Family Guy
A musical number performed by the family about how television used to have values — a sitcom opening from the 1970s, done straight and then undercut.
Family Guy rebuilt its titles: two distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1 and 10, running between 31 and 36 seconds.
At 36 seconds at its longest, it opens well under the 58-second median for animation sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on Fox in 1999, when America's Most Wanted, The X-Files and MADtv were also on the network.
Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; Family Guy did so once.
All 2 opening title sequences
Season 1
31sThe opening held its shape across the run, with the animation redrawn for high definition partway through. This is the later, higher-resolution version of the same sequence.
Season 10
36sThe tenth season, for comparison with the entry above — the same piano, the same staircase, the same joke about television.
More animation opening titles from the 1990s
1 sequence
One Piece
The longest-running opening rotation in television — more than twenty distinct sequences over a quarter of a century, each announcing a new arc.
- Season 1
2 sequences
South Park
A banjo, a cut-paper Colorado town and four boys at a bus stop — re-recorded and re-animated repeatedly across nearly thirty years while staying recognisably the same twenty-nine seconds.
- Season 1
- Season 15
1 sequence
SpongeBob SquarePants
A sea shanty led by a painted pirate head, in call and response with children — one of the most universally known pieces of television music written this century.
- Season 1
2 sequences
King of the Hill
Four men drinking beer in an alley, and a guitar riff. Thirty-one seconds that tell you the show has no interest in going anywhere.
- Season 1
- Season 14
1 sequence
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Ninety seconds cut faster than the eye resolves, with whole frames of text and diagram flashed for one frame each. Yoko Takahashi's theme is bright, major-key J-pop laid over imagery that is doing nothing of the kind, and the mismatch is the point rather than an accident.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Futurama
Like The Simpsons, an opening built to differ every week — a new caption under the logo and a different scrap of old cartoon on the screen the ship flies past — wrapped around Christopher Tyng's theme and a crash into a billboard.
- Seasons 1–4
- Seasons 6–7