Characters / It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: Mac

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Main Character Index
The Gang (Dennis Reynolds, Dee Reynolds, Charlie Kelly, Mac, Frank Reynolds) | The Gang's Families | Recurring Characters | Other Characters

Ronald "Mac" McDonald

"I gave him an ocular pat down."

Played By: Rob McElhenney, Preston Bailey (young, "A Very Sunny Christmas"), Anthony Hill (dream, "The Gang Turns Black")

Debut: "The Gang Gets Racist"

"When my dad was in solitary confinement, I used to write to him every day to see how it was. He never wrote back, but if he did, he'd would've said, 'Son, you've got to keep your mind active. Also, I love you.'"

One of the co-owners of Paddy's Pub and its self-proclaimed head of security. He is Charlie's childhood friend, and Dennis' high school friend and later roommate. The son of a convicted felon, Mac is frequently trying to demonstrate his toughness and gain respect and admiration as the "sheriff of Paddy's". He also often brags about his hand-to-hand combat skills, although he typically flees any type of physical confrontation.

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A-F

• Abhorrent Admirer: He's constantly pining after and pursuing Dennis, only becoming more blatant when he comes out. Dennis is clearly repulsed at first. However, this is toned down considerably in Seasons 15 and 16, as while Mac obviously still has feelings for Dennis, he backs off him almost completely. At the same time, Dennis has grown far more comfortable with being near Mac again, to the point of even sleeping in the same bed together with no one between them.
• All Gays are Promiscuous: He seems determined to invoke this after coming out. In "The Gang's Still in Ireland" he admits to having been "S'ing and F'ing" his way through life for a while now and having sex with multiple partners at once; after going through an identity crisis about his heritage, he heavily considers going on a sex bender through Ireland until he decides he wants to lean into his Catholicism as his primary identity instead.
• Alliterative Name:
  • Calls himself "Vic Vinegar" whenever he needs a pseudonym. Also, he's referred to as Ronald Reynolds in "The Gang Goes on Family Fight".
  • His Embarrassing Nickname in high school was Ronnie the Rat.
• Always Someone Better: Country Mac is better at everything Mac claims to be (not that Mac was actually good at these things in the first place). He's better at fighting, he can do death-defying stunts (such as jumping off a bridge) without hesitation, he is even better at accepting his own homosexuality. As a result, the rest of the Gang loves Country Mac immediately, which sets off Mac's inferiority complex throughout the entire episode. And to make matters worse, Country Mac seems to be entirely unaware of this, as he's completely willing to fight for Mac when the latter gets hurt by another fighter.
• Ambiguously Gay:
  • In earlier seasons (1-7), Mac regularly sleeps with women, but it's hinted that he's into men as well. He gushes over the male physique (particularly that of Chase Utley and Arnold Schwarzenegger), enjoys a homoerotic friendship with Dennis, and while dating a pre-op MTF transgender woman (twice!) says that her penis makes him feel weird things.
  • Later seasons throw the ambiguity out of the window, with Mac losing whatever attraction he felt toward the opposite sex: he gets aroused only by dudes, actively seeks situations where he can feel up beefcakes, fantasizes about a Heaven filled with sexy shirtless guy angels, and tries to kiss Dennis on two separate occasions. The creators have confirmed that Mac is, indeed, queer, and from Season 8 onwards he is firmly in Armoured Closet Gay territory (see below).
  • As of Season 12, Mac no longer hides his sexuality.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: He abruptly confesses his love to Dennis when the Gang is held hostage by the McPoyles. The admission goes unreciprocated and is never mentioned again.
• Armoured Closet Gay: He tries to cover up his attraction towards men by being a Heteronormative Crusader, up until finally admitting he's gay in the Season 11 finale... only to backpedal on it and claim that he's been "cured of it" at the very end. As of mid-Season 12, he's finally out for good, but even then he remains adamant that there were no hints he was gay prior to him admitting it.
  • In "Mac Fights Gay Marriage," Mac uses homophobia as an excuse to be jealous that some guy married Carmen, a transgender woman. It is repeatedly pointed out that Mac had sex with Carmen back when she still had a penis, so his objections make even less sense.
  • In "Mac Day", he apparently spent 5 hours lecturing the Gang about the evils of homosexuality (and at one point claimed that AIDS is God's punishment for gays). Everyone else just points out the incredibly blatant boner he had the entire time. Later in the episode, he has himself and the Gang grease up male bodybuilders, during which the Gang notes he has a boner again.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: A retroactive example. In "Charlie Got Molested" he's genuinely offended when he hears that the McPoyle Brothers and Charlie were molested by their elementary school gym teacher but he wasn't, seeing himself as being much more attractive than them.
• Attention Whore: Much like Dennis and Dee, Mac is an attention-seeker who desperately craves the attention of others in order to feel pleased with himself. Charlie lampshades his fluctuating weight - going from skinny to fat to muscular - as a cry for help and to basically treat it like a baby by ignoring it.
• Author Appeal: The movie that he writes in "The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 6" is so rife with homoerotic undertones that it gets confused for gay porn.
• Back from the Dead: After Mac, Charlie and Dee fake their own deaths, they hide in the office of Paddy's. When Frank and Dennis come in, they run out — carrying sparklers — and Sweet Dee yells "Surprise, bitches! We're alive and it's blowing your MINDS right now!"
• Badass Longcoat: "It's not a jacket, it's a duster. It's like a jacket, only it's longer, thicker, and far more badass. I look like Lorenzo Lamas, and women find it irresistible." Subverted though, in that Mac is anything but a badass.
• Beard of Evil: Has a beard and is a prejudiced ass.
• Been There, Shaped History: He and Dennis caused some of the voting count delays in the 2020 Election by trying to advertise a fictional debate between themselves about whether Rocky Balboa or Donovan McNabb is a better athlete.
• Berserk Button: He has many, usually relating to insults directed at him or his mother. A good example is when Dee says that Mac is "covered in stupid tattoos and has a cigarette for a mother", at which point Mac begins strangling her.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: In "The Gang Replaces Dee with a Monkey", he smirks when he finds out the monkey may have sexually assaulted him in his sleep.
• Big Beautiful Man: Subverted In-Universe, as while Rob McElhenney arguably isn’t any less attractive heavier (his wife actually even found Fat Mac more attractive then when he got ripped for Season 13), he gained sixty pounds and grew his beard out for Season 7 to appear unattractive to subvert sitcom characters, regardless of lifestyle/wealth, getting better looking as their shows go on due to their actors having more money/access to plastic surgery, personal trainers etc. As such, Mac is seen by The Gang as being gross, as he’s frequently shown stuffing his face and having food on his shirts (some of which are too small for him and have his gut hang out), and being out of shape/sweating/wheezing while eating, and they constantly mock him for being fat. Dennis even ended up slipping him "size pills" that led him to lose the weight because he was so repulsed by him.
• Big Eater: In Season 7 when he gains a significant amount of weight. He even carries around a trash bag full of chimichangas in the season premier.
• The Big Guy: Seems to think that he's this, what with his constant claims of being the sheriff of Paddy's, but everyone else is all too aware that he's anything but. In the episode where his role in the Five-Man Band is determined, he fights for the position of "The Muscle" before settling on "The Brain", while in reality he's more or less The Lancer.
• Blatant Lies: In "The Gang Misses the Boat", Mac hooks up with an attractive woman named Dusty (she's, in her own words, "super into angel dust") and spends multiple scenes with her in private. Towards the end of the episode, Dennis storms into Paddy's back office, from where everyone can hear Mac and Dusty having sex... except when he opens the door, Mac and Dusty are simply reading magazines while making sex noises.
