American Dad/WMG

The series is a virtual world experiment by the CIA onto Stan ala The Prisoner meets The Truman Show

Stan either volunteered for a virtual world experiment or was forced into it. In real life, Stan was a pathetic racist jingoist who would blindly let his prejudices get in the way of his life. In virtual world, his dreams could all come true of being a perfect human, in either case not knowing the circumstances of why.

Bullock could be the morally ambiguous administrator of this experiment and have full control over all that happens in it, right down to the non-canon episodes like "Raptures Delight" and every Non Sequitur Scene. In the virtual world, Real!Stan's life is comprised of...

• • Francine: Ideal representation of what he'd want as a wife.
  • Steve: Ideal son of him and the brunette woman who Fracine was based upon that real world!Stan loves or loved.
  • Haley: The opposite of Steve political ideology wise but as ignorant and stubborn.
  • Roger: Stan's id personified.

In addition to those, the virtual world adds things like Francine's occasional Axe Crazy moments, Steve's femininity and Haley being his daughter. And the kicker? Klaus is really real world!Stan. You see, as Klaus is the show's Butt Monkey, it acts as a reflection as what the program sees him as and given a German accent to offset his German prejudice. The main Stan is a representation of what real world!Stan wants to be in life. Roger might actually be a relative or friend of real world!Stan that acts as a Spanner in the Works to the series, thus being the Ensemble Darkhorse everyone loves since he writes his own material. The really off the rails gags like the Stan and Francine subplot in the Bar Mitzvah heist episode is Bullock, Roger or some other technician getting bored and doing some crazy crap.

Jack Smith isn't really Stan's father.

Or Stan's mother isn't a natural blond. Would explain where Steve got red hair.

• • Francine isn't a natural blond (in "Star Trek," she let her brownish-red roots grow back after her usual hair stylist quit his job when he discovered that being gay is a choice).

Roger's alternate personalities are because of the Best Friending Ritual from the episode "Roger 'N Me".

Within two days of doing his first ritual, he has all of three peoples' memories floating around inside of him (including his own), and one or all of the duplicated sets of memories seem to have perfect recall. He starts disguising himself before this, but they only seem to take on lives of their own (and he only forgets which personalities are actually his alternates) after the events of this episode.

The Golden Turd literally affects peoples' minds.

A man beats his best friend to death for half the potential worth of the artifact (which drives him to guilt-based suicide), a long-time Ethical Cop steals evidence two weeks before his retirement, and a woman poisons her husband for planning to return the artifact and clear his conscience. It then becomes an item of reverence after the apocalypse. Possible, especially considering Money, Dear Boy, but should all of those things have happened so quickly?

Everything in this show is just a Bizarro flip from Family Guy, and thus infinitely more interesting in every way.

• • The father figure is a competent and reliable employee that is largely humorless, and, if anything, suffers from an extreme lack of imagination rather than ludicrous ADD.
  • The wife/mother is an idiot with few translatable skills.
  • The son is a savvy and intelligent nerd with a regular clique of friends.
  • The daughter is sexually desirable (despite cracks about her allegedly mannish looks from Roger and, in one episode, Karl Rove), sexually active (though most of the time, she sleeps with men to get weed or money—In "Helping Handis," she's seen picking through a pile of stems and seeds, then grumbles, "Damn it, Eddie, I slept with you" and in "Failure Is Not a Factory-Installed Option," she slept with a group of sleazy men to pay the bills when Stan had abandoned his family), politically active, married, and is only treated like a Butt Monkey by Stan because of her political views, not because she's the least favorite family member.
  • Instead of a megalomaniac baby that will grow up to be an ineffectual adult, we have an egomaniacal alien that has actively been affecting human culture for over sixty years.
  • Instead of a talking dog that has grown to be a Small Name, Big Ego-ish Author Avatar, we have a talking fish who is largely pitiable and has been Demoted to Extra as of late.
  • Peter works a desk job at a beer factory (though he started out as an assemblyman at a toy factory) while Stan is a field agent in the CIA, allowing for some interesting plots or plot devices.
  • Unlike Chris in Family Guy who's basically an Expy of his dad, Stan & Steve are opposites (though Steve, like Jamie on Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, does look up to his dad and believes what he believes [until Stan gets outed as a hypocrite in some way], i.e., that homosexuals are insidious and planning to indoctrinate heterosexual men as seen in "Lincoln Lover" or that masturbation is a sin as seen in "A Smith in the Hand") which adds for some interesting dynamics in the episodes where they are paired up together.

Roger's planet is either destroyed or a Crapsack World-cum-World Gone Mad.

What do you think would happen to a planet whose main race practices Comedic Sociopathy?

• Think? We know.

The disguise Roger wears in the episode where he and Steve try to tell Bush about Bin Laden's location is supposed to represent Light Yagami

Roger's real mission is to replace everyone on Earth.

