Chris Griffin

Like Meg, Chris is written as a fairly typical adolescent, though he is good-natured and easy-going and rarely worries about his situation. He shares his father's lack of common sense and is often confused and naive. Even so, he usually learns faster than Peter and has talents including filmmaking and video editing. In "Patriot Games" he is the only family member to pick up a cockney accent when the family moves to London. He and Stewie are often shown as a close team. In season 23 an episode confirmed that Chris is autistic. He generally loves and looks after Meg. Once socially active at school, he grew increasingly unpopular and friendless as the series went on, though he remains outwardly confident. In "Stew-Roids" a relationship with Connie D'Amico briefly makes him popular, then arrogant.

Chris resembles Milt, Larry Cummings's son in The Life of Larry, which MacFarlane made in 1995 as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. That film led to Family Guy three years later. Seth Green has said his voice for Chris came from imagining Buffalo Bill, the killer in The Silence of the Lambs. He pictured how that character would sound speaking over the public address system at a McDonald's. In a 2003 interview MacFarlane explained the Evil Monkey gag: the writers wanted to give Chris a childhood fear that turned out to be real, because he has a childlike mind. The monkey's grimace and pointing gesture were the idea of writer Mike Barker.

A long-running gag has Chris tormented by the Evil Monkey that lives in his closet, while everyone he tells assumes he is joking. In "Hannah Banana" he proves the monkey exists and the two become friends: the monkey turns out not to be evil, only depressed after his wife left him, and he helps Chris pass a book report. When the monkey shows more interest in Chris's schoolwork than Peter does, father and son fall out. The monkey later helps reconcile them before moving into the closet of Jake Tucker. A second gag, starting with "Blue Harvest", has Chris defend Seth Green's career and Robot Chicken whenever Peter mocks them. It continues through "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side" and the final Star Wars parody. Chris and Green share a birthday, 8 February.