  Dennis: [barges through door] ... what the hell's going on in here? What is this?
  Mac: Oh... we totally just banged or whatever.
  Dennis: You're fully clothed, Mac! Have you been pretending to bang this chick the entire time?
  Mac: ... no.
  Dusty: He can't even get it up with me.
• Boisterous Weakling:
  • Mac's always eager to fight, but in the instances where he doesn't simply run away, his fights are always Curbstomp Battles in his opponent's favor. At one point he knocks himself unconscious when trying to remove Charlie from the bar.
  • Of course, he eventually wins a one-sided fight himself, albeit on a bunch of kids and with Charlie's help.
• Bouncer: His self-appointed position at Paddy's Pub, though he rarely attempts to ever do anything relating to it and proves to be utterly incompetent at it during the few times when he does. When he tries to throw Charlie out as a demonstration of his skill he fails miserably and somehow manages to choke ''himself'' out.
• Butt-Monkey: The later seasons play up his patheticness and self-delusion to such extremes that even the other characters begin to discuss what a loser he is, often directly in front of him. It has reached a point where he now regularly contends with Dee for the spot of The Friend Nobody Likes, a title that she held uncontested for most of the show's run.
• Celeb Crush: Has a thing for Chase Utley, to the point of writing him love letters (which he claims are platonic). "The Gang Gets Extreme: Home Makeover Edition" also reveals that he wants to impregnate Danica Patrick.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "What's up, bitches?"
  • Many episodes start with Mac entering the bar and saying "Guys, I've got news!" or a variation thereof. Lampshaded in "Chardee MacDennis" when the Gang are bored out of their minds and get excited when Mac walks in because they think he'll have some big announcement to make that will absolve them of their monotony.
• Character Development:
  • Actually manages to accept his homosexuality for good in "Hero Or Hate Crime?". While coming to terms with being gay doesn't do anything to affect his horrible personality, his insecurities about who he is are a defining part of his character, and so overcoming them, even if it's only slightly, is still a big step for him.
  • By season 15 and definitely 16, he actually seems over Dennis. Not to the point of standing up to him, but when Dennis reveals he’s Johnny (because it’ll get Mac out of the house), Mac is convinced Johnny is real. Early Mac would have been convinced that Dennis actually loved him. Not to mention, before the reveal, Dennis talked trash about Johnny, saying Johnny doesn't even like Mac, much less love him, and Mac actually defends Johnny. Meaning if Johnny was real, Mac would've picked him over Dennis, which would've been inconceivable in Seasons 13 and 14.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • In earlier seasons, Mac is portrayed as straight (with a fetish for older women). In later seasons, he's a closeted, bigoted gay man. This is possibly an example of negative Character Development: presumably, as Mac's attraction to men grows more pronounced and harder to deny, he becomes more reactionary and pseudo-religious in defense.
  • He was originally The Leader of the gang and the main instigator in their adventures while Dennis was The Lancer. However, as his codependency with Dennis became more pronounced, along with his repressed homosexuality, Dennis became more dominant in their social circle to where he and Mac have essentially switched places.
• Chewbacca Defense: He tunes out scientific findings that conflict with his beliefs by pointing out that the "facts" are continuously being corrected as science develops (Earth being the center of the universe, tide theory, the medicinal properties of mercury, etc.) whereas the claims of his religion have never been empirically disproven.
  "Science is a liar sometimes."
• Churchgoing Villain: He's a member of the Gang but still regularly attends church. Though, he has a very skewed perspective on his own religion, and his attendance is mainly to help reinforce his compulsory heteronormality.
• Coax Them Out of the Closet: Mac is an Armored Closet Gay who sometimes seems to be trying to coax himself out with his constant double entendres and euphemisms. The rest of the Gang tries to get him to admit it for years. In "The Gang Goes To Hell Part 1," he tries to tell a gay couple that being gay is a sin and they manage to coax him out in about five minutes (though he goes right back in the next episode before coming out once and for all in "Hero Or Hate Crime?").
• Coming-Out Story: Over Seasons 11 & 12 and reaches its climax in "Mac Finds His Pride."
• Competition Freak: He finds opportunity for competition in the most ridiculous of things - e.g. proving that he is the least fond of smashing things up - and whenever he's excluded from said competition, he tries to foster rivalries between other members of the Gang, as seen in "The Gang Beats Boggs".
  Mac: Yeah. I need you to start a McGwire/Sosa-like rivalry with Dee.
  Charlie: Look, I think you're getting, like, too worked up about this thing. Can we just drink the beer and hang out, you know?
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: He got it drilled into him as a kid that shame and punishment were the best ways to not do the wrong thing again (even though this clearly hasn’t worked for him in the slightest), and even a Risk E Rat’s feelings guy gets concerned hearing this.
• Corruption of a Minor: Charlie has to tell him that no, it’s not a tradition to go to other people’s houses, open presents and run when the next family gets in, it’s just stealing. Mac even admits for once that his parents really messed him up.
• Deceptive Legacy: While researching his Irish heritage, he calls his mom and learns that their family is actually Dutch and his father's real last name is Vandross. Or so she says. The Season 15 finale reveals Mac is in fact Irish and the Gang paid off Mrs. Mac to lie because they didn't want Mac constantly talking about it.
• Delusions of Parental Love: His father Luther is a gruff, cold dangerous career criminal, who ignored Mac throughout his entire childhood save to insult and belittle him. Whilst Luther has attempted to reconnect with his son several times in the present, all their attempts are doomed to failure (granted mostly due to Mac's own stupidity or the gangs antics). His mother meanwhile is even worse, with her quite openly admitting to not loving, caring for or even liking Mac to his face, and has never lifted a finger for her son in her life. Despite this Mac is deep in denial and deludes himself that his parents love him, constantly craving his father's approval and having trained himself to interpret his mothers dismissive grunts as signs of affection he desperately craves.
• Desperately Craves Affection: As a result of growing up with an absentee father and an indifferent mother, Mac clamors for positive attention whenever he can get it.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • While he's always presented as far, far less skilled of a fighter than he claims to be, the show switches between whether he is physically pretty strong but lacking in any stamina or fighting ability, or completely weak in every sense of the word.
  • He can also range anywhere from showing explicit interest in women (and having no standards) to being in a Transparent Closet depending on what's funniest (this was dropped later on and he has officially been out of the closet since Season 12).
  • Mac's intelligence is another attribute that is subject to variation. Some episodes depict Mac as being fairly crafty while others portray him as a hopeless ditz, sometimes with less common sense than even Charlie.
• Dirty Coward: Only Dennis can compare to him in terms of sheer cowardliness. In one instance, he decided to beat up Bruce Mathis but freaked out and bailed before confronting him; in another, he pushed Dee forward and ran away when threatened with a mugging.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Doesn't like being called by his real name, Ronald McDonald.
• Dumbass Has a Point: In "Reynolds v. Reynolds: The Cereal Defense", the topic shifts to the subject of creationism. Mac, The Fundamentalist, is generally framed as foolish for his refusal to believe in evolution, but he manages to make a cogent argument against Dennis, because he successfully proves that Dennis doesn't know how evolution actually works, so his "faith" in it is no more valid than his faith in Creationism - especially since the scientists he believes in can be wrong. Dennis is unable to come up with a good answer because Mac has a point: Dennis has never thought about the topic beyond blindly trusting smart people, and said smart people can be wrong. ^note  In real life, Catholics don't actually believe in creationism; evolution has been an accepted part of church doctrine for decades. However, Mac is a demented moron, with a less-than-scrupulous approach to his faith and a bizarre upbringing; so it's not especially implausible that he believes this.
