In this
20 Minutes into the Future episode, Stewie's lush retirement is interrupted by Brian, who brings news that Peter is dying.
Examples:
- All Just a Dream: Turns out the entire episode was a fantasy made by Stewie while staring at an old man costume he wanted to buy at the store.
- And I Must Scream: Brian is alive in this future, due to a pill that Stewie developed. As a result, Brian survives the house explosion, but as a mangled, bloody mess. He begs for the process to be reversed so he can just die, but Stewie leaves him in this anguish for participating in the scam. It's at this point the fantasy ends and Stewie gets snapped back to reality.
- Batman Gambit: The entire family in the future pretend that Peter is dying to scam Stewie out of his cash. Then we find out that Stewie knew about it and set the house on fire as a way of revenge.
- Butt-Monkey: Meg at the end of the episode. In the costume shop, Peter makes Meg be the rear half of "Edgar The Farting Horse", with him as the front half, and insists that he do the farting.
- Call-Back: Meg having snake tattoos on her arms? Hmmm...
- Everybody Cries: At the end of Stewie's alternate reality where Peter – surrounded by his family – dies, everyone breaks down in tears. Subverted when it is revealed that the Griffins are conning Stewie.
- Foreshadowing: Stewie hands out cigars to every member of the family, including Peter, who just died, foreshadowing not only that Peter's death was a scam, but that Stewie was aware of it.
- A rewatch shows that, when planning said scam, the Griffins couldn't even be bothered to get their story straight. Peter looked up cancer symptoms so that it would show up on his Google history, but Lois claimed he had severe diabetes.
- Generation Xerox: Dr. Hartman's son looks just like him, to the point that Lois calls him Dr. Hartman before he corrects her.
- Ladies and Germs: Parodied. During the awards ceremony, the announcer opens with "Ladies and gentleman and the 14 other genders we have now..."
- Older Than They Look: In the future, Quagmire looks almost exactly the same, just having a couple wrinkles and some grey hair. There's also a joke about Asian reporter Tricia Takanawa aging far better than her white peers. She looks exactly the same as she does in the present day.
- Out-Gambitted: The family was trying to play on Stewie's sympathies by faking Peter dying, getting him to fix up the house and later share his wealth. Stewie knew all along, which is why he gave them cigars before leaving the newly fixed up house. He had secretly turned on the gas, so when a match is struck, the house explodes—killing everyone but Brian.
- Take That!: United Airlines has left Cleveland on hold for many years, though the supposed politeness keeps him mollified. Meanwhile, Spirit Airlines isn't even bothering with the pretense when making Seamus wait.
Spirit Airlines Message: We don't give a crap about you, but we're the cheapest, so sit there and take it.
- Title Drop:
Stewie: I guess I'm just not a family guy.
[Canned laughter]
- Toilet Humor: The episode literally opens on a Citizen Kane shout out where Stewie says "Fart joke" instead of "Rosebud".
