History Series / ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia

''It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia'' is a critically-acclaimed sitcom that began in 2005, airing on Creator/{{FX|Networks}} for the first eight seasons and FXX since Season 9. Reruns have aired on Creator/ComedyCentral, Creator/{{MTV}}2 and Viceland, while the entire series is available for streaming on Creator/{{Netflix}} (in Ireland and the UK) and Creator/{{Hulu}} (also in the US). Fifteen seasons have been produced, with three more officially greenlit, making it the longest-running American live-action sitcom of all time. Season 16 premiered on June 7, 2023.

* RiddleForTheAges: In "Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life", Charlie and Dee decide to "walk a mile in each other's shoes." When Charlie explains how he sleeps at night and why he urinates in a bucket instead of a toilet, all he tells Dee is "You do ''not'' want to use that bathroom." We never find out what this means.
** "Mac and Dennis Buy a Timeshare" has Frank who's managed to get stuck inside of a playground coil that he can't get out of (which everyone understandably asks how that happened), but never has it explained just how he got into it.

* KafkaKomedy: Ben Smith, Dee's boyfriend throughout Season 5, is a legitimately good-hearted, caring man who treats Dee like a queen even though she constantly puts him through the wringer. He's also gorgeous with a "stupid"[[note]](in a good way)[[/note]] body, but Dee pushes him away because she's paranoid that he's using some sort of elaborate scheme to get in her pants, just because Dennis revealed that he's been doing the same thing to other women. While this is one of the more blatant examples in the series, there are many instances of characters outside of The Gang getting screwed over because they unknowingly made the mistake of being nice to the main cast.

''It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia'' is a critically-acclaimed sitcom that began in 2005, airing on Creator/{{FX|Networks}} for the first eight seasons and FXX since Season 9. Reruns have aired on Creator/ComedyCentral, Creator/{{MTV}}2 and Viceland, while the entire series is available for streaming on Creator/{{Netflix}} (in Ireland and the UK) and Creator/{{Hulu}} (also in the US). Fifteen seasons have been produced, with three more officially greenlit, making it the longest-running American live-action sitcom of all time. Season 16 is due to premiere on June 7, 2023.

** Mac is portrayed as an ArmoredClosetGay who uses homophobia in a flimsy attempt to deny his own homosexuality. Rob [=McElhenney=]'s mother is a lesbian and his childhood was split between being raised by his father [[HasTwoMommies and his mother and her partner]]. His two younger brothers are also gay.

** The tie-in book has Mac mention how awesome Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger was in [[Film/{{Twins}} "that movie where the weird-looking little guy played his twin brother"]]. That [[Creator/DannyDevito "weird-looking little guy"]] plays Frank.

** Dennis has a completely amoral father figure (Frank) and a mother who believed he could do no wrong and openly and heavily favored him to Dee. At the age of fourteen, the school's librarian raped him, and it's implied he doesn't feel emotions after this incident. He believes that he is a perfect human being and is overall sociopathic.