• Dumb Muscle: On the occasions where he actually is shown to have some strength, he's still too dimwitted and unskilled to put it to much use.
• Eat the Evidence: He has eaten paper contracts in order to make them invalid. It hasn't always worked.
• Egocentrically Religious: Only ever seems to remember that he's Catholic when he needs to rub it in his friends' faces. Otherwise, he's perfectly fine with completely going against the teachings of his religion. Likewise, whenever he prays it's always for fulfillment of his own selfish, ugly desires (typically in the form of asking for divine retribution against his so-called friends).
• Embarrassing First Name: His dad named him Ronald McDonald just for the laughs. It’s no wonder why he goes by “Mac”.
• Embarrassing Last Name: As his first name turns out to be Ronald, McDonald. The others find delight in snickering over it every so often.
• Embarrassing Nickname:
  • In high school, he was called Ronnie the Rat.
  • When he joins The Mafia in "The Gang Gets Whacked", the gangsters take to calling him "Pussyhands".
• Emergency Food Supply Animal: Literally. After spending a month going insane from living in the suburbs and feeling like Dennis is neglecting his feelings, Mac spitefully allows their dog Dennis Jr. to starve to death and secretly feeds it to Dennis. When Mac reveals the truth, Dennis is appalled while Mac belts out an Evil Laugh far more terrifying than anything we've seen from him before.
• Entitled to Have You: Dennis is explicitly The Tease who manipulates Mac’s affections while being codependent with him, and a Serial Rapist himself, but Jerkass Has a Point that Mac is overbearing, gets hard at a play rape scene (in the live show asks Dennis to not “ruin it”), and tried to poison the guy to get him reliant on Mac.
• Epic Fail: Mac thinks of himself as tough, strong, and a capable fighter, and he is none of these. Whenever his combat abilities are tested, the results are both pitiful and hilarious.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Loves and craves approval from his mom, and any mistreatment or insults towards her is one of the many things that set him off.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Mac is the only member of the Gang who is consistently openly affectionate with his parents. This is directly tied with his "Well Done, Son" Guy nature, as both Mrs. Mac and Luther generally respond to him with indifference or outright annoyance.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He is typically the only one to protest a scheme that the Gang cooks up if it's too morally reprehensible and when he wants out, he sometimes just leaves and says "I'm washing my hands of the whole situation!" He normally comes back to their schemes after leaving, though.
  • He finds Dennis's predilection towards Date Rape disturbing, and once told Dennis and Dee off for their plan to go on welfare after their unemployment runs out.
  Mac: Welfare is for people who need it, like drug addicts and single mothers. It's not for over privileged pieces of shit who want to waste millions in taxpayer dollars.
  • In "PTSDee", he's appalled by Frank's casual killing of women and children in the virtual reality game they’ve been playing.
  • He's disgusted when a priest he'd befriended turns out to have pedophilic urges rather than being gay like Mac had assumed.
  • Dennis tells him the only way they’ll happen is by rape, and while Mac is a Stalker with a Crush, he’s not going to stoop to that level.
• Everybody Knew Already: The Gang's nonchalant reaction to Mac finally announcing that he's gay.
  Dee: No shit.
  Mac: Oh, you knew this already?
  Dennis: What, that you're gay? Yeah...
  Frank: From the day we met.
  Charlie: Yeah, always.
• Extreme Doormat: Not initially, but he does gradually become one over time. Mac was never as tough as he claims to be, although, to his credit, he was more assertive in the show's earlier seasons. Over time, however, Mac has become more meek and docile, namely towards those he craves approval from, like his father or Dennis. Compare his regular bickering and fighting with Dennis from the earlier episodes to his more submissive demeanor in the later ones. Justified in that years of living with a man like Dennis have gradually eroded Mac's self-esteem, making him less confident and more susceptible to Dennis's domineering ways.
• Extreme Omnisexual: Had sex with Margaret McPoyle, a woman he's openly disgusted by, simply because she offered. In general, during the early seasons, if Mac has the option of having sex with something, he'll have sex with it. This is probably due to him being a closeted gay man; he was so adamant about proving his non-existent heterosexuality that he was willing to have sex with any woman who would accept him, regardless. He also smirks a bit when Frank tells him that a monkey may have "fucked [his] mouth."
• Fake Band: Chemical Toilet.
• Faking the Dead: "Mac and Charlie Die" Parts 1 and 2. He and Charlie fake their death in order to escape from Mac's father, who they believe is trying to kill them.
• Fat and Proud: Played with, as while the others mock him, he actually prefers being fat in the seventh season, and has no issue going shirtless still. Although, after it’s revealed he was gaining weight (which he insisted was him "cultivating mass") for a scheme that, unbeknownst to him, the rest of the gang dropped as soon as it was created, he’s furious at them and goes to his church confessional to have God smite them. After losing the weight he reveals to a therapist he enjoyed being fat because people saw him as intimidating and "like a monster barreling towards them" and now feels tiny “like a postage stamp". The therapist tells him he likely has body dysmorphia.
• Fat Bastard: In Season 7, where he gains a rather grotesque amount of weight.
• Feigning Intelligence: Part of his M.A.C. system involves posing as Dennis' approachable Cute Bookworm roommate to lull women into running to him for comfort after Dennis inevitably breaks their hearts. If you've seen any episode of the series, you'd know he's anything but.
• Fetish:
  • A recurring trend with Mac is his interest in various niche fetishes, such as older women. The staff describes him as "spinning around, trying out different things, but inevitably ending up on a dick".
  • When a cop comes in to Paddys to tell them about a suicide risk, he immediately leans against the wall to get strip searched.
• Fighting Irish: He is a very hot-blooded and confrontational Irish-American. However, in Season 15, the Gang leads Mac to believe he is actually Dutch, which makes him go through a complete identity crisis, as he'd always prided himself on being this trope.
• Flanderization:
  • While Mac's homoerotic obsession with muscles and Dennis was always a thing, it steadily increases across the series, to the point where he is outright confirmed to be a closeted gay man in the later episodes and his repressed sexuality has become one of his defining character traits. Charlie lampshades this in "Time's Up For The Gang", where he struggles to define Mac's role in the group before settling on him being "just, like, our gay guy now."
  • Similarly, Mac's Desperately Craves Affection side has steadily been played up more and more until, by the later seasons, he generally spends more time acting like a simpering puppy dog than he does playing up his usual pseudo-badass schtick.
• Freudian Excuse: His parents' neglect led him to constantly seek approval and attention in adulthood.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He becomes this in "Mac Day" due to his repeated denial of who he really is. Later episodes show the Gang expressing more consistent frustration with him, to the point of openly stating that they hate him several times. Also hinted to be this in Season 1 before Dennis, Charlie, and Dee went through major Flanderization. Back then the Gang would never hesitate to point out what an asshole he was and people outside the Gang could never stand him.
• The Fundamentalist: More so as the series progresses. In "Mac Day", he openly admits he's using his day to try to convert the rest of the group to his faith. He scales it back after finally coming out in Season 12.
• Fun T-Shirt: Punny/funny T-shirts are a staple of his wardrobe.

