can't get treated in a timely manner due to lack of health insurance (per the terms of the bet), so he administers self-first aid with a newspaper and a used hypodermic needle. After his car is towed, he resorts to sleeping under parked cars, and eventually attempts to break in to his house and rob his own family. At this point, he finally admits that he was wrong and tells Jeff and Hayley that they can live with him for as long as they need to.
• Detrimental Determination: One of Stan's biggest flaws is his inability to give up on a venture, even when it's clear to everyone else that he should stop. Perhaps the best example of this flaw is in "Hurricane!"; Stan is determined to show his family his way is right, even though it's apparent that he's doing far more harm than good. End result: he gets his family attacked by both a shark and a bear, and impales Francine in the shoulder with a javelin (he was aiming for the bear). It's only when Buckle shows up and tranquilizes both animals that the family is finally safe.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • In "American Fung", he has Francine put in a mental hospital for a few days, so he can avoid facing her wrath for forgetting their anniversary. It never crosses his mind that Francine would put two and two together, and figure out who put her there.
  • In "Point Breakers", his desire to keep working undercover with his new surfer friends leads to him framing them for bank robbery. He fails to realise that this will upgrade them from "suspects" to "wanted criminals" until it is pointed out to him.
• Dirty Cop: He's a CIA agent, yet he has broken the law and/or taken advantage of his position countless times over the course of the series.
• Dirty Coward: He's not afraid to let someone else suffer or take the fall to save his own skin. This includes his own family. Once, they were being hunted by Roger on a space station and he prioritized leaving the ship on his own and ignored his family's cries for help.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Stan is personally responsible for Klaus being stuck in the body of a fish, simply because the CIA didn't want East Germany winning the Gold medal for Ski-jump during the 1986 Winter Olympics.
  • In "Four Little Words", he goes to great extremes to make Francine believe that she killed her friend when in actuality her friend was accidentally killed by Bullock during a date gone wrong. Why? He didn't want her say "I told you so".
• Dropped a Bridge on Him:
  • This happens to him at the end of "Hot Water" for no real reason, but like Kenny McCormick, he is alive and well in the next episode, mostly because "Hot Water" was a series finale that was rewritten as a non-canon episode when Fox decided to renew the series.
  • Stan dies in "Rapture's Delight" and gets escorted to his personal heaven, which is identical to the beginning of the episode (though Klaus is dead and mounted on the wall). The commentary for the subsequent episode jokes that everything from then on actually takes place in Stan's personal heaven.
  • At the very end of "Big Stan On Campus" the helicopter transporting him and Bullock crashes in a huge fireball, presumably killing him. Nothing is heard of that incident again.
• Dumb Muscle: He is a muscular hunk who is often quite dim-witted, especially after Flanderization.
• Eagleland: Type 2 Incarnate. He's frequently seen as a massive patriot who constantly tries to protect his country. This was more prevalent in the early episodes of the show.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the earliest episodes, Stan was shown to be almost inhumanly agile, performing cartwheels and many an Unnecessary Combat Roll. Later episodes dialed this back to the point where he is incapable of keeping up with Francine while the two are free-running in "Stanny Boy and Frantastic."
• Egocentrically Religious: He is this at times, such as in "Dope & Faith", where he prayed to Jesus to let him win a raffle for a paddleboat. He claims his religion is the "foundation" of who he is, yet he more often than not uses this as an excuse to think that he's better than others (like in "Rapture's Delight") rather than live up to its teachings, and in "Daesong Heavy Industries", admitted that he's never actually read the Bible. Following a Crisis of Faith after Steve's logic undermines all the book's stories, he reacts dismissively to the suggestion that he simply see them as a set of instructional fables, detesting the idea of basing his character around some "fairy tales".
• Entitled Bastard: No matter what terrible things he does to others, he always expects them to forgive him right away.
• Expansion Pack Past: Different episodes give increasingly weird and tragic events in Stan's childhood, often in the form of abuse by his dad, Jack. It's been revealed through various episodes throughout the series that Stan learned about sex by watching his father do it with a prostitute, was abandoned by Jack and briefly raised by the Harlem Globetrotters and that Jack tricked him into believing that a random stranger was his imaginary friend, just for starters.
• Extreme Doormat: He tends to be this to Deputy-Director Bullock in multiple episodes. The most extreme example was in "(You Gotta) Strike For Your Right", where he was not only the only person not to strike for better working conditions, but continued working for Bullock even after being made the target of his Home Alone-esque pranks.
• Fat Bastard: He is generally muscular, but some episodes do depict him as plump, which is combined with being a ruthless Jerkass.
• Fat Idiot: He is occasionally shown to be chunky (beneath his muscular exterior) and is often a complete idiot who makes destructive decisions.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Stan's so uptight that when he enjoys something, he can't stop.
