Family Guy is probably the most (in)famous example of a work with extensive use of the Cutaway Gag. The show very rarely goes an episode without several cutaways being thrown in, most are only a few seconds long (but can be longer, with some even lasting longer than a couple of minutes), and often take the format "This is better than/worse than/just like the time that...", allowing virtually anything to be slotted in anywhere.
Subversions, Exaggerations, Parodies, Aversions, Lampshade Hangings, etc. of the Cutaway Gag trope in Family Guy
- An example, from "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea":Lois: Nigel's charming. All British men are!
Peter: Yeah right, that's what they said about Benjamin Disraeli.
[scene cuts to Disraeli as he writes with a quill pen in his study, then glares at the camera]
Benjamin Disraeli: You don't even know who I am! - In 2010 they did produce a few episodes with no cutaway gags, basically to prove that they could. One of the two, "Brian & Stewie", featured Brian and Stewie locked in a bank vault. It was a normal episode that was pretty well done. The other was an extended Very Special Episode.
- Sometimes the gag is subverted:Stewie: They'll come after you like Peter went after that hockey coach. [Beat] Oh, no clip? Oh, thought we had a clip. Nope? Okay.
- In "Believe It or Not, Joe Is Walking on Air", Peter compares a situation to giving a monkey the keys to an amusement park. However, no clip follows, and Lois asks what it has to do with anything.
- In "Spies Reminiscent of Us", Stewie is knocked out, and he can't set up the cutaway properly. This leads to him standing in an empty white room. Then, famous athlete Wilma Rudolph runs by. Stewie comments: "Obviously, she had something to do with the gag, but I didn't hear the setup, so I don't really know the context." Later in the same episode, the cast meets Vladimir Putin, who shows them a Russian Cutaway Gag, which consists of a poorly animated yellow porcupine yelling in Russian until a loaf of bread lands nearby, at which point it starts laughing.
- In the episode "Back to the Woods", James Woods steals Peter's identity and when he tries to get back with his family, James threatens him with activating a cutaway gag if he doesn't leave. Peter leaves in fear while Brian doesn't understand why he's so scared.
- The quote at the top of the main page gets a Call-Back later in the episode:Peter: Guys, we have to re-cripple Joe. It's the right thing to do, just like taking out Hitler.
[cut to Hitler juggling on the unicycle again. Peter walks up to him and kicks the unicycle out from under him, then punches him out]
Peter: See? We had a plan for that all along. - Yet another spoof comes in one episode where Peter says "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!" The scene changes to show Peter in bed with a lipstick-wearing horse; he glances at the camera and mutters "Um, I misspoke."
- One episode even had a Cutaway Gag within a Cutaway Gag.
- In the episode "Back to the Pilot", Stewie and Brian time-travel back to the pilot episode; rather than reuse the pilot's cutaways, it shows that during the gags, the characters just sort of awkwardly stand in place and wait for them to finish. And then there's a cutaway gag showing that the "modern" characters now take time to smoke/text/do their makeup/etc. during their gags. Later in the same episode, a Bad Future version of Peter straight-up announces "here's a cutaway," which is just him on a white background saying, "Matthew McConaughey is terrible".
- The 2011 Thanksgiving special involved Kevin Swanson returning home and admitting he went AWOL from the army. Peter refers to him as a "regular Benedict Arnold Drummond". Cut to the producers hopelessly confused and looking for a tape of Gary Coleman in a Napoleon hat. After giving up, they just put in one of the Cowardly Lion as Lindsay Lohan's OB/GYN.Peter: What the hell is going on up there?
- They even have Cutaway Gags poking fun at Cutaway Gags. In one episode, there's a cutaway about the time Quagmire thought he was getting his own show (instead of Cleveland):Quagmire: See you later, bitches. Have fun with your stupid, goddamn Giant Chicken jokes and your Conway Twitty... Hey, why is there a moving truck outside Cleveland's house?
