Seth MacFarlane was surprised by outrage over Brian Griffin’s ‘Family Guy’ ‘death’

So far, Seth MacFarlane has not taken too much time speaking out about what was one of the biggest television stories of last year: The decision to seemingly kill off the Griffin family dog Brian on “Family Guy.” Fans were devastated by what happened; they started petitions, complained on Twitter, threatened not to watch, and hated the new dog Vinny with some sort of fiery passion (even though he was pretty great.)

While Seth expected that there was going to be some sort of vocal response to what he did, mostly due to the fact that this is a show that has some vocal fans, he never expected it to become the sort of global story that it was. Speaking to reporters at Fox’s TCA panel this week, he summed up the entire situation with the following remark:

“We were all very surprised — in a good way — that people still cared about about that character to be that angry. It didn’t occur to us. We thought it would maybe create a little bit of a stir, but the rage was not something we counted on.”

The good news for those concerned is that Seth said he will never kill off Brian again, though he did not say anything about whether or not he would attempt another sort of stunt in the future. He still believes that the move with Brian was a net positive, mostly because it did manage to have people a little bit worried about their favorite characters again. He wants “Family Guy” to feel like a show were “anything can happen,” especially since it is 12 seasons in and this is the time when you can very easily start to go on autopilot and not pay too much mind to much of anything.

What do you think: Was Seth’s move the right one when it comes to getting people invested in “Family Guy” again? Let us know below.