Stewie Griffin Is Afraid of 'News of the World'

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About

Stewie Griffin Is Afraid of News of the World, also known as Scared Stewie Griffin, is a scene from the animated series Family Guy in which Brian discovers that Stewie Griffin is afraid of the cover art for Queen's 1977 album News of the World and proceeds to repeatedly scare him with it in the following days. Online, the clip gained virality as an exploitable meme format, with users replacing the cover art with various imagery in video edits.

Origin

On March 11th, 2012, episode 16 titled "Killer Queen" of season 10 of the animated comedy series Family Guy premiered.^[1] In one scene of the episode, the character Brian finds the 1977 Queen album News of the World, with character Stewie Griffing getting scared of the giant robot on the cover pictured with dead Queen members in its hand. Brian then proceeds to terrorize Stewie by placing the cover into various places, including a scratch lottery ticket and a wall in Stewie's bedroom, to mess with him (scene shown below).

On June 12th, 2022, TikToker^[2] @b0nesbreaking420 (previously @tw1st3d.gvtx) posted the earliest found humorous edit of the scene, replacing the cover with an image of Your Favorite Martian showing his feet and paired with Vine Booms. The video (shown below) gained over 308,400 views and 29,300 likes in nine months.

Spread

Later on June 12th, 2022, TikToker @b0nesbreaking420 posted^[3] a green-screen template for the meme, with the post accumulating over 2.2 million views and 340,000 likes on TikTok in nine months.

Starting on that day, users on TikTok and YouTube posted their edits of the clip, replacing the album with various images, often profile pictures of popular internet personalities. For example, on June 12th. YouTuber^[4] Freedavies posted a 3D Saul Goodman version of the meme that gained over 5,600 views in nine months (shown below, left). On July 13th, YouTuber^[5] SuperWiiBros08 posted a Nathaniel Bandy edit that received over 522,000 views in eight months (shown below, right).

On July 23rd, 2022, the YouTube^[6] channel CreatorSet Green Screens posted a green-screen template for the meme.

The format maintained its popularity online through late 2022 and early 2023, with multiple edits going viral. For example, on August 4th, 2022, YouTuber^[7] Memetastic posted an In the Virtual End version of the meme that gained over 550,000 views in six months (shown below, left). On March 20th, 2023, Twitter^[8] user @tippity posted a The Only Frame from The Whale meme that gained over 1,100 retweets and 6,700 likes in two days (shown below, right).