Where did netizens find the original 1998 Family Guy pilot episode? The full version resurfaces online after decades

The popular animated sitcom Family Guy's pilot episode, which aired on Fox in 1998, has resurfaced online after almost 30 years. The American sitcom was created by writer and director Seth MacFarlane.

The X user @Dexerto tweeted about the discovery of the pilot episode. The tweet has now gone viral on the social media app, with more than 420,000 likes and 15,000 reposts.

According to Dexerto, the episode first surfaced in 2022 when Robert Paulson, one of the sitcom's animators, uploaded the entire episode to his website. On March 21, 2025, the user GhostTheDeadGirl from the Lost Media Wiki's Discord discovered the episode.

For the unversed, the Lost Media Wiki is a fan-driven project where fans of films, shows, music, etc, try to find the media that's been lost for years.

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More details on the pilot episode of Family Guy

According to Yahoo Entertainment's report, Fox gave Seth MacFarlane $50,000. He then made the 1998 pilot episode and showed it to the executives who greenlit the animated sitcom. Family Guy then aired on Fox from January 31, 1999 onwards.

The formal pilot, Death Has A Shadow, incorporated some details from the 1998 pilot, such as Peter getting intoxicated at the Stag party and Stewie building a mind-control device.

According to the media outlet, only the first seven minutes of the 1998 episode were available on the Family Guy Volume 2 DVD. On March 21, 2025, the channel Goobie uploaded the full 16-minute episode to YouTube.

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Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane talks about the long-running show

Seth MacFarlane at the PaleyFest LA 2024 - "Family Guy" 25th Anniversary Celebration - Image via Getty

In April 2024, the show's creator and voice actor, Seth MacFarlane, sat down in an interview with the Los Angeles Times with the show's other voice actors, Alex Borstein, Seth Green, and Mila Kunis. The main cast of the sitcom discussed the show as it was their 25th anniversary.

MacFarlane shared that the show shouldn't stop airing since the fans love it. He also expressed that the show makes enough revenue that he can comfortably donate money to charities.

For the unversed, MacFarlane donated $1 million to The Rainforest Trust to fight deforestation.

"At this point, I don’t see a good reason to stop. People still love it. It makes people happy and it funds some good causes. It’s a lot of extraneous cash that you can donate to Rainforest Trust and you can still go out to dinner that night," MacFarlane said.

MacFarlane stated in the interview that he thought about ending the sitcom in the past. However, he doesn't plan to end the show until fans get tired of it. He said:

"There was a time when I thought, it’s time to wrap it up. At this point, we’ve reached escape velocity. I don’t know that there’s any reason to stop at this point unless people get sick of it. Unless the numbers show that people just are, 'Eh, we don’t care about Family Guy anymore.' But that hasn’t happened yet."

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Family Guy is currently in its 23rd season. It can be streamed on Disney Plus, Hulu, Prime Video, and Apple TV.