Seth MacFarlane's American Dad! frequently toes the line of acceptable, much like it's Sunday-evening partner Family Guy, another creation of MacFarlane's that features a few more despicable characters. However, American Dad! takes the cake when it comes to awful things characters have done, largely due to the actions of Roger Smith.
Roger Smith, or Roger the Alien, has resided with the Smith's since he was rescued by Stan from Area 51. Over the years he has developed a number of personalities that he uses to interact with the world without revealing he's an alien. These personalities more often than not are also used in his terrible schemes, which we're going to explore today as we look at a few of the worst things Roger has ever done.
BURIED FRANCINE ALIVE
In the fifth season episode Merlot Down Dirty Shame, Roger and Francine Smith are having a night of wine tasting that leads to Roger becoming incredibly drunk and kissing Francine. The next day Francine tells Roger she's going to tell Stan about the incident, which makes Roger fearful due to Stan's insane jealousy.
In order to avoid the confrontation, Roger decides to get rid of Francine, which ultimately results in him burying her alive. He also tries to get Stan to kiss another woman first, but when that backfires he lies and tells Stan that Francine was the one who tried to kiss him. When Stan threatened divorce that might threaten Roger's lifestyle, he then responded similarly by burying Stan alive and telling him the truth.
HAS RUN MULTIPLE SWEATSHOPS
Roger will always opt to get other people to do his work for him, and that doesn't restrict the use of children. The first season's Tears of a Clooney saw Stan and Francine fly off to Prague for an elaborate scheme to take down George Clooney, which left Roger alone to start his very own vineyard in the Simth's drained pool.
Of course, he used orphaned children to tend to the vineyard, and after they all came down with a mysterious disease, Haley called Child Services. One of Roger's personas also went on trial in The People vs. Martin Sugar because he ran a sweatshop that made handbags.
CONVINCED STEVE HE WAS ADOPTED
While Steve is usually one of Roger's closest family members, they have had a few terrible moments that have pushed the limits of their friendship. In the episode Stannie Get Your Gun, Roger sets out to convince Steve that he is adopted after Steve steals Roger's cookie.
He does this with a number of convincing tricks like altering family photos, but the worst thing he does is finds a family whose child was abducted as an infant and convinced Steve that he was their missing child. Only after the family had welcomed their "son" home did Roger reveal his prank, leaving the family crushed.
STOLE A BODY FOR HER HAIR
Roger's ability to manipulate the Smiths (and pretty much every human around him) is on full display in Old Stan in the Mountain. Roger tricks Francine into going on a trip with him to a dance contest, though it is soon revealed that they were going to Roger's ex-wife's funeral.
Francine is then coerced into helping Roger dig up the body and take her out to the lake, where another lie is revealed and it is determined that Roger just wanted to shave off her hair to make a wig, and had married her and waited for her to die in order to steal her hair.
TRIED TO KILL THE SMITH FAMILY
The episode Great Space Roaster featured the Smith family as they took part in Roger's "Celebrity Roast." While they assumed it was going well, it was soon revealed that Roger was devastated by what they were saying, and in typical Roger fashion, he began plotting his revenge.
The family is nearly killed by an exploding kitchen and cut brakes before Roger admits that he will never stop until he kills them. Even when Stan imprisons him, Roger kills his way back to the family, who escape into space. Roger, of course, hung on to the wing of the rocket and traps the family, where he makes them roast each other to feel what he felt, though they all soon laugh it off.
TRIED TO DROWN A BABY
It seems hard to believe that this isn't at the top of the list, but that just goes to show terrible Roger can be on American Dad! In One Little Word, Deputy Director Bullock leaves his adopted son AJ with the Smith family, and Roger becomes both jealous of and then later attached to the baby.
He grows so attached that he kidnaps AJ to a cabin at a lake. When AJ breaks the leg off of Roger's prized crystal spider, an enraged Roger attempts to drive a car into the lake and drown baby AJ. He is thankfully stopped by Stan, and AJ is safely returned to his mother.
SKINNED/EXILED/KILLED JEFF
Jeff Smith might have suffered the most at the hands of Roger. In Love, American Dad!-Style, Roger develops a crush on Hayley and skins Jeff so he can wear him like a suit and make Hayley fall in love with him, though he returns the skin to Jeff when he fails. He also exiles Jeff to space when he learns that Roger is an alien later in Naked to the Limit, One More Time.
Jeff is killed in space because of this, though he is returned in a partially alien body. Roger kind of undoes this horrible sequence of events by offering to birth Jeff a new human body in case he and Haley want to have a baby, but to do this he literally sucks the human brain right out of Jeff's body, and almost runs off with his "son" to raise him as Tristen before Jeff is fully reborn.
FRAMES KEVIN BACON FOR A HIT-AND-RUN
American Dad! never shied away from lampooning or including celebrities on the show, and the second season's Four Little Words featured Kevin Bacon and his nose. After being ridiculed at a park for being disfigured because he didn't have a nose, Roger found a latex nose that made him look like Kevin Bacon.
Roger proceeded to use the nose to impersonate Kevin Bacon so he could get free stuff around the city, but he stopped wearing the nose unexpectedly. It was revealed he stopped wearing it because he got in a drunken hit-and-run accident and killed a pedestrian. The real Kevin Bacon was arrested and convicted in his place because even he thought Roger looked like him.
KILLED TEENS FOR NOT PAYING HIM
In the seventh season episode Virtual In-Stanity, Roger and Klaus begin a driving service after Roger steals a limousine. However, his job is soon replaced by a mission for revenge when a group of guys refuse to pay. He responds instantly by driving over and killing one of the fare-ditchers.
Roger and Klaus spend the rest of the episode hunting down the others who stiffed them, even running down a few of them at the funeral for their friend. He manages to take out the final guy by murdering an entire plane full of people. He even undoes the chute of a stewardess who managed to escape the plane crash, causing her to fall to her death as well.
RICKY SPANISH
One of Roger's worst personas is Ricky Spanish, a "lying, thieving sociopath" who Roger buried and forgot about until finding his costume. Roger himself credits Ricky Spanish as the "worst persona I've ever done," and the costume even takes Stan over in the later episode Persona Assistant.
Some of his lowest moments include: taking a dump in an open chest cavity during surgery, stranding Principal Lewis in Tijuana, and setting a kid's petting zoo on fire. One of the worst things he did was stab Bullock's wife through the chest with a katana at her birthday party, killing her. Thankfully, an intoxicated Bullock didn't even remember the incident.