American Dad: 10 Perfect Episodes Sci-Fi Fans Will Love

American Dad! is gearing up for its return to FOX with new episodes after 12 years of being away, and there are a ton of hidden gems that science fiction fans will love to see in action. American Dad! has been a great success for both FOX and TBS over the last couple of decades. As it gets ready to cross over its 400th episode milestone in the coming season, it’s been made clear that there are really no limits in what kind of stories that the animated series can, and will, tell. Especially when it comes to its love of sci-fi gadgets.

Thanks to having an alien as one of the core characters in the cast, and a CIA agent having all kinds of resources at his disposal, American Dad has made all kinds of episodes with fun technologies and ideas that really use sci-fi to its utmost hilarious capacity. There are ten episodes in particular that have really made an impression for how it’s used its sci-fi ideas over the decades, and you can read on below for our picks for ten episodes that sci-fi fans will love. And let us know your picks in the comments!

10). Virtual In-Stanity

Season 8’s “Virtual In-Stanity” is one of the many episodes that makes use of the wild CIA experiments and technologies for its story, but this is likely one of the most twisted takes on it. After finding out there’s a robotic avatar technology that would allow him to spend more time with his son, Stan decides to become an attractive girl (voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar) to spend time with him. Naturally, it’s not long before it goes too far and Stan nearly uses this body to sleep with his son.

But the real fun comes from the technology of the avatar itself. Not only is it revealed that this robot body is incredibly fast and strong, but that it also completely mirrors all of Stan’s movements when in use. This leads to some great sequences like when Stan uses her at a school dance (with a raunchy style befitting Stan), and then Francine tries to fight off the avatar with a power loader like seen in Alien. It’s just a lot of fun.

9). Great Space Roaster

Speaking of Alien, Season 5’s “Great Space Roaster” decides to go all in on that idea. The episode sees the family deciding to hold a Roast for Roger’s birthday after he begs them for one, but he ends up insulted after all of their jokes. Then deciding to take his revenge by killing them all, the only way they can think to escape him is by going out into space for a year as part of a CIA (and CHIA Pet) experiment. That’s where the episode really goes for it.

Inspired by Alien (complete with Stan deciding to wear panties much like Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley in the film), Roger then starts attacking the family across a space station in order to get his revenge. There are some fun twists to the idea as Roger uses Ace of Base as a backing track to his attacks, but unfortunately it’s just too short of a sequence within the episode. It’s a great sci-fi sequence, but just not long enough overall.

8). The Shrink

Season 10’s “The Shrink” sees Stan visiting the CIA’s therapist in order to recover from a brush with death, and it’s not long before he takes it too far. As part of his therapy, Stan starts to play with miniatures but gets too invested in them because it gives him a sense of control over his surroundings. It turns out that Stan had planned to build a miniature city in order to shrink himself and live in it. Eventually the rest of the family shrinks down to find out what’s going on, and chaos fully breaks out.

You’ve got the exploration of the tiny town, giant ants that start to overwhelm the town thanks to a red wine spill that Roger casually causes, and all the while they need to get to the shrink ray that Stan tossed aside to bring them back to their regular size. It’s a fun and tense episode, and using a shrink ray was a fun way for Stan to figure out his own demons.

7). The Unincludeds

Although American Dad has a few episodes that deal with time travel, Season 11’s “The Unincludeds” is one of the most fun takes on the concept. Rather than going through time themselves, it’s revealed in the future that Steve and Snot eventually invent a time machine. But as they use it to look back on their past selves, they realize that they only remain friends as adults when the both of them go on to lead loser lives in high school. It’s a surprising conflict that comes about through it all.

When Steve gets more popular, their future selves begin to change and Steve realizes that Snot lives a much worse life the more popular Steve gets. We get many iterations of their future selves as a result, and Steve decides to torpedo his present day popularity to ensure a future together with his best friend. It’s both a great episode about Steve and Snot, and also a fun take on time travel with lots of funny gags as a result.

6). The Two Hundred

Season 11 was also when American Dad officially celebrated its 200th episode milestone. It’s a huge event story too as when Roger falls into a super collider, he ends up splitting himself up into the 200 different identities we’ve seen over the course of the animated series before this point. The main focus of the episode launches Stan into a post-apocalyptic world destroyed by Roger as they are in constant danger of being attacked by the titular “two hundred.”

