When Seth MacFarlane made American Dad!, he finally did something right. The show is hilarious, well-written, and entertaining as all get-out, and is frequently watched in my household.
One of the funniest running gags in the show is how the Smith family treats Klaus Heisler (or Heissler, depending on the episode), a former East German Olympic ski-jumper who had his brain transferred into the body of a goldfish by the CIA. Klaus is now a member of the Smith family, masquerading as their pet goldfish, not that you’d know that based on how the family treats Klaus on a regular basis.
10. Openly Hateful Towards Him
Roger, much like Klaus, is tied to the Smith family because they’re obligated to protect him due to Stan’s job in the CIA. Roger and Klaus have a confusing relationship at best and an absolutely bewildering relationship at worst.
Sometimes they’re enemies, sometimes they’re lovers, and they seem to have been everything in between. However, sometimes Roger just absolutely hates Klaus, like when he tells him in season five, “You can’t participate, Klaus. I hate you. I say that not out of anger, but as a fact.” Stating that you hate someone so simply is such a ruthless and cold-blooded thing to do to another person (or, goldfish).
9. Threaten to Kick Him Out
Though, technically, the Smiths can’t kick Klaus out of the family, they threaten to do it periodically, and sometimes even attempt to do it. Sometimes he’ll be left outside, or openly abandoned when the family travels somewhere else.
Though sometimes he’s forgotten on accident (arguably worse?). sometimes it’s even on purpose. In a season four episode, Roger reiterates how badly the family wants Klaus to get kicked out, and how close they are to doing it, while also highlighting how intensely he hates Klaus sometimes. He says to him, “It’s like you want to be kicked out of this family,” which, oof.
8. Violence Against Klaus
In season six, episode eleven, “A Piñata Named Desire,” Roger asks Stan to attend an acting class with him, and Stan does. The tension rises when Roger and Stan audition for the same role. However, this is not what we’re looking at in this episode; no, we’re looking for Klaus, who makes a comment about acting that seems to make Roger angry.
Well, obviously makes Roger angry, because after Klaus is done speaking, Roger picks up his fishbowl, throws it across the room, and smashes it against the wall. Klaus gasps on the floor while Roger simply walks out of the room and leaves him to die. Yikes.
7. Emotionally Taxing Conversations
Disrespecting your friends, your relationships with your friends, and your friends’ mental health are three of the worst things you can do to a person you claim to love, and yet this happens time and time again to Klaus. The Smith family always comes to him when they need something, but they’re rarely there when Klaus needs something, or if he just wants to hang out.
They often mock him in that case. In season three, Stan turned to Klaus for advice, and Klaus finally stood his ground, saying, “No. You only turn to me when there’s no one else to turn to.” Brave, but should be unnecessary.
6. They Want Him Dead
Really, at this point, why is Klaus even still hanging out with the Smith family? We, personally, probably would have tried to Finding Nemo ourselves long ago. “All drains lead to the ocean, kid.” Anyways, Stan certainly wants Klaus dead, and he wants it so badly it’s imprinted deep within on his immortal soul.
In the season five Christmas episode (which are notoriously not canon, but we’ll get to that), Stan’s personal heaven has Klaus dead and mounted on a board in his dream home. Even though this doesn’t actually happen, it shows how badly Stan wants Klaus dead and mounted for all to see.
5. No, They Really Want Him Dead
In another season five episode, titled “An Incident at Owl Creek,” Stan accidentally embarrasses himself at Buckle and Sharri’s pool party and blows up his family’s house so he can fake their death and leave their old life behind. After a bit of deciding, he comes to the logical conclusion that embarrassing President Barack Obama will make Stan’s faux-pas less embarrassing, and so the story spirals from there.
While Stan is trying to embarrass the President, Klaus tries to help; however, upon approaching President Obama, Klaus is spotted by the Secret Service and is shot immediately, getting blown to pieces while swimming in a pool. This turns out to be another dream of Stan’s; as it turns out, he really wants Klaus to die.
4. Getting Him Thrown In Jail
We mentioned earlier than Roger and Klaus have been everything from enemies to lovers, and I wasn’t kidding. In season 12, episode 19, “Kloger,” Roger and Klaus have an “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes moment when they meet on a blind date and end up hooking up.
However, the relationship eventually tanks itself, as all relationships on American Dad! must do, and Roger is infuriated with Klaus for wanting something different than he does, and swears revenge (usually Klaus’ schtick, but fine). In his rage, he gets Klaus arrested and imprisoned, then gets himself imprisoned and ruins Klaus’ jail time, too, as well as going slowly insane. Obviously a very healthy relationship!
3. Casting Klaus Out
In season ten, Klaus has a bit of a harder time than usual — he has a scent problem, which fish have, as Klaus points out. He’s a fish, he will occasionally smell fishy. This prompts the Smiths to cast him out of their home, with Stan Smith labelling Klaus an “outside fish” and leaving him outside with the cats and the birds. These cats and birds then team up and start trying to kill and eat Klaus, until he manages to get back inside the house.
At that point, Klaus is willing to forgive the Smiths for what they did, but they immediately turn on him and bring the cats and birds into the house to kill him.
2. Refusal to Help
The whole reason Klaus is with the Smith family in the first place is because the CIA put his brain in the body of a goldfish, and now he needs to be kept under wraps and protected so this never gets out. Stan is often shown to be incredibly important within the CIA and valued as an agent, so it’s not surprising he’s in charge of Klaus.
What is surprising is that Stan could help Klaus find a human body, but he actually just refuses to. At one point, he’s actively responsible for Klaus’ real body decaying to the point of being unusable for Klaus ever again. Stan treats him with disrespect time and time again and this, coupled with his refusal to help, strains their relationship throughout the show.
1. Descent Into Madness
At the beginning of the show, Klaus was the smartest member of the family and often served as the voice of reason. He could be a straight man in many chaotic scenes, which was funny, because he was a goldfish. As the show went on, though, and the Smith family (including, and often especially, Roger) started treating him worse and worse, Klaus started to devolve, too.
He tried to warn them, at the beginning, against their wrongdoings and their faults; as time goes on, though, they ridicule him, hate him, attack him, try to hurt or kill him multiple times, fantasize about his death, et cetera. Klaus is taken for granted, mistreated, and sometimes abused, and so he does the same thing in return. As the show progresses, Klaus becomes crazed, often pretending things are real that aren’t, talking to people who aren’t there, or just being generally psychotic.