G-N

• Give Me a Sign: Mac has a big Inferiority Superiority Complex, and is desperate for someone to tell him what to do. Of course he interprets anything how he wants so he doesn’t have to acknowledge having to change.
• Given Name Reveal: His full name goes unmentioned until "The High School Reunion, Part 1", which dramatically reveals it to be "Ronald McDonald".
• Global Ignorance: Apparently thinks Philadelphia and Detroit are states.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Subconsciously aware that Dennis is more fixated on his sister than returning any feelings for him in "The Gang Chokes", and when Dennis gets pissy at him being an Extreme Doormat, “save Dee from choking” is when he decides to stand up for himself.
• Grew a Spine: In “The Gang Chokes”, he decides to grow one at the worst possible time, when Dee is flatlining and Dennis actually wants him to follow an order to save her. Oddly enough, despite being blatantly defied, Dennis actually seems to be impressed by him doing this.
• Guilt Complex: Tells Charlie he feels constantly guilty for his thoughts and urges, but doesn’t want to confront any of them and just wants to be absolved.
• Gym Bunny: Mac shows shades of this stereotype, e.g. his love of sports stems partly from his obsession with the male physique, and he only ever goes to the gym to ogle beefcakes and work on his glamour muscles.
• Handwriting as Characterization: A Running Gag on the show is that Mac idolizes Philadelphia Phillies player Chase Utley and is constantly writing fan letters to him. When the letters are displayed onscreen, it's shown that Mac's handwriting looks like that of a pre-teen, befitting his Manchild personality.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Intense, moody and aggressively passionate are some of the best traits to describe Mac and his case is a bit due to how violent and threatening he can be when he feels offended.
• Handsome Lech: A sleaze while going for women; after coming out, he hasn't gotten any less aggressive or reprehensible with his sexual overtures.
• Has a Type: While he's not picky about who he has sex with (see Extreme Omnisexual), he has consistently shown a preference for beefy hunks (making his attraction to unfit and waifish Dennis very ironic).
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: When in the closet, Mac would vent his repressed homosexuality either with a sense of Catholic homophobia or would try and make his gay urges seem straight by roping his friends into it, such as when he tried making all his friends oil up body builders in "Mac Day" or insisting there be a shower scene (complete with an unnecessary ass-shot) in "The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 6". After he officially comes out as gay in "Hero or Hate Crime?", he ends up completely switching gears and frequently bringing up his sexuality to justify things in his favor whether it actually makes sense or not.
• Heaven Seeker: Much to the incredulity of his friends, Mac will occasionally refuse to participate in the Gang's schemes if he believes they compromise the likelihood of him getting into heaven (which, for him, is populated by hunky angels and a buff shirtless god). Played for extreme drama in "Mac Finds His Pride," when Mac tries to communicate to his father the tension he feels between being gay and wanting to be accepted by God through a beautiful and genuinely moving contemporary dance routine, with a woman representing God as his partner.
• He-Man Woman Hater: While all the male members of the Gang are pretty misogynistic, Mac's the only one to explicitly state that he hates women. Out of the Gang, he also has the worst relationship with Dee. It's to the point that even Charlie of all people acknowledges that Mac has "really weird women issues".
• Hereditary Homosexuality: Mac, whose Armored Closet Gay status is a longstanding Running Gag for most of the series, has two gay cousins. The first one appears as an easily forgotten Bit Character from the pilot. The other one, "Country Mac", is presented as a Foil who acts like Mac but without all his bad qualities (including being open and confident with his sexuality). Mac's father has also displayed bisexual tendencies, although that might be a result of having spent years in prison. Season 16 gives him a gay uncle too, albeit one who didn't father either cousin.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • With Dennis, though "heterosexual" is debatable in this instance. The commentary for "Mac and Dennis Break Up" has the staff (perhaps jokingly) suggest that Mac and Dennis are possibly queer and in a pre-sexual romantic relationship that neither is completely conscious of.
  • Mac plays the trope straighter (...ha ha) with Charlie, who he has known since childhood.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He comes out to his father via an interpretive dance routine that's both technically impressive and genuinely moving. In general, there's an implication that most of what makes Mac a bad person is that he feels the need to obsessively live up to his ideal of masculinity and to look cool in front of the rest of the Gang.
  • Judging from "The Gang Buys a Roller Rink", he actually was a successful drug dealer in his youth, though still not as much of a badass he tried to look while doing it.
• High-School Hustler: A negative example. He dealt weed in high school in a selfish bid to be popular, and ratted out his competition to clean up the market, earning him the nickname "Ronnie the Rat".
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: His dad is a Notorious Parent who spent a majority of his son's life in prison, tries to use him has a mule for his misdeeds whenever he tries reconnecting with him and purposefully named his son "Ronald MacDonald" as a cruel joke on him. His mother is a chain-smoking woman who sees her son more as a nuisance than her own child. Both are shown to be emotionally-distant to him at best, genuinely contemptuous at worst, and are a contributing factor to Mac's pathological need for the approval of others.
• Holier Than Thou: Mac is prone to being very self-righteous, though he's definitely not a shining pillar of morality.
• Hot-Blooded: He is quick to anger, and has a tendency to act first and think never (e.g. he offers to take a Blood Oath and slices his hand before anybody actually agrees to it).
• Hypocrite:
  • Mac considers himself to be a very devout Catholic but demonstrates a poor knowledge of the church's beliefs and rituals and lives by absolutely none of the church's teachings. Most notably, he joins an anti-abortion movement until he believes that he got a girl pregnant, then suggests that she get an abortion. Later on, he goes to confession with the intention of asking the priest to smite the rest of the Gang, even as the priest explains Mac is supposed to be repenting for his own sins.
  • Mac also considers himself to be the most loyal and passionate for Philadelphia's sports teams out of the Gang. The rest of them repeatedly point out that he's the only one of them who owns merchandise of other cities' teams, including the Eagles' arch-rivals the Dallas Cowboys.
• Hypocritical Humor: In “Paddy Has A Jumper”, upon hearing the guy’s name is “Brian O’Brian”, he says he would kill himself if he had that clown name. Dee reminds him of his actual name.
