20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn’t Know About Family Guy

7. Quahog Is Named To Be Inoffensive

Unlike The Simpsons, which purposely has Springfield as a state-less, geographically inconsistent city, Family Guy firmly roots itself in Rhode Island, where Seth MacFarlane went to college. Partially on Fox's insistence, it serves as a grounding for some of the more ridiculous antics on show. Quite why the name of Quahog was picked for the fictional town, however, has various misreportings.

Some claim it's the mascot of Rhode Island School of Design, where MacFarlane went to college, although their (unofficial) mascot is the much more bizarre Scrotie the Scrotum. The real reason is that quahogs, a colloquialism for a hard clam, are common in Rhode Island, making it a generic, but locally inflected, name. The reason for this is that producer Danny Smith didn't want to cause massive offence to a real RI community; all hell had broken loose in his hometown after a joke on previous show and wanted to play that down (a little).