Ever wondered why Simpsons, Family Guy, Bob's Burgers, The Cleveland Show, American Dad, Futurama and King of the Hill almost always had less than 26 episodes per season? Or how Family Guy can have dozens of episodes on standby like the showrunners have said in interviews? Or why King of the Hill had four shitty episodes mysteriously air after the official finale?

Well, they have been known to air episodes out of order. Not just within a season but looking at the production codes you can clearly see that episodes of various seasons are mixed up. According to production codes, the real season 2 of American Dad starts at s2e20 and ends at s4e1. Also, American Dad is officially at season 17 but the production codes only show 14 seasons.

So what I think is going on is that FOX does indeed order 26 or more episodes per season, it's just that 22 or so are only intended to air, the rest is just emergency filler. It's not unthinkable that dozens of episodes of these shows have been written, recorded, animated and edited, we're just never going to see them because they're probably terrible nonsense that would only air if the "good" episodes weren't completed on time and they need to debut a new episode.