* AmbiguouslyBi: A great number of the gang's actions have homoerotic undertones.
** Charlie and Frank have a very strange living arrangement in their apartment. They sleep in the same bed and are committed to continuing that arrangement. They frequently play the game "nightcrawlers," which involves them wriggling around on the ground together. Frank also peeks at Charlie while masturbating. When Charlie fakes his own death, Frank creates a life-sized Charlie doll, pretends that it's him, and possibly has sex with it. In a later episode, Charlie and Frank get a civil union, though only for the insurance. When Frank briefly leaves, Charlie is distraught and makes a plan to get Frank "back into [his] arms." He tells his mother that she doesn't know Frank like he does, and calls her a man-stealer.
** In "The Gang Sells Out" Dennis explains "bottoms," "power bottoms" and "twinks" in graphic detail to Frank and Mac, who listen with great interest. This scene is given a callback in "The Gang Recycles Its Trash," where Dee explains other aspects of gay culture to Frank and later to Dennis. In another episode, Dennis is impressed by Dee's assessment of a gay man and states that he "could never satisfy him."
** In "The Gang Gets Racist," Dennis may or may not have had sex with a man while black-out drunk.
** Mac is obsessed with muscular men and watches action movies specifically to view the physiques of the stars. He's also obsessed with Chase Utley. Mac admits to loving him, but insists that it's a fraternal love, not romantic.
** In "Hundred Dollar Baby," Mac and Dennis train Charlie as an underground street fighter. Mac and Dennis primp Charlie before training by massaging his hand and shoulders respectively. After they insist that Charlie trains without his shirt, they decide to get wasted before they continue training. Charlie motions Dennis to continue the shoulder rub, and Dennis stands suggestively close... while moaning in his ear.
** Lampshaded in "Mac & Dennis: Manhunters" by Frank, who just can't understand this teabagging, male-nipple-rubbing generation. Also subverted, since Frank immediately chalks it up to the generation gap.
** Between Mac and Dennis, especially in the episode "Mac and Dennis Break Up" where the two decide to "take a break."
** Dennis wears a thong while telling Mac he's wearing it for him while Mac presents a towel that insinuates his ass and his enormous penis, and in a later scene Mac [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything pumps a shotgun up and down before firing its liquid into a kneeling Dennis's awaiting mouth]].
** In "The Gang Gets Analyzed," Mac picks up a black pen and accuses a therapist of using it to make him think of a penis. He then starts unconsciously stroking and sucking on it. Dennis says that Mac sucks on pens at their apartment so often that he has to hide them.
** In "The Nightman Cometh," Dennis accuses Mac of getting aroused while pretending to rape him.
** In a moment of excitement, Mac actually tries to kiss Dennis.
** In "The Gang Dines Out," Charlie and Frank dine out to celebrate their "anniversary" while Mac and Dennis have their monthly dinner together. Each pair acts like a romantic couple. Also in the episode, several characters try to fondle a hostess by shoving a tip down her blouse, but Mac shoves a dollar bill into a male waiter's pant pocket.
** In "Dee and Dennis' Mom Is Dead", the gang tries to make some new friends and get MistakenForGay by every guy they approach. They later find two college guys, tie them up and say they're going to [[AssShove shove stuff up their butts]] to haze them because "that's what friends do."
** While working as a school janitor, Charlie volunteers to clean facepaint off of a student by bathing him. The principal nixes the idea, so [[ComicallyMissingThePoint Charlie suggests the kid should bathe himself while he watches]].
** A couple of the ways Dennis would haze his fellow fraternity members was by sticking the tip of his dick in their mouths for a short amount of time (while they sleep) and [[AssShove shoving bananas up their butts]] in front of their best friend.
** In "Thunder Gun Express", the gang talk excitedly about how the male lead "hangs dong" in the movie. In "The Gang Squashes Their Beefs", Dennis says he likes that the Thunder Gun DVD is unrated because of the possibility the dong scene might be a couple of seconds longer.
** In "Frank's Back in Business", the investors say they paid to have Dennis and Dee both jerked off at a massage parlor, though the genders of the masseuses aren't specified. The bloopers for the scene reveal Dee's masseuse was a woman too.
** In the Gang's poorly shot movie Lethal Weapon 6, an awkward shower wrestling scene between Mac and Dennis is followed immediately by a cut to a strip club. This was done so that the characters could establish that they "aren't gay." Note that this was after a scene imitatating the volleyball scene from ''Film/TopGun'', including the music.
** When she gets the chance to direct a pornographic film, Dee becomes fixated on the main actress's breasts and compulsively keeps talking about them even when telling her how she should be emoting.

