Fox, Hulu remove Boston Marathon episode of ‘Family Guy’ over controversy

While the internet serves many wonderful purposes, one of the awful things that it is responsible for from time to time is allowing people to either misinform or manipulate the works of others into something that is beyond their original intent. In the wake of the shocking Boston Marathon bombings on Monday that took the lives of three people and injured many more, this has unfortunately happened when it comes to footage from an episode of “Family Guy.”

On Tuesday, a clip started to rapidly gain pageviews across the internet showing Peter Griffin talking about the Boston Marathon, only to seemingly transition into a scene showing Peter causing some explosions using his phone. Conspiracy theories started that the show had either predicted or inspired the horrific acts, but there was one enormous problem with this: it was all a set up. These two clips (which we’re not going to show here in the interest of good taste) were spliced together to turn the scene into something that it was not originally.

Almost immediately after he caught wind of it, show creator Seth MacFarlane took to his Twitter account to distance the show from the Boston tragedy:

“The edited Family Guy clip currently circulating is abhorrent … The event was a crime and a tragedy, and my thoughts are with the victims.”

Both Fox and Hulu have pulled the Boston Marathon-themed scene from their websites for the time being, and we also do not expect that it will be airing in repeats anytime soon. This is not the first time that an animated comedy has been met with such an action, but this is a rare example of one being met with it largely due to an edited clip that took jokes out of context.

This is the not the only show impacted by the Boston tragedy: “Revolution” was pushed back for a week, given that its new episode contained a story that featured a bomb scare.

Photo: Fox