Cleveland Brown | |
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Cleveland Brown | |
Name | Cleveland Orenthal Brown Senior |
Age | 39 (debut) 40 (as of The Fat Man and the Sea) 41 (as of Love, Blactually) 42 (as of Mr. & Mrs. Brown) 43 (as of Stand Your Brown) 44 (as of Swindler's List) |
Job(s) | Cleveland's Deli ("Do and Die" - "Cleveland Moves In") Waterman Cable ("Birth of a Salesman" - "Cleveland Moves Out") Quahog Post Office ("Death of a Mailman" - "Return to the Seas") Supreme Black Nationalist of The Black Pumas ("Return to the Seas" - Present) |
Relatives | LeVar Brown (father) Evelyn Brown (mother) Dwayne Tubbs (father-in-law; deceased) Dee Dee Tubbs (mother-in-law; deceased) Auntie Momma (caretaker-in-law) Broderick Brown (brother) Janet Tubbs (sister-in-law) Hong Kong Phooey (adoptive brother-in-law) Madame Claude (cousin) Donna Tubbs-Brown (wife) Cleveland Jr. (son) Cecelia Moreno (daughter-in-law) Aisha Brown (daughter) Roberta Tubbs (stepdaughter) Rallo Tubbs (stepson) Brian Tubbs (nephew) DeBrian Tubbs (nephew) Rock Hudson (stepson's pet dog) |
Voice | Mike Henry (Season 1 - Season 19) Arif Zahir (Season 20 - Onwards) |
Cleveland Orenthal Brown Sr. (born May 10, 1967) is a major character and member of the secondary cast of Family Guy, who serves as one of Peter Griffin's beer bar buddies, along with Glenn Quagmire and Joe Swanson. He is the ex-husband of Loretta Brown, the current husband of Donna Tubbs-Brown, the father of Cleveland Brown Jr., the stepfather of Roberta and Rallo Tubbs, and the owner of Rock Hudson. He one of the few token black guys in Quahog, which makes him somewhat of a novelty to the people around him. Cleveland also serves as the voice of reason to the beer bar buddies and often offers deep insight that other characters are unable to see. He also got his own spin-off series called The Cleveland Show, where he serves as the main character. He was voiced by Mike Henry for the first 19 seasons of the show, before his voice actor stepped down from his role. In lieu of Mike's absence, Arif Zahir took over the role from Season 20, onwards. In season 20 onwards he also rules the town as a Black Ethnostate
Biography[]
Teenage Years[]
Cleveland went to high school at Stoolbend High School. He was good friends with people such as Terry Kimple and had a crush on a girl named Donna. However, the two of them never actually became boyfriend and girlfriend, because she was always hanging out with Robert Tubbs. They stayed friends, but Donna went on to marry Robert. After Cleveland moved on from Donna, he began a strong relationship with a girl named Loretta. She was never actually seen in the series, but she was mentioned in the episode "Death Lives". Their relationship lasted throughout the remainder of high school and into his adulthood.
Early Adulthood[]
As adults, Cleveland and Maxine moved into the same house together, but Cleveland would later break up with her because she was constantly cheating on him.
Cleveland was an accomplished minor-league baseball player before moving to Quahog after a break-up with his girlfriend Maxine in "Death Lives". In "Blind Ambition", he also used to be extremely fast-talking, being able to zip through sentences in the blink of an eye. He put these sharp and slick linguistic skills to good use by becoming an auctioneer, but during one of his auctions, he was struck in the head by a totem pole, giving him head trauma, which resulted in his speech being permanently slowed down to the smooth and silly vocal skills we know him for today.
In the 70's, Cleveland was sick of living in Virginia, and decided to move to Rhode Island. On his way there, he had his first encounter with Peter, seen in the episode "Death Lives". As he was driving off from Virginia, Cleveland picked up a hitchhiking Peter, who was also headed to Rhode Island. After this, the two of them became friends and Cleveland happened to move into the house across the street from his house.
In Quahog, Cleveland opened up his own deli called, well, Cleveland's Deli.
