In episode 4 of season Family guy, as the panic room begins to fill with water, Peter Griffin confesses on his deathbed, “He didn’t care” about Godfather. His family loses sight of this, and a pointless argument ensues about the cult film that eventually leads to Peter uttering the enigmatic, and now deadpanned, words: “It’s pushing on itself.” Nearly two decades later, series creator Seth McFarlane finally explains what that means.
“Since this has gained popularity, here’s a fun fact: ”It’s self-inflicted’ is the criticism my college film history professor used to explain why he didn’t think ‘The Sound of Music’ was a great movie” – McFarlane wrote on X this week. “A first-rate teacher, but I never quite followed it.” The joke isn’t that Peter has suddenly become an erudite critic as the family prepares to drown under his latest idiotic stunt. It’s just a funny-sounding set of words that sound like they should mean something but actually don’t.
Family guy superfans have been trying to decipher the deeper meaning for years discussions are ongoing on forums, subreddits and social media. Sometimes this phrase just starts trending as users riff while spending idle moments staring at their phones. Even now, people still insist that Peter meant something, and they know exactly what he meant.
“That’s why I didn’t like Jackson The Lord of the Rings– one of the people replied. “It hits you in the face and screams, ‘This is an epic masterpiece!’ Appreciate it! I didn’t do it. He learned from that and softened his approach to sequels a bit.” What?
“My interpretation of ‘it insists on itself’ is that when you watch it, you get the impression that one of the intentions behind this movie was: ‘It SHOULD be good,'” wrote another. “There are many ways you can try to be good without trying to be good, and that is to buck the trends. The self-insistence means that it hits all the marks that a “good” movie “should”.
The gag from episode 77 ends with Peter revealing that he wasn’t even finished Godfather and I prefer the summer of 1986 Money mine instead starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. The punch line is that the movie sucks too.
.