Characters / It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Gang

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

The Gang

Meet Mac, Dee, Charlie, Frank, and Dennis

"We immediately escalate everything to a ten. It's ridiculous. Somebody comes in with a preposterous plan or idea. Then all of a sudden everyone's on the gas, and nobody's on the brakes. Nobody's thinking, we're just talking over each other with one idiotic idea after another."

— Dennis

The five main characters of the show. A sordid group of degenerates who own and operate an Irish-themed dive bar in Philadelphia called Paddy's Pub.

This page is for general tropes about the Gang. For tropes about the individual members, see their respective character pages.

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Character-Specific Pages

• Dennis Reynolds
• Dee Reynolds
• Charlie Kelly
• Mac
• Frank Reynolds

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A-M

• Accidental Hero: Every time they actually do something broadly good for the community, it's always an unintended consequence of whatever mishap of the week they've gotten into.
• Aesop Amnesia: They never learn a lesson. Ever. And if they seem to it usually turns out to be an Ignored Epiphany.
• The Alcoholics: All of them (except for Frank) come to the realization that they're alcoholics after experiencing terrible withdrawals. Frank becomes more of an alcoholic in "The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention." Although the reasons the Gang gives him an intervention aren't necessarily normal. In "The Gang Gets Quarantined" everyone (sans Frank) thinks they caught the flu but is actually experiencing alcohol withdrawal symptoms.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: The entire Gang has this in spades as a direct result of their addiction, but Dee is probably the worst offender.
• All-American Face: "The Gang Wrestles For The Troops" has Mac, Dennis, and Charlie assuming these personas, attempting to model their costumes after eagles and calling themselves "Birds Of War." It doesn't work all that well, due to a mix of poor costuming making them look less like muscular eagles and more like chickens with boners painted on their stomachs, Charlie's attempts to play up the "bird" aspect rather than the "patriotic" aspect, and the fact that they get their asses kicked by "The Talibum".
• Alliterative Family: Dennis and Dee Reynolds. According to Frank in "The Gang Gets Analyzed", they were supposed to be triplets and the third kid was going to be named "Donnie", but the fetus was reabsorbed by Dennis and Dee.
  Frank: (in tears) Donnie! You would've been the good one!
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: They’re all way too stuck in their ways and bigoted to actually do anything about it, but Dee wants a dick, Dennis’s hatred of women partly comes from jealousy, Charlie is happy to crossdress while shitting, and even Mac muses they don’t really do gender at the bar anymore.
• Ambiguously Bi: They all have their moments. Glenn Howerton has even stated that everyone in the Gang is "a little ambiguously gay."
• Ambitious, but Lazy: A lot of their schemes, even the more well thought out ones, tend to fail because their innate laziness causes them to quit, look for shortcuts, or try to make shortcuts it none are available.
• AM/FM Characterization: The four younger members frequently listen to 80s and early 90s rock (Dennis's love of power ballads; Mac playing White Snake for his project badass videos; all of them saying Chumbawamba is the greatest band like it's an objective fact) which is a genre that was popular when they were in high school (reflecting their inability to grow up) and tends to be loud and unapologetic.
• Animal Motif: The Gang are frequently associated with crows. Described in-universe as a "trash bird", the pack-based garbage-scavenging animal reflects the group's general behavior quite well. It also alludes to the idiom "to eat crow", which refers to the humiliation felt after being proven wrong regarding something that you took a strong position on; something that the Gang experiences in just about every episode.
• Anti-Hero: At their absolute best, they manage to be these.
• Anti-Role Model: Oh big time! Every member of the Gang can be so horrible and usually are that you would think they would be the mascots for this trope!
• Asshole Victim: They're horrible people which makes the regular gauntlet of humiliation and failure they endure on a daily basis satisfying to watch.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: It's a common occurrence for them to come up with one harebrained scheme only to completely forget about it after latching onto another.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: For all their bickering there are occasional moments showing they do in fact care about each other in their own warped way.
  • A good example is in "The Gang Goes to Hell, Part 2". After spending all episode arguing as the room they are trapped in slowly fills with water, the Gang finally accept their fates and join hands as they wait to drown. This being the Gang, they immediately start fighting each other to be rescued first the moment help arrives. However, for about thirty seconds, the five were ready to die, together, as a family.
• Ax-Crazy: At their worst, the whole group is so insane and destructive that they could easily qualify as the most dangerous people in all of Philadelphia.
• Badass Longcoat: Mac's duster is worn specifically for this effect. The other male members of the group frequently steal it from him and wear it themselves in order to invoke this trope. Since none of them are very badass, it never really works.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Technically applies to the whole Gang at certain times, but Sweet Dee is arguably the in-universe champion of this one. Kaitlin Olson's ability to portray a bad aspiring actress and stand-up comic is nothing short of genius.
• Bad Boss: Everyone in the gang is an owner of Paddy's Pub (except Dee who was just hired as a waitress). Not only are they too lazy and incompetent to run a decent bar, they also treat Dee like crap and even Charlie (initially a part owner) is treated as a subordinate janitor.
