The Fox TV show “Bones” is not what you might call a “normal” police procedural. A very quirky series, “Bones” is responsible for not one but two of the weirdest TV crossovers ever. One of them is especially bizarre: Stewie Griffin, the diabolical baby from the animated series “Family Guy,” makes a memorable guest appearance in “Bones” Season 4.
Stewie, voiced by his normal voice actor and “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane, shows up in the season’s 25th episode, “The Critic and the Cabernet.” Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) keeps seeing visions of Stewie. The first instance comes when Booth is preparing to donate sperm so Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel) can have a baby. Stewie shows up on a TV screen and berates Booth for not going to his “hot doctor friend” to “make a direct deposit.” Even unplugging the TV doesn’t stop him.
Stewie appears later while Booth and Bones are interrogating a suspect. Nobody but Booth can see or hear Stewie, so the interrogation quickly goes off the rails, but the hallucination gets Booth to admit his reservations about Bones having the child. The end of the episode reveals that Booth has a brain tumor, and that’s why he’s been seeing Stewie. (Booth has surgery to remove the tumor, but gets some amnesia as a side effect. Like we said: not a “normal” police procedural.)
Seth MacFarlane was returning a favor to the Bones team when he did the crossover
“Family Guy,” with its many references and cutaway gags, is no stranger to crossovers. Stewie’s appearance on “Bones,” however, was completely the live-action show’s idea. In an interview with Buddy TV, Seth MacFarlane explained that the occasional live-action gags on “Family Guy” were usually shot on the “Bones” set by the “Bones” team. Both were Fox series.
“‘Bones’ has been really cool to us. We’ve worked with them a bunch of times,” MacFarlane said. “They’ve really been very neighborly. They came to us and they said it’d be really cool to have Stewie do a guest spot and we were like, ‘Absolutely. It’s the least we can do. We owe you a hundred times over.’ It was fun. They did a great job with it.”
The episode of “Bones” featuring Stewie aired in May 2009. In December 2010, “Family Guy” pulled the reverse and had David Boreanaz make a cameo. During the Christmas episode “Road to the North Pole,” — which is one of the best episodes of “Family Guy” – Brian and Stewie are seeking shelter as they look for Santa’s workshop. They receive help from the “Aurora Boreanaz,” Boreanaz’s live-action face superimposed over some aurora borealis visuals.
“Road to the North Pole” also features some live-action segments where MacFarlane’s father narrates the story. According to the DVD commentary for the episode, these sequences were filmed on, of course, the “Bones” lot.
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