In the present day, Robert Downey Jr. is a bona fide blockbuster star with an array of unbelievable performances underneath his belt. Due to his career-defining flip because the genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist Tony Stark, aka the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Iron Man, he is probably the most beloved and revered actors working in Hollywood. However again within the mid-2000s, Downey was nonetheless incomes again the belief of each present enterprise and the audiences that fell in love with him within the Eighties and Nineties, after they watched him descend into tragedy with a number of arrests for varied possessions of unlawful substances and a number of other jail sentences between 1996 and 2000.

Fortunately, Downey was in a position to piece his life and profession again collectively. Key roles within the TV sequence “Ally McBeal” and films like “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” and “Good Evening, and Good Luck” helped the actor’s profile rise. Regardless of skepticism from Paramount Footage, director Jon Favreau was in a position to sneakily safe Downey within the position of Tony Stark in “Iron Man,” and the remainder is historical past. However just a few years earlier than that, Downey made a pit cease by Seth MacFarlane’s thriving animated sitcom “Household Man.”

Much like Downey, “Household Man” additionally had a comeback within the mid-2000s, following the present’s cancellation by Fox in 2002 after simply three seasons. On the time, TV exhibits have been simply beginning to be launched on DVD, and when “Household Man” acquired the bodily media remedy, it gained an entire new fan following, ensuing within the present’s revival in 2005 — and it is nonetheless going robust to today. It was within the present’s fourth season, the primary again after cancellation, that Downey made an look within the “Household Man” episode titled “The Fats Man Strangler,” visitor starring as Patrick, the estranged brother of Griffin household matriarch Lois (Alex Borstein). 

So how did Downey get entangled with “Household Man” in its resurgence? It is all due to his son.

“The Fats Man Strangler” is the seventeenth episode of the fourth season of “Household Man,” and that is the place Downey stars as Patrick, who has been dwelling in a psychological hospital since he was a younger little one. Patrick had a nervous breakdown after strolling in on his mom having an affair with “The Honeymooners” star Jackie Gleason, which ends up in his unhealthy and unlawful obsession with strangling obese males, placing Peter Griffin (MacFarlane) in peril. It is a unusual position for Downey to take, even at this stage in his profession, and it occurred just because his son was a fan of “Household Man” on the time.

As revealed on the commentary for the episode within the fourth season’s launch on DVD, author Chris Sheridan defined that Downey truly referred to as the present’s manufacturing employees with an curiosity in merely producing or aiding in an episode, as a result of his son beloved the sequence. As an alternative, they got here up with a personality for him to play, and the remainder is “Household Man” historical past. In that very same commentary, McFarlane mentioned that Downey “did a terrific job” and complimented the “very sort of half-crazy, and possibly simply eccentric character to that character that basically labored out nice.”

Although Downey has but to return to “Household Man” since his Marvel-fueled profession spike, his character did seem within the season 10 episode “Killer Queen,” the place Patrick was voiced by Oliver Vaquer as a substitute. Downey is fairly busy today, however possibly at some point “Household Man” will get him to come back again for one more visitor look. In any case, MacFarlane has mentioned he will not cease the present till audiences cease caring, and that does not appear to be taking place anytime quickly, so why not get the legendary Avenger again for some enjoyable?