Characters / Family Guy - Glenn Quagmire

Family Guy Main Character Index
The Griffin Family (Peter Griffin | Stewie Griffin | Brian Griffin) | The Neighbors (Glenn Quagmire) | Recurring Characters (Pawtucket Brewery | Adam West High School | Quahog 5 News) | Antagonists

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Glenn Quagmire

Giggity-giggity-goo!

Voiced by: Seth MacFarlane

Debut: "Death Has a Shadow"

One of the Griffins' neighbors and one of Peter's friends; an extremely perverted sex addict and former U.S. Navy ensign that flirts with every hot woman he sees (even teens) often in rather disturbing ways. He is now an airline pilot.

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Tropes A to D

• Abhorrent Admirer: His obsession with Lois is batshit crazy. He keeps multiple photos and mementos of her hidden around his house, casually stalks her, and even goes as far as peeping on her. He even gives a lookalike of her an exact copy of her set of clothes, and will always take up an opportunity to take her from Peter when they have marital problems. Fortunately, his attempts to do so always fail.
• Ace Pilot: Can fly anything. From an old Japanese Zero, a Cessna and a passenger jet. And, make no mistake: he's damn good at it, certainly enough to maneuver a passenger plane away from fighter jets.
• Acquainted with Emergency Services: In Season 3 "Lethal Weapons", while a naked Quagmire watches Lois chase away the New Yorkers on her lawn from his window, his window slams down shut on his penis. Unable to get the window up, Quagmire calls 911:
  Quagmire: Hello, 911? It's Quagmire. Yeah... Yeah, yeah, it's in a window this time.
• Acquired Poison Immunity:
  • He's been maced/pepper sprayed so many times he's developed an immunity.
  • "Halloween on Spooner Street" revealed that he has already contracted, and subsequently become immune to, every known venereal disease. It takes Peter finding one that hasn't been discovered yet in order to finally infect him.
  • He's performed auto-erotic asphyxiation on himself so much that he can recover from being strangled in only a few seconds.
• Action Survivor: He's skinny and doesn't have the fighting abilities of Peter or Joe but it's practically impossible to find a punishment he's not used to and he'd do anything to protect the people he cares about or punish the ones he hates.
• Affably Evil: Make no mistake, Glenn can be a pretty nice guy but the fact that he's able to have a (mostly) stable personality around so many people, even as he commits rape makes him even more disturbing. Not to mention how in the past he casually hinted he wanted to rape Lois.
• Ambiguous Criminal History: What sexual crimes hasn’t Quagmire committed? In addition to the hundreds of crimes that he’s committed on screen, there are several implications that he’s committed much more than that. A good example of this would be in the episode "Perfect Castaway." In it, Peter and friends play a game of I Never, and they start listing every single sexual act they can think of. Of course, Quagmire gets progressively more and more drunk, as he has apparently committed most of, if not everything that they have listed.
  Peter: God, let's see... What else is there, Um... I never gave a reach-around to a spider monkey while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
  Quagmire: Oh, God. (takes a drink.)
  Joe: I, uh... I never picked up an illegal alien at Home Depot to take home and choke me while I touch myself.
  Quagmire: Oh, come on! (takes another drink)
  Peter: Um... I never did the same thing, but with someone from JoAnn Fabrics.
  Quagmire: Oh, God! This is ridiculous! (takes a drink and passes out)
  Peter: Oh, wow, he's out cold. Hey, let's write on him! (Peter, Joe, and Cleveland giggle.)
• Antagonist in Mourning: Subverted. He attends Brian's funeral, but is shown watching a baseball game on his cellphone out of boredom.
• At Least I Admit It: Quagmire could be seen as a Deconstruction of this trope. He believes himself better than Brian because he admits to his vices but not only does he commit worse offenses than Brian has he also lacks any of the emotional baggage that affects Brian, often doing such things out of sheer callousness. Rather than giving himself a moral high ground through his honesty about his actions, he comes across as above judgement because of it. To add to it, he truthfully doesn't as he is later revealed to blame all his shortcomings on his mother, something Brian is quite willing to throw back at him.
• Appeal to Worse Problems: A recurrent point in his vendetta with Brian. While Quagmire is to some degree honest about his many flaws, being a rapist among them, he deflects onto people like Brian since he believes they provoke much more toxicity to the world due to being immoral egotistical people who still believe they are righteous and try to aggressively force their beliefs onto everyone else. Of course, since Brian himself hides under this fallacy just as often, and Quagmire over time used it to pontificate and virtue signal just as obsessively as the former does, it is often the point that the two are both insecure hypocrites with barely any difference between them.
• The Atoner: Vaguely implied with Glenn that he at least understands how horrible he is and on some level wants to either make up for it or at least be punished for it. He mentions doing charity work and helping out in the community while also telling Chris that he needs someone to punch him in the stomach every morning and tell him that he is a bad person with none of it meant to be sexual in any way.
  Quagmire: Now, the first thing I need you to do is punch me in the stomach every morning because I am a bad person.
  Chris: Is this a trick?
  Quagmire: It's the furthest thing from a trick, go ahead. And it should be pretty hard, I'm a worse person than you think.
• Attempted Homewrecker: Despite criticizing Brian for this, Quagmire is worse than Brian in this regard; Brian, while sexually attracted to Lois, also respects her as a person and his feelings go beyond mere lust. Meanwhile, Quagmire only likes Lois for her body and one episode has him getting arrested for peeping on her.
• Audience Surrogate: For the majority of the fans that began to hate Brian. In fact, if you watch the scene where Quagmire reveals why he hates Brian, you'll notice all of the reasons sounds more like they are coming from the fans instead of Quagmire.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: He beats Brian senseless for having sex with his transgender father, which Brian had no knowledge of.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: The more critical he became of Brian and others for being delusional and fraudulent of their vices, the more pretentious, judgemental and self-righteous he himself became, compared to the sleazy but jovially self-aware person he was before.
• Been There, Shaped History: He reveals to Peter and Joe in "Halloween on Spooner Street" that he was Patient Zero for gonorrhea.
• Berserk Button: In most post-cancellation seasons, Brian's existence is this to him. Being a self-appointed hedonist and pervert, Quagmire aggressively loathes the concept of virtue signaling and people who try to absolve themselves of their own shortcomings through faux righteousness and pontificating of others, as both his mother and Brian discover. As Brian has lampshaded, however, his own obsessive grandstanding and avoidance of responsibilities and consequences sometimes make him a complete hypocrite in that regard.
• Bestiality Is Depraved:
  • He's had a one-night stand with a giraffe, which resulted in a half-human/half-giraffe baby whose first words are "Giraffe-ity!" Quagmire denies that the baby is his.
  • He mentions at one point "sexy monkeys" and the armed guards that separate him from them.
