This article lists characters from the animated series American Dad!.
Voice cast
The voice actors are not assembled as a group when performing the lines of their characters; rather, each of the voice actors perform their lines privately. The voice actors have stated that because of their personalities and tendency to goof off when together as a group, they would never get anything completed if they performed their lines collectively.
Appearances
Main characters
Stan Smith
Stanford Leonard "Stan" Smith (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) is the title character on American Dad! who has an exaggeratedly masculine voice and manner about him. Stan is Francine's husband and Hayley and Steve's father. Hayley may or may not be Stan's biological daughter since Francine revealed to have cheated on Stan at a bachelorette party in the episode "The Kidney Stays in the Picture", but Stan regards Hayley as his daughter. As the Smith family breadwinner, Stan is a CIA agent. Early on in the series, Stan was exaggeratedly patriotic and Conservative. His character, however, has progressed over the course of the series from the ultra right-wing it had been. All the same however, Stan has proven to be drastic and extreme in numerous other ways beyond politics. He is often shown rashly taking extreme measures in ways that are conspicuously destructive, disastrous, and life-threatening to others. Making his extreme-measure taking worse, Stan is utterly inconsiderate and insensitive, thus he does not stop to think of how others are negatively impacted, nor does he care. As examples of this: in the episode "Dope & Faith" when Stan found out one of his friends was an atheist, he tried getting him to pray by blowing up his home, spreading the bird flu at his restaurant, brainwashing his wife into thinking she was a lesbian, and taking his kids away; in the episode "I Can't Stan You," Stan evicted his entire neighborhood and his own family just for overhearing some of his neighbors gossiping about him behind his back; in the episode "Four Little Words," Stan framed his wife as a murderer all so as not to hear her say the words "I told you so"; etc. Not a stranger to going to any and all lengths to achieve his desired ends—even to the point of shamelessly harming others—Stan is characterized as very dog-eat-dog. Aside from his thoughtlessly drastic and endangering behaviors, he has an endearing. kinder, and sensitive side as well. It has been revealed that he very much desires fatherly love and attention but has always lacked this. Stan's parents separated when he was very young (later learned because of Stan himself in the episode "Blood Crieth Unto Heaven"); thus he has a father (Jack Smith) who was not around much and mistreated him.
Francine Smith
Francine Lee Smith (née Ling, voiced by Wendy Schaal) is Stan's wife and the mother of Steve and Hayley. Indignant, Francine can usually be seen nagging and scolding her family (particularly Stan) over their wrongdoings. Francine often nags at her family to uphold certain virtues and over any unwholesome or reprehensible behaviors they engage in. Ironically, it is mostly in the midst of all her moralizing and urging others to do the right thing that she demonstrates blatant inappropriateness, indecorum, and inelegance. Sporadically while engaged in moralizing others, Francine will randomly throw in remarks and behaviors that are in bad taste and lack all propriety. Adding to her paradoxical nature, Francine's behaviors have been known to become downright immoral and sometimes even fiendish, all the while trying to get others to live more wholesomely and do what is right. For example, in the episode "The Boring Identity," Francine made efforts to get Stan to be a more civilized and respectable husband. In the process, she deceived him into thinking he was an entirely different person after he got struck with amnesia. Another example, in the episode "Can I Be Frank With You," Francine was disgruntled by the fact that she and Stan were not a closer couple. To achieve this, she encroached in on Stan's guys' night using a male disguise that could fart for extended periods of time. Francine has also been shown to have a randomly wacky and peculiar side. For example, in the episode "The Scarlett Getter," while Francine was engaged in an angry rant about Stan, she stated "Those two are stuck on each other like gum on a hot summer sidewalk on a summer afternoon. I'm sorry, I'm taking a creative writing class."