Brian sits down like a dog in this pilot. Later in the series, he sits like a human.
Based on Seth MacFarlane's original 15 minute pilot cartoon which was his pitch to FOX. The pilot is included on the Volume 2 DVD.
In the original pilot, Lois was a blonde.
Death Has a Shadow and the next 3 episodes are from a time when Seth MacFarlane wanted to do all the episodes like old radio shows. Most of the old radio mysteries were stuff like Death Has a Shadow, Death Knocks Twice, Driver Death, and so on. However this proved unmanageable as the writers and producers found it hard to talk about the episodes unless they alluded to actions, not the titles such as The One Where Peter is Under House Arrest.
This is the most watched episode of the all the episodes from all the series. It is estimated that 22,000,000 Americans saw this when it was originally broadcast in 1999.