  • Also his "unusual" way of thinking, his arrogance, and pride tends to get him to perform unlikable acts of Disproportionate Retribution and ends up doing horrible things to his own family and is completely willing to put them in danger, lie to them and abuse them for his own benefit or sense of justice.
• Feigning Intelligence: He thinks that he knows everything and constantly uses an eloquent and authoritative tone when speaking, but it's shown, especially in later seasons, that Stan is every bit an Idiot Hero and a Know-Nothing Know-It-All.
• Flanderization: Stan was always something of a bumbling sociopath, but it originated more from his ego and right-wing extremities, and at times he diverged from Seth MacFarlane's traditional Bumbling Dad role by proving to have Hidden Depths and some amount of tact (to the point of having spaced moments he was actually right about something). As time passed however, the necessity for Stan to learn An Aesop every episode led to him becoming increasingly moronic and childish, and his badass CIA agent qualities have been increasingly degraded in favor of making him a borderline Straw Loser for the rest of the Smiths.
• Forgotten First Meeting: "100 Years a Solid Fool" reveals that he first met Roger when he was a rookie agent, long before the rescue at Area 51. While narrating the story to his family, he fails to see the similarities between the manipulative, disguise-wearing drug lord he was outsmarted by and Roger until Roger flat-out tells Stan it was him.
• Freudian Excuse: Stan was extremely unpopular in his childhood due to his nerdy ways. As a result he bullies Steve for also being nerdy hoping to break him of said habits, in order for Steve to have the life he didn't. Additionally, his father, Jack, was an alcoholic who was never around (and was later revealed to be a con artist), which didn't exactly help in being a father. Meanwhile his needy mother made Stan take his place, leading him to try take all adult responsibilities prematurely and not grow up naturally.
• Future Loser: In "No Weddings and a Funeral", future Stan is shown to have been divorced from Francine, lost his job, and been forced to live in a rundown apartment with only a cat for company.
• Genius Ditz: Despite acting like a general idiot and doing incredibly stupid things, he is a weapons expert and the best field-agent on the CIA. He was even able to outsmart Francine several times in episodes like "Franny 911" and "Widowmaker". However, this would eventually disappear in later seasons since Stan has been relegated into a full-blown idiot.
• Going Native: Stan has a strong tendency to do this; lampshaded by Francine in "Stan of Arabia".
• Gun Nut: Not only is he almost always carrying a pistol, he's hidden guns around the house and frequently holds people at gunpoint whenever he can't make them do what he wants.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He can viciously lose his temper at the drop of a hat. Roger has learned this more than once.
  Stan: You don't deserve to be on that cross, you lazy, wine-loving bisexual!
• Happily Married: To Francine, but they have an equal amount of neglect and unfaithfulness with love.
• Heel Realization: "The Kidney Stays in the Picture" actually has him learn a lesson and learn from it. When he finds out that Francine cheated on him with another man a few days prior to their wedding, he (quite understandably) becomes a lot more rude and petty towards Francine. Then, when he stops Francine and Joel (the man she drunkenly cheated on Stan with) from having sex out of spite, Francine warns him that Hayley's existence could be undone by Stan's reckless intervention. Stan begins to realize that he truly loves Hayley regardless of blood. Not long after, he and Francine visit their younger selves and explain what should happen in order to preserve Hayley's existence. When his younger self isn't convinced, he remembers all of his fond memories with Hayley and truly realizes that she will always be his daughter, biological bonds be damned.
• Henpecked Husband: Played with in "Stan's Night Out." He throws a brief temper tantrum because he assumes Francine never lets him go out with his friends. However, Francine has absolutely no problem with Stan spending time with his friends away from her and is surprised he thought he was "stuck" there.
• Heteronormative Crusader: He gets better as time goes on. In fact, accepting gay lifestyles is the only lesson Stan remembers, probably because a relapse into homophobia wouldn't fly under the radar as easily as his other forgotten lessons. To the point where he even once gives a Patrick Stewart Speech that while Republicans might not accept gays or support gay rights, they shouldn't hate Gay Republicans, because they're on their side and it's a waste of perfectly good hate that should be reserved for Democrats!
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: He's the main protagonist and has done many messed up and heinous actions throughout the show. Thankfully, he's nowhere near as bad as Roger.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: His father left him when he was young and his mother forced Stan to fill his role as provider despite being too young to do so. His mom also lied to Stan, saying that his pet dog was sick and needed to be shot to put him out of his misery (turns out she did it because the apartment they were moving in to didn't allow dogs).
• Honor Before Reason: Wheeeeeere to begin...
  • Generally, he dislikes being proven wrong by others on his ideals.
  • He steals the idea of a telethon from Roger to save a torturing program for terrorists, but when many wonder if he really came up with the idea, Stan lies and claims he did, which makes Roger go after him to ruin the telethon. (Stan stupidly believed Roger got angry at him for not calling him for dinner.)