• I Am Big Boned: In the seventh season, after putting on 50 lbs., he kept insisting that it was muscle, or that he was "cultivating mass", even after discovering he had become diabetic because of his weight gain. He finally admits that he is fat later in the season.
• I Banged Your Mom: Sleeps with Barbara Reynolds in the appropriately titled "Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom". In Season 9, when Dennis jokes that Mac has never had an orgasm, Mac immediately blows up and screams in Dennis' face: "I've had orgasms! I've had tons of orgasms! I’ve had one with your mom, dude!"
• If It's You, It's Okay: Even early in the series, it's easy to interpret his sexual encounters with women as him trying to act straight or as more of a status symbol than actually enjoying the act itself. But he genuinely enjoyed sex with Barbara and actually has lingering feelings for Carmen after their breakup.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Mac possesses a desperate desire to emulate the tough-as-nails macho stars of the 80s action movies that he's obsessed with. Unfortunately for him, his Dirty Coward nature and lack of real strength makes that nothing but a distant dream.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Along with his desire to be an ultra-badass, Mac is also deeply insecure about the possibility that his friends and parents don't care about him, and will pathetically do whatever he can to earn their affection. However, his actions tend to only lead to them disliking him even more. It’s pretty sad that his biggest fantasy is to die and have the other guys finally realise what they missed out on and cry over him.
• I Just Want to Be Special: In "The Gang Wins the Big Game", he has a sad, self-aware realization that every single thing the Gang does turns to shit (mostly because they’re cruel assholes), and he wanted them to succeed just once by getting to the Super Bowl.
• Implausible Deniability: Mac has a tendency of making ridiculous and blatantly false subconscious justifications for things about his life that he doesn't like (most commonly, his weakness, his cowardice, his sexuality and his parents not caring about him).
• Incompatible Orientation: He has a thing for Dennis, who is at least ostensibly straight and outright tells Mac in Season 13 that it's never going to happen. However, this trope seems to be growing weaker as their relationship improves in the seasons after that, even more so after the Johnny incident in Season 16.
• Incredibly Obvious Bug: When he and Charlie fake their own deaths, they hide in the air-vent during their joint funeral at Paddy's, talking at full volume. This alerts Dennis that they aren't actually dead.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Likes to hype himself up as an ultra-tough man's man, but is actually a deeply insecure person who constantly worries (and not without good reason) that his friends and family don't care about him. Even he says he doesn’t actually like himself, and would rather play someone else if he can.
• Insane Troll Logic: Believes both that God hates gay people and that God loves him, and uses that to deny his own sexuality. When he first realizes that he is gay, he immediately is aware of the apparent contradiction — God cannot simultaneously hate gay people and love Mac, a gay man. Rather than reexamining his own prejudices, he simply decides that he's proven that God does not exist. After surviving the boat sinking, which he attributes to a miracle, he flips it around, stating that since God has now been proven to exist and to love Mac, that proves that he is straight after all.
• Insufferable Imbecile: Despite his self-appointed position as the groups "Brains", Mac is an arrogant, Holier Than Thou, misogynistic dimwit who desperately clings to a hopelessly untrue vision of himself as a respected badass and devout Catholic despite him barely understanding the religion and misinterpreting the bits he does know (it's usually Dennis, who is openly an Atheist, who corrects him). He likewise needs it spelled out to him why he shouldn't tell people in advance that he plans to manipulate them, or why he should keep quiet about important information, until after he's already done so.
• Instant Expert: Often believes himself to be this but he really, really isn't.
• Is That Cute Kid Yours?: After finding a baby in the dumpster behind Paddy's, Dee and Mac decide to raise it and put it into showbiz. When a passerby asks his name, Mac replies with D.B. — which is short for Dumpster Baby.
• Jerkass to One: While Mac can be a pretty big jerk to the entire Gang, he’s generally at his most vicious towards Dee, and has no problem snapping at her and telling her to "shut the fuck up." ^note Ironically, their actors are Happily Married in real life.
  • That said, while they're probably the least close pairing in the group, they do seem to get along well enough when the rest of the Gang isn't around, such as in "The ANTI-Social Network" or "The Gang Hits the Slopes".
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While not as evident as Charlie, Mac can come off as this occasionally. For example, underneath the overblown transphobia he seemed to genuinely have feelings for Carmen. Additionally, he has the best parental relationship out of the Gang (even if the affection is mostly one-sided), and multiple They Really Do Love Each Other moments with Dennis and Charlie.
• The Kirk: Mac is temperamentally directly in between the mindlessly impulsive and aggressive Frank and Charlie and the rational-yet-calculating Dennis and Dee. It varies depending on the episode which one of these extremes he gravitates closer towards.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All:
  • With respect to religion, Mac likes to act like he's spiritually wise, but it's clear that most of his knowledge of faith is what he's gleaned from Small Reference Pools. He is utterly blindsided when Carmen's boyfriend manages to counter his attempts to cite the Bible to justify homophobia with a Biblical passage about beating slaves to death.
  • This also applies to his supposed knowledge of martial arts — he likes to believe he's a Bruce Lee-level master of fighting, but the most he can manage is kicking and punching like a doofus.
• Late Coming Out: Due to his massive denial, Mac doesn't end up fully coming out until he's in his forties. Played for Laughs because he's in such a Transparent Closet that everyone else knew he was gay long before he did.
• Like Father, Like Son: Mac tries to deliberately invoke this trope by dealing drugs, emulating his father's appearance and acting tough. Subverted in that Luther used to be a genuinely terrifying and capable criminal whereas Mac is a cowardly, incompetent small-time crook. See "Well Done, Son" Guy below. A later episode does reveal, however, that Luther is bisexual, further highlighting Mac's own repressed attraction to men.
• Likes Older Women: As a result of sleeping with Dennis and Dee's mother. He later tries to hook up with Barbara's sister at her husband's funeral.