  • In the episode "Perfect Castaway", the guys are playing a drinking game and have to take a drink of their beer every time they performed the sexual act mentioned, Quagmire had done everything they mentioned, being on his 38th beer before passing out while everybody else was still on their first. Fitting the definition of "depravity" to the extreme, Quagmire has done dozens of specific and outlandish sexual acts, including having sex with Cleveland's (ex-)wife, banging a girl in a specific airport bathroom, separately picking up illegals working for 2 different companies to choke him while he masturbates, and (fitting the definition of "bestiality") giving a reacharound to a spider monkey while reciting the American Pledge of Allegiance (with Peter looking in his direction as he is making this up).
• Beware the Silly Ones: He has an incredibly vicious side to his normally hyperactive personality, as Brian and Jeff learned this the very hard way.
• Big Brother Instinct: In, "Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q", he cannot bear to witness his sister being abused by her boyfriend Jeff and decides to outright kill the latter.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He acts very friendly and funny, but in reality he's a dangerous rapist.
• Black Comedy Rape: "Roofie Coladas" are apparently a staple drink he buys women. As Peter is quick to point out, it's also not material for a spinoff show.
  Quagmire: Well, they made it through the whole season. Now can I have my own show, Peter?
  Peter: Quagmire, you're a rapist.
  Quagmire: (Disgruntled grumbling)
• Briefs Boasting: Always shown wearing leopard-print briefs, which is meant to symbolize his show-off sex addiction.
• Bullying the Dragon: His vendetta with Brian has shades of this. In "Jerome is The New Black", after Quagmire made very vocally clear he wasn't his friend, Brian seemed to finally relent and respect his wishes. However, the incident left Quagmire with zero filter around Brian, and now lashing out at him over the mildest (and sometimes even accidental) provocation. When this finally crossed Brian's own Rage Breaking Point, he proved fully capable of antagonising Quagmire on purpose, including sabotaging his relationship with a dog lover, shutting down his cat cafe, scamming him out of thousands of dollars, and stealing the love of his life. Even in their later more petty feuds, Quagmire is usually the first to bite or throw barbs at Brian.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's a pretty competent pilot, and he does take his job seriously. Though usually pretty carefree, seeing someone being irresponsible around an airplane is one of the few things that can instantly piss him off (as Peter finds out the hard way).
• Car Fu: He rammed his sister's abusive boyfriend into a tree.
• The Casanova: He is a step forward from being just a regular womanizer- he is a pervert, victimizer, and a rapist as well.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "Giggity-giggity-giggity-goo!"
  • "OH!"
  • "Heh-heh...aaaall riiiight."
• Characterisation Click Moment: His initial characterization was a Rat Pack-esque swinger and party animal who tries and fails to pick up women. The writers name this bit from "Love Thy Trophy" as the moment where his character clicked, especially his attitude to women:
  Woman: Hey, Glenn, I have a question for you: What do you do for a living?
  Quagmire: [wearing a lecherous grin] And I have a question for you: Why are you still here?
• Characterization Marches On: He was initially portrayed as more of a fifties-type swinger fellow and seems quite normal in comparison to the extreme pervert he would eventually become; he was also very unsuccessful at attracting women before becoming the sort of guy who beds a different woman every night (often by immoral and illegal ways, such as roofies, an elaborate mechanism in his couch that sprays any woman who sits on it with knock-out gas, strips her clothes, and spreads her legs and lies her on her back while disco music plays [as seen and demonstrated in "It Takes a Village Idiot and I Married One"], and emotional manipulation). And even later than that, Quagmire still kept his near-rapist ways, but was shown to hate Brian with a passion (compare with some early episodes where Quagmire and Brian, despite not interacting much, were on friendly terms), and actually care about two women in his life: his sister, who's being abused by her boyfriend, and Cheryl Tiegs, the one woman he loved so much, that he became a sex addict when she broke up with him. After a while Quagmire's prudish temperament branched outside of Brian, and Quagmire gradually became the juxtaposing stick-in-the-mud Only Sane Man of the main group, while still being a sexual predator.
• Competition Freak: Quagmire has a habit of getting hyper-competitive at any sort of sporting event. When playing golf with Peter and the gang, he loses his temper repeatedly, at a bowling tournament, he drop-kicks a small child's birthday cake in celebration upon winning first place, and at a softball game, he doesn't allow the literal death of Horace distract him from noticing that Jerome's ball was out of bounds.
• Cool Car: He drives a red '57 Chevy Bel Air convertible.
• Create Your Own Villain: After several disproportionate tirades (and at least one brutal beatdown) against him, Brian gained a mutual contempt for Quagmire and has actively made his life difficult on several occasions over their spats.
• Crippling Castration: Subverted. Glenn's penis was bitten off by a shark. Ultimately, he received a penile transplant after a donation from his post-gender reassigned father and the power of Artistic License – Medicine/Artistic License – Biology.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He is an extremely skilled pilot, but he is also a depraved rapist with the same flaws as Joe and Peter.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • The writers can't seem to make up their minds on whether Quagmire is a Lovable Sex Maniac with a heart of gold or a rapist and kidnapper.
  • In later seasons he totters in and out between being the fairly jovial, wacky but still depraved being he was before, or a something of a priggish curmudgeon who nitpicks all the stupid antics of the cast (while still being as depraved a being as he was before).
  • His rivalry with Brian fades in and out since it's introduction. In some cases he can at least passively socialise with Brian, in others they can't remotely interact without Quagmire expressing his utter disdain for him. How mutually Brian hates Quagmire also varies, sometimes he will (if somewhat unctuously) try to make peace with Quagmire, who will have none of it, in others he spats with him with equally vicious contempt, with Quagmire even sometimes the one trying to being halfway affable until Brian intentionally reignites his anger.
• Dirty Old Man: He's really 61, but has the libido of a teenager.
• Disco Dan: The interior of his house has the look of the 60's or 70's.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Beats Brian to near death for unknowingly sleeping with his now-trans-woman dad, and shoots Peter in the head after the latter accidentally shoots his arm, destroying a part of his brain (though it didn't help that Peter was being an unapologetic jerk about it). Whether or not Quagmire meant to shoot Peter in the arm, his lack of shock speaks volumes.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Quagmire apparently doesn't need his women to be conscious or even alive in order to get off; more than one scene in different episodes show Glenn dragging away the scantily-clad/naked body of a woman who's unconscious or dead, although we never actually see what he does after the fact.