• The Band Minus the Face: The Season 13 premiere revolves around them adapting to the loss of their nominal leader, Dennis.
• Band of Brothers: Deconstructed. They have a lot of shared trauma (Dennis and Charlie have parallel Rape as Backstory, the Reynolds childhood was plagued by emotional abuse at best, and Charlie and Mac were childhood friends with similar neglectful parents) and they do love each other in an extremely warped way, but they are so deeply codependent that staying in rots them completely, and changing the dynamic makes them even more dangerous as individuals. It’s telling that their softest moment as a group is planning to die together, hand in hand.
• Beauty Is Bad: Averted with Frank, but the other members of The Gang are all attractive, youthful, and just plain bad people. It even goes on a scale: Dennis, who is most concerned about his appearance, is easily the worst, while Charlie, who is The Pigpen, is the nicest.
• Been There, Shaped History: The Season 15 premiere reveals that the Gang indirectly helped shape that year's political landscape in more ways than one. Dennis and Mac caused the voting count delays in the presidential election, Frank was responsible for the Rudy Guilliani hair dye mishap, and Charlie and Dee provided the costumes for the rioters who stormed the Capitol.
• Being Evil Sucks: They will never admit it, or at least for any length of time, but being horrible makes them completely miserable, with no other friends, success, or even much hope. The only time any of them get thrown a bone is when they do something kind or admit something like an adult, but they don’t connect the dots.
• Bickering Couple, Peaceful Couple: Platonic version between the two sets of roommates in the Gang. Mac and Dennis are constantly arguing compared to the more in-sync Frank and Charlie.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Frank is Dennis and Dee's legal father, and (until Season 15) is possibly Charlie's biological father; all four of them are disgusting, awful people. Dennis and Dee's mother also manages to surpass the four of them in sheer despicableness, while Charlie's mother displays many of the same psychoses that he does. Outside of immediate relatives, Dennis and Dee's grandfather was a Nazi and their cousin is an emotionally-stunted weirdo. And don't even get us started on Charlie's uncle Jack... Mac's family is just as messed up, but not quite as big and tangled as the rest of the Gang's are.
• Big, Thin, Short Trio: Mac is the big as he's the most muscular (if also a Paper Tiger who folds at the first sign of conflict). Dennis is the thin as he's the most slender of the guys, and the one who tends to be in charge most often. Charlie and Frank alternate as the short, as they are the most wacky and impulsive of the group, in addition to being its most vertically challenged members.
• The Blind Leading the Blind: Generally, the gang tends to gravitate to whoever is the loudest and most coherent about expressing their ideas, even if those ideas are horrible. Dennis in particular is a little smarter than the others (except maybe Frank) and the most willing to take charge, which leads to him pulling the group down incredibly dumb paths.
• Break the Haughty: Many episodes end with the Gang being knocked off their high horse in the most humiliating way possible. Being who they are, the lesson never sticks.
• The Bully: The Gang are mean-spirited jerks who have been casually harassing and tormenting other people for fun since at least their teen years. Just look at how they treat the likes of Cricket and the Waitress. They're even this to each other, especially towards Dee. Also, in typical bully fashion, whenever someone bigger or more powerful than them comes along, they very quickly resort to either cowering or toadying.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Ties in with Wrong Genre Savvy below. Their belief in Negative Continuity and that their actions don't have lasting consequences leads to them forgetting and/or generally being indifferent to the lives they've ruined and the spirits they've crushed, and when they bother acknowledging them, their responses usually amount to "get over it." Even amongst themselves, they will often have forgotten their own transgressions against each other by the time the victim gets their revenge.
• Butt-Monkey: The Gang are one of the most pathetic and dysfunctional groups on TV, and frequently end up humiliated and/or injured. Dee stands out as the biggest butt monkey of the group, often being blamed for things that aren't her fault and receiving no due reparations when someone wrongs her.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': They nearly always fail at their schemes, and none of their dreams and ambitions ever come true.
• Can't Take Criticism: As a group. Despite incessantly ragging on each other, the moment an outside perspective is rightly critical of their terrible bar, unhealthy lifestyles, amoral schemes, dysfunctional codependence as a group or collective substance abuse and dependence, the whole Gang will respond with cooperative denial. Many an episode entails the characters giving each other a hard time for a flaw but coming together to disregard whoever else points it out, such as during Frank's intervention.
• Card-Carrying Jerkass: The main characters are rude, vulgar, obnoxious, loud, greedy, self-destructive, occasionally bigoted, misanthropic jerks who consistently view themselves as better than everyone else. Realistically, they are each others' only friends, as their behavior alienates pretty much everyone they meet.
• Cast Full of Crazy: The Gang are quite possibly the most deranged and unhinged people you will ever meet.
• Catchphrase:
  • "Hey-oooo!" Used whenever one of them enters the bar with good news.
  • "God damn it." Sometimes followed up with "Charlie."