• Limited Wardrobe: Mac has been wearing the same black combat boots and blue Dickies chinos since Episode 1, with few exceptions beyond costumes. Rob McElhenney claims Mac only owns the one pair of pants, and that the wardrobe department has altered them for McElhenney's various weight fluctuations. Shirt wise he doesn’t rewear them to the same extent Charlie does, but certain ones do pop up a lot, a grey t-shirt with "RIOT” written on it is one of his most well known. After getting fat in Season 7 he buys and usually wears larger Tommy Bahama Hawaiian style button up shirts, and in the following few seasons despite having lost the weight by season 8 he still wears them despite now being way too big on him. Like Charlie Mac also grew up poor so re-wearing a lot of the same shirts is realistic.
• Literal-Minded: Particularly evident in "The Gang Inflates", where he takes Frank telling him that he and Dennis made a bad investment leasing their couch for 15 years and that inflation has reduced the value of the dollar to mean that he should buy an inflatable couch. When Charlie tells him he has to save up his nut (as in, how a squirrel does before winter), he takes that to mean he should buy a bulk can of assorted nuts.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: By Season 10, he can't even get an erection while trying to have sex with a woman anymore, as Mac's current "fling", Dusty, reports in "The Gang Misses the Boat". Mac claims it's because she isn't hot enough, though nobody's fooled.
• Love Martyr: Later seasons increasingly portray him as harboring romantic feelings for Dennis, who routinely abuses, belittles and demeans him. By Season 15, he starts gradually growing out of this bit by bit.
• Manchild: While Dennis, Charlie, and Dee show shades of this as well, Mac is by far the biggest example. He's constantly doing childish stunts for his "Project Badass" videos, and notice how he acts anytime he shares the screen with his parents.
• Manly Gay: Played with. While Mac, who is attracted to men, has an obsession with the male physique and stereotypically masculine hobbies such as sports, extreme stunts and actions movies, his interest in these pursuits is distinctly framed as being the result of his extremely childish concept of manliness. So while he in reality isn't actually this trope at all, he very much wants to be.
• Manly Tears: Actually part of his show in “Mac Finds His Pride”, as he knew his dad was going to reject him, and he sobs on the God stand-in as she tells him it’s okay.
• Martial Arts and Crafts: Inserts arbitrary roundhouse kicks and karate chops into pretty much everything he does.
• Miles Gloriosus: He brags about being a great martial artist. In reality, he's a Dirty Coward who knows nothing about fighting. He did block a punch from a black belt once, but only to get knocked out shortly afterward.
• Mistaken for Gay: Seen in the original pilot that was pitched to FX. (The scene didn't make it to the series proper, wherein he is, in fact, canonically gay).
• Mistaken for Murderer: The episode "Mac is a Serial Killer." He's actually banging Carmen again, and doesn't want his friends to know about it.
• Mistaken for Racist: In "The Gang Gets Racist." Subverted as other episodes reveal him to have some pretty strong racist tendencies.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: In “The Gang Gets Whacked”, after the rest of the Gang abandons him, he joins the mafia. This doesn’t work, as he’s still the Butt-Monkey just for a different group of people.
• Mood-Swinger: In "The Gang Gets Analyzed.", Mac goes from angry ranting to depression to maniacal laughter in the space of about a minute at the beginning of his session. Lampshaded by the therapist, who asks him whether this is normal.
• Moral Myopia: Charlie calls him out on wanting Poppins to get an abortion when he’s usually pro-life, and Mac says this is different because it affects him.
• Mr. Exposition: Generally gets left with the duty of explaining the Gang's various rituals to Frank and the audience, as well as quickly informing the others of any events currently going on in Philly in order to get the plot rolling. Lampshaded in "Chardee Macdennis: The Game of Games".
• Mr. Fanservice: Season 13 has him acquire an impressively chiseled physique, which is shown prominently in the season premiere and finale, the latter of which has Mac perform an elaborate dance with fake rain while shirtless. Ironically no one in the gang is impressed nor really cares about his ripped body, whereas in Season 7 when he got fat they constantly mocked him over it.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: In Season 13, his new muscular physique makes him strong enough to lift Dee up by the crotch one-handed. Ironically he does not take advantage of his new fitness to stand up to his and Charlie's now middle aged and out of shape high school bully who’s son stole their bikes along with his friends, but they do instead beat up the kids.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Admits along with Charlie that they emotionally tortured Dee way too hard in one game of "Chardee MacDennis" and seems to genuinely feel terrible for making her cry for a solid month and contemplate suicide after.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: To Dennis in Season 14, to the point where "The Janitor Mops Twice" has Charlie compare him to a dog being trained. He comes out of this in later seasons.
• Neat Freak: Much like Dennis, he's very clean and organized where his living space is concerned. He even cleans Charlie's apartment when he moves in with him for an episode. He and fellow Neat Freak Dennis do, however, manage to trash Dee's apartment and the suburban home they buy to escape it.
• Never My Fault: Whenever he fails to perform well in something he brags about, whether his fighting prowess, bouncer skills, religious knowledge or physical toughness, he always has an excuse. These range from the light in his eyes to an undetected slope in the terrain, but often revolve around somehow being too strong, fast or smart to properly react to the problem. After coming out as gay, he blames his lack of a boyfriend on how "it's difficult out there."
• No Accounting for Taste: When he still slept with women, he'd hook up with girls he was actively repulsed by just to say he'd had sex with somebody. This doesn't carry over to his taste in men, where he seems to only go for attractive, musclebound studs or Dennis.
• No Bisexuals: Despite showing overt interest in women in the first seven seasons, Mac is only ever described as being gay after his sexuality begins getting discussed in-universe. While the idea of the Gang simply being too ignorant to even consider the possibility of bisexuality is very plausible, Mac himself notably stops showing interest in women after this point. Given the kind of women he used to pursue, however, it's not hard to imagine these were simply The Beard, along with the fact he was raised Catholic and he felt he had to overcompensate his masculinety to impress his father.
• No Shirt, Long Jacket: Sports this look in "Make Paddy's Great Again" with his duster in order to show off his new physique.
• Not Helping Your Case: Mac has a tendency to prove people right when they point out his character flaws. From "The Gang Dances Their Asses Off":
  Frank: I put us all on a ranking system so you kids would care about your jobs.
  Mac: What's my rank?
  Frank: You're third.
  Mac: What? Why am I third?
  Frank: Too volatile.
  Mac: BULLSHIT!
• Not So Above It All: While he’s the Token Good Teammate when it comes to sexual assault, he admits he’s sexually blackmailed a priest.

