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

3. The Episode Names Were Going To Be Based On '40s Mystery Radio Shows

Episode names of animated sitcoms have a strangely paradoxical nature. On the one hand they need to be descriptive and provide a succinct summary of the episode, but on the other they're really only ever really going to be used by more serious fans who read up on the series and buy the DVDs. Quite what their purpose is is pretty strange. Although the early days of Family Guy serve as a window into one often overlooked positive of them.

Originally, Family Guy episodes were going to be named in honour of mystery radio shows from the forties, leading to some confusing and morbid names that don't really have much bearing on the episodes. Just read the titles of the episodes against the descriptions in the image above and you'll see that the relation is pretty strained. This proved confusing during production, with the names making it harder to communicate about episodes, so this trope was dropped for the second season. Although some (here's looking at you, Hell Comes to Quahog), still aren't that helpful.