  • "Shut up, bird!" and "You bitch!" are frequently thrown Dee's way.
  • "Move past it."
  • "What is happening?"
• The Chew Toy: As the Gang are a bunch of obnoxious Villain Protagonists, it's occasionally satisfying to see them get their Just Desserts.
• Childhood Friends: Charlie and Mac have been friends since they were kids, and met siblings Dennis and Dee while in high school. By the time the series starts, everyone, barring Frank, has known each other for over a decade.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: The members of the Gang never hesitate to betray one another if there's something to be gained in return.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Mostly Frank and Charlie, but they all have their own bizarre quirks that present themselves from time to time — namely, Mac's delusions of toughness and Dee's obsession with creating unfunny characters and costumes. Even Dennis, who sees himself as the most "normal" one and frequently lampshades how weird the rest of the Gang are, readily names "laser beams" as something that people use to groom themselves, claiming that "it's the only way to make sure the follicle is completely destroyed."
• Comedic Sociopathy: The show as a whole is this thanks to them.
• Comically Missing the Point: Through a combination of narcissism, insecurity, stubbornness and stupidity, every member of the Gang is quick to take innocuous advice as insult or criticism as praise or nonsense. This is perhaps best exemplified by the episode "The Gang Gets Analyzed", where each member speaks to a therapist and hears only what they want to hear or most fear to hear.
• Comic Trio: Dennis, Mac and Charlie switch between four distinct set ups depending on the episode:
  1. Dennis as the clueless leader, Charlie as the dumb follower and Mac as the ignored voice of reason.
  2. Dennis as the clueless leader, Mac as the dumb follower and Charlie as the ignored voice of reason.
  3. Mac as the clueless leader, Charlie as the dumb follower and Dennis as the ignored voice of reason.
  4. Charlie as the clueless leader, Mac as the dumb follower and Dennis as the ignored voice of reason.
• Compressed Vice: Inverted and played for laughs in “The Gang Hits The Slopes”, as Dee (usually The Klutz), Dennis (usually will get winded after a few minutes of tennis) and Mac (has no clue of sports even if he claims to) are all perfect at skiing. Lampshaded repeatedly with “the rules are different on the mountain”.
• The Corrupter: Just interacting with the Gang consistently causes Sanity Slippage or some other life-ruining outcome, almost completely without fail. Victims of the Gang's corruption include Rickety Cricket (goes from a clean-cut priest to a horribly mutilated Crazy Homeless Person), Maureen Ponderosa (has become a literal Crazy Cat Lady), Bill Ponderosa (Dee helped ruin his marriage^note though he didn't need too much help doing that, and with Frank as his AA sponsor he's become a drug-fueled suicidal maniac), Mac's dad Luther (whose interactions with the Gang usually land him back in prison or endangered by other inmates), The Waitress (is driven insane by Charlie's stalking and Dennis' sociopathic manipulation, and also gets fired from her job, causing her to sink further and further into poverty and alcoholism), and The Lawyer (despite outsmarting the Gang on multiple occasions to his own benefit, they've ruined at least one of his marriages and indirectly caused his eye to be pecked out in court).
• Country Matters: They love using the word "cunt". Especially to old ladies.
  Dennis: I called an old lady a cunt this morning!
• Deck of Wild Cards: The Gang are each other's only friends. That doesn't stop them from constantly backstabbing each other in their various schemes, sometimes for no reason at all.
  • In "Frank Retires," Charlie squabbles with Dennis and Dee over who will inherit Paddy's Pub from Frank. Mac loudly announces every time he switches sides, Dee betrays Dennis and joins Charlie, and Dennis tries using a fake heir as a bid to take everything for himself.
  • "Paddy's Pub: Home Of The Original Kitten Mittens": Charlie and Dee, Mac and Dennis, and Frank separately try to come up with merchandising ideas for the bar, constantly trying to one-up each other and stealing ideas back and forth. It ends up All for Nothing when the Lawyer they've been irritating tricks them into signing all the merchandising profits over to him.
• Depending on the Writer: Each member's intelligence can vary wildly depending on what the plot calls for. They also take turns being the "voice of reason" who displays the most common sense.
• Dirty Coward: All members of the Gang are miserable wimps who will stab each other in the back to save themselves. A classic example is the ending of "The Gang Goes To Hell" where the group are holding hands and accepting their apparent deaths... until rescue arrives, at which point they begin kicking and fighting each other to see who gets saved first.
• Dislikes the New Guy: In Season 2, Dennis and Dee are extremely reluctant to accept Frank (who, at this point, they believe is their biological father) as part of the Gang. Charlie is also uncomfortable with having Frank as a roommate at first, though they later become close friends.
• Dumb Is Good: The borderline illiterate Charlie is the closest thing the group has to a decent person. In contrast, Dennis, the only member of the group who has had a higher education, is easily the worst of the bunch. As a whole though, they avert this trope because they are both immoral jerks and idiots.
