Family Guy "Death Has a Shadow" (Unaired 1998 Pitched Version)

On January 31, 1999, Family Guy premiered after Superbowl 34 with the episode "Death Has a Shadow". There were actually plans before 1999. In this article, it will only be covering Family Guy's Pilot, not Larry and Steve. In 1998, Seth MacFarlane took ideas from Larry and Steve and put it in a new family-based show. Seth originally made the pilot hand-drawn, looking a bit sloppier. Characters looked crude and different, Lois and Stewie received a more mixed color type design, Lois had blonde hair, to match her similarities with Chris's hair, but was later changed to a more distinguished brunette hair. Stewie has purple overalls and a green inner shirt, this was changed to red and yellow to make him appear more like a maniacal baby.

The pilot was reportedly finished, but only seven minutes and a few low quality screenshots of the rest of the pilot survived. Many commercials for the show, despite being changed before them, still contain the early pilot scenes, matching the bad taken photos, except the courtroom scene, which remains lost entirely.

On internet forums of the late 2000's, people claimed to have a copy of the pilot tape, either from an "ebay seller" or "they family works for Seth MacFarlane and got from him", some even claimed to have taken the picture with their copy.