The crash test dummy story was a ruse. Eventually it's just going to be him impersonating everyone and the Smiths.

• • He may have help with that. Fred Savage has been impersonating a good dozen of people including Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore for years, whose to say he might not be from the smae planet and such?
  • That... Would be a HILARIOUS episode.

Barry's parents are keeping him fat for the good of humanity.

As many of us know, Barry takes "vitamins" to suppress what a psychotic villain he is. However, it is revealed at many points in the show through his dialog and actions that sometimes these pills probably don't work as well as they should("I wanna kill her with a bottle!" "Let's kill his mom, next!") So what are his parents to do if they can't completely slow him down mentally? Slow him down physically, of course! They feed him an endless stream of junk food and discourage exercise, keeping him fat and complacent. After all, we've seen how dangerous he is off his meds, could you imagine how much that level of danger would be multiplied if he was physically fit?! Unfortunately for Barry, but possibly good for the people of Langley Falls, this horrid diet has caused a large host of health problems (such as type-2 diabetes and renal failure) that are only now starting to get acknowledged by the cast. In the future, I can see an episode where Stan, disgusted by Barry's weight, puts him on a diet and exercise regimen to make him physically fit. Barry, during one of his psychotic moments of "clarity", realizes his chance and stops taking his pills or flushes them down the toilet, then starts to really fuck shit up.

• Or, alternatively, the pills have a side-effect of lethargy and a slowed-down metabolism. As a troper who has gained a lot of weight from taking paxil as a child, I can tell you right now that such things are possible. If this is the case, rather than my above WMG, it would probably make better social commentary about the American pharmaceutical system. However, it would probably only be mentioned in passing, and would sadly sacrifice the opportunity for an excellent episode showing Barry returning to his true Large Ham Chessmaster self.

The serie will end with a Big Damn Movie

about Roger's world, a governement conspirancy, the place were Klaus become king or a parody of a movie.

• Linda's secret attraction to Francine.
• Hayley and Jeff's troubled marriage. Snot will make sure it becomes worse.
• Francine's real parents.
• Debbie wants to get back with Steve.
• Toshi will give a Reason You Suck Speech to the characters.
  • And it will be in english, or just in japanese and people will think he's saying something heartwarming.
• A crisis involving a terrorist group. The leader is the Big Bad from one of the main characters past. This time Stan will be good in the crisis.

Roger is a child of Doctor Frank N Furter

A hedonistic pan-sexual alien crossdresser? anyone else think its hereditary?

Hayley isn't really bi

She's shown interest in doing the nasty with other women, but hasn't actually done it. She just wants to do it with another woman because it's another way to rebel.

The CIA really does execute tattle tales

Stan just said that they didn't, so she wouldn't be scared of him going to his workplace. The CIA intentionally meant to kill the woman's husband.

Francine is the stereotypical symbol of what every white woman wants to be.

Or at least what everyone with a white wife wants their wife to look like. Let's see she doesn't have a single flaw on her except for when she's not touching up on her beauty regime and she has blonde hair, I hear that's the hair every white person wants, this show doesn't focus on eye color so she just has normal colored eyes, and not blue eyes.

• • Pretty sure this is what the writers meants for her to be. Stan desires an "all-American" lifestyle, and he wants that type of family. Francine is supposed to be the "ideal" stereotypical housewife.

actually a fact, Roger does have some cool alien powers 6 from what I've counted

1. He craps hypnotizingly gold, jewel encrusted turds.
2. He can survive an extreme amount of punishment, as seen from the numerous times he's been hit with cars or dropped from great heights.
3. He can move at unreasonably fast speeds, as seen in "Jenny fromdablock" when he impersonated a cousin of Steve's to date Snot. Oh and the horse episode when he said I hope the horse whisperer isn't me this time. He got there and said "oh crap", as the camera moved to the seat we saw Roger all changed into his other costume and then as the camera moved back he was with Stan again and said, " thank goodness I'm just his secratary".
4. I would call this a power while most wouldn't, his ability to completly and mentally snap of a personality of his into it's own life, still within himself. As seen in the episode mentioned above with the horse, but more importantly as seen in the episode where he was missing a glove and it turned out to belong to another persnality that he lost when it got married.
5. He can probe you and learn everything you know.
6. He seems to stand still on time, he was around when biggie was shot, he was around when he got those free nights at the hotel, he was around when he ended up becoming the creator of disco, but he always looks the same. He created disco when stan went back in time with that angel and left a record there, that Roger happened to find. And he got the free night in the hotel when stan Steve went back in time to end up becoming the person in the painting he jacked it to.