Tropes E to H

• Easily Forgiven: Both Peter and Cleveland are still friends with Quagmire, despite the sexual affairs he has had with their wives.
• Embarrassing Last Name: In "Tiegs for Two", he is revealed to be half-Polish and that his last name is really Quagglechek.
• Ephebophile: He's not even above trying to sleep with teenage girls. During the Quagfest episode, we see his global sexual conquests parade. When Thailand comes around Peter is shocked to find that they are pretty young. How young, we don't get to see but Peter at least is certain that just seeing the parade might land him and his family in hot water.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: His transgender mother Ida was his hero, and weirdness about her transition aside, they are very close. His relationship with his biological mother is a lot more complicated.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • He won't take advantage of Meg when she is extremely vulnerable.
  • Peter's boss Angela is apparently so hideous that even he wouldn't do her.
  • He's an unrepentant pervert, but is rather uncomfortable with trying to sleep with his friends' wives. He immediately regretted sleeping with Cleveland's now ex-wife, and when trying to seduce Lois during a period when Peter had amnesia and was willing to abandon his family, he immediately went flaccid when she confided how much she trusted him.
  • Sonja soon proved to be too perverted for him, being squicked out when she told him to sleep with his father (after having transitioned to a woman). It got worse.
  • He was disgusted that Carter had an affair in violation of his wedding vow to a wife of fifty years.
  • Both times when he was married, first to Peter's maid Joan and later to a prostitute named Charmese, he still respected his wedding vows and temporarily gave up his philandering until he found a way out of both relationships.
  • In "Brian Griffin's House of Payne", he tries to stop Joe from shooting Brian to death.
  • For all his hatred for Brian, he is sincerely horrified when he gets run over during their brawl in "Cat Fight", and considers calling off their feud when he realizes how toxic it has become. Of course, Brian still manages to get under his skin in later episodes, but there is at least a limit there.
  • He also has zero tolerance for racism. For example, in "Peternormal Activity", when he finds out that the man they killed was a KKK leader rather than a decorated veteran, Quagmire says he's glad that a monster is no longer on the streets.
  • In "Boys and Squirrels", he is incredibly uncomfortable when Peter, whose new height gain makes goth girls mistake him for Slenderman, texts these girls to kill themselves (Peter claims he's joking around). When Peter then yells at goth girls who think he's Slenderman to kill themselves, Quagmire, of all people, is disgusted and calls him out on it.
• Extreme Omnisexual: Peter outright said in "Meg and Quagmire" that Quagmire will "bang anything." Cue a Cutaway Gag of Quagmire in Peter's fridge, having sex with a meatloaf.
• Fair-Weather Foe: In "Must Love Dogs," he begs for help from Brian to pick up a dog-loving girl.
• Flanderization: Ever since Season 8, he's increasingly taken a hypocritical pedestal towards the other characters' immoral actions, particularly Brian who he has slowly transformed into a pompous Sitcom Arch-Nemesis towards. Unlike most cases of the trope, his original wacky perverted side is still there, but more often only to pepper the Hypocritical Humor of Quagmire of all people acting like the stuck-up voice of reason.
• Formerly Fat: According to Brian at least.
• Friend to All Children: One of his redeeming traits is that he's a good uncle to his terminally ill niece and seems to have a soft spot for young people in general besides this, even Meg. He's shown to be really good with the Griffin children, whose father is one of his closest friends, very regularly helping them out and giving them advice.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: In "Quagmire's Mom," Quagmire is arrested for statutory rape after sleeping with a teenage girl. He tries to convince the judge that his sexual deviancy is the fault of his mother, who was an even bigger deviant than him, and being raised by her warped him. The judge disagrees, pointing out that while his childhood wasn't perfect, it doesn't excuse his crime, and sentences him to prison. Brian later tells him that he's a grown man and should take responsibility for his own actions and not blame his mother for them.
• Gratuitous Japanese: In the Halloween episode, he tricks Peter and Joe into thinking he was possessed by his kamikaze pilot ancestors by speaking Japanese.
• Green-Eyed Monster: When he gets jealous, he gets very hostile or at the very least resentful.
  • After Cleveland gets his own show and not him, he becomes passive-aggressive towards him every time they meet. He's the first person to mock him of his show's cancellation, but he starts being nicer to him after his return to Quahog.
  • When Brian starts a relationship with Cheryl Tiegs, he immediately comes over the Griffin household to angrily confront him, even breaking down their door out of anger. He then dates Jillian to even the score. Unfortunately, this backfires on him when he loses his temper and gets into a scuffle with Brian at a restaurant, effectively ending his chances at both relationships.
  • He sounds envious when he tells Ida about how much of a lucky guy Peter is for being married to Lois. Ida immediately sees through this remark and correctly deduces that he has feelings for Lois.
• Hairstyle Malfunction: Revealed to wear a toupee in "Old Man and the Big 'C'," but it gets fixed by him getting a hair transplant.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He is very quick to anger when around Brian, who constantly manages to inadvertently offend or infuriate him immensely, often leading to a rather vicious verbal (and sometimes physical) beatdown by Quagmire. Even in later episodes, where Brian abhors Quagmire back and often provokes him on purpose, it is often made clear that Quagmire has an exceptionally seething hatred for Brian.
• Handsome Lech: Quagmire is a charismatic douche-bag and his creepy infatuation with womanizing turns him into a manipulative, rapey and downright criminal seducer of women.
• The Hedonist: Often seeking pleasure from seducing women into having sex with him when he isn't committing weird sex acts (see Ambiguous Criminal History above) or flat-out sexual assaults. In one of the Family Guy books, Brian describes Quagmire as "Caligula in a Hawaiian shirt." Notably, the book was written before their feud started and wasn't meant as an insult. If anything, Quagmire would've taken it as a compliment.
• He Who Fights Monsters: His established hatred for Brian has led to Quagmire developing increased aggressive and occasionally outright violent tendencies over petty (and often inadvertant) offences from the latter, as well as a similar bouts of snobbish preachiness as his nemesis. After a while Brian came to openly hate Quagmire back, while by then Quagmire's defensive ego had grown to practically match Brian's pretentiousness, essentially making them Mirroring Factions who bicker and pontificate at each other over petty, often completely hypocritical reasons.