• Dysfunction Junction: Between the lot of them, everyone in The Gang has a variety of health problems (notably, they're all alcoholics), mental health problems (Dee and Frank have both been institutionalized, Dennis has borderline personality disorder (at least), and Charlie has... whatever it is he has), trouble coming out (Mac), parental issues, anger management issues, toxic co-dependence on each other, and a general inability to sustain meaningful relationships outside of their group.
• Eagleland: They all heavily embody the Type 2 flavor.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The Gang are a bunch of crass, scheming, petty, spiteful, self-centered assholes who will screw over anyone at a moment's notice, but whenever a clearly immoral issue like racism pops up, they will immediately distance themselves from it, talk at length about how wrong it is, and attempt (in their limited understanding of the world) to dissect the problem like mature, rational people. Of course, they are all racists, but it's more of an unconscious ignorant prejudice than genuine malice. They also draw lines at Nazism, direct homicide, and pedophilia, though this too is clearly more due to their awareness that these things are seen as negative by society at large than out of any sort of genuine moral conviction.
  • Besides Frank, they're all uncomfortable with the idea of direct homicide (though Dennis fantasizes about it), but they're fine with indirect acts of manslaughter like watching a game of Russian Roulette play out or having Cricket push a suicidal man to his death.
  • In "PTSDee", the guys are horrified by Dee tricking a father into a borderline incestuous situation with his daughter out of spite. Even Dee seems to realize that she crossed a line, saying she doesn't want to talk about it.
  • In all of the Carmen storylines, the Gang (minus Mac) is clearly supportive of her (them calling her "the tranny" notwithstanding) and of transgendered people in general. When Mac fumes about her being in a "gay marriage", Dennis points out that she's a girl and he's a guy so it's not a gay marriage, Dee opines that a marriage should be between two people who love each other, and Frank says (in his own way) that they should have the chance to get married like everyone else.
  • "Frank Reynold's Little Beauties" shows that all of them are uncomfortable with the idea of hosting a child beauty pageant, especially Frank, as they're all aware of how such shows are magnets for pedophiles and don't want to be roped in with them. Dee also points out how irresponsible it is for the parents to leave their children unsupervised in a bar run by strangers.
  • They all at least attempted to take COVID-19 seriously and stayed home like everyone else, with Dennis and Mac forming one bubble and Dee, Charlie, and Frank forming another. These good acts ended up leading to them scamming the IRS out of three separate PPP loans.
  • Even the Gang finds the McPoyle family and their incestuous ways repulsive. Part of it stems from their dislike of the family, but they’re still clearly appalled by the incest.
• Everyone Is Related: Frank is the legal father of Dee and Dennis and possibly the biological father of Charlie (until Season 15). Mac, the odd one out in this respect, was apparently adopted by Frank in Season 10, though whether this was a one off joke or actually canon has yet to be confirmed.
• Everyone Went to School Together: The four younger members of the Gang attended high school together. They also went to school with the McPoyle brothers; the Waitress, though they don't remember this; Cricket, and a number of other recurring and one off characters.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Whenever they try to do something good, it always ends poorly and traumatizes or otherwise hurts people because they just don't understand the most basic decency. Their attempt to give the Juarez family home an "extreme makeover" amounts to kidnapping the family and whitewashing them. Dee's limited knowledge of Spanish does little to help.
• Evil Is Petty: Overlapping at times with Disproportionate Retribution, one of the Gang's defining traits is that they can never let anything go and will try to get back at whomever for an imagined slight, deserved or not.
  • A standout example has to be in "Paddy's Pub: The Worst Bar in Philadelphia", in which the Gang kidnap a bar critic because he gave them a deservedly lousy review. Then, after narrowly getting out of the mess and avoiding legal action, they go to kidnap him again because he neglected to mention their names (which would get them into legal trouble) in his follow-up review.
  • To say nothing of "The Anti-Social Network", which involves the Gang trying to track down a man who shushed them in a bar for being obnoxious, all so they can shush him back.
• Fanboy: One thing all the members of the Gang have in common is that they're fans of the Lethal Weapon series. As such they have produced three unofficial sequels, tentatively titled Lethal Weapon 5, 6 and 7.
• Flanderization: Played with. Every member of the Gang gets more extreme in their characterizations as time passes, but it's justified by their deteriorating mental health, decreasing ability to maintain relationships outside the Gang, ungraceful aging, and overall spiraling deeper and deeper into delusion and toxic codependency. It's also lampshaded heavily in Season 10's episode "The Gang Misses the Boat", where they all become conscious of their traits that have become most heavily flanderized.
  Dennis: By the way, all of us have become so goddamn weird.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: It varies between episodes, but for the most part, Charlie is sanguine, Dennis is melancholic, Mac is choleric, Frank is leukine, and Dee is phlegmatic.
• Freudian Excuse: As detailed below, all of them have one.
• Freudian Excuse Denial: Collectively they all had terrible childhoods, and are inwardly seething and disgusting thanks to growing up that way, but aren’t about to process any of it anytime soon. They’re more willing to whine that today’s kids are too sheltered.
