Seth MacFarlane's long-lived animated sitcom "Family Guy" has always been known for its flippant, non-sequitur pop culture references and its deliberately tasteless humor. "Family Guy" is often described as being a show for fratboys, as it taps into crass, low impulses. Almost all the characters on the show are ignorant, impulsive, crass, and often prejudiced. One might be tempted to take offense if the show weren't also so pointedly adolescent; it's clear that the writers of "Family Guy" are instructed to go for the quickest, funniest gag, and are not instructed to espouse any kind of irresponsible ethos. The writers are all smart people. They simply love dumb jokes.

Many jokes are made at the expense of celebrities, and many real-life actors and performers are lampooned openly on the show. Case in point: William Shatner (as played by MacFarlane) is often depicted as posing, vamping, and vogue-ing in his performances, a clear exaggeration of Shatner's sometimes-clipped acting style.

"Family Guy" even poked fun at Adrien Brody, for no other reason than he was in the pop consciousness. In the episode "Friends Without Benefits" (December 9, 2012), Meg (Mila Kunis) goes to see a 3-D movie called "Adrien Brody Doing Sit-Ups." A side view of the screen depicts an outsize nose emerging from the screen to a terrified audience.

In a 2017 interview with Andy Cohen on "Watch What Happens Live," MacFarlane revealed that Brody did not appreciate that dig at his nose. That's fair, as the mockery seems unwarranted. Brody had won an Oscar ten years earlier for playing Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski's "The Pianist," and was largely beloved by audiences. Making fun of his nose seemed like a low blow.