The Alleged Death of Lois Griffin From 'Family Guy' Is Trending on Social Media

The characters of the long-running animated sitcom Family Guy become memes for all sorts of strange and/or inexplicable reasons. A running animation for Peter Griffin has been used in several pieces of viral content, such as placing him in the City Escape truck segment of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. The fight between Joe Swanson and his friends who are trying to break his legs has been edited to artistic degrees.

Then there's Lois Griffin.

The matriarch of the Griffin family has been the subject of multiple memes in 2022 alone. As the year draws to a close, the internet has squeezed in one last joke for Lois. News of her untimely death has been trending on social media over the holiday weekend. But where exactly did this news come from? Here's everything we know about the death of Lois Griffin.

In late December 2022, news began to circulate about the death of Lois Griffin. A viral tweet with more than 108,000 likes and 9,400 retweets (as well as 20 million views, if you're counting those as well) from @minasdemon claims "Lois Griffin DEAD AT 43." Among the many comments, people have taken the news to heart. Some are heartbroken over her sudden passing, with others expressing abject apathy. @minasdemon even shared "footage" of her death in the form of a scene from an old episode.

To be perfectly clear, Lois Griffin is not actually dead. In fact, the most recent episode — which aired on Dec. 11, 2022 — doesn't even feature Lois prominently, much less show her dying. News of her recent death is greatly exaggerated by @minasdemon, though that hasn't stopped the user from jokingly doubling down on the joke in the replies.

It seems this hoax may be a take on TikTok's current celeb-death-hoax trend that has been making its rounds. This prank sees users shock their loved ones by saying that "so-and-so is dead at so-and-so age."

Fans have had mixed reactions to the Lois hoax. One person tweeted, "Quit spreading fake news." Others have leaned into it, stating, "Streets lost a good one."

Despite Lois's death being a hoax, it wouldn't be the first time that a major character death nearly shook up the show. In 2013, Brian Griffin — the family's talking alcoholic dog — canonically died from a hit-and-run and was subsequently removed from the show. The character would return two episodes later, but not before the show's creators received immense fan backlash and hate mail demanding that Brian return to the show.

Believe it or not, this isn't even the first Lois-based meme of 2022. In a scene from Season 21 Episode 4, "The Munchurian Candidate," Lois screams out the name of her husband, Peter, in a vain attempt to get him to stop doing something horrible. The scream was so visceral that it quickly went viral. Many on social media praised the voice performance of Lois' actress, Alex Borstein, for having committed to the scream so fully.

New episodes of Family Guy return on Jan. 8, 2023, on Fox.