* ContinuityNod:
** In the episode where the gang goes on a road trip, Charlie reveals he has never left the city of Philadelphia in his entire life. When they near the city limits he panics and abandons the trip. Several seasons later in "The Gang Gets Stranded In The Woods", they have him locked in the trunk of their car to keep him from escaping when they go to a party outside the city. This is referenced again in "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore", where the gang decides to hit the Shore but first discuss the logistics of knocking out Charlie.
** If a character suffers a bad injury in one episode, it usually carries over into the next.
** The gang apparently [[Main/WeShouldGetAnotherTape only has one VHS cassette that they tape over constantly]]. Whenever we see footage they've recently recorded, [[Main/ContinuityNod snippets of recordings from past episodes play]] in the blank spots between edits.
** In "Mac and Charlie: White Trash", Charlie wears cutoffs and shows Mac their "advantage"--the ability to pull a wider split, which Dennis showed him in "The Gang Gets Extreme: Home Makeover Edition".
** In "Frank's Pretty Woman", when the eponymous hooker suddenly starts smoking crack, Dennis gets extremely uncomfortable and quickly leaves the room, implying that his addiction from "Dennis and Dee Go on Welfare" is still a problem. Later he talks about how amazing crack is and how much he wants another hit.
** The episode "Mac is a Serial Killer," Dee is approached by a pimp named Pepperjack in a park. He says that she could be his "top ho" if she would just "get up off that crack rock." Dee responds "I'm not on any crack rock! Well, there was that one time..." referencing the episode "Dennis and Dee Go On Welfare" where Dennis and Dee intentionally get addicted to crack to get more welfare benefits.
** In "Frank's Pretty Woman", Roxie's client "Tiger Woods" is actually the same actor hired to impersonate Donovan [=McNabb=] in "The Gang Gets Invincible".
** Charlie's small forearm tattoo that he started giving himself in "Dennis and Dee Get a New Dad" is apparently present from that episode forward, though no one ever remarks upon it and it was only established in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it close-up to begin with. It reads "BAD NEW," apparently having been intended to read "BAD NEWS" but never completed.
** In "The ANTI-Social Network" and "The Gang Beats Boggs," Frank calls himself Dr. Mantis Toboggan, the alias he used in "The D.E.N.N.I.S. System."
** Also in "The ANTI-Social Network", after being shushed by a stranger, Dennis remarks that the stranger didn't know who he was, and how he might be a man with a "trunk full of duct tape and zip ties". Come "The High School Reunion Part 2: The Gang's Revenge", it's revealed that Dennis does indeed have a secret compartment in his trunk full of duct tape and zip ties.
** "The High School Reunion" is a ContinuityCavalcade, with references to Mac's dog Poppins and a number of minor characters and events from previous seasons.
** In "Charlie and Dee Find Love," Mac mentions the wrestler "The Maniac" from "The Gang Fights for the Troops" and says he has to get "greased up," which the Maniac announces in the episode. The Maniac also returns in "Mac and Dennis Buy a Timeshare."
** In one episode, Dee wants to go to a Josh Groban concert and meet the guy. She says she wants to "pop" because he loves his ladies to "pop". In "The Gang Saves the Day", Dee fantasizes about marrying him and one of the reasons he likes her is stated to be because she pops.
** In Mac's dream heaven in "The Gang Saves the Day," he sees Rex, the male model about whom Mac said, "His [[UnusualEuphemism bird]] won't quit." Rex also shows up in "Ass Kickers United: Mac and Charlie Join a Cult."