When it all finally gets revealed, and we see all of the Rogers across the animated series’ run, it’s just such a fun cap to 200 episodes of animated history. All sparked by a rather fun sci-fi idea that took advantage of the Large Hadron Collider worries that had been popping up at the time.

5). Fellow Traveler

Season 18’s “Fellow Traveler” is probably one of the best self-contained Roger episodes in American Dad‘s series overall. This episode takes place before the events of the series and sees Roger when he first crash landed on Earth. Hitting New Mexico in 1947, Roger meets a unique group of people all with distinct personalities and gimmicks. These are familiar as it’s clear that they inspire many of the personas Roger takes on in the future, but the episode unfolds with an uncertainty for what Roger is going to do next.

He’s trying his best to avoid causing any trouble, and it opens up to a whole new kind of tone than seen in the series before. It’s an episode without the rest of the Smith Family, and features a Roger who is unlike the boisterous personality we see in other episodes. He slowly gets attached to this group of people, and it eventually unfolds in a rather unique way. For an episode that once again focuses on Roger’s alien nature, it’s definitely a must-watch for sci-fi fans.

4). Rabbit Ears

Season 14’s “Rabbit Ears” skews more towards the horror thriller side of sci-fi, and is all the better for it. Almost feeling like an episode of The Twilight Zone, Stan finds an old TV and ends up watching a mysterious program that starts to air on it. Originally being hooked on its 1960s aesthetics and its charming lead star, he finds himself getting sucked into it and discovering a chilling new kind of world. Thus fans watch as Stan tries his best to escape, but starts to lose his memories the longer he’s trapped. It’s such an honestly terrifying kind of concept, and it all comes to an end with a proper sci-fi thriller ending that kills all hope. It’s just so much fun.

3). May the Best Stan Win

If there’s one really fun episode that makes use of time travel, however, it’s one that seemingly starts from one of the smallest ideas. It’s revealed that a future version of Stan (that’s since become a half-Mexican cyborg) in this Season 5 episode is trying his best to win over Francine as his present day self eventually pushes her away. All the while, the future version of Stan is trying to trick the present version into distancing himself further.

It’s a fight between Stans for Francine’s love, and it ends with its own Terminator flavored final clash. There’s a pretty good Chad Lowe running joke throughout it as well, and it really hits hard when it pays off. It’s always good to get a new take on time travel that hasn’t really been done before, and American Dad has quite a few fun examples.

2). Echoes

Season 17’s “Echoes” has a strange tone throughout as following a mysterious introduction from Avery Bullock (voiced by Patrick Stewart), the episode sees Steve getting a job at the local weather station. After looking into the mysterious doppler, Steve starts to get visions into the future and tries his best to keep it from happening. He begins to get hooked to looking into the future the more he does it, and all throughout a mysterious hum echoes throughout the episode (as characters continue to point it out).

It’s an episode that feels like it’s really trying to be special, and it just seems different from everything that happens. There are references to multiple potential universes, and mysterious being from another world that eventually dooms the entire world to a bleak fate. It’s ambitious, and it’s incredible to see it payoff in only the way this show can.

1). The Jeff in Space Saga

This pick is a cheat because it’s multiple episodes, but there’s really no better sci-fi saga than this one. Spread across multiple seasons, there are episodes that follow Jeff into space and his adventures in trying to get back to Earth. Season 8’s “Naked to the Limit, One More Time,” has Roger tricking Jeff into going into space in his place. It’s then followed by “Lost in Space,” as fans get to see what life is like for Jeff on Roger’s home world. Season 10’s “The Longest Distance Relationship,” then plays with time as many years pass before Jeff makes it back and Season 12’s “Holy Sh-, Jeff’s Back!,” wraps it all up with Jeff swapping his brain with an alien.

It’s a saga that is literally otherworldly as Jeff meets many different kinds of aliens, is put to the test with his love of Hayley, and even Sinbad shows up as himself as an incredibly funny (and random) addition to the story. He’s clearly having a ton of fun (even when he turns into a Jedi like ghost), and it makes it all the better. This multi-episode saga is the best sci-fi story that American Dad has ever told, and it’s one that fans need to see.

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