  • Stan is so into the thrill of winning that when he actually lost to Steve's team in a game of football, he attempted to commit suicide because of the shame he felt for losing. It also turns out that Stan never was able to express sadness properly either.
  • The initial reason he agreed to risk his career (and possibly even life) to protect Roger from the CIA, considering himself to be honor-bound to repay Roger for saving his life from Unfriendly Fire at Area 51.
  • He trained up Steve by masquerading as a school bully to toughen him up. When Steve asks him what Stan did to get rid of his bully, he simply laughs it off by saying his bully moved out so there was never a closure there.
• Hypocrite:
  • Several plots (such as "Seizures Suit Stanny") revolve around Stan being deeply against something, then (by circumstance or his own choice) trying it for himself, and becoming obsessed with it (and usually trying to cover his hypocrisy around his family). These episodes more often than not tend to portray Stan at his most unlikable, especially with the lows he'll sink to in order to cover his tracks.
  • Stan often derides Steve for being a geek and a "wuss", despite the fact that he was the same (or even moreso) at his age, and constantly tries to "make a man" out of him. But several episodes (such as "Chimdale") have shown that, when push comes to shove, Steve can be more of a man than Stan is.
  • Despite the hard time he gives Steve for the latter's niche hobbies, Stan often shows an abnormal level of passion for his own interests, such as joyously treating the United States Census as an actual holiday.
  • In "Bully for Steve", Stan acted as a bully to Steve, constantly telling him that he needed to stand up to bullies. Not only did Stan never stand up to his childhood bully, Stelio Kontos (because he simply moved away), but when Steve brings him in to do the fighting for him, Stan doesn't even try to fight back, letting Stelio beat him to a pulp.
  • In "There Will Be Bad Blood", he tells Steve he should appreciate what he already has, so he decides to bring him to his allegedly poor Native American half-brother Rusty's place in Arizona to teach him humility. However, upon finding out Rusty is actually supremely rich, he tries to steal the wealth for himself and throws a massive temper tantrum about how it should all be his.
  • In "Big Stan on Campus", he looks down on the campus security team, believing them to be "unprofessional", even though he himself saw his temporary employment there as being like a "vacation", and wanted the students to see him as a Cool Uncle rather than an authority figure. When the students make it clear they don't see him that way, he attacks them all with pepper spray.
  • "The Mural of the Story" began with Stan lecturing Hayley about how you should always put family first. But when Hayley ends up taking the blame for the damage he caused to the town's beloved mural while attempting to restore it, Stan does nothing to correct that belief and is perfectly willing to let his own daughter suffer rather than publicly admit his failure.
  • He frequently finds fault with others, expecting them to just stand there and take it, but he himself Can't Take Criticism at all.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Stan forbids Steve to go out with Debbie, an overweight girl, while his family points out that he isn't quite thin himself. With Stan being extreme like he usually is, he takes the fat comments too close to heart and starves himself to the point where he becomes anorexic.
  • At one point, he basically sends Francine to the woods because she has a spanking fetish to "recover" from her deviancy, despite the fact that he's obviously got a foot fetish himself.

Tropes I to N

• Idiot Hero: Stan is able to hide it by using an eloquent and authoritative tone, but only just barely.
• Incest Subtext: He gives his mother baths in the bathtub. He sits in the tub and sings about washing her private parts as well.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: Stan's idea of a good time usually involves things most people would find unbearably boring, such as taking part in the annual census.
• Inexperienced Killer: Apparently up until the end of the episode "The 42-Year-Old Virgin" that despite working at the CIA for years, Stan had never actually killed anyone before. This winds up making Steve hate him and Francine losing sexual interest in him, but gets the approval of Hayley. He gets his first kill at the end of the episode, a poker buddy named Bad Larry, albeit by accident.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: While deeply arrogant, stubborn and self-assured, Stan is also very insecure, and craves the validation of others. In "I Can't Stan You", learning that he is not as beloved by his neighbors as he believed he was causes him to break down, eventually driving him to have the whole neighborhood (and his family) relocated so he won't have to endure their "criticisms". This trait is also brought up in "Chimdale" and "An Incident at Owl Creek", with Stan even stating in the former his belief that other people's opinions of you matter more than anything.
• Informed Flaw: He's allegedly such a Control Freak that God Himself called him on it, but it's shown time and time again that he actually has very little control over his life. He doesn’t want Hayley to date Jeff — Jeff marries and moves in with the Smiths. He doesn't want another baby — Francine tries to rape him. And while Hayley’s actions are usually given the excuse of his harsh rules, they’re usually things like coming in past curfew, dying her hair green, drinking while underage, getting a job as a stripper, having boys in her room, and stealing monkeys from an animal testing lab and keeping them in the house (although that's still better than letting then be tortured by evil scientists). It's reached the point where the family does the complete opposite of what he says the moment he says it (although it's possible that his Control Freak tendencies are actually a result of the lack of control he has in his life).