O-Z

• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • After finding out Dennis, his best friend, has been keeping letters from his incarcerated father from him (and ripping them up). Rather than become angry and trying to attack Dennis, like he normally would, Mac is totally quiet and sadly sits on the floor, despondent.
  • In "Mac Finds His Pride", instead of constantly flaunting his sexuality like he'd been doing all season, Mac is surprisingly quiet and brooding pretty much throughout the entire episode, saying that he actually doesn't feel very proud as a gay man and has no idea where he fits within the community. He even refuses to dance on the Paddy's Pub float for the Pride parade, when everyone else in the Gang was expecting him to. It gets to the point where Frank, in a bit of O.O.C.-ness of his own, actually takes it upon himself to help Mac properly come out to his father, becoming somewhat of a supportive pillar to him in the process.
• Only One Name: Mac. Just Mac. It was believed to be his last name, because his parents are referred to as Mrs. Mac and Luther Mac to keep the gag going. But in "The Gang Cracks The Liberty Bell", in which Mac, Dennis and Charlie tell the story of The Gang's 1776 counterparts cracking the Liberty Bell, he is referred to as "MacDonald." "The High School Reunion" gives us the whole thing: Ronald McDonald.
• Only Sane by Comparison: Despite his greed, overblown self-confidence, stupidity and cruelty, he can be the the Only Sane Man at times. He's generally more rational and sensible than both Frank and Charlie while also being much less sociopathic and insensitive than Dennis and Dee, making him the closest thing the Gang has to a "regular guy" and allowing him to have a slightly greater amount of lucidity in certain situations. This is best shown during Dennis' infamous "implications" speech, which he reacts to with understated horror (compared to Dee, who is shown to not only approve of, but have her own variation of the scheme), and Charlie's assault on a mall Santa, where he attempts to restrain him. The last few episodes of Season 12 emphasize this in him.
• Oral Fixation: Has a habit of chewing/sucking on pens, probably as a manifestation of his repressed homosexuality. It gets so bad that Dennis has to keep all the pens in their apartment hidden.
• Paper Tiger: To his credit, Mac is fairly impressively muscular, but Dennis claims that he only works out his "glamour muscles", meaning he only builds muscle to look good and is actually worthless physically. From what we see of Mac's athletic abilities, Dennis wasn't lying. Played with in Season 13 in which he manages to lift up Dee by the crotch with one hand; however, despite his improved physical abilities, Mac is still a terrible fighter as in Season 14, Charlie manages to overwhelm him in a fight. In Season 13, he also instead beats up a group of kids with Charlie for stealing their bikes, when he could’ve easily taken on of the kids’ fathers who happened to be a childhood bully of theirs, but he backed away all because said bully asked, "What are you gonna do about it?".
• Playing Both Sides: In "Frank Retires", he switches between siding with Dennis/Dee and Charlie, and later Charlie/Dee and Dennis, depending on which side he thinks will benefit him the most.
  Mac: I'm playing both sides so that I always come out on top.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He's a homophobic fundamentalist. And he not only thinks Blackface can be done tastefully, but has done it himself. He has also referred to Italians as "dagos" at least twice onscreen, started going to a different church when his regular one become popular with Vietnamese people, and believes that Mark Zuckerberg "and his Jews" are involved in a conspiracy to topple various governments. He appears to have loosened up his homophobia considerably following the events of "The Gang Goes to Hell", to the point of not only calling Frank out for using homophobic hate speech against him, but being able to eloquently and effectively explain why the slur that Frank used should be considered as hate speech during the events of "Hero or Hate Crime?". At the end of that same episode, he finally accepts himself as gay, seemingly removing his homophobia entirely in the process.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: None of the Gang have any love for the police, but he’ll suck up calling after them that blue lives matter.
• Progressively Prettier:
  • Inverted in Season 7, where he suddenly gains 60 pounds and is seen and portrayed as being quite grotesque. Rob McElhenney was actually really annoyed at the trend of Progressively Prettier in television, especially for actors that play characters that would have no access to (blatantly obvious) plastic surgery or personal trainers, so he put on a ton of weight just to mock the practice.
  • Played straight in Season 13, where he goes in the opposite direction and develops an extremely well-sculpted physique and becomes even more muscular than he ever had been previously. Rob McElhenney did this as another, more on-the-nose parody of this trope, noting the absurd number of male characters on television that possess perfectly chiseled abs, even when there is no logical reason for them to, for the sake of being able to do Shirtless Scenes.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: One of his signature looks, which he flashes whenever he wants to get his way or is feeling sympathetic or confused.
• Raging Stiffie: A recurring problem for Mac, who gets easily aroused when in close proximity to beefcakes.
• Really Gets Around: Back when he was in the closet, he pulled more tail than Charlie (who was obsessed with a single woman) while also lacking Dennis's impossibly high standards (which he calls him out on in an early cold open). This continues with men after he comes out, where he describes himself as "S-ing and F-ing [his] way through life" when the subject of his sexual escapades comes up.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The only member of the Gang to be deservedly and accurately called out by the others on a regular basis. His constant fibbing and bragging tend to get on everyone's nerves pretty quickly.
  Charlie: Learn how to kick. Take one karate class, if you're so into karate!
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Red Oni to Dennis' Blue, though it's played with a bit. Mac is quick to get angry and resort to violence, but also tends to be one of the more reasonable and level-headed members of the group in times of crisis.
• Religious Bruiser: Mac believes himself to be this. In reality, he's incredibly weak-willed and cowardly and is only ever particularly religious when it immediately benefits him.
• Romanticised Abuse: He thinks love is dominating another man and getting him to submit to your will. Ironically, whenever his sexual exploits come up in later seasons, Mac is usually the one being dominated.
• Sanity Slippage: The disaster with both of them moving to the suburbs makes him a lot clingier to Dennis and wanting his affection, which in turns makes Dennis hate him more.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: He vocalizes his kicks and punches to make himself appear badass.
• Schemer: When he was younger, he was a drug dealer in high school and ratted on all the other dealers to free up the market. He also created The M.A.C. system for seducing Dennis' castoffs: Move-in After Completion.
• Science Is Wrong: At his worst, making Charlie look like the Only Sane Man, he’ll decry evolution because everything has to be about God.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Whenever he's really, really happy, he emits loud, high-pitched squeals of delight more befitting a five-year-old (best demonstrated in "A Very Sunny Christmas" when he's psyched about the Christmas gifts).
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Played with in his dynamic with Dennis. While Mac is obsessed with stereotypically "manly" pursuits such as body building, extreme stunts and martial arts, he's distinctly the more emotionally-vulnerable and submissive half of the duo.
• Serial Rapist: It's stated early on that he took part in sexually assaulting Cricket during the Gang's teen years (where they would hunt him down and tea-bag him), which he outright points out is rape when Dennis performs it on him during his sleep. He's not quite as much a monster as Dennis, though, as he's actively disturbed by Dennis' more extreme and explicit sexual assaults/harassment, but he's still so much a predator that his problematic behaviour was outlined in "Time's Up for the Gang".
• Serious Business: He takes the revelation that he's supposedly Dutch and not Irish very seriously.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Pride and Gluttony.
  • Pride: As a means of detracting from his homosexuality, Mac overcompensates by trying to make himself seem more badass than he really is. On multiple occasions he tries to make himself seem impressive and badass, building up his glamour muscles instead of physically useful muscles, trying to do martial arts moves that he does not know how to use and trying to turn everything into a competition that he himself thinks he could win, only for his attempts at accomplishing them to fall flat and make him look like a weak loser.
  • Gluttony: In Season 7, Mac gains 50 pounds, becoming gluttonous to the point of carrying an entire trash bag of chimichangas everywhere he goes. This was meant to be a Deconstructive Parody of sitcom characters getting better looking as the show goes on due to the actors becoming wealthier, when the opposite happens for regular people.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Invoked in "The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award", where Dennis forces him and Dee to have this dynamic to draw in customers a la Sam and Diane. Unfortunately, rather than flirty sexual tension, Mac and Dee's tension is much more aggressive, violent and founded on mutual hatred rather than any sort of attraction.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Mac usually wears sleeveless t-shirts, most of which he cut the sleeves off himself, in order to appear more badass and show off his tats, and even makes the rest of the Gang do the same and cut the sleeves off the shirts they’re wearing when they have to do his bidding for the day in "Mac Day".