• Freudian Trio: The mindlessly impulsive Charlie is the id, the cold-hearted and manipulative Dennis is the superego, and the vacillatingly intelligent Mac is the ego.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Each member of the Gang has had at least one episode where they are kicked out of, quit, or are replaced with someone else in the Gang. Reactions range from apathy to outright cheering when it occurs.
• Friendship Moment: While this usually ends up subverted more often than not, a few episodes end with the Gang genuinely coming together to enjoy each other's company. Examples include "The Gang Solves the Mortgage Crisis", "Mac and Charlie: White Trash", "The Gang Dines Out", "Flowers for Charlie", "The Gang Escapes", and "The Gang Carries a Corpse Up a Mountain".
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Not as bad as most shows since every potential duo in the Gang has gotten at least a few episodes together. However, there are still some examples:
  • Dennis and Charlie rarely have storylines together without Mac or Frank acting as an intermediary between the two.
  • Mac and Dee, who hate each other vehemently, only have a handful of episodes centering around just the two of them.
  • Dennis and Frank have a moment of this in "Dee Gets Stuck in a Bog", where they realize they haven't had much time alone together without a third party to act as a "buffer".
• Global Ignorance:
  • In "The Gang Hits the Road", the main characters pass the time by playing a game that involves drinking while naming all 50 states in America. Among the incorrect guesses that Mac, Dee, and Charlie throw out are East Virginia, North Virginia, South Virginia, Philly, Milwaukee, and Detroit. Most of these were named while sober.
  • In the episode "Frank Falls Out the Window", after Frank falls out of the window in his apartment, The Gang asks him "obvious" questions to see if he has a concussion:
    Dennis: What is the capital of Pennsylvania?
    Frank: Philadelphia.
    Dennis: Yes... no...
    Mac: I don't think that's right.
    Dennis: Is it Pittsburgh?
    Charlie: At one point, it was Philly. I'm pretty sure.^note Charlie's statement is actually correct; Philadelphia was once the capital of Pennsylvania and of the United States. Whether Charlie actually knew this or just guessed is a mystery, however. Regardless, the answer they are all looking for is "Harrisburg".
• Hair-Trigger Temper: All of the main characters have very intense anger issues that hardly get resolved and this leads them to act in ways that are extremely petty, vindictive and spiteful.
• Harmful to Minors: Ironically, Dennis (the most sociopathic of the Gang) is probably the least guilty of putting children in harm's way.
  • Mac and Dee consider putting a baby in a tanning bed.
  • Mac and Dee are implied to have drowned a child when they let him go down a tube slide while asleep. The lifeguard doesn't care, and the child's mother is later seen frantically looking for her missing son.
  • Frank has no problems shooting a child in a virtual reality game.
  • Mac and Charlie dish out a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on a bunch of kids. Charlie thinks he may have killed one of them.
  • Dee unwittingly has sex with an underage high school student.
• Hated by All: With the exception of Cricket (in later seasons), Pondy, Uncle Jack, Mrs. Kelly, Z, Artemis, and some of the recurring bar patrons, nobody in Philadelphia is especially fond of the Gang.
• Hates Everyone Equally: They're sociopathic idiots, but egalitarian idiots to be sure. They will use colorful insults but they'll never exclude anyone for being who they are.
  • They aren't homophobic towards Mac and make it clear that they would rather have him be true to himself than keep lying. When Country Mac casually reveals that he's gay, everyone expresses support for him and appreciate his honesty.
  • When Mac's ex, Carmen, fully transitions into a woman, everyone but Mac are supportive of her and they support her marriage. Mac only rejects the relationship because of his own closeted sexuality, religious beliefs, and poorly-hidden jealousy.
  • They are all very uncomfortable by the portrayal of Karen White (an entitled white woman played by Dee) since she's "a cunt" for expressing thinly veiled racism and threatening a black man for being in her neighborhood.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: On a good day. And the "heroic" part is usually accidental.
• Hidden Depths:
  • A minor one, but singing appears to be the one thing all of them are actually any good at, which they each show off pretty frequently.
  • "The Gang Hits The Slopes" reveals that Dennis, Mac and Dee are all world class skiers.
• Hollywood Atheist: Besides Mac, they have a low opinion of religion and religious people.
• Hot-Blooded: The Gang are very emotionally unstable and act out in the worst ways possible because of it.
• Hustler: While their main line of work is (ostensibly) running the bar, more often than not they abandon their duties in favor of some con or other. On very rare occasions, their schemes actually prove to be successful.
• Hypocrite: All of them are quite adept at pointing out the others' flaws, while completely ignoring their own glaring problems.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Despite being perpetually trapped in a mutual network of manipulation and abuse, the Gang will sometimes rally together as a unit against third parties who offend or annoy any of them.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Mainly Dennis, Dee and Mac. Their narcissism and delusions come from their insecurity.
• Insufferable Imbecile: The entire main cast fall into this to varying degrees, as the premise of the show is that they are all self-deluded, idiotic and vindictive degenerates.