• Ink-Suit Actor: Minus the exaggerated chin, Stan looks a lot like Seth MacFarlane.
• In Love with Looks: In "Shallow Vows," it's revealed that he only married Francine for her looks. Stan is so shallow that he even has himself blinded when Francine decides to stop taking care of her appearance.
• Insane Troll Logic: Stan's logic when it comes to fixing things he perceives to be broken.
  • He tries to stop Francine from thinking he's too boring and leaving him by poisoning Roger so Francine will be too busy taking care of him ("Brains, Brains, and Automobiles").
  • He tries to get Steve to stop playing with toys by taking him to Mexico to lose his virginity to a whore ("Toy Whorey").
  • He believes he could "fix" Christmas after he perceives that liberals have ruined it by going back in time and killing Jane Fonda ("Best Christmas Story Never Told").
  • He plans to make up for forgetting his and Francine's anniversary again by having Francine put in a mental hospital, just long enough for him to put together a (poorly thought-out) gift ("American Fung").
• Instant Soprano: In "Crotchwalkers", he steps on a rake, which swings up and hits his groin so hard that his testicles allegedly retreated up his scrotum, leaving him with an embarrassingly high-pitched voice. Ironically, it's right when he accepts it to help Roger, Klaus and Hayley's Russian folk band that his balls drop back down.
• Insufferable Imbecile: He is an extremely stupid CIA agent who has anger issues and frequently engages in depraved and assholish behavior.
• I Reject Your Reality: Stan has a bad habit of refusing to acknowledge anything that disproves the mental illusions he's crafted for himself, whether in regards to his talent, brains, popularity, or even the idea that he had anything other than a happy, well-adjusted childhood.
• Irony: Despite his aim at protecting his family, there are times where he is completely willing to put them in danger, lie to them and abuse them for his own benefit or sense of justice. This was lampshaded in "Hurricane!" (part three of the Seth MacFarlane "Night of the Hurricane" crossover). It didn't help he shot Francine a couple times during the whole ordeal.
• It's All About Me: While he does care about others, Stan is still completely willing to put them in danger, lie to them and abuse them for his own benefit or sense of justice.
• Jaded Washout: "The Life and Times of Stan Smith" reveals that, under all his boasting, he believes himself to be this, well aware that all his best days are behind him. This is why he becomes so obsessed with having Roger help him relive his glory days.
• Jerkass: When he's not being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, he is this most of the time.
• Jerkass Ball: While he tends to not be the nicest guy to begin with, he gets far worse several times. Taken to an absurd degree in "Wiener of Our Discontent" where he reminds and demeans Roger that he is a useless alien who was sent to Earth as a crash test dummy to test out said ship (and not to be "The Decider" as Roger thought he was and flaunted said title to avoid comeuppance for his actions). The kicker is Stan goes out of his way to make Roger feel like crap even after Roger gets a job at a wiener factory to the point Francine wonders how many sick days Stan is going to take just to make Roger's life miserable.
• Jerkass to One: Stan really hates Steve's friend Barry, and has gone out of his way to insult and threaten him unprovoked on multiple occasions.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • The episode "Less Money Mo' Problems," depicts Stan as being in the wrong for considering Hayley and Jeff freeloaders for living with him and Francine instead of being out on their own. While the episode had some valid points about how hard it is to make a living on just minimum wage, Stan was actually justified for getting frustrated with them; what with Jeff waking him up in the middle of the night to watch Bones, going to the bathroom while Stan was still in the shower, and pouring out an entire bottle of syrup onto his pancakes after Stan asked him to pass it.
  • In "The Old Stan and the Mountain," Stan is depicted as wrong for going behind his elderly coworker's back and stealing an assignment to demonstrate a new Urban Assault Vehicle. While, yes, it was kind of a dick move, Stan points out that the coworker who was supposed to demo it was clearly exhibiting signs of senility, citing how just the other day he mistook a sponge for a Hot Pocket.
    Stan: You microwaved it for thirty seconds, flipped it over, and then microwaved it for another thirty seconds. You had a lot of opportunities to see that it wasn't food.
  • Generally, though most episodes usually depict Stan as in the wrong, he does make some legitimate points, even if he goes about them the wrong way, such as Roger being a lazy Fat Slob who acts like he's better than everyone around him ("Weiner of Our Discontent"), and being irritated that Francine's adoptive parents drop in uninvited and completely take over his house ("Big Trouble in Little Langley").
  • In "Hamerican Dad", he adamantly refuses to let Roger join his ham club, well aware that Roger will end up making it all about him. After Francine browbeats him into sponsoring Roger for membership, Roger ends up doing exactly that.
  • In "Railroaded". While he was mostly trying to deflect blame for his own actions, he was right to point out that the citizens of Langley really shouldn't have voted to make him mayor, meaning the mayhem that followed was just as much their fault as it was his.
