Lois Griffin

Lois grew up as the daughter of multibillionaire parents Carter and Barbara Pewterschmidt. She was raised Protestant, but "Family Goy" reveals that her mother is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who hid her background. Lois speaks with a nasal New England accent. She works mostly as a housewife, but single episodes have given her other jobs. She becomes a television reporter in "FOX-y Lady", is elected mayor of Quahog in another episode, works at the post office in "Take a Letter" and works as a flight attendant. In "Baby, You Knock Me Out" she retires from boxing undefeated after 18 fights. She earns a black belt in Tae-Jitsu in "Lethal Weapons". "The Fat Guy Strangler" reveals that she has a brother who is a murderer.

Lois usually acts as the voice of reason against Peter's impulses, but some episodes show a darker side. In "The Son Also Draws" she develops a gambling habit at a casino and loses the family car. She becomes a bulimic model in "Model Misbehavior". In "Sibling Rivalry" she puts on a great deal of weight once Peter's vasectomy kills his sex drive, and finds she enjoys it. In "Stuck Together, Torn Apart" she and Peter separate over his jealousy, then discover she is equally jealous and reunite. Several episodes suggest she is bisexual or bi-curious. Borstein has said the character became more sassy and sexual after the first season, as a deliberate challenge to sitcom conventions about wives.

While at college, MacFarlane made The Life of Larry, a short about Larry, a middle-aged man, his dog Steve, a wife called Lois and a teenage son called Milt. A sequel, Larry & Steve, was broadcast by Cartoon Network in 1997. Representatives of 20th Century Fox asked him to build a series around the characters and gave him $50,000 to develop a pilot, around a twentieth of the usual cost. Within three months he had created the Griffin family. Larry became the basis for Peter and Steve for Brian, while Meg and Stewie were entirely new. Although Larry's wife shared Lois's name, the two do not resemble each other. Fox ordered thirteen episodes after seeing the pilot.

Alex Borstein, a producer and staff writer on the show, has voiced Lois since the pilot. She also plays Tricia Takanawa, Loretta Brown and Barbara Pewterschmidt. When Family Guy was in development Borstein was a cast member on the sketch series MADtv. A colleague working with MacFarlane asked her to audition, before she had met him or seen any artwork. She was performing a stage show in Los Angeles at the time, playing a red-haired mother whose voice she had modelled on a cousin from Long Island. She brought that voice to Lois. MacFarlane wanted it quicker and higher-pitched than her original slower version, and Borstein has noted that it has kept speeding up. In "Road to the Multiverse" Kei Ogawa voiced Lois in a Japanese-set scene.

IGN ranked Lois twelfth in its list of the top 25 Family Guy characters. The same site placed her song from "Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater" third among the show's musical moments. Two of her fights also made its list of top fights: with Stewie in "Lois Kills Stewie" at seventh, and with the family in "Lethal Weapons" at sixth. Outside the series she has appeared in Drawn Together, South Park, The Cleveland Show and The Simpsons, and she plays Princess Leia in the three Star Wars parody episodes.