• It Amused Me: Whatever they do that isn't motivated by greed, fame, lust, or vengeance is prodded along by a mixture of whimsy and boredom.
• It's All About Me: Nearly every scheme they ever concoct that have even the slightest chance of succeeding usually winds up sabotaged in-part by their inflated and conflicting egos. For instance in "Wolf Cola: A PR Nightmare", Dennis comes up with the plan of give impartial answers in a public news interview and while Dee and Frank stand there quietly, only for Dee to butt-in and give a public apology (something Dennis expressly told her not to do) and Frank to make multiple pro-terrorist comments. In the second interview, Dennis struggles to prevent the interview from derailing, only to immediately go into a savage rant of how much he hates dogs.
• Jaded Washout: They will never admit it ever, still wanting to believe they’re cool and in their twenties, but when an amnesiac Frank obliviously guilt slings that they don’t want to be 40 year old losers working in a bar with unattainable dreams, they have a brief moment of upset. Dennis has a moment of rage in the sixth season at the inevitability of spending their whole lives in a bar.
• Jerkass: They're spiteful, narcissistic, petty and obnoxious all around.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Whenever they do anything remotely heroic, it's for selfish reasons.
• Just Ignore It: As a group, they don’t actually want to confront anything they’ve done or had done to them (meaning actual serious shit, not just petty slights), and would rather stew in anger, drink it away, or run off back to the bar.
• Karma Houdini: By all accounts, they should have gone to jail some time ago. This trope is very downplayed, though, as while the Gang often escape legal punishment, their actions are almost never devoid of consequences, and they're rarely ever better off than they were at the start of the episode.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: The main characters are a bunch of Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonists. They try to scheme their way through life, but usually just end up making things worse for themselves and/or each other. The driving point of the show is that they're so awful, they deserve everything that happens to them. The two biggest butt monkeys of the group are Charlie (a stalker who is treated like a servant by the rest of the Gang) and Dee (a spiteful, violent rapist who is The Friend Nobody Likes).
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Whenever their Wrong Genre Savvy assumptions lead them to making the wrong conclusions about something or gives them bad ideas, they will follow through with it no matter how obvious the incoming failure is. Whenever anybody - whether it is each other or someone outside of the Gang who knows better - tells them they are wrong, at best they will either ignore them completely, thinking The Complainer Is Always Wrong. At worst they will snap and attack you with hurtful words and physical violence. Mac and Charlie, being dumbest and most impulsive out of the five of them, are the worst at this.
• Lack of Empathy: The entire group has a very hard time understanding the emotions of others. And when they do, they don't care enough to take them into account when creating plans.
• Large Ham: All of them are prone to ranting while shouting at the top of their lungs. Dennis is easily the best at ranting while Charlie is the best at shouting.
• Laughably Evil: The Gang are a loathsome and despicable bunch, but their crazy antics are always hilarious to watch.
• Lethally Stupid: Their idiocy has led to multiple instances of fatal and near-fatal injuries.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Corrupt as they are, they can't even compare to the McPoyles in terms of depravity. Somehow they still manage to be much greater threats to society.
  The Lawyer: My client [Liam McPoyle] is odd. You might even refer to his family as very creepy. But they are saints compared to [this] sordid lot of degenerates.
  • While Mac and Charlie are no saints, they can arguably be considered this within the group, being much less cold-hearted and malicious than the three Reynoldses.
• Limited Social Circle: Simply put, the Gang really wouldn't function in normal society outside their own little group. The fact that the Gang has no other friends is occasionally lampshaded and used as the premise of episodes.
  • In "Dennis and Dee's Mom is Dead", Charlie, Mac and Dennis plan a party and realize that they have alienated all of their friends. They spend the rest of the episode advertising for new friends.
  • In "The Gang Gets a New Member", the Gang welcomes back a previously ousted friend, Schmitty. They force him to go through an elaborate ceremony to become a member of the Gang, then (attempt) to throw him out of a moving car at the end of the episode when he doesn't take their peculiarities seriously.
  • After Frank purchases a children's beauty pageant, the Gang gets Frank's on-off girlfriend Artemis to run the soundboard. Dee asks whether she's really qualified to do it, only for Mac to respond that the Gang doesn't have "a deep bench."
  • When the Gang goes on a Bland-Name Product version of Family Feud, the only "friend" they could get to record a video message cheering them on was their homeless associate Rickety Cricket. And he only did it because they paid him five bucks.
  Mac: We couldn't get anybody else?
  Charlie: No.
  • The Gang does, however, have a good-sized network of associates, enemies and former lovers, who become recurring characters. In "Dee Gives Birth", the men of the Gang run around to all of the men in the extended cast trying to find out who fathered Dee's baby.
  • Their lack of friends is justified in that the Gang is so horrible that the only people who can stand to be around them are those who are just as messed up as they are, such as the McPoyles and Bill Ponderosa.