• Hey, That's My Line!: In "Quagmire's Quagmire", Glenn thought that his new super-kinky girlfriend Sonja was perfect, until she went too far even for him:
  Quagmire: [while Sonja beats him with a rod after throwing him in the trunk of his car] Ow! You're hurting me, and I really need to clean out my trunk!
  Sonja: Oh, I'm gonna clean out your trunk. Giggity.
  Quagmire: That's my word... that's my word! [Sonja slams the trunk shut]
• Hidden Depths: In addition to his disgust with Brian's hypocritical and self-centered nature, "Jerome Is The New Black" showed that Quagmire is not without humanity. He volunteers at a homeless shelter, is helping his sister through an abusive relationship, and that his extreme pansexualality is his attempt to fill the void left by his failed relationship with model Cheryl Tiegs.
• Hypocrite: Many of the things he chewed Brian out for during his "The Reason You Suck" Speech in "Jerome is the New Black" are things he is either just as guilty for, or 'more' guilty for.
  • He calls Brian out for hitting on Lois, when he has done the same to an equal if not higher degree. Quagmire's actions go beyond Brian's, including stealing some of her hair and digging through the Griffin's garbage for her toenail clippings. In "Big Man on Hippocampus", he also decides to take advantage of Peter's amnesia to convince Lois to sleep with him. Brian's attraction to Lois is portrayed as more respectful. Quagmire also had a full affair with Cleveland's first wife Loretta.
    • Additionally, Quagmire finds Lois the fantasy woman, and, if we trust Peter's word in "Brief Encounter", believes she's an "angel". Lois on many occasions is just as unlikeable as Brian and for many of the same reasons as he is. Of course this is implied to be because Quagmire has a crush on Lois that overrules her personality traits, while most of Quagmire's qualms with Brian are implied to be exacerbated by his petty hatred of dogs as a whole.
    • In "The Heartbreak Dog", he's one of several characters that chews Brian out for having an affair with Bonnie. His presence at the intervention feels completely unfair since Quagmire has not only previously caused an affair of his own between Cleveland and his first wife Loretta, but he's also tricked Joe into letting him have sex with Bonnie, and alluded to raping Joe's infant daughter.
  • He claims Brian takes advantage of Peter's generosity by pooping in Peter's yard, which is standard dog behavior. He instead takes advantage of all of his friends' generosity, including Peter and Clevaland, whose wives he sexually harrassed or had affairs with, and Joe, who he tricked into letting Quagmire have sex with his wife. But above and beyond all of that, he is continually taking advantage of Joe not throwing him in jail for his many sexual crimes.
  • He uses the line "How's that son of yours you never see?" in referencing Brian's failure as a father. Quagmire himself encountered several children that resembled him in "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing" and promptly ran away from all of them. His only child he ever showed any affection towards was his daughter Anna Lee, who he gave up for adoption in the episode right before this rant, because she was getting in the way of his casual sex, and later because he wouldn't be a good parent. In Dylan's only episode prior to this rant, Brian and Dylan grew into a positive relationship, until Dylan himself chose to leave Brian in order to take care of his mother using the lessons he learned from Brian.
  • He claimed to be superior Brian by admitting his flaws and hypocrisy In "Quagmire's Mom" he is revealed to blame all his personal issues and flaws on his mother's upbringing of him. Brian calls him out on refusing responsibility for his crimes. Quagmire's retaliation is that an Atheist shouldn't support a Christian like his mother, talking down to Brian about Atheism, when he accused Brian of using Atheism to talk down to others.
  • He criticizes Brian for being a one-note "bore". Character Development and Flanderization turned him into the group's stick-in-the-mud member outside of his lampshaded one-note sexual deviant personality and love of cats.
  • In "Peter-assment", he tells Peter that if he doesn't have sex with his (female) boss, he's gay. When Peter tries to have Quagmire have sex with her for him later, he says no, simply because she is "ugly". By his own logic, he must be gay, but this is never brought up. Likewise, he calls Peter out at the end for (supposedly) having an affair, when again, he said not doing it makes him gay.
  • A deleted scene from "And I'm Joyce Kinney" has him disgusted over the fact that he lives next door to Lois when her past of being a former porn star is revealed. This is despite him being a registered sex offender who lusted after her beforehand.
  • In "The Giggity Wife", he gets into a drunken Accidental Marriage with an older, washed-up Streetwalker named Charmise. He's disgusted with her for her sexual past, yet he has slept with thousands of girls and women, and continued to do so after that marriage ended.
  • Quagmire rightfully takes an issue with Jeff's domestic and emotional abuse of his sister. He also wrongfully teaches a pick-up class that thrives on emotional abuse, keeps restraint devices to force women to have sex with him, and even when he doesn't use them, takes no regard for the bodies of the women he drugs into sex.
  • Since the moment their feud was established, Quagmire aggressively abhors Brian for being a Fair-Weather Foe, and makes vigorously clear each and every time that he doesn't owe Brian a shred of feigned kindness just to convenience his selfish ego. In "Must Love Dogs" however, Quagmire has no qualms skulking up to Brian for a favor, and when Brian in turn spitefully throws it back at him, an outraged Quagmire accuses him of being a jerk for no reason.
  • Also in "Must Love Dogs", he pretends to like dogs when in truth, he really hates them, all so he can get into a relationship with a dog lover. One of the things he hated Brian for is his pretentiousness, but this proves that he's not above being pretentious if it suits him.
• Hypocrite Has a Point:
  • Quagmire calls out Brian for, among other things, dating only bimbos, lusting after the married Lois, and not looking after his kid. Although Quagmire himself has these flaws too and is aware of it, Brian doesn't give a single retort to "The Reason You Suck" Speech that he has just received.
  • Even in later spats, where Brian does have plenty of ammo concerning Quagmire's own sleazy habits, Quagmire is perfectly willing to draw it back onto him. After all, Brian had zero qualms with Quagmire until he got bitter about him refusing to be his friend:
    Brian: [angry] Hey, if you guys are so close, maybe Jillian should know that you teach a class in picking up women?!
    Quagmire: [equally angry] And Cheryl should know that you took that class!