• Jerk Jock: He has this mindset, looking down on "nerds" while enjoying sports and other "manly" pursuits. Which is ironic, considering a) his being looked down on and bullied by the jocks at his old school and b) his interest in overly geeky hobbies like slot car racing.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Arguably Stan's callousness and self-righteous attitude has been toned down or at least been placed in more well-intentioned light in later seasons. It is a rule for the creative team that, in his own mindset, Stan's actions are for the well being of his family and country. No matter how insane or immoral they are.
• Jock Dad, Nerd Son: A constant source of contention between he and Steve. Stan constantly tries to help his son with various "masculine" activities to avoid letting Steve repeat the same poor experience Stan had in high school.
• Karma Houdini: In "The Mural of the Story", he's put in charge of the restoration project to restore the town's mural. But before it even starts, he ends up wasting the entire project's budget on a pre-party leaving him the sole person to fix it but only ends up making it worse. When the mural is unveiled, everyone assumes that Hayley was the one who made it worse and Stan... Decides to just let them continue thinking that thereby completely throwing her own daughter under the bus and ruining her reputation. While he does eventually own up to his actions at the second unveiling of the mural (which is now entirely repainted in tribute to Hayley due to the aforementioned's revenge ploy of making him think that all his earlier actions led to her being involved in a serious car crash and in critical condition so that she and Klaus could plot to blow it up), nobody besides Hayley calls him out for selling her out the way he did nor does he receive any punishment for wasting the initial project's budget before it could even get off the ground. And that's not even mentioning up how in-between him throwing Hayley under the bus and her revenge on him, he CHISELS HER EYES OUT AND FLAYS HER ENTIRE FACE OFF in an attempt to help her!
• Kissing Under the Influence: With Roger during their trip to Atlantic City. They were both drunk, and Stan agreed to the most intimate experiences of Roger's species. Roger ended up knowing all of Stan's memories, but not vice versa — this was especially humiliating for Roger because Stan was actually Roger's first.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Numerous episodes go out of their way to emphasize this, especially The Most Adequate Christmas Ever, where God actually had to tell Stan face-to-face (as Stan holds a gun to his forehead) that no, he does not know everything and he can't.
• Lack of Empathy: In "100 Years a Solid Fool", he shows no regrets over the agents who died as a result of his poor decision-making, callously stating that they were just holding him back.
• Lactating Male: In "A Pinata Named Desire", Stan, while bragging about being better than Roger at everything, states he can wet nurse better than Roger — proven when wet patches appear on his shirt.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Perhaps the most ridiculous, exaggerated example in all of Western Animation.
• Large Ham: Seth has gone on record describing Stan as his most exhausting role on any of his shows.
• Lethally Stupid: At his absolute worst. Stan's attempts at helping only cause pain and suffering for everyone involved such as Francine being shot and a bear and shark attacking the family in "Hurricane!" and Hayley needing extensive facial reconstruction after he disfigures her in "The Mural of the Story".
• A Lesson Learned Too Well: Related to his fatal flaw detailed below; when an epiphany finally does work its way through his thick skull, before the end of the episode erases it, it's at the worst possible time where it leads him to leave others to take the fall for something he could help fix. Such as finally learning to say no to Bullock when he's asked to take him to a hospital for a bullet wound.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: While it's not Lampshaded in-series, it should be noted that his mom bears a resemblance to Francine; same height, blond hair, same lips, similar body shape, and a similar face shape as well. Knowing Stan, it makes sense that he ended up marrying a woman who looks like his mother. Stan's relationship with Francine is eerily similar to his relationship with his mom, given that he shows All Take and No Give devotion to her which she only calls out when it becomes an inconvenience to her.
• Locked Out of the Loop: In the episode "Haylias," he believed that Project Daycare, which he put Hayley in, was discontinued because the subjects lost their free will permanently after seven days of activation. It isn't until after he activates Hayley and misses the deadline that he discovers from Bullock that the project was actually discontinued because the subjects turned on their handlers and killed them after seven days.
• Love Is a Weakness: To quote "The Magnificent Steven":
  Stan: A man kills what a man loves before it weakens him.
• Manchild: It really depends on who's writing the episode. "Man on the Moonbounce" actually showed Stan acting like a kid, despite being an adult, as a therapeutic way to catch up on the childhood he lost when his father abandoned him and his mom forced him to grow up and provide for her.
• Manipulative Bastard: He can be surprisingly good at nudging people into doing what he wants.
• The Millstone: As shown in "Hurricane!", Stan's every attempt at trying to save his family from the hurricane just keeps making the situation worse until, when things reach their boiling point, Buckle bursts in and tranquilizes Stan along with an attacking bear and shark because he "wasn't sure who was doing the most damage." Francine even states that, though many of Stan's ideas and plans sound reasonable at first, they're always doomed to end badly.