* RunningGag:
** Calling Dee a bird:
*** In "the Gang Gives Back," Mac says that Dee looks like Big Bird in her canary yellow pantsuit.
*** In "Mac is a Serial Killer," Mac and Dennis accuse Dee of looking like Larry Bird. She counters that ''they'' look like Larry Bird, which doesn't have the same effect.
*** Subverted in another episode, where Dee predicts that the guys are about to call her a bird again. Mac retorts that he was going to say "fish" this time, because her eyes are so far apart.
*** In "Who Got Dee Pregnant?", Dee wears an angel costume to a Halloween party, but the gang calls it a bird costume, and it gets progressively more bird-like in each retelling of the story, until, in Mac's version, she's an actual ostrich.
*** In "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters", Dee, along with Charlie, becomes ravenous after eating what she thought was human meat. While eating meat sandwiches, she starts to peck at her food like a bird.
*** In "The Gang Saves the Day," Dee imagines that Josh Groban sings a song about how beautiful and not like a bird she is.
** Dennis's creepy fixation with sexual conquest, to the point of being a borderline [[DateRape date rapist]]:
*** His D.E.N.N.I.S. System is a method for getting women to fall in love with him using lies and emotional manipulation.
*** In "Fatty [=Magoo=] vs the Aluminum Monster," Dennis says, "I'm not going to take no for an answer because I just refuse to do that, because I'm a winner and winners... we don't listen to words like 'no' or 'don't' or 'stop!' Those words are just not in our vocabulary."
*** Dennis states in "The Gang gets a Boat" that women always put out on boats because of "[[ImpliedDeathThreat the implication]]." He has to repeatedly insist that he wouldn't ''actually'' rape the women on the boat.
*** In "The Storm of the Century", Dee accuses Dennis of raping girls in the bunker.
*** In "The Anti-Social Network," Dennis says, "I could be a man with a fistful of hammers, a trunk full of duct tape and zip ties." In "The High School Reunion part 2", he reveals he actually has a trunk full of duct tape and zip ties. He's fetching them because he's angry that a woman rejected him.
*** In "How Mac got Fat," Mac comments, "Dennis always tells me, 'Never let someone else's resistance keep you from getting what you want.'"
*** Dennis's practice of recording all of his sexual conquests without their knowledge is brought up in a number of episodes. In "Charlie and Dee Find Love," he claims that he has running cameras in his bedroom at all times.
*** In "Charlie Rules the World," Dennis brags about "entering" a date with "almost no resistance." In his video of the evening, he's also seen pushing her head down to crotch level. Though he gets it in return when he enters the astral plane and British Dennis, after giving him a haircut and some sage advice, does the same thing to him.
*** In "Reynolds vs. Reynolds: The Cereal Defense," it's revealed that Dennis has several bench warrants for sexual misconduct.
*** In "Paddy's Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens," Dennis tells The Lawyer that he'll sneak into his house while his wife is sleeping and "ease into her real nice" so both spouses will be cheating on each other.
*** In "The Gang Squashes Their Beefs", Frank wonders why Dennis always tries to get people to sign a contract. Dennis says the fact that it is in writing means they have to do whatever they agreed to.
*** In "The Gang Goes to Hell", Dennis' attempt at flirting through invoking "the implication" gets him tossed into the brig.
** Mac's delusions of being tough, his Catholicism and his homoerotic fixation on the physiques of other men.
** Sweet Dee's cars constantly being stolen and destroyed by the rest of the gang. Lampshaded in "Reynolds vs. Reynolds: The Cereal Defense."
** The gang apparently only owns one VHS cassette and simply tapes over it repeatedly. Whenever they show a new video, snippets of past videos from previous episodes bleed out around the edges.
** No one in the Gang remembers ever meeting the [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep Waiter]], despite their numerous encounters.

Has a [[ShoutOut/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia Shout-Out]] page.

''It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia'' is a critically-acclaimed sitcom that began in 2005, airing on Creator/{{FX|Networks}} for the first eight seasons and FXX since Season 9. Reruns have aired on Creator/ComedyCentral, Creator/{{MTV}}2 and Viceland, while the entire series is available for streaming on Creator/{{Netflix}} (in Ireland and the UK) and Creator/{{Hulu}} (also in the US). Fifteen seasons have been produced, with three more officially greenlit, making it the longest-running American live-action sitcom of all time.

** ZigZagged in "Charlie Got Molested." Mac is offended when he learns that Charlie and the McPoyle twins were molested by their CreepyGymCoach, but he was "passed over," since he was ''way'' cuter than any of them as a child. He even goes as far as trying to seduce the coach as a way to validate himself. However, Mac does some research and learns that sexual abuse often has far more to do with power and vulnerability than the victim's attractiveness. The gang later finds out that the whole molestation story was a {{Blackmail}} scheme created by the McPoyles—not that anyone would have wanted to molest Charlie, who was rather deranged and off-putting as a child.

* TriangRelations: A type 5, with Charlie, The Waitress and Dennis. Charlie is obsessively in love with the Waitress, who despises him. She in turn has a crush on Dennis, who is aware of it and uses it to manipulate and degrade her as well as Charlie. Given the CrapsackWorld the show takes place in, these crushes are manipulated by the participants and outsiders constantly.