Family[]
One day in the early 80's, as revealed in "Good Ol' Fargy Love", Cleveland went to Willie's Waffle World to get himself food. As he went inside, he saw that Loretta, who was a parking enforcement at the time, giving him a ticket for his van. Cleveland storms out and complains to her, but is then attracted to Loretta and vice-versa. Loretta still puts a ticket on his van, but upon reading it, Cleveland sees it told her to call her and gave him her number. In 1984, the two got married and they had a child named Cleveland Brown Junior, named after Cleveland, in 1988 (or 1985-ish, due to Junior getting an age-lift later on).
In the first two seasons, the two were shown to have a semi-supportive relationship. Overtime, around the third season Loretta became a lot more abusive and overpowering toward Cleveland, making herself the dominating forced in their marriage. It got so bad that Cleveland mentioned to Randall Fargus in an off-hand comment that Loretta is the true man in bed in "A Cheater Runs Through It", and confirmed to be true in "Brian the Bachelor". In the episode "The Cleveland Loretta Quagmire", Loretta had finally become fed-up with Cleveland being a pushover and not only cheated on him with Glenn Quagmire, but she also dumped him and left him forever.
The Cleveland Show[]
In the pilot episode of The Cleveland Show, "Cleveland Moves In", Loretta's divorce with Cleveland was finalized. With Loretta gaining custody over the Brown House, while Cleveland kept custody of Cleveland Jr.. This meant Cleveland and Junior were forced to move out. The duo moved back to Cleveland's hometown, Stoolbend, Virginia. Cleveland also shut down his deli and left it up for sale, which nobody took the sale for it as it was so lame and left the building just gathering dust. There, he was reunited with Donna Tubbs. Donna explained that she and Robert had officially ended their marriage as well, and that she was left with custody of the house and kids, hers being Roberta and Rallo Tubbs. After she and Cleveland bonded some more, they fell in love and got married, officially merging the Brown and Tubbs family into one.
Cleveland got a job, working as a cable installer at Waterman Cables, which is where he had another reunion with his old high school friend, Terry Kimple.
In the series finale, "Cleveland Moves Out", Cleveland and his family had to leave Stoolbend and go back to Quahog, with the out of universe, reasons being that The Cleveland Show was cancelled, and the in-universe reasons being that a meteor destroyed his house and he got fired from his job, forcing him and his family to leave Stoolbend and move back to Quahog.
Back in Family Guy[]
Cleveland made his Family Guy return appearance in the episode "He's Bla-ack!", where his old friends roasted him on his show, as their little way of welcoming him back.
Cleveland's deli was in a huge rut, as seen in the episode "Dr. C and the Women", so Cleveland had to get a job as a postal man in the episode "Death of a Mailman".
In "Return to the Seas", Cleveland Brown radicalized into a staunch black nationalist, with his group being called the Black Pumas.
Appearance[]

Cleveland Brown is a large, fat man. He has dark, curly black hair and a mustache, that he takes great pride in. He wears a yellow shirt and blue pants.
Personality[]
Cleveland Brown is a very calm, peaceful, and tolerant guy who is always very happy and accepting of everything. On very rare occasions does he ever get angry, and even when he does, it takes a lot to make him feel that way. In the episode "The Cleveland Loretta Quagmire", Cleveland managed to stay happy, even after his best friend had an affair with his wife and his wife divorced him and insulted everything about his character. It wasn't until Peter constantly pressured him, that he finally got a sudden surge of anger. When he did, he was uncontrollably violent and did not hold back any punches or show any mercy, trying to kill Quagmire, while also damaging tons of property in the process. If you're looking for a shortcut to Cleveland's berserk mode, then making racist comments, especially using "The N-Word" is a quick way of triggering him. He is also the voice of reason to the friend circle, always giving out cautionary warnings to Peter, when he's pulling off another one of his stunts. However, since he's so mild and passive, he is always being ignored. This is taken to extremes, showing that Cleveland will allow anyone to do whatever they want to him, even if he completely hates it. This is because he has no way of telling them to stop. Because of this, he lets Loretta control his entire life, he allows Peter and his friends to torture him with stupid endeavors, he never gives his son any orders or punishments, and he basically has no control over his life.