Tropes I to L

• I Love the Dead:
  • Lampshaded by himself when he was about to have sex with the corpse of a hooker Stewie sniped, only to stop and ask himself if he actually was mentally ill.
  • In "And Then There Were Fewer", after a woman named Stephanie is shot and killed at a dinner party, Quagmire drives off with her dead, naked body in the trunk of his car.
  • The episode "Mr. and Mrs. Stewie" features this exchange between Peter and Quagmire:
    Peter: Men need someone to spoon with and snuggle with just the same as women. Who says that the body next to you has to be male or female, or whatever?
    Quagmire: Or alive.
    Peter: Yeah. Well, no...
  • In the episode where Loretta, Cleveland's ex-wife, dies an Quagmire is in charge of transporting her body:
    Cleveland: Why is [Loretta's corpse] wearing a French Maid costume?
    Quagmire: Because I wanted to nail a dead french maid. Giggity-giggity|!
• Implausible Deniability: In "Tea Peter," he married a giraffe and had a Half-Human Hybrid child with it. Despite the fact that the newborn giraffe had his face and even said a variation of his catchphrase ("Giraffity!"), Quagmire promptly denied the child was his.
• Introverted Cat Person: In later seasons, while still very outspoken sexually, he becomes the (often hypocritically) more uptight and sensitive of the group, with his love for cats also a more focused trait. On the negative side of this trope, it's also implied to be one of the more petty reasons he hates Brian, when he dates a dog rescuer, he is revealed to find dogs insufferable compared to his quiet affection for cats.
• The Jailbait Wait: While Quagmire has had sex with underage girls as young as twelve, he's apparently willing to wait for Meg. More than almost anyone else on the show, he also seems to genuinely care for her, much more so than her own family, everyone else in Quahog, and the universe at large.
• Jerkass: Most of the time, he's a heartless sex hound who will do anything to take advantage of almost any woman and he's abandoned who knows how many kids. Also sometimes his own hatred for Brian crosses over into Disproportionate Retribution, like when he beat up Brian for sleeping with his female-transitioned father (something which Brian was completely unaware of).
• Jerkass Has a Point: Since Season 7, he is extremely standoffish and vitriolic towards Brian, even when he tries to be nice to him. When Brian angrily calls him out on this in "Adam West High" however and demands some basic courtesy back, Quagmire fires it back around at him, reasoning that Brian is never nice to him out of decency but simply because he can't stand someone hating him, and is just uncutuously kissing up to him so he'll stroke Brian's ego in return.
• Jerkass to One: He flip-flops between a heartless sex hound and a Jerk with a Heart of Gold but normally gets along with most people. However, from Season 8 onwards, he completely despises Brian and is openly rude to him whenever they interact.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He grew attached to his illegitimate daughter, and, during his infamous rant against Brian, revealed that he works at a soup kitchen to help the homeless. He also gave said daughter up when he realized she would be happy, and he expressed disapproval when Peter pretended to be crippled (in the Star Wars special). He's also shown to care about the Griffin kids, giving them advice and helping them out, even if it is to do bad things. Even when he was trying to sleep with Meg, he actually was willing to go at her own pace rather than just drug her as he would done with any other woman.
• Karma Houdini:
  • It's Played for Laughs more often than not but by any definition he's a serial rapist and prolific sex offender, amongst other moral and criminal offences. He is guilty of faking love just to get women to sleep with him, has several children across the world that he doesn't care to know about (running away from one that might have been his), brutally assaulted or was otherwise horrible to Brian for various petty reasons, kept women prisoner in his own home, is guilty of necrophilia...basically, by all rights he should be in a maximum security prison for life.
  • As with most of the cast, his crimes take a Refuge in Audacity when they are just a cutaway gag. In one infamous gag (often censored), he even sexually assaults Marge Simpson, proceeds to have a consensual affair with her, is caught by Homer and shoots him in a panic, then murders the entire family, including Bart, Lisa and Maggie, to cover up the event. The stuff that is played straight with Quagmire however still includes sexual assault, peeping on women undressing, and assault and murder of his sister's Domestic Abuser (while this is portrayed somewhat sympathetically, it's still obviously murder).
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Following Brian's mutual declaration of hatred for Quagmire in "Tiegs For Two", most "Brian vs Quagmire" bouts are doses of karma for both characters, due to both mercilessly dressing each other down over their flaws and most conflicts ending with them mutually screwing each other over.
• Keet: Quagmire is often always upbeat and energetic for the perverted creep that he is. Somewhat downplayed in later seasons, especially around Brian.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: One of his most consistent character traits (aside from the sex) is that he loves cats. He's had at least two (one of whom was killed by Peter in a prank gone wrong), and couldn't resist turning a transcontinental flight to Alaska back to Rhode Island just because he heard that a neighbourhood cat was about to give birth.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Murdered his sister's abusive boyfriend.
• Lampshaded Double Entendre: He often uses "giggity" as a verbal punctuation mark whenever he says or overhears a line of dialogue that could be taken sexually.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Downplayed. While his chin is certainly huge and square, this trope really only applies during his more noble moments.
• Laser-Guided Karma: His incredibly aggressive and one-sided hatred against Brian eventually gets requited by the latter, who hits him with incredibly low blows as payback. Brian's revenge schemes include hooking up with the one woman he truly loved, Cheryl Tiegs, scamming him of almost all of his entire bonus, and setting up a Humiliation Conga with a dog-loving girlfriend.
• Last-Name Basis: The only one who actually calls him "Glenn" is Lois, and Cleveland on some occasions.
• Laughably Evil: Being one of the most morally bankrupt characters in the whole series is what makes him hilarious.
• Lean and Mean: Played straight with the lean and zigzagged with the mean. He's clearly the thinnest of Peter's friend group and, in later episodes, is the most irritable among them. And of course he's especially mean towards Brian.
• Leitmotif: Has his own theme song
  He's Quagmire, Quagmire
  You never really know what he's gonna do next
  He's Quagmire, Quagmire
  "Giggity-giggity-giggity-giggity-Let's have sex!"
• Lust Makes You Dumb: His ibido has frequently gotten him in trouble.
  • Due to his lax behavior in using protection, he has several STDs.
  • In "Blind Ambition", he spies on Lois in the bathroom, by hiding on the ceiling, which results in him getting arrested and almost kicked out of the neighborhood
  • In "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire" he almost gets killed by Cleveland for sleeping with Loretta, Cleaveland's then wife.