- The episode where pot is legalized in Quahog leaves Peter too baked to set up a cutaway. He stumbles through the setup, then gives up and instead resigns himself to throwing a scrolling list of celebrities he dislikes up on the screen.
- In another episode, Peter said "she's betrayed me worse than Lady Macbeth betrayed Duncan." We then cut to a spaceship, where Lady Macbeth is fighting a bear. Cut back to Peter admitting "I don't know Shakespeare very well."
- In another episode, Peter introduces one involving Michael J. Fox, but then it cuts to him standing in front of a white background. He describes the entire flashback to the audience, explaining that the execs decided it was too low a blow... but then they decide to roll it after all, and they use the cutaway normally.
- In another episode, Peter says an intro to the cutaway, then cutting to Peter explaining to the audience that to enhance their reading abilities, he'll simply show a typed transcript of said cutaway. Unfortunately for the audience, it was a visual gag.
- "Yug Ylimaf" has a reverse cutaway, where Brian says "This is more intense than when I fought a rabbit in that karate tournament" after we see said event.
- During the early episode "I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar", a gag references something that literally just happened:Peter: A boat's a boat, but the mystery box could be anything! It could even be a boat! You know how much we've wanted one of those!
Lois: Then let's just—
Peter: We'll take the box!
[cut to next scene]
Lois: [sarcastic] "We'll take the box!" You gave up a boat for free tickets to a crappy comedy club.
Peter: C'mon Lois, you're acting like this is the first time I've ever done something stupid. You remember that time I was supposed to get that boat?
[entire punchline plays out again]
Lois: Peter, that just happened ten minutes ago. - A cutaway in "Life of Brian" that shows Stewie going forward in time to get a Christmas toy early actually provides foreshadowing to the events of "Christmas Guy".
- A cutaway gag in "Quagmire's Mom" referencing Peter's "karaoke phase" has Peter, for no adequately explained reason, wait through the entire opening to the The Who song "Baba O'Riley" before answering a question that Lois asks him.
- In "Fighting Irish", Liam Neeson sets up a cutaway gag showing a soldier tragically dying. Peter then remarks that they usually have a joke when they do one of those, to which Liam responds “I’m not your clown!”
- In "Roasted Guy" there's one that goes on for over two minutes, featuring a wolf being tricked into saying, "Cock A Doodle" at the Moon, who then becomes a prostitute, which is a movie featuring Quagmire as the wolf. When it finally ends, Peter says the cutaway was so long, he forgot what he was talking about.
- In the Crossover episode "The Simpsons Guy" Peter tries to get Homer to set up one, which just confuses him, so Peter has to set it up himself.
- The episodes with the most cutaways are "The Blind Side" and "Save The Clam" which both have a massive sixteen.
- "Cutawayland" is all about these as it features Lois and Peter accidentally saying the same gag at the same time, causing them to go Cutawayland and eventually not being able to escape after being tired of being there. It turns out to be All Just a Dream though.
- In "Finders Keepers", Peter actively uses cutaways to his advantage, getting himself and Lois into the locked Drunken Clam by saying "this is worse than the time we were in the Clam right now", and then again to send himself to a strip club to get away from Lois.
- In "Lawyer Guy" a mix-up causes two of the cutaways, one involving a detective named Stabby McBackerson and another feature Lee Harvey Oswald working from home, to be switched.[after the wrong cutaway plays]
Lois: What was that?
Peter: That was "someone's getting fired," is what that was. - In "The Old West" Peter tells Joe that David Geffen paid the show $10 million to not do a cutaway about him.
- In The King is Dead, when Lois tries to comfort Peter after he's mocked at his job, she tells him about other people who had mindless job, for example Albert Einstein who worked for a patent office. The scene cuts away to Einstein stealing the theory of relativity from a guy named Smith. Later in the same episode, Peter remarks about how God created Shrinky Dinks. The scene cuts to god creating Shrinky Dinks... only for Albert Einstein to return from the previous cutaway and steal them!