• I don't think he can move super fast and that "Jenny Fromdabloc" episode could possibly be non-canon. If he could move at light speed wouldn't he be practically invincible? Think of all the times he nearly got caught by threatening pursuerers such as the C.I.A and wouldn't his supposed powers help Steve conduct his scheme to ruin that Jewish guy's barmitsfa easier. I believe that was to just help close the episode easier.
  • I think that his super-speed IS cannon. If you think about it, Roger is the type to make life unnecessarily difficult for himself, just to make things more interesting. Also, I think that he knows that he can pull the light-speed powers out of his back pocket if he really needs them (like his survival depends on it). He didn't use them when the CIA was after him, because he didn't believe them to be a real threat to him. Then, when they actually did capture him, he was locked in a room with no means of escape. Super-speed wouldn't have saved him in that situation - he'd need super-lock picking skills, or the ability to blow holes in metal doors, etc. No matter how fast he moved, it wasn't going to get him out of there.
• in another episode it's shown that he's immune to fire and explosions (firecracker explosions anyway) as well
• No, that just means he possess a resillience against something. We the viewers aren't one hundred percent sure that his crap has "hypnotising powers" that man could of just been real greedy, and there are also plenty of other organisms that can stand large amounts of pain and damage to the body so that's not a power either. Roger may have a real high mental capacity that enables him to so called switch personas, just because someone's real smart doesn't mean they have powers, and besides Roger hasn't been shown to perform any supernatrual feats so why would he have powers. He just has abilities exclusive to his race not powers. A fish can breath in water but that doesn't mean it has powers.
• It's called "cool alien powers" if they are to his race only they count as a power. Breathing underwater is a cool fish power, that Aquaman has, and we call that a power.
• Note that, when the Smiths tried to escape into space in order to escape an angry Roger, the guy was hitching a ride on a rocket. One of his abilities is apparently to survive in the vaccuum in space.

Stan from American Dad and Quagmire from Family Guy share the same father, or at least grandfather.

Stan got his chin and build from their father, and Quagmire got his promiscuity, cheating, and chin from their father. Both also share the same hair color.

Francine is Obfuscating Stupidity.

Despite acting ditzy she has moments of brilliance such as in 'Stan Time'.

Jewel and Francine share the same grandmother.

In 'Shallow Vows' when she does not touch up her beauty regimen she looks like Jewel. Anyone else think that?

This show is not in the same world as Family Guy

The god here and on Family Guy are different. Their Jesus are two completely seperate characters. The crossover in the "Stewie Kills Lois" two parter was just part of the ep's use of VR. There's been no gag of Cleveland taking a bath and being blown out of the house.

• • Jossed, there's a crossover episode.
    • What ep?
• The Storm Episode, Bada-Bing!
• Didn't Stewie mention in "Petergiest" that Jesus was Chinese? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Quahog's Negative Continuity means Jesus can be a completely seperate character. God is supposed to be an Eldritch Abomination, so He can look different. Not to mention that God isn't even technically God because Stewie accidentally created the universe via Stable Time Loop.

Roger was the single worst person on his otherwise utopian planet.

How would a society where most of the people were like Roger function? It simply couldn't survive long enough to invent fire, let alone space travel. Since they would need to suppress their bitchiness to function, the ones with a naturally high bitch level would die, or at least be to weak to fight off illnesses. Thus, over time you end up with a civilization consisting of kind, generous, altruistic individuals. But every once in a while, you end up with a bunch of recessive genes coming together...

• This troper accepts this as his personal canon. Also, this would be the reason why Roger was "chosen" to be the "Decider". He may not be the only one, his planets' leaders and/or government deliberately chose types like Roger to send them away, and believe they'll likely die in a crash.

Stan IS good in a crisis

He just really hates his family.
Judging from the damage everyone received, I think he hates Francine the most, I mean he shot her, that's pretty bad.
He also beat the snot of Jeff, but has already, on several occasions, mentioned he hates him.
To add to that I think he had C.I.A. agents plant the shark specifically for Halie to be taken by.
And had them move his house off of the foundation

• Unlikely as Stan is shown to love his family in some episodes.
  • Some days they piss him off a little less, like the episodes you speak of.
    • I still do not think so, if he doesn't like his family couldn't he have abandoned them years ago. Think of the episodes where he tries to bond his family, and in An Apocalypse when he thought that the world was ending, wouldn't he have left them to die? I think this is not true.

Janet lives with a foster family

We don't see her living with Principal Lewis.

• Alternatively, she lives with her mom (somewhere in Langley Falls, presumably, as she's enrolled in the local high school), who has full custody, or maybe Principal Lewis has partial custody, but Janet happens to be at her Mom's/a friend's whenever any of the main cast go to his house.

James, Quagmire's cat from Family Guy, is Simon, Steve's cat from American Dad.

They look similar, except that Simon has a lot of cuts and bruises and generally looks like he's been run over by a car (which he was). Peter buried him in a place that works like the Pet Sematary (along with his lucky cat's foot), and he Came Back Wrong. They also both have the name of a biblical apostle, but that's probably just a meaningless coincidence (in- or out-of-universe).