Tropes M to P

• Mirror Character: Throughout the course of their feud, Brian has become more openly sleazy and vindictive back towards Quagmire, while Quagmire has became more prudish and judgemental. Most of their verbal spats revolve around them pontificating at each other for utterly hypocritical reasons, with "Tiegs For Two" even ending on them getting called out for being as bad as each other.
• Moral Myopia: Despite being an unrepentant rapist, he's distraught over his sister's abuse from her boyfriend.
• Never My Fault: Quagmire has the tendency to blame others for his womanizing habits. He claims that losing Cheryl Tiegs caused him to attempt to fill in the whole with other women and started his sex-crazed antics despite other episodes showing that Quagmire was perverted since infancy, and he later tries to blame his mother for him being the womanizer he is. Brian calls him out on it, though being Brian, it doesn't faze Quagmire remotely.
• No Sympathy: During Brian's funeral, unlike everyone else attending, he spends it watching a Red Sox game on his cellphone.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Pointed out in "Tiegs For Two" regarding Brian. When he reaches similar petty lengths to spite Brian, even using his old girlfriend to get back at him, the girls complain about using them and acting like children. In the DVD edit, Quagmire gets on a pedestal and gloats to Brian about this before they point out they were referring to both of them.
• Older Than They Look: Quagmire claims to be 61 years old, though he appears to be the same age as Peter, Joe, and Cleveland.
• One-Hour Work Week: Has a job as an airline pilot, although he is rarely seen at work. Justified, as pilots often have nonstandard work schedules.
• Parental Incest: At least expressed an interest in having sex with his then-infant daughter when she was old enough (although when he actually met an adult daughter he immediately stopped trying to seduce her after the relationship was confirmed), and has sex with his mother. He drew the line at sex with his female-transitioned father. Sonja forced him anyway.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: His feud with Brian, when not flat out violent rage, is usually this, especially since Brian has started hating him back. They both thrive on heckling each other and calling out each other's hypocrisies.
• The Peeping Tom: In one episode he is charged with peeping in the ladies' room.
• Pet the Dog: Meg and Brenda are the only ones to bring out his somewhat noble aspects, as they are the only women whom he appears to show genuine care for.
• Phrase Catcher: Multiple characters have responded to his various sexual exploits and double entendres with "Who else but Quagmire?"
• Pink Is Erotic: He's the sex-obsessed neighbor of the Griffins and he has a pink and purple color scheme in his house. His bedroom has pink walls, a magenta bed, and mirrors on the ceiling. When he worked as a stripper, it involved pink lighting, pink smoke, and he wore pink with Peter when he worked as a prostitute with Peter as his pimp.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Quagmire's a pilot, a fact only occasionally brought up in the later half of the series.
• Playboy Has a Daughter: Subverted: After finding an infant has been left on his doorstep from a one-night-stand, Quagmire discovers that the child is his and he must learn to face the challenges of single parenthood. It doesn't work out and he puts her up for adoption.
• Practically Different Generations: Given how he's Older Than They Look and really irresponsible, some of his illegitimate children have a large gap in age. Two episodes feature and infant and 18 year old daughter of his, and a Cutaway Gag reveals he has an adult son in Madrid.

