Family Guy Death Pose / Peter Falls Down The Stairs

Confirmed 183,457

Part of a series on Family Guy. [View Related Entries]

About

Peter Falls Down The Stairs and Family Guy Death Pose is a scene from a 2012 episode of Family Guy where Peter Griffin falls down the stairs, landing in a hurt pose with both arms and one leg twisted behind his back. The scene became the subject of edits over the following years along with the pose, which is used in multiple episodes of the show, often in exploitable memes and redraws where characters from other media properties are depicted striking it.

Origin

When a character is hurt in Family Guy, they are often drawn in a pose with their arms and a leg twisted behind their back. It is unclear when the pose was first used in the show, but variations of dramatic injury or death poses have frequently been used over its run for multiple characters and episodes.

On January 15th, 2012, Season 10 Episode 11 of Family Guy aired, titled "The Blind Side." In one scene, Peter Griffin falls down the stairs after Lois has them replaced. Peter curses while falling down the stairs and lands in a hurt pose with both arms and a leg twisted behind his back. An upload of the clip to YouTube^[1] posted in June 2012 gained over 5 million views in 10 years (shown below). On May 26th, 2016, YouTuber^[2] iPriority uploaded an uncensored version, gaining over 5 million views in six years. This is one of the most popular examples of the pose.

The death pose may be a reference to a pose from season 5, episode 19 of the Highlander television series, released on May 12th, 1997.^[11] In the episode, two characters jump to their deaths. Their bodies are seen lying in a pile of rubble, with one character in a pose that is similar to the Family Guy death pose (shown below). It is unconfirmed if this is just a coincidence.

Spread

The scene became the subject of edits over the following years. For example, on January 18th, 2018, YouTuber^[3] Arthadoor posted an edit of the scene adding Super Mario 64 sound effects and graphics to it, gaining over 3.8 million views in four years (shown below).

The pose became the subject of memes as well, often showing characters drawn striking it or video game characters who died in a similar pose. For example, on August 8th, 2018, Twitter^[4] user @soundsmithtf2, posted, "Bearded Expense, after dying to a Sentry Buster, ragdolls into a near-perfect replication of the stock Family Guy death pose," showing a Team Fortress 2 character in the pose, gaining over 1,300 likes in four years (shown below).

On February 8th, 2019, Deviant Art^[5] user Agent-P1uto drew a character from A Hat In Time in the pose, gaining over 1,000 views in three years (shown below, left). On June 15th, 2020, Redditor ashidaii posted another Team Fortress 2 screenshot showing a character in the pose to r/tf2,^[6] gaining over 830 upvotes in two years (shown below, right).

On January 28th, 2021, YouTuber^[7] Pringa posted an edit of the falling scene vocoded to Gangsta's Paradise, gaining over 4 million views in a year (shown below).

On September 19th, 2021, Game Banana^[9] modder Robro posted a mod for Deltarune that replaces Ralsei's "splat" sprite with a sprite showing him in the death pose (shown below).

On February 20th, 2022, Twitter^[10] user @snugcrow posted a Golden Ratio meme applying the ratio to the image, gaining over 15,000 likes in two months (shown below, left). On April 23rd, 2022, Nexus Mods^[8] user BeepSignal posted a Stardew Valley mod that replaces an image of the Dying Grandpa in Bed with a version of the character in the pose (shown below, right).