* FiveManBand: {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d throughout "The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis" as the gang argues over which role they fill in the band. The final version: Dennis is [[TheHero The Looks]], Charlie is [[TheLancer The Wild Card]], Frank is [[TheBigGuy The Muscle]], Mac is [[TheSmartGuy The Brains]], and Dee is [[TheChick The Useless Chick]].

The show follows a group of friends, regularly called "the Gang", which consists of [[HandsomeLech Dennis Reynolds]] (Creator/GlennHowerton), [[TheLadette Deandra "Sweet Dee" Reynolds]] (Creator/KaitlinOlson), [[ThePigpen Charlie Kelly]] (Creator/CharlieDay), and [[IJustWantToBeBadass Ronald "Mac" McDonald]] (Creator/RobMcElhenney). Together they run Paddy's Pub, a struggling South UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} Irish-themed dive bar. Dennis is the vain, sociopathic prep from a rich family, Dee is his shallow, shrill, and insecure twin sister who has aspirations of being an actress, Charlie is the high-strung idiot savant who is obsessed with [[NoNameGiven the]] [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep waitress]] at a coffee shop, and Mac is the [[MilesGloriosus wanna-be bruiser]] forever stuck in adolescence as well as [[ArmouredClosetGay the closet]]. In the second season, Creator/DannyDeVito joins the cast as Dennis and Dee's neglectful father [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Frank]], a shady, millionaire businessman who is drawn to the gang's depravity and chooses to bankroll their schemes.

* LyricalDissonance: "Alone" by ''Music/{{Heart|Band}}'' plays whenever [[GagBoobs well-endowed]] news woman Jackie Denardo appears on-screen to signal Dennis' lust and ecstasy in having a chance to get with her. Even though it has some relevance in that the lyrics of the song is about the narrator who doesn't know how to confess their aching love for someone, which links with Dennis' tongue tied state in trying to talk to her, it still has an infinitely more tragic tone to it than Dennis' trying to talk to a woman he merely finds hot.

* SuperOCD:
** As revealed in "Mac's Mom Burns Her House Down", Mrs. Kelly has a habit of flicking lightswitches, locking doors, et cetera in [[RuleOfThree sets of three]] before she goes to bed "so Charlie doesn't die". It's apparently infectious, as Charlie and Mac find out.
** Miss Kelly also made Charlie get vaccinated every month and wear bubble-boy suits every flu season.

** Presumably Artemis, who says that she doesn't remember ''most'' nights in "Who Got Dee Pregnant?"

** The usual sitcom jokes that rely on DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale and DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale are averted and occasionally deconstructed. Dee is as frequent a victim of {{Slapstick}} shenanigans [[SlapstickKnowsNoGender as her male friends]], and her sexual offenses, along with those of her male counterparts, are not excused at all. Also, the double standard of victimization are treated seriously for some of the characters, such as [[spoiler:Charlie and Dennis]].

* SlapstickKnowsNoGender: Dee is more likely to suffer physical pain than the guys in the show. She has had her leg shattered by homeless people, her face smashed in by a metal folding chair, poisoned, and set on fire ''twice''.

* DistractedByTheSexy: "Storm of the Century" has Mac, Dennis, and Charlie completely disregarding the WeatherReport's warnings of a '''Category 5 snowstorm''' due to [[MaleGaze their wandering eyes focusing entirely on]] [[BuxomIsBetter the well-endowed meteorologist Jackie Denardo]]. The guys subsequently channel surf to the Spanish station, where [[MaleGaze they fixate on]] [[BuxomIsBetter the equally-chesty weather girl Evita Sanchez]]. Then they spend a bit of time flipping back and forth between forecasts. [[AllMenArePerverts Naturally.]]

* UnconventionalFoodOrder: In "The Waitress Is Getting Married," Charlie's already-imploding blind date only gets worse when he asks the waiter for "In Swamp Water by Robert Munsch, a little girl named Victoria orders "swamp water" at a restaurant, which is cola, ginger ale, root beer, orange soda, and chocolate milk mixed together.Milk steak, boiled over hard, with a side of your finest raw jellybeans."