• Eh, compare the cats side by side, they have different designs and they're different colors.

The show will end with either Stan and Francine dying or some other big thing happening.

• In an interview with one of the producers, he said that the Season 7 premiere episode "Hot Water" was made at a time when they feared FOX wouldn't renew the show, so they thought it would be a good idea to end the show with killing the main characters. The show was renewed, so it was just used as a non-canon season opener. This indicates that for the real finale, they want something big to happen. Since killing the main characters was already used in "Hot Water", they might not go with that again, but maybe end the last episode/season on some other big event like Roger and other aliens being revealed to the world.

There'll be an episode where Linda Memari confess her feelings for Francine.

She doesn't care if Francine is married or straight, Linda wants to be with her. Things will be awkward between them and become estranged. Linda becomes obsessed to the point of kidnapping Francine and driving off to where Linda can marry Francine against her will.

• New York for its topical tone

Roger has a special power that prevents people from recognizing him.

• This power cannot be controlled consciously. His species shares this ability with the Kryptonians, similar to how people can't recognize Clark Kent as Superman when he wears his glasses. When Roger sees himself as a certain person, the minds of those around him are affected and they too see him as that person. Only his close friends and a few alien hunters can recognize him out of disguise, as the Smith family have spent so much time around him that they're immune to his mind-screw abilities, and an expert alien hunter with a lot of will and concentration could overcome the effects on their own.
• Further proof of this is the fact that Roger tells Steve that everyone in the family has an alter ego of Roger's that they don't recognize. Steve's is a girl around his own age that he played Spin the Bottle with at a party. Can't remember off the top of my head what the others are, but they all have one.
  • I believe Francine's was a little Korean boy or something.

The Ladybugs will come after Francine again.

Roger will eventually be caught by the CIA.

• Roger will be be discovered, but eventually trapped somewhere with Bullock. They'll become friends, and when they finally reach civilization Bullock will let Roger go. Because, come on, it would be freakin' HILARIOUS to see the two characters interact.

Roger comes from a genderless species.

• It would explain his Ambiguous Gender.

The entire series is Klaus' dream.

Family Guy is a TV show that people in American Dad watch

There's been at least two hints to support this. Stan mentions Brian as his favorite fictional dog; Brian, who's revealed to be right next to him, reacts like a celebrity who feels pestered by the public might. ("Do I know you?") Later, Stan is shown apparently watching and commenting on the same episode we (the viewers) are watching; when Brian decides to (temporarily) become Republican, Stan says, "Good for him." Thus, Stan is a fan of Family Guy. Alternately...

Barry is the grown-up version of Stewie

Lois is a redhead. Barry is a redhead. Peter and Chris are fat. Barry is fat. Stewie is an Evil Brit. When Barry stops taking his pills, he turns into an Evil Brit. By the current season in Family Guy, the Griffins (or just Brian) eventually figured out he was evil and started giving him "vitamins" to stunt his homicidal intent, resulting in Stewie's current Villain Decay. (Maybe the pills fix the shape of his head somehow?) As he grows up, he gets fatter and stupider. He calls himself Barry instead of Stewie because he confuses his name with that of Bertram's, his half brother by Peter (who he calls Barry because "Bertram" is now too hard for him to say).

Roger has something of a Freudian Excuse

His life on his home planet was unspeakably awful. It explains why it's almost never brought up.

Toshi had an experience with aliens once.

In one episode, Steve introduces him to his "Uncle Roger", whom Toshi recognizes as "the alien in a wig". The only ones who can recognize Roger as an alien are Stan's family and the workers at Area 51, people who have had prolonged contact with him.

• • Or Toshi HIMSELF is the alien! When he landed on Earth, he landed right smack dab in japan or where his fake parents lived. His ship, or the chance he's a robotic alien, his programming picked up his parent's language of birthplace which explains why he doesn't speak English when the rest of his family can.

Hayley's personality is the result of being brainwashed as a child.

She is shown to be a Daddy's Girl when she was a little kid, but once he tried to condition her to be an assassin so they could be a team, their relationship got tense and distant. Enraged by what her father put her through, she subconsciously designed herself to be precisely what Stan hates.

When he went crazy, Roger forced each Smith to roast the family member they love most for extra sadism.

Thus:

• Stan loves Hayley most, he just hides it after she developed the opposite of his political views and they became pseudo-enemies because he was disappointed and hurt.
• Hayley loves Steve most.
• Steve loves Francine most.
• Francine loves Stan most.

Stan is Hayley's biological father.

They both have black hair (which is a recessive trait, if memory serves) and similar personalities. The only thing that other guy had in common with Hayley was a headband which... isn't exactly genetic.