• Momma's Boy: In "Oedipal Panties", it's revealed that Stan is so overprotective of his mother that he had been abducting his mother's boyfriends and dumping them on a deserted island for over 30 years!
• Money Dumb: He is oftentimes shown to be horribly irresponsible with managing money. Here are the most notable examples:
  • In "There Will Be Bad Blood", he received $20,000 from his dying grandfather. He ended up losing it — not in stocks or bonds, but by leaving it on the bus.
  • In "Less Money, Mo' Problems", he was in charge of handling $938 to live on minimum wage for a month. He loses almost all of it overnight by spending it on frivolous things, becoming homeless as a result.
  • In "A Little Extra Scratch", he invested everything in pornographic pogs, which his financial advisor warned him not to do. He ends up at risk of losing the house.
• Moral Myopia: If he does it for himself, it's okay. If someone does it to him, it's unforgivable.
• Mr. Fanservice: He's tall and muscular, often has scenes wearing nothing but brief underwear, was briefly employed as a male stripper, and it has been shown on more than one occasion that he has a muscular booty (earning him the nickname "Thunder Butt"); he also gave a rather provocative dance in a skin tight suit in "Virtual In-Stanity".
• My God, What Have I Done?: After stabbing Steve in the ankle to get him out of bowling, he comes to the realization that he stabbed his own son and deeply regrets it.
• My Way or the Highway: Stan is often insistent that others do things the way he thinks is best and will go to absurd lengths to convince them to choose the "right" way.
• Narcissist: Most of his actions, his selective memory and the mental gymnastics boil down to his highly inflated ego and sense of self worth.
• Never My Fault: When things go wrong, he's quick to assign blame to others, even when he's the one to blame. Just like with the Hypocrite example, episodes where this happens tend to show him at his absolute worst:
  • In "CIAPOW", he put the blame for his team's failed atempt to steal an inhaler on all the others, in spite of the fact that it was his idea to steal it in the first place, and that they were only caught because he left a piece of paper with their hotel information on it behind.
  • In "Father's Daze", when the rest of the family learn that he was using a Laser-Guided Amnesia device to make them "redo" Father's Day over and over again, rather than accept fault for it, Stan instead rants about their inability to "get it right".
  • In "The Mural of the Story", he ends up being the sole person responsible for restoring the town's mural after blowing the project's budget on the pre-party and ends up making it even worse. While he does later own up to it, he initially just callously lets Hayley take the fall for it at it's first unveiling.

Tropes O to Y

• Official Couple: With Francine; they've been married since the start of the series.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Stan's full first name has never been conclusively given. He's been referred to as "Stanley", "Stanford" and "Staniel" at various points and it isn't known which, if any, is actually his name. The episode "Hayley Was a Girl Scout?" gives his full name as "Stanford Leonard Smith".
• Only Sane Man: In "Stan's Night Out", Stan discovers that his coworker friends at the C.I.A. are a bunch of irresponsible assholes whose blatant disregard for other people boarders on the sociopathic, with him playing the role of the straight man throughout an increasingly insane night.
  • Also in "People vs Martin Sugar", he is the only member of jury who sees that Roger is guilty despite his sympathetic attitude during the trial.
• Papa Wolf:
  • He might not agree with Hayley, and he might not have much in common with Steve, but if anyone insults or harms either of them, that person's going to be in pain for a long while.
  • Do not call his daughter a whore. Avery Bullock learned this the hard way. (You know, Stan's boss whom he more-or-less idolizes?)
  • In the early seasons when there was more emphasis on hiding Roger from the CIA, Stan was fully prepared to execute Roger if it meant protecting his family from any possible repercussions, despite being indebted to Roger for saving his life by his own admission.
  • He was also willing to get stabbed by multiple swords in unison if it means getting his son to finally lose his virginity.
• Paper Tiger: As much as he likes to act like a tough guy, he tends to fold pretty quickly when someone puts up a good enough fight, and will sometimes even run from a confrontation entirely. In "Francine's Flashback", it was shown that Francine once beat him to a pulp for forgetting their anniversary, with Stan begging police officers to keep her away from him.
• Patriotic Fervour: Stan veers between honorable and despicable, but prides himself on being a true patriot.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: He usually wears a blue suit while Francine's dress is pink.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: He's a bigot in many ways, but he generally learns An Aesop about it...for a while. Gays, fat people, senior citizens, even blacks; they all get some backlash from Stan at least once.
• Prematurely Bald: One episode revealed that Stan is completely bald, and has been trying to keep it a secret from everyone. Except everyone already knew, and none of them cared. He then decided to keep wearing his wig and no one ever cared enough about it to mention it again afterwards. Despite this, several episodes before and afterwards blatantly prove this is almost certainly not canon (cf. "Frannie 911" showed that Stan was once scalped by Roger dressed as an American Indian, leaving stubble on his bald head. If he were wearing a wig, there'd be no stubble nor would Roger need to scalp Stan). Stan's baldness would be re-canonized in "Comb Over, A Hair Piece", where Stan gets hair plugs.