• Limited Wardrobe: In wanting to keep the characters’ lack of money realistic, everyone will wear the same clothes. Cindy lampshades that Dennis has kept all his flannel since the late 90s, Dee has a couple of dresses for special occasions that keep popping up, Charlie will always wear the same army jacket, and Mac only has a few cut off sleeve shirts too.
• Loser Protagonist: No matter what Dennis says about himself, all of the Gang are just horrible and toxic people who will find no success in life.
• Lower-Class Lout: While they technically have millions of dollars at their disposal (thanks to Frank's Arbitrarily Large Bank Account), they definitely fit the bill of being unintelligent white trash who regularly engage in petty theft and violence. Dennis and Dee like to think of themselves as above this, but they really aren't.
• Made of Iron: They're all pretty physically durable and have clocked countless Amusing Injuries, especially Charlie and Dee.
• Manchild: Aside from Frank, none of the Gang have matured past their teen years (at most). While sometimes it does seem like there's an endearing aspect to this (usually in the case of Charlie's good-natured love for some things), it's shown as a horrible thing all around - the Gang are demanding, selfish, uppity monsters with no self-control who can barely take care of themselves.
• Manipulative Bastard: This is Dennis' main dynamic, but everyone in the Gang gets up to it at some point or another, to varying degrees of success. Even Charlie can be surprisingly cunning when sufficiently pushed.
• Multiple-Choice Past: “The Gang Buys a Roller Rink”, a Whole Episode Flashback to 1998 contradicts the Gang’s previous characterizations as teenagers, which is that they were always horrible bullies. In particular, it claims that Dennis and Dee Used to Be a Sweet Kid before being corrupted by Frank and a head injury caused by Charlie, respectively. Considering the episode is shown from the Gang’s point-of-view, and the Gang’s memories have been established as being... faulty, for lack of a better term, it's safe to say they shouldn’t be taken completely at face value.

N-Z

• Never My Fault: None of the Gang ever takes any responsibility for their own flaws. If they're ever called on it, they'll immediately dismiss it or try to steer the conversation in another direction. Charlie is adamant that he's not illiterate and can't see that most of his life problems are caused by his own "solutions" to said problems, Dee can't admit she's terrible at her dream job of acting and unpopular with men, Dennis doesn't understand why women tend to run away screaming from him as often as not, Mac insists upon his own masculinity and competence, and so on. A truly staggering example comes in "Time's Up for the Gang" when Dennis brings up a photo of Cricket in his current state and outright says he was "born this way", completely ignoring how the group has reduced him to a crazy homeless person living on the streets.
• Nice Mean And In Between:
  • In the core trio (see Comic Trio and Freudian Trio), Charlie is the nice (the closest thing the Gang has to a Token Good Teammate, if only by comparison), Dennis is the mean (the most sociopathic of the Gang), and Mac is the in-between (a jerk who can be arrogant but is still less manipulative and cruel than Dennis, and calls him out on his more sociopathic behavior).
  • This also extends to the three Reynolds family members in their own trio: Frank is the "nice", an amoral but Affably Evil businessman who mostly just wants to have fun and is seldom ever actively malicious; Dee is the in-between as a temperamental jerk who will occasionally voice concern over some of the Gang's more outright bigoted behavior; and Dennis, again, is the mean as a full-on sociopath who enjoys controlling and dominating the lives of his friends.
• No Indoor Voice: Charlie in particular, but everyone in the Gang is prone to loud, obnoxious arguments in public places. It's been lampshaded many times In-Universe.
  Frank: This manager's been to Paddy's, and he said it's nothing but a bunch of people yelling over each other.
  Dee: Well... So what? That's what we do. We yell at each other, and if people want to tune in and listen, then they're welcome to.
• No Social Skills: Only Dennis has anything even close to normal social skills, and that's simply in comparison to the others. By the later seasons, even he can't have a conversation with someone outside of the Gang without being thrown into a screaming tirade.
• Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: One of the rules of their self-produced board game, Chardee MacDennis. Cheating is punishable if caught, but still highly encouraged.
• Obsessive Sports Fan: All five of them are die-hard fans of Philadelphia's major sports teams, particularly the Eagles and Phillies. Several episodes have them going to games, trying to meet players from the teams, and generally obsessing over them. They also gleefully take part in the more criminal behavior associated with sports fandom.
• Odd Friendship: Between the group of them, Dee and Charlie form an actually stable and (mostly) non-toxic friendship (with benefits), despite her being a wholly shrill and unpleasant person and Charlie being... Charlie. (This is actually a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, as Kaitlin Olson is the best of the cast at not breaking character when Charlie Day begins ad-libbing.)
• Once per Episode: Every episode will at some point have one of the Gang deliver an exasperated "Goddamn it!"
• One-Hour Work Week: The reasoning for them being bar owners was that it'd free them up for daytime antics (since most barflies show up at evening), but they're usually busy with the Zany Scheme in the evenings as well. Pretty much the only one who's actually shown doing their job on a somewhat regular basis is Charlie. It's not hard to figure out why Paddy's Pub is such a dive.
