Stephen King x Family Guy: The spine-tingling Halloween crossover that withstood the test of time

The animated American television comedy Family Guy, popular for its humor and gags, did something unexpected. The show's season seven episode 15 was titled Three Kings and it aired on May 10, 2009, where it parodied a great horror writer. The episode has three segments which are parodies of three different Stephen King stories, Stand by Me, Misery, and The Shawshank Redemption.

Since it deviated from the Family Guy plot, the episode, written by Alec Sulkin and directed by Dominic Bianchi, garnered excellent reviews and remains a fan favorite today. The plot of this Family Guy episode is pretty straightforward. It shows Peter envisioning his family and friends in three of Stephen King's most well-known novels after learning about the author.

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Family Guy’s humorous twist on Stephen King’s stories

In the first parody of Stand by Me, the Family Guy episode shows Peter, Quagmire, Cleveland, and Joe playing 12-year-olds embarking on a self-discovery trip down a train track. The four boys, Joey Duchamp (Joe), Cleve Brown (Cleveland), Quag Chambers (Quagmire), and Petey LaChange (Peter), go in search of a dead corpse in the woods in 1955.

They follow a pair of railroad lines to locate the body. When they discover the body—which turns out to be Meg—they are met with Ace Merrill, (Mayor West). Merrill is a neighborhood bully, who arrives to collect the body and threatens them with a knife.

Petey takes out a revolver to scare Ace, who says he will return for vengeance. However, since they reside in the same area and would inevitably cross paths again, Petey lets Ace retain the body in order to prevent the situation from worsening.

After the boys get back home, they each go their own ways. Quag becomes a well-known Hollywood actor who overdoses on drugs. Joey accepts that he is in a wheelchair and creates a new sport for people with disabilities. Meanwhile, Cleve grows up to marry Rebecca Romijn.

Second, in the Family Guy version of Misery, Brian, who is hurt, is saved by his admirer Stewie. The last book in the Snuggly Jeff children's book series by the renowned author Paul Sheldon (Brian) has recently come to an end. In order to concentrate on more important tasks, he finishes off the protagonist in this last volume.

While going through a snowstorm, Paul steers off the road to avoid colliding with Stephen King, leading him into an accident. Paul's number-one admirer, a cross-dressing kid named Stewie Wilkes (Stewie), comes to his aid and takes the wounded Paul to his secluded cottage.

After discovering and reading the manuscript for Paul's most recent Snuggly Jeff novel, Stewie is furious at the unfortunate passing of the main character. He compels Paul to completely rewrite the book in order to bring Snuggly Jeff back to life while keeping him hostage. Upon dispatching Stewie out for paper, Paul comes upon a news report naming Stewie as a serial killer.

By coincidence, Joe, the sheriff, arrives, but Stewie blows off his legs with a shotgun, killing him so he doesn't have to use a wheelchair. Despite Paul's attempts to revive Snuggly Jeff towards the end of the novel, Stewie won't let him go since he knows Paul will inform everybody about the abduction. Paul's eventual destiny remains unclear as the segment of the episode ends.

In the final segment of this episode of Family Guy, Peter imagines his own Shawshank Redemption, in which he and Cleveland become prison mates. After being transferred to Shawshank Prison, Andy Dufresne (Peter) becomes instant friends with Red (Cleveland), another prisoner. In a show of goodwill, Andy begs Red for a rock hammer so he may use it to slowly tunnel out of the jail.

He also wants Red to help him build Star Wars miniatures out of rocks, which the ruthless warden (Carter) offers to sell to crippling Bogs (Joe), the prisoner who assaulted Andy in the lavatory. Clearance is granted for Andy to tidy the warden's office. In the process, he plays a recording of Hollaback Girl throughout the jail, completely bewildering every prisoner and infuriating the warden.

Red is told by Andy that he is planning to go to Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and that if he ever manages to break out of jail, he ought to head to a volcanic rock that he has put in a Buxton hayfield. Later on in the evening, Andy disappears.

The warden is so angry that he tosses one of Andy's pebbles at a picture of David Cassidy, ripping a hole in it. When the Warden reaches down below the hole, he finds a tunnel Andy built that leads to a sewage line that the latter used to escape.

After being freed from Shawshank, Red visits the field in Buxton that Andy had instructed him to visit. There, he discovers a box holding cash and a postcard asking if he can recall the name of the Mexican nation that Andy had informed him about—Zihuatanejo. Sadly, Red is unable to do so. The next scene shows Andy building a boat on a Zihuatanejo beach, impatiently awaiting Red's arrival so they may set sail together.

Even though Family Guy parodied three stories without any spooky overtones in this episode, the Misery segment, which stars Stewie as Kathy Bates, is a fantastic imitation of the movie.

The second act of this Family Guy episode is almost a Halloween episode in and of itself, complete with a humorous replication of Bates' devoted fan and a shocking cameo from the author himself.

Family Guy season 7 episode 15 "Three Kings" and the latest Family Guy season 22 are available for fans to stream on Hulu.