• Slut-Shaming: Away from her he’s actually quite impressed that Dee is "slamming ass all over town", but to her face he calls her a "nasty fucking slut."
• Smart Ball: Easily the biggest victim of this. Depending on the episode, his intelligence can vary wildly from being the most rational member of the Gang to even dumber than Charlie.
• Smug Snake: Mac is a self-righteous narcissist with an overinflated ego and delusions of grandeur and this obnoxious behavior often makes him disrespected by the rest of The Gang which is full of Smug Snakes like Dennis and Dee.
• Sore Loser: The Gang has to nail their Chardee MacDennis game board to the bar because Mac will always try to flip it once he inevitably starts losing.
• STD Immunity: Averted. Mac never uses condoms during sex due to his Catholic beliefs, and accumulates diseases as a result.
  Frank: Mac, you're too low-class. All those women are going to think they will catch something from you.
  Mac: (happily) They will.
• Sticky Fingers: He often instinctively steals things he doesn't actually need (e.g. trying to pocket an ashtray in "The Gang Goes on Family Fight" despite having given up smoking by that time).
• The Stool Pigeon: Mac was a drug dealer in high school, and would clear the market of other drug dealers by snitching on the competition. This earned him the unfortunate nickname "Ronnie the Rat".
• Stout Strength: This varies in Season 7 when he puts on 50 pounds.
• Straight Gay: Played with. While Mac doesn't ever display any stereotypically camp behavior, his uncanny ability to constantly spout out homoerotic innuendo still makes his attraction to men obvious. After finally coming out, he expresses pride in the fact that he shows no outward signs of his homosexuality, and gets angry when Dennis implies otherwise. Downplayed in Season 13, where he starts to act more effeminate, though not enough to qualify as Camp Gay either.
• Straw Misogynist: While all of the Gang have misogynistic tendencies, Mac is the most open about his hatred of women, something implied to be a product of his closeted homosexuality and the various coping mechanisms he uses to justify it.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Around Season 3 he starts normally slicking his hair back, making him resemble Luther more closely.
• Suicide is Shameful: He’s the only one who thinks the Gang should do something about the suicidal man on the roof of Paddy's. Not out of any moral decency, but because he believes suicide is a mortal sin.
• Tattooed Crook: He has a number of "tribal" tattoos on his arms which he likes to show off. Subverted, of course, in that Mac's not the hardened criminal he pretends to be (although much like the rest of the Gang he has done a lot of illegal things).
• Teeny Weenie: Dee and Charlie joke about him having one after he brags about "hanging dong" on the trolley in "Thunder Gun Express".
  Dee: Looked like a button in a fur coat.
  Charlie: It was more of a ding than a dong, really.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Frequently greets the Gang with "What's up, bitches?!"
• Throw the Dog a Bone: As Mac has become more of a Butt-Monkey in later seasons, the show occasionally makes an effort to be nice to him:
  • Dennis consistently abuses him and takes advantage of his affections, but when asked for a nice thing to say, he gives a genuinely sweet speech (that of course includes TMI about his sex life, because it’s Dennis) about how Mac makes him feel safer.
  • Downplayed in "Hero or Hate Crime?", when he finally comes out for good and the rest of the Gang is actually supportive. Of course, they all still hate him, but they decide to let him have this small victory and not ruin the moment for him until the next day.
  • In "Mac Finds His Pride", he actually manages to impress Frank and a large group of prisoners with his dance performance. The episode treating Mac's feelings seriously is also throwing the dog a bone in and of itself, since his religion and sexuality had both been treated as punchlines up to that point.
  • In "The Gang Carries A Corpse Up A Mountain", Mac actually pulls his weight when helping the Gang carry Shelley's corpse up a cliff, and the episode never mocks his physical strength although it's worth noting that Mac surprisingly doesn't brag about his muscles here. Lampshaded by Dennis, who tells Charlie and Frank not to admit to Mac that he is pretty strong (at least in comparison to the rest of the Gang).
• Token Good Teammate: In later seasons. He’s the only one who thinks they shouldn’t harass women anymore while Dee and Dennis are serial rapists who brag about it, Charlie is a Stalker with a Crush, and Frank thinks he can get away with anything being rich.
• Token Religious Teammate: The only member of the Gang to profess any kind of religious faith.
• Too Dumb to Live: He tells a mob boss's wife that he won't sleep with her because she's gross in "The Gang Gets Whacked".
• Took a Level in Kindness: He's still violent, short-tempered and misogynistic, but he's slightly less of a jerk in the later seasons, especially after he comes to terms with his sexuality and tones down his The Fundamentalist tendencies accordingly. This is particularly notable due to it being the only instance of positive character growth in the series.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Blue Gatorade and Mac's Famous Mac and Cheese.
• Transparent Closet: By Season 9, Mac's sexuality is obvious to the rest of the Gang, even though he himself is still in denial. No longer the case as of Season 12's "Hero Or Hate Crime?", where Mac finally accepts his homosexuality for good, but he still insists that he showed no outward signs of homosexuality before he came out.
  Charlie: I know we've never said this as a group, but Mac's gay, right?
  (the rest of the Gang agrees)
• Uke: No matter how fat or muscular or regular he gets, a power bottom Mac is not, and he displays consistent and needful servile behavior whilst anally pleasuring himself when he's alone with such implements as pool drains and a customized exercise bike that fists him as he pedals called the Ass Pounder 4000. That is not to say that he is harmless or docile, as he's sexually blackmailed at least one priest and he is not beyond engaging in some Münchausen Syndrome in his ceaseless quest to be useful.
• Underdressed for the Occasion: His idea of formalwear is a tie over a polo shirt. The occasions where he does dress up almost always have him ridiculously overdressed.
• Unfortunate Name: Ronald McDonald. And his nickname was Ronnie the Rat for narcing on drug dealers in high school.
• Verbal Tic: Tends to pepper his sentences with the word "bro" frequently.
• Weight Woe: Not that he takes any blame for it, but he’s upset enough about his weight gain to go to a confessional about it, as he did it for a scheme he thought the gang was gonna go through with (and the whole time he kept insisting he was cultivating mass) and was livid when they said they dropped it as soon as it was suggested and they mock him for it. In “The Gang Gets Analyzed", when by that point he is thin again, he reveals he liked being bigger because he was more intimidating, and the therapist explicitly asks him if he’s heard of body dysmorphia.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Mac, still stuck on adolescence, desperately seeks the approval of his creepy wayward father Luther. While Luther is in prison, Mac tries unsuccessfully to show him that he's "hard." When Luther first gets out of prison, Mac becomes emotionally invested in getting his parents back together, sputtering, "This is about happy boys!" He even tries to bond with his father by driving him to the houses of everybody who was responsible for getting him convicted. In the end of "Mac & Charlie Die Part II," Luther leaves a note telling Mac that he still loves him, even though Mac has driven him away with his constant screw-ups. By the end of "Mac Kills His Dad," whatever love Luther had left for Mac is completely gone, and he rejects Mac indefinitely in "Mac Finds His Pride."
• What the Fu Are You Doing?: On the occasions where he shows off his martial arts skills it becomes painfully obvious that he has none. He also consistently uses the term "roundhouse kick" to describe what's closer to a leaping version of a Taekwondo-style spinning hook kick. An actual roundhouse kick involves no spinning or jumping whatsoever.
• Will They or Won't They?: The later seasons seem to be setting this up between him and Dennis. Mac is explicitly in love with Dennis, while Dennis' feelings are harder to decipher. Glenn Howerton agrees with the opinion that the two are the "greatest 'will they, won't they' in television sitcom history."
• Wimp Fight: Frequently, given all the above tropes, but a highlight would be his "fight" with Charlie in "Frank Retires." Said "fight" consisted of Charlie going limp and Mac strangling himself into unconsciousness.
• Would Hit a Girl: Has no problems elbowing Dee in the face or punching her in the crotch.
• Would Hurt a Child: Definitely. After all, they can't really fight back that well, unlike their parents.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: When everyone fights over who gets the Bar, Mac tries to invoke the Playing Both Sides trope to remain the manager no matter which side wins, without realizing that the only thing he achieves is that neither side can trust him. So in the end he comes off as an untrustworthy fool, instead of the Chessmaster he thinks he is.
• Yes-Man: Mac can be a real sycophant who's desperate for approval and serves as a Bumbling Sidekick to both Dennis and Frank. Frank even calls him a follower.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: He gets in with a church group who gets him to realise that religion isn’t all about punishing yourself, but yanks it himself by running off when he realises they’re gay.

---

"Well, first of all, through God all things are possible, so jot that down."