How Bones' Season 4 Crossover With Family Guy Came To Be

TV crossovers have been a thing for the vast majority of the medium's history as a popular form of entertainment. From "The Jetsons" meeting "The Flinstones" to "The Simpsons" meeting the characters from "Futurama," there's a rich history here. But not every crossover is quite so obvious. For example, the Fox crime drama "Bones" ended up crossing with, oddly enough, Seth MacFarlane's animated sitcom "Family Guy." Bizarre though it may sound, both shows aired on the same network at the same time, and there was a good enough reason to bring these characters into the same universe at the time.

The episode in question was the second to last episode of "Bones" season 4, entitled "The Critic in the Cabernet." While the main plot involves human remains found inside a wine barrel during a tasting, the crossover has to do with the episode's B-plot. In the episode, Emily Deschanel's Brennan decides to have a baby and asks Booth to be the father. He begins to doubt himself and soon winds up talking to Stewie from "Family Guy."

In a 2010 interview with TV Tango, series creator Hart Hanson addressed the crossover and how it came to be. Ultimately, it had to do with the tumor that David Boreanaz's Booth was contending with (more specifically, a symptom of that tumor):

"We did the little crossover with Stewie from 'Family Guy.' It was a lucky, fortuitous thing. We'd done this research on the tumor that Booth actually had, and one of the symptoms was that you see animated characters. It was an actual symptom of the type of brain tumor he had. I think my initial idea was 'SpongeBob SquarePants' because SpongeBob makes me laugh. Josh Berman, another producer on the show, said, 'No. It should be Stewie from 'Family Guy.” We called up Seth [MacFarlane] and he was all for it. That was just one of those fortuitous things that happens."

The episode aired in 2009, right when both shows were arguably at the height of their respective cultural powers. Boreanaz ended up returning the favor in short order, as he appeared briefly in the "Family Guy" season 9 episode "Road to the North Pole." For what it's worth, /Film ranked "Family Guy" season 9 as the best in the show's long, storied history. Boreanaz had at least a small part to play in all of that.

This was not the only crossover that was proposed by Hanson and the creators during the long run the series enjoyed on Fox. As he explained in the same interview, "Bones" came very close to crossing over with another crime show, "Lie to Me." However, timing and logistics got in the way of that one happening:

"Crossovers come up all the time as a possibility. For a while we were talking about doing a 'Lie to Me' crossover. I always thought a 'Fringe' crossover could work if we started at the same crime scene. It's so difficult to arrange crossovers because somehow the two shows have to come to an agreement on a time and a place and all those things. And most of quite honestly are doing things at a flat-out run just trying to get a show to the air. With 'Lie to Me,' Sean Ryan had just taken over the show when we started talking about it, and he had his hands full."

"Bones" is currently streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.