Tropes Q to U

• Really Gets Around:
  • Loretta exploits his promiscuity in the episode "The Cleveland Loretta Quagmire" when she chose Quagmire to have an affair with, knowing that Quagmire is all too willing to have sex with anybody.
  • Well, anything female with a vagina. He's even hit on Meg with the line "Hey Meg, 18 yet?" Even Loretta exploited this in "The Cleveland Loretta Quagmire." He's been banned from the zoo because of the "sexy monkeys". The only known exception to this is Peter's boss, Angela, who even Quagmire refuses to have sex with, on the grounds that she is "a complete dumpster fire."
  • Glenn has an ambivalent attitude towards transgender women, as in one episode he hits on a feminine-looking individual, rejects her when he realizes the woman is trans, backs up a moment to check if she's pre-op/post-op and goes back to rejecting her when she says she's still pre-op. However, in another episode he gets really upset when Brian informs him that based on his scent, he had sex with two Filipino women and a man, when he was under the impression he had sex with three Filipino women.
  • In "Family Gay" he takes Peter up on his offer of sex but only if they do it "his way."
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In "Jerome is the New Black," Quagmire gives a long ranting speech to Brian, who has spent the entire episode trying to be his friend.
  Quagmire: OK. I'll tell ya. You are the worst person I know. You constantly hit on your best friend's wife. The man pays for your food and rescued you from certain death, and this is how you repay him? And to add insult to injury, you defecate all over his yard. And you're such a sponge. You pay for nothing — you're always like "Ooh, I'll get you later," but later never comes. And what really bothers me, is you pretend that you're this deep guy that loves women for their souls, but all you do is date bimbos. Yeah, I date women for their bodies, but at least I'm honest about it. I don't buy them a copy of The Catcher in the Rye and then lecture them with some 7th Grade interpretation about Holden Caulfield is some profound intellectual. He wasn't. He was a SPOILED BRAT. And that's why you like him so much -- he's YOU. GOD, you're pretentious. And you delude yourself by thinking you're a great writer, even though you're terrible. You know, I shoulda known Cheryl Tiegs didn't write me that note... She woulda known there's no "A" in the word "definite." And what I think I hate most about you, is your textbook liberal agenda. How we should "Legalize Pot, maaan..." How big business is crushing the underclass, how homelessness is the biggest tragedy in America... Well what have YOU done to help?! I work down at the Soup Kitchen, Brian... Never seen YOU down there... You wanna help? GRAB A LADLE. And by the way, driving a Prius does not make you Jesus Christ. Oh, WAIT — you don't believe in Jesus Christ, or any religion for that matter... Because "religion is for idiots." Well who the HELL are YOU to talk down to anyone?! You failed college TWICE, which isn't nearly as bad as your failure as a father — how's that son of yours you never see? But you know what? I could forgive all of that... all of it... if you weren't such a BORE. That's the worst of it, Brian. You're just a big, sad, alcoholic BORE. Sigh... Well, see ya, Brian. Thanks for the fucking steak.
• Red Is Heroic: Downplayed. He wears a red Hawaiian shirt, but again, only really counts during his noble moments.
• Red Is Violent: He wears a red Hawaiian shirt and can get pretty aggressive if pushed far enough.
• Refuge in Audacity: Quagmire has complained about never being given his own spinoff unlike Cleveland, to which Peter in response lampshades that Quagmire is a convicted rapist.
• Relative Button: Save for his mother, he becomes incredibly violent toward any perceived slight done to his family, which Brian accidentally press a lot.
• Romance and Sexuality Separation: Spooner Street's resident pervert Quagmire is perfectly capable of having emotion-free impersonal sex with just about anything that moves and quite a few things which normally do not. He has a long-standing desire for the one woman who is unattainable to him - Lois Griffin. His infatuation for her includes passive stalking and building a shrine in her honor. On the one occasion where Lois becomes attainable - she has tired of Peter's stupid antics - she indicates her availability to Quagmire. However, his long-standing romantic infatuation combined with Performance Anxiety and guilt that he is somehow betraying Peter - and above all the realization he is in love with her - all combine to devastate his libido. While Peter has a last-ditch play to get her back, he is seen escalating a Viagra overdose, electric shock therapy, direct injections into his penis, and finally hitting himself very hard with a hammer. All to no avail.