• Promotion to Parent: For Jeff, first symbolically, and then literally once Jeff and Hayley tie the knot.
• Psychopathic Manchild: If he's not acting like a three-year-old, he's killing someone while acting like a three-year-old.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: He has this mentality in the episode "Buck, Wild," explicitly telling Steve that the only way he can become a man is by hunting and killing an animal. Ironically enough, the episode "The 42-Year-Old Virgin" revealed that Stan had, in fact, never killed another human being and had simply been talking a big game (his first credited kill had died in a subway accident, and every kill since had died in increasingly ridiculous accidents just as Stan tracked them down). Steve and Francine lose all respect for him as a man when they find out. However, he netted his first kill by the end of the episode and he's killed multiple people on-screen since. Deservedly, of course. Usually.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Stan has a major soft spot for ponies.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Stan doesn't care much for gun safety, and frequently points his gun at people he doesn't intend to kill (like his own family). At one point, he was so Trigger-Happy that he shot the toaster to pieces.
• Retcon: There are several aspects of Stan's character that are only established for a specific episode and forgotten about later. Such examples include:
  • "The 42-Year-Old Virgin" revealing that he's never actually killed anyone, despite killing Jackson's double in "Francine's Flashback" and Jay Leno in "Stan of Arabia - Part 1".
  • "Chimdale" revealing that he's bald and wears a wig. This is contradicted by both previous and later episodes like "Frannie 911", "Old Stan in the Mountain" and "Gifted Me Liberty" where in the first-mentioned a flashback shows Roger scalping off his hair leaving visible stubble and the latter two having his hair gradually fall off due to either rapid aging or extensive blood loss.
• Right Way/Wrong Way Pair:
  • Just about always the Wrong Way to Francine's Right Way in terms of their parenting skills (Francine has the odd subversion, but even then Stan is almost never the Right Way).
  • Even more so against Hayley. While Hayley can be self-serving and abrasive about it, her left-wing ethics are always far saner than Stan's right-wing extremist ways.
• Self-Serving Memory:
  • In "There Will Be Bad Blood", Stan believes that his half-brother Rusty "tricked" him out of the valuable land their grandfather left to him. This is in spite of the fact that (as shown in a Flashback), Stan, believing the land was worthless, cheated Rusty with a rigged game so he would end up with the $20,000 their grandfather was also leaving them (which he later lost on the bus).
  • In "Into The Woods," Stan suddenly remembers how he once betrayed a friend from childhood by not standing up for said friend during Halloween. After seeing him for the first time in years, Stan becomes obsessed with making it up to the guy. Stan's "help" involves stalking the guy and trying to force him to accept a new job he thinks is cooler, to the point he burned down the sub sandwich store the guy worked in. It turned out Stan got the memory mixed up and his friend's the one who abandoned him for being a loser. At the very end of the episode when Francine does something similar, we get a look into Stan's head as he keeps replaying Francine's betrayal until he literally rewrites the memory and swaps places so now he's calling her the loser.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Manly Man to Steve's Sensitive Guy. Stan even tries (and fails) to get Steve to toughen up in one episode by being his aggressive and threatening bully.
• Sexual Karma: Stan's moral compass becomes questionable in later seasons and he's constantly shown to be selfish and self-righteous. In a majority of the sex scenes between Stan and Francine, it's mostly for Stan's satisfaction since he believes it proves his manliness. This dynamic is the focus of Poltergasm, Francine reveals that after they married she started faking her orgasms because Stan stopped taking his time or addressed her need for pleasure. Once they start doing it more affectionately, Francine's "poltergasm" disappeared under a thunderous cry of pleasure.
• Shaking the Rump: Isn't afraid to literally shake what his momma gave him as he did in "Spring Break-Up" and in "Flirting With Disaster" It's revealed that the women at the CIA nicknamed him "Thunder Butt" because of his muscular butt and his ability to clap his butt cheeks together.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: He's always Dressed To Kill.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Frequently acts narcissistic about his looks and "intelligence". May also apply as Inferiority Superiority Complex when it's found out he wasn't always "the stallion he is today".
• Sore Loser: To a ridiculous degree in "Game Night". In the past, he reacted to being bested during the family's games by accusing the one who won of cheating, Flipping the Table, and cruelly insulting everyone in the room. It got so bad that the others decided to just let him win rather than suffer another outburst, and did so for years until Jeff got fed up with his Unsportsmanlike Gloating.
• Split Personality: In "Cock of the Sleepwalk", though technically it's Stan and his conscience.
• Standard '50s Father: Tries to invoke the trope, but fails.
  • In a DVD-exclusive special on the creation of American Dad, Seth [MacFarlane] describes the show as "What If? a 1950s anti-Communism short film announcer had a wife, kids, and a job with the CIA in the 21st century?"