When Cleveland got his own spin-off series, his character quickly developed into something completely different. All of Cleveland's timidity instantly disappeared, and he had officially become a loud and outgoing character, who was always dancing around and turning everyday dialogue into a little musical number. He played with his dialogue and made up a bunch of funny phrases and made up words to say. Now, he was the wild and crazy guy in the group, and his new bar friend, Tim served as the calm and overlooked voice of reason to his hair-brained schemes. He had officially taken on the role of Peter Griffin in his new friend circle. The only difference between Peter and himself at this point, was that Cleveland actually cared about his family enough for him to help them in their times of need and to try and make up for his stupid actions that might have hurt them. He had also taken on some more personality traits. Cleveland was very sporty. He has expressed a great passion in playing baseball, so much so, that he became the coach of The Stoolbend High baseball team. He was also really good at playing basketball and enjoyed playing games of basketball with Rallo in his spare time. He was also a huge fan of watching football, holding Superbowl parties at his house, and even dressing as the GM Robot. He is very fashionable, especially when it comes to his mustache, and he spends a lot of time grooming and waxing his mustache, to the point where he even has his own mustache make up kit in the bathroom. He also has an entire wall, stocked with all different kinds of hats, which he wears to make himself look more snazzy. Every time a special event happens, he needs to get all dressed up in this brand new outfit, so that he can be noticed by everyone who sees him. He was very musical and likes singing his own made up rap songs. He made up his own rap song, along with Kenny West, which Kenny took all the credit for. This incident happened twice. It's not just rap, though. Cleveland enjoys all kinds of music. He wrote a town anthem for Stoolbend, which was an upbeat country esque song, he sang a gospel choir song to his son, in an attempt to make him believe in the Christian God, and above all things, he can't stop singing his own theme song, which would fall into the pop category.
After Cleveland's show was cancelled and he returned to Family Guy, he had officially lost all substance to his character, whatsoever and while some of his traits from the spin-off carried, like him being less timid and more outgoing in episodes focused on him, his only real personality trait was being black. Everything he did was either a contribution to a modern day black stereotype or a reinforcement of an archaic form of black stereotyping.
In the Season 22 episode "Return to the Seas", it is revealed that Cleveland Brown had entered an echochamber on twitter.com where has become a black nationalist.
Relationships[]
Friends[]
- Peter Griffin
- Glenn Quagmire
- Joe Swanson
- Brian Griffin - [Formerly]
- Horace -
- Mort Goldman -
- Jerome Cool J -
- Tim the Bear -
- Lester Krinklesac -
- Holt Richter -
- Dr. Fist -
- Terry Kimple -
- Gus -
Family[]
- Cleveland Brown Jr. -
- Loretta Brown -
- Donna Tubbs-Brown -
- Roberta Tubbs -
- Rallo Tubbs -
- Rock Hudson -
- Broderick Brown -
- Robert Jones -
- LeVar Brown -
- Evelyn Brown -
- Auntie Momma -
- Choni Moreno -
- Cecelia Moreno -
Trivia[]
- There's a real-life football team called the Cleveland Browns, which is what this guy is named after. That's also part of why he has such a passion for baseball.
- Cleveland's voice actor Mike Henry has stated that his inspiration for the voice was someone that he had met and told him that he had graduated from the University of Maryland, pronouncing it "the University of Merlind", which is recognizable.
- In college, Cleveland majored in ceramics and minored in trombone playing.
- Cleveland was conceived during the 7th inning stretch of a Cleveland Indians game.
- Cleveland's e-mail address is ClevelandBrown@clevebro.com
- Cleveland believes that 9/11 was an inside job.
- Cleveland lost his virginity when he was nine.
- Cleveland got his virginity back when he was thirty-seven.
- He has terrible foot odor and refused to take off his shoes at Quagmire's house because of the odor, running away after accidentally admitting this to all of his friends.
- Cleveland drives a Blue Saab 9-5.
See Also[]
Brown Family |
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Cleveland Brown • Loretta Brown • Cleveland Jr. (Original Cleveland Jr.) • Donna Tubbs-Brown • Roberta Tubbs • Rallo Tubbs • Rock Hudson • Broderick Brown • LeVar Brown • Evelyn Brown • Robert Jones • Dee Dee Tubbs • Hong Kong Phooey Tubbs • Meadowlark Lemon • Cecilia Moreno • Choni Moreno • Marco Moreno • Flora Moreno • Janet Tubbs • Brian Tubbs • DeBrian Tubbs • Dennis Rodman |