10 Completely Insulting TV Plot Twists
6. Brian Gets Brought Back To Life - Family Guy
In the twelfth season of Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane made the controversial decision to kill off Brian, the Griffin family dog, and absolute main stay of the program, which had been dealing with staleness in recent years.
It featured a poignant goodbye to the character, and even though there was some fan backlash, MacFarlane made a bold choice to liven up the series. With Stewie destroying his time machine earlier in the same episode, the journey of Brian and Stewie came to a close, and Brian was truly gone from the show for good.
Just kidding! The dog was back in two weeks.
Yes, through the use of some time traveling mumbo jumbo, Stewie is able to save Brian's life and completely reset the monumental changes that had just been made.
The worst part about this was just how blatant it was at being a ploy to stir up buzz, and therefore, ratings. Brian's resurrection wasn't a result of the wishes of fans, the whole plot was there from the very beginning.
At the very least, the three episode arc may have backfired, as fans slowly began to wane. By the finale of that same season, Family Guy aired its first ever episode to gain fewer than four million viewers in the U.S. And it was all downhill from there.