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‘Family Guy’ yanked by Fox isn’t only TV episode to get plug pulled

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After an edited clip from its animated series “Family Guy” was circulated online with a claim that it predicted the Boston Marathon bombing, Fox elected to pull the episode, “Turban Cowboy,” from streaming sites, including Fox.com and Hulu.com.

The clip making the rounds online showed series protagonist Peter Griffin explaining how he had won a race, which involved detonating two bombs. While the scenes in the clip all appeared in the same episode, the clip had been edited to appear closer to the events in Boston than the actual episode showed.

The clip got so much exposure that series creator Seth MacFarlane took to Twitter to call it “abhorrant.”

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While it’s doubtful that “Turban Cowboy” will disappear forever, it’s not the first time a network has pushed a particular episode of a show off its schedule or out of its archives in the heat of a controversy.

Several shows, from “The X-Files” to “Seinfeld,” have either pushed the boundaries of what the audience found acceptable too far or were overtaken by real-world events.

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While these episodes may have been pulled from the public eye for a period of time, they almost always surface again.

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