• Running Gagged: Quagmire's hatred of Brian between the eighth and ninth seasons, with Brian frequently triggering Quagmire's wrath by inadvertantly offending him somehow. This gag last appeared a heated fight in "Tiegs For Two" with only much more subdued disagreements between them since. While it does return a couple seasons later, it is reformed more into a two-way Sitcom Arch-Nemesis dynamic where both Brian and Quagmire are equally cold and vindictive towards each other.
• Selective Enforcement:
  • To some level, as while he has drawn the line with Peter and co's antics at times, it usually takes a lot to reach his Rage Breaking Point and he remains their friends, while he has zero filter around Brian and will recurrently aggress him over the slightest infraction or display of ego, to the point that it led to Brian hating Quagmire back in the first place.
  • Quagmire loves cats passionately, letting his roam freely in his house and even attempting to open a free range cat cafe. By contrast he believes dogs should stay off the furniture and be banned from coffee shops. Naturally, Quagmire's dislike for dogs has also been implied to play into his aforementioned intolerance for Brian.
• Self-Deprecation: Later in the show, he starts voicing multiple critisms from fans, including jibes at Peter's Jerkass antics, darkly offensive humor and the excessive use of Conway Twitty. Also, nearly everything Brian says or does around him manages to piss him off, echoing the character's decreasing popularity throughout the years.
• Share the Sickness: He has numerous STDs as a result of his promiscuous lifestyle and knowingly spreads them to the women he sleeps with.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: He originally had a one-sided animosity against Brian, who has gradually given more retaliation to Quagmire's bitterness towards him, reaching to the point of a rather even handedly vicious Escalating War in "Tiegs For Two" where it had died down, until it re-exploded full circle in "Brian the Closer" and has since perked up in some light verbal spats.
• The Sociopath: He gleefully takes advantage of multiple women, plenty of which are only high schoolers. He also firmly believes himself to be on the moral high ground when comparing himself to Brian.
• Stalker with a Crush: He may go after any attractive woman that catches his eye, but several episodes show that he has a unhealthy obsession with Lois.
• Straw Hypocrite: It's heavily implied that the list of things he hypocritically hates Brian for are only a cover and that the real reason as to why he hates him is because he seeks an easy target to deflect onto, much like Brian often does, and also because he, a cat person, hates Brian, a dog.
• Supreme Chef: A few episodes establish Quagmire as being an exemplary chef, with one even having him hosting his own cooking show.
• Token Evil Teammate: While the rest of his friends and acquaintances can be amoral in some way, he takes the cake for being the most amoral out of all of them given his lengthy sex crime record.
• Took a Level in Cynic: Become noticeably more curmudgeonly and prudish in later seasons. Not that he was any less aware of the Crapsack World around him before, he just rolled with it. He was pretty damn corrupt to begin with, though was notably the most laid back and happy-go-lucky of Peter and his friends. His role as a Self-Deprecation avatar however has gradually evolved him into a much more cynical character (he has gained an outright Hair-Trigger Temper around Brian).
• Too Kinky to Torture: He's into bondage and is sometimes seen being the submissive one. He also enjoyed getting slapped across the face by Lois. However, "Quagmire's Quagmire" shows that even his kinks have limits.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Glenn is... intense when it comes to sports. Bowling and golf have shown to bring out the worst in him.
• Unstoppable Rage: He was not pleased when Brian slept with his transsexual dad.

Tropes V to Z

• Vague Age: His true age is never really confirmed. Though his I.D. says he's 61, there are several contradictions. Several flashback scenes (and a time travel episode) show that he's around the same age as his friends, he's amongst those barred from drinking alcohol by Mayor West's decision to raise the legal age to 50, his dad had claimed to have had a sex change at 61, and Peter's testimony at his trial for statutory rape implies that he's around 48.
• With Friends Like These...: Lusts after Peter's wife and daughter, broke into his house to viciously assault his dog, destroyed Cleveland's first marriage by having an affair with Loretta, and is guilty of virtually every sex crime in the book, to the apparent knowledge of Joe, a police officer. It's a wonder he still has a social life.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: This is a deliberately implausible retcon that's Played for Laughs. Quagmire was stated to be born in 1946 (1948 on the DVD) but, in "Fist Full of Meg", he said he went to high school in 1986, when he would be at least forty. On top of that he's shown, in previous episodes, to be an older adult and serving in the Navy in 1988.

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