• Stay in the Kitchen: Stan's been known to be incredibly sexist towards women, believing women shouldn't have a say in matters, let alone vote. In Stan of Arabia, he sings about this trope and even takes advantage of Saudi Arabia's laws to keep Francine in line... until he learns that she risks execution for trying to rebel.
• Straight Man: He tries to be this, but is really much more of a The Comically Serious Butt-Monkey. He gets rare genuine moments of this, usually against Roger, who is immature and outright sociopathic enough to make him look sane.
• Straw Character: He's an exaggerated stereotype of hyper-patriotic Republicans. Though much less so as the show went on.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Very much so. He's raven-haired, the tallest in the family, and has the most chiseled face out of all of MacFarlane's animated protagonists.
• Tautological Templar: He's always confident that his way (which is often shockingly bigoted, even by his own family's standards) is the good, righteous, and just way, by simple virtue of being his way. He often comes around by the end of an episode, but the show actually lampshades how the lesson never sticks. As a gung-ho CIA agent, he also feels this way about the United States itself — he doesn't believe that America can do no wrong so much as he believes that anything it does is justified by being America.
• Took a Level in Badass: In a season 1 episode, he was noted as a weapons expert who hadn't fought hand to hand in years, and has the shit kicked out of him by a homeless man. Later, Stan is an extremely competent fighter, hand to hand or otherwise.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Starting when the show moves to TBS.
• Troubled Abuser: As bad of a father as he can be, Stan's own parents were even worse. His father was cruel and neglectful and completely abandoned the family when Stan was 8, and his mother expected him to take over the role as man of the house, costing him his entire childhood and leading to a disturbingly co-dependent relationship between them in adulthood.
• Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: Minus the "sympathetic" part, but in the earlier episodes, Stan is shown to be xenophobic and homophobic multiple times. Examples include when he falsely accused his new Iranian neighbors of being terrorists and when he kidnapped Greg and Terry's newly adopted daughter because he thought that kids shouldn't be raised by gay couples.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: He's been kidnapping his mom's boyfriends and dumping them on a deserted island since he was a boy to keep them from dumping her and breaking her heart like his father did.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Averted. Stan's just as, if not more, attractive than Francine. He just hasn't slept around as much as Francine.
• Ultimate Job Security: He's done things that should have got him fired. In "Bully for Steve" and "A Boy named Michael" he didn't go into work for extended periods of time, just so he could "toughen" Steve up by bullying him in the former, and mock Roger by acting like a low-class lout in the latter. His career has never been shown suffering any ill consequences for those acts.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Subtly deconstructed (initially). Stan's recurring fear (other than seagulls before getting over it in "Choosey Wives Chose Smith") is if his friends and family still actually love him or not.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Roger in "Railroaded". Roger convinced Stan to run for mayor, engineered his victory, then encouraged Stan to relax while he handled all the hard work. This allowed Roger to lock up all the townspeople and do anything he wanted.
• Vicariously Ambitious: Due to his background as a high school loser, Stan frequently attempts to live triumphs through his family by pressuring them into social climbing, particularly Steve.
• Villain Protagonist: When you take into consideration many of his actions throughout the show's run and the lows he'll stoop to in order to get his own way or hide his hypocrisies from the rest of the family, there are many episodes where he ultimately comes across as the bad guy instead of the hero (even in ones where he's supposed to be the hero!). Episodes like "The Scarlett Getter", "Seizure Suit Stanny" and "Father's Daze" just to name a few are prime examples of Stan playing this trope 100% straight.
• Virtue Is Weakness: In "A Jones for a Smith," he expresses the view that people should solve their own problems and asking for help of any kind is a sign of weakness; when Hayley starts choking on a piece of turkey sausage, Stan goes so far as to forcibly hold Francine back from helping her, leading to Hayley nearly dying.
• Vocal Evolution:
  • His voice sounded a lot deeper and gruffer in Season One.
  • Starting with around Season 16, Stan's voice sounds noticeably hoarser and less booming.
• Weight Woe: Stan is a Rare Male Example. He once became so self-conscious about his weight he hallucinated that he was getting fatter and fatter until his family pointed out he was suffering from anorexia and hunger-based delusions to the point that he had wasted away to a walking skeleton. This was not helped by further hallucinations of a frat boy-like personal trainer.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Has elements of this in his relationship with his father Jack, and this trait is very prominent in his son Steve.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Often the cause of his Jerkass antics.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He fears seagulls. Or rather he feared them, as he mentions he got over the fear in "Choosy Wives Choose Smith", where he interacted with them (a hand wave, as the plot required said interaction).
• Yandere: To his mother. Ever since his father ran out on them, he has decided to be there for her. When she starts seeing other men, he believes that they'll just break her heart like his father did. So to "protect" her, he kidnaps her boyfriends during their third date and he sends them to a deserted island.

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