Family Guy makes a habit out of deconstructing various tropes seen in media, usually via Cutaway Gags.
- Peter Griffin gets into zany schemes not because he's a typical stupid sitcom father, but because he's mentally handicapped and refuses to seek treatment. This has consequences for everyone in his family; his antics routinely cost him jobs, Lois and Meg have psychological problems, Chris, already having learning difficulties, is not getting the help he needs, largely because the family is too focused on Peter, and they all pretty much have dead-end futures.
- The Christmas Episode, "Road to the North Pole" deconstructs the concept of both Santa Claus and Subbing for Santa. The former is shown to be deathly ill and suicidal from being unable to keep up with the demands of people during the holidays, while his factory looks like, as Stewie put it, Bridgeport, Connecticut. When Brian and Stewie try to do the latter, they find out how impossible it is to deliver presents to the entire world when their first delivery has them essentially commit a home invasion (and waste an hour and a half) in what turned out to be the wrong house.Brian: No wonder Santa lost his mind, this is ridiculous! We can't do this!Stewie: Nobody can! It's INHUMAN!
- The Running Gag of Meg being abused by everyone is deconstructed in later seasons by showing her going crazy and unstable from being the Butt-Monkey... which became a new Running Gag. However, the episode "Seahorse Seashell Party" completely deconstructed Meg's abuse and how the family puts her through it because otherwise they'll turn on each other and Meg's an easier target than themselves.
- "Grimm Job" features both a more realistic and darker telling of Little Red Riding Hood, including Red immediately realizing the wolf is not her grandmother, and the woodsman cutting the wolf open in a very violent manner; said woodsman is also not the hero, but a madman going house to house killing people.
- "Lottery Fever" deconstructs Pooled Funds by showing Peter trying to pull a Scrooge McDuck and ending up bruised and bloody. As Peter put it, a pool full of coins does not act like a liquid.
- "Meet the Quagmires" deconstructs the opening sequence of The Jetsons by having George get sick of his wife always taking his entire wallet and calling her out on it.
- "80's Guy" deconstructs several 1980s movies and their tropes.
- In order to get a girl's attention , Peter gives Chris a bunch of old 80’s movies and tells him to do what the characters did in those movies. Sometime later Joe brings Chris home and tells them he was imitating the boombox serenade scene from Say Anything... by standing outside a female classmates window with a boombox playing "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel and as a result is being charged with felony stalking.
- In one of his efforts to prove the 80’s are still relevant and timeless, Peter plays up the Wille Coyote/Road Runner dynamic with the gopher from Caddyshack. This backfires for two reasons:
- The Gopher, in clear violation of natural instinct, does his dance routine to Kenny Loggins “I’m Alright” leaving him exposed.
- Peter’s opening salvo to the routine is to kill the gopher with a rocket launcher. From a mere two feet away. Not only does the gopher end up as gore splattered everywhere and not only does the family admonish him for killing the poor animal, he’s the only one shocked the gopher didn’t get away in time.
- A scene in the Direct-to-DVD movie Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story does a particularly nasty deconstruction of Looney Tunes and its Amusing Injuries, wherein Elmer Fudd is out "hunting wabbits", shoots Bugs Bunny four times in the stomach, snaps his neck amidst cries of pain, and then drags him off leaving behind a trail of blood.
- In "Brian Goes Back to College" where Peter and friends became The A-Team, the show's "amusing injuries" are discussed as actually life-threatening.
- In "I Take Thee, Quagmire" Peter tries to get Quagmire out of a wedding by reminding him of his lustful nature, so Peter brings him the Statue of Liberty's foot. When Quagmire politely refuses, Peter rants about how difficult this stunt really was:
- Peter: Hey. Hey. Do you have any idea what I went through to get this? A lot. A real lot. You think this is just, "Oh, here comes Peter with the Statue of Liberty’s foot. Oh, isn't that just a gas?" No. No. The reality, the real reality, of getting this together was staggering. You know, this cost me $437,000. Don't ask me how I got it. I had to call in a whole bunch of favors from people I've never even met. So, the very least you can do is just rub up against... (putting his hands up in defeat) I don’t know.
- "The Former Life of Brian": deconstructs the "goodbye scene" at the end of The Wizard of Oz; Dorothy telling Scarecrow that she'll miss him most of all in front of Tin Man and Cowardly Lion really hurt the latter two's feelings.
- In "Livin' on a Prayer", the opening sequence of Little House on the Prairie gets a deconstruction when Stewie trips on a rock he had no way of seeing because of how tall the grass was. He remarks that if he got a cut from said rock, it would be a death sentence because of how un-advanced medicine was in those times.
- In "Herpe the Love Sore", Peter and the guys try to fight a group of soldiers who sat in their booth and refused to budge. As a last resort, Peter tries to power himself up with spinach ala Popeye, only to spend about a minute trying to open the can and cutting his thumb in the process. When he finally opens the can and eats it, nothing happens.
- ""Dead Dog Walking" deconstructs Fat and Proud. After getting himself trapped in an unwanted marriage, Peter cheers him up by saying that he can let himself go, now that he "never has to attract another woman again". Brian takes it too far and ends up dislocating his hip.
