Family Guy/Road to the Multiverse

Road to the Multiverse
Season 8, Episode 1
Airdate	September 27, 2009
Written by
Directed by
← 7x16 Peter's Progress	8x02 → Family Goy
Family Guy — Season Eight

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Road to the Multiverse is the first episode of the eighth season of Family Guy, and the one hundred twenty-eighth episode overall.

The episode featured Stewie and Brian in their fifth "road adventure" episode. Here, in a plot inspired by the television program Sliders, Stewie demonstrates a remote control that allows him and Brian to travel through alternate universes.

Starring: Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Mila Kunis, Seth Green, Mike Henry

Also Starring: Adam West (Mayor Adam West)

Plot Overview

During the Quahog Clam Fair, Stewie wins an animal contest with his entry: a genetically altered pedigreed pig, featuring a exaggerated amount of muscle and fists. Brian sees the pig and wonders how Stewie acquired it. Stewie explains it rather simply: With an ability to travel to other universes, he traveled to a farm that engineers said animals.

After Brian expresses his skeptism, Stewie shows off his Multiverse machine and the remote control allowing such travel to be possible. Stewie explains that he is able to travel to parallel universes, each depicting Quahog in the same time and place but under different conditions. Exactly that happens when Stewie demonstrates the machine - even though Stewie has never traveled to more than one other parallel universe, and is thus unaware of how to return them home.

During their first stops, Brian and Stewie experience the following:

• A non-Christian Quahog, where Stewie claims that technological and medical advances are 1,000 years ahead of the real Quahog due to the lack of Christian influence. Meg is depicted as stunningly beautiful, and Stewie says even she is "one of the uglier ones," especially since Lois is really beautiful. In addition, the Sistine Chapel is without the familiar Christian-inspired frescoes from artists such as Michelangelo, instead substituting a collage of photographs of Jodie Foster, created by John Hinckley Jr.

• The Flintstones universe, where Peter and Lois bear a distinct resemblance to Fred and Wilma Flintstone, respectively. Both use crude language, with the word "rock" substituting for the offending words, and a frog is used as a condom.

• A Disney-inspired universe, where the main characters of Family Guy are all depicted as various characters from Disney films. They all sing about the joys of eating pie ... until Mort Goldman shows up. Knowing that Mort is a Jew, all of the characters attack Mort.

• Quahog in the Ice Age. Stewie and Brian are frozen in a glacier, until Brian's tail-wagging frees both of them.

• Two alternate universes with life in Quahog depicted had recent United States history never happened as it did. One features a Japanese-controlled American, since the atomic bomb had never been dropped; Stewie explains that Japanese forces never did surrender and eventually achieved victory in the Pacific. The other is of a post-World War III society, with Quahog depicted as a wasteland; Stewie says that because Frank Sinatra was never born, he never used his influence to elect John F. Kennedy president, and President Nixon then botched the Cuban Missle Crisis, setting off nuclear war with Russia.

After briefly visiting other alternate worlds, including one featuring Brian and Stewie in live action, the two end up in a world where humans are subservient to dogs, with the dogs acquiring human characteristics. Brian likes this world and wants to stay, although Stewie wants to leave. The two get into an argument and in the process, the remote control is broken, trapping them in the "dog universe."

The two travel incognito to the Griffin residence, where the family are dogs and have a human version of Brian. There, (dog) Brian and (human) Stewie learn that dog Stewie has invented the same "Multiverse" remote control and is able to send them home. However, before (dog) Stewie can send the real Brian and Stewie home, (dog) Peter aggravates (human) Stewie, and (human) Stewie bites (dog) Peter on the hand. (Dog) Joe happens by the Griffins, witnesses the bite incident, and takes Stewie to the Human Pound to be euthanized.

The two Brians and (dog) Stewie go to the Human Pound, where they are able to free Stewie and defeat (dog) Joe as he comes after them. After returning to the Griffins in the dog world, (dog) Stewie sends the real Brian and Stewie home. (Human) Brian, realizing that he no longer wants to be subservient to dogs, jumps in the portal to the real Quahog, just before it closes. However, (human) Brian's stay in Quahog is short-lived; he is quickly hit by a car and (presumably) killed.