Biting The Hand Humor / Family Guy

• "Lethal Weapons" ends with Peter insulting the network for what it chooses to air. When Lois says he shouldn't do that, he Tempts Fate by asking "What are they gonna do? Cut our budget?" He then leaves to get a beer, and his "walking" is suddenly shown as a still drawing of him crudely wobbling back and forth.
• Probably the most striking example was the first scene in the first episode of Family Guy's fourth (i.e. first post-cancellation) season, where Peter recites the Long List of twenty-nine prime-time shows that Fox cancelled between Family Guy's own cancellation in 2002 and return in 2005 - most of which were started within that same period as well.
  Peter: Everybody, I got bad news - we've been cancelled.
  Lois: Oh no! Peter, how could they do that?
  Peter: Well, unfortunately, Lois, there's just no more room on the schedule. We've just got to accept the fact that Fox has to make room for terrific shows like Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That '80s Show, Wonderfalls, Fastlane, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Skin, Girl's Club, Cracking Up, The Pitts, Firefly, Get Real, FreakyLinks, Wanda at Large, Costello, The Lone Gunmen, A Minute with Stan Hooper, Normal, Ohio, Pasadena, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddie, The $treet, American Embassy, Cedric the Entertainer, The Tick, Luis, and Greg the Bunny.
  Lois: Is there no hope?
  Peter: Well, I suppose if all those shows go down the tubes, we might have a shot.
• Revisited in the seventh-season episode "Family Gay". At a horse race, the announcer rattles off the list of entrants, all of them named for then-recently-cancelled FOX shows, including MacFarlane's own failed attempt at a live-action sitcom The Winner. That's not even mentioning the fact that Peter's horse is named "'Til Death".
• They also inverted this trope, in the episode "Death Is a Bitch." Assigned by Death with the task of killing the cast of Dawson's Creek, Peter demurs:
  Peter: I'm not gonna kill those kids. If they die, I'll have nothing to watch on Wednesdays. [Glancing at the camera, and breaking out in a nervous grin] Other than the fine programs on FOX.
• In "Meet the Quagmires" we get this exchange:
  Molly: Hey did you guys hear on the news how President Gore hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden with his bare hands?
  Lois: Yeah, who woulda thought that bin Laden was hiding out in the cast of Mad TV?
  Quagmire: Man, the perfect hiding spot. The one place no one would look!
  • Also an Actor Allusion, as Alex Borstein, who voices Lois, had a recurring role on MadTV.
• Then there was the episode where they took one potshot after another at FOX News when Lois went to work for them.
• In "Something Something Something Dark Side" the opening scrawl turns into a ramble about how FOX thought so little of the Star Wars franchise that it did not bother to retain merchandising rights, handing those off to George Lucas. It then goes on to point out precisely how valuable those merchandising rights turned out to be and questions the sanity of FOX stockholders for sticking with a company that makes such unbelievably stupid choices about money. That same scroll also features a CGI elephant skipping across the screen, which the scrawl says it cost $58,000 to animate and render, and served no other purpose than to prove their point.
• The opening crawl for "It's A Trap!" is about how Seth MacFarlane had to allow this episode to be made despite the exhaustion of the writers in order for him to be allowed to take an absence in order to make Ted. "Fox suddenly had dollar signs in their eyes."
• In "Big Man on Hippocampus," there was what appeared to be the trademark black with white lettering panels from [adult swim] questioning why anyone would watch the show on FOX since it is much funnier on Adult Swim, because they don't censor all the good jokes. At the same time, it took a jab at Adult Swim, claiming that even if the viewer is watching it there, they're actually watching it on Fox. When the episode premiered on Adult Swim, the meta ramped up with this promo right after the aforementioned scene.
• Peter closes the episode "Three Kings" with "Now stay tuned for whatever Fox is limping to the barn with."^note It was Seth MacFarlane's second TV show, American Dad!
• They've even made fun of TBS in "Hell Comes to Quahog":
  Announcer: We now return to Showgirls...
  Peter: Yeah!
  Announcer: ...on TBS.
  Peter: Aww.
• Towards the end of "The Simpsons Guy", Homer and Peter agree to stay a half-hour away and with a "pile of garbage" in between from each other which is a reference to The Simpsons airing from 8-8:30pm and Family Guy airing from 9-9:30pm. It is also a reference to Fox usually switching the shows out of the 8:30pm slot, most of them end up failing.
• From "Excellence in Broadcasting," courtesy of the Family Guy wiki: After Brian said that he was moving in with Rush Limbaugh, after Stewie says "Ooh, this is a bad idea. But I guess that FOX has bad ideas, huh?", a promotional bumper for Sons Of Tucson shows up and Stewie says to the viewers, pointing at the bumper, "Let's all just sit here for a moment and remember that this was a thing." ^note  A bit of background; Sons of Tucson was a live-action sitcom about a group of kids, whose dad was in jail for insider trading, that hired a slacker loser to pretend to be their father. It aired during the "Animation Domination" block, despite not being animated; it also often pre-empted American Dad, so it's likely this was also revenge.
• In "Married... with Cancer", when Brian's new wife Jess passes out after choking at a restaurant, he calls for 911 and a network bumper for 9-1-1 comes up. Brian says that it's not a good time for Fox to focus on expanding their media empire, and a bumper for Empire comes up in response. When Brian flatly namedrops the then-recently cancelled Son of Zorn, a Windows XP-style error message reading "File Not Found" comes up.
• At the end of "Adam West High", the announcer tells viewers to vote for the next mayor of Quahog online, but Peter warns them that it's a trick and FOX just wants to track their data.
• In the episode "Stewie's First Word", Peter asks his Magic 8 ball if the Fox network is sustainable in an era where streaming has become the norm. The Magic 8 ball explodes in response.
• In the episode "Pawtucket Pat", when Peter announces that FOX News is arriving, a car with a "FOX NEWS" decal shows up alongside with the Confederate flag.