• Paper Tiger: Monstrous as all of them can be, the Gang only has a very nebulous capacity to affect the world around them, and it usually only takes a firm stance and a few strong words to send them running the other way. Barring a few isolated instances such as encounter with Gary the serial killer, they also fold rather easily when they cross paths with bonafide career criminals.
• Parent-Child Team: Happens whenever Frank shares a plot with his adopted children, Dennis and Dee.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Apparently, all of them except Dennis have "Paddy's Pub" as their computer password.
• Pet the Dog: The five of them are highly unpleasant people and the friendships within the group are strenuous, but all of them (even Dennis) are capable of demonstrating genuine kindness and concern towards each other on (very rare) specific occasions.
  • Aside from Mac, the rest of the Gang seem genuinely pleased for Carmen completing her transition and getting married.
  • They all take a moment to marvel at the adorability of Dee's newborn baby in "Dee Gives Birth".
  • None of them hold any prejudice towards Mac for being gay. What they are put off by are Mac's transparent attempts at convincing them that he's really straight. When he finally comes out in Season 12, they're supportive.
  • As guilty as the Gang are of committing sexual assault and even sexually harassing each other, when one of them refuses to admit they were abused when they were young, they’ll usually rally around and offer some kind of support. Dennis thinks Dr. Gainer was gross and took advantage of Dee when she was in college, she in return is disgusted about Ms. Klinsky in high school, and they all try to point out the obvious with Charlie and his creepy Uncle Jack.
• Ping Pong Naïveté: As seen in under Comic Trio, most of the Gang ping-pong between ridiculous naive and seasoned lie detectors. Mac and Charlie have it the worst.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The members all own/manage/work at Paddy's (in theory Frank is the manager, Dennis is the bartender, Dee is the waitress, Mac is the bouncer and Charlie is the janitor) but they rarely do their actual jobs. This is lampshaded in one episode where Dennis suggests they just spend the night running the place and serving customers instead of doing a zany scheme, but the others are confused and assume it's all part of a scheme he has cooked up.
• Place Worse Than Death: The bar, of course. A critic decides not to press charges against the Gang for kidnapping him because he thinks that being stuck together at Paddy's is a far more fitting punishment than sending them to jail.
• Politically Correct Villain: Very downplayed — with the execption of Frank, they do their best to come off as tolerant people who respect oppressed groups. They're not very good at it, but it's still probably the only genuine moral principle they hold to.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: All five of them have displayed racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/anti-Semitic/Islamophobic/ableist tendencies at one point or another, though the four younger members are all generally shown to be Innocently Insensitive and prone to stating And That's Terrible when they're aware that the group that they're talking about is an oppressed one. Frank, however, is shown to openly possess backwards opinions regarding just about everything.
• Potty Failure: Every member of the Gang has defecated on themselves at least once throughout the series: Mac in "Mac Day", Frank in "Frank Retires", Charlie in "Chardee MacDennis 2: Electric Boogaloo", Dee in "Old Lady House: A Situation Comedy" and "The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies’ Reboot", and Dennis in "The Gang's Still in Ireland".
• Psychopathic Manchild: All of them act like immature children and get worse and worse every season.
• Really Gets Around: With the exception of Charlie, everyone in the Gang has casual sex frequently. This is justified in that none of them are capable of maintaining a relationship beyond sex on account of their wildly unstable and toxic personalities.
• Rotating Protagonist: Each of the Gang has gotten a handful of few episodes centered around their character. The main focuses in the early seasons tend to be Dennis and Charlie, while in later seasons it seems to be Dennis and Mac.
• Sanity Ball: Who's given the role of Only Sane Man within the Gang tends to vary. This gives the impression of both Hidden Depths and hypocrisy, especially since their role as the Only Sane Man or Straight Man will last for a scene or two, lampshading others' stupidity or horribleness. Everyone in the Gang is better at pointing out the flaws of others than their own.
• The Scapegoat: Dee is the biggest one, but they have no problems throwing any of the other members of the group to the wolves if it means saving their own skin.
  Mac: Everything's gonna be fine, Frank.
  (Frank leaves the room)
  Mac: (to Dee) Now, you pinned the whole thing on him, right?
  Dee: Oh yeah, of course I did.
• Schemer: While Frank and Dennis are the standout examples, all members of the Gang are prone to hatching (usually ill-fated) plots in virtually any given episode.
• Selective Memory: All five of them are prone to completely rewriting history in their own minds to either make themselves look better or to avoid taking responsibility for something.
• Selective Obliviousness: All of them have this bad except for Frank, who openly chooses to be where he is and at the very least has no illusions about what kind of person he fundamentally is.
  • Dennis refuses to admit that he runs a failing business, he isn't as smart as he thinks, and in general that he is just as much of a loser as the others.
  • Dee refuses to admit the fact that she is a terrible actress and is a rude, crude, and white trash alcoholic waitress.
  • Charlie refuses to acknowledge the fact that the Waitress hates him and will never love him.
  • Mac is probably the biggest example of this trope. He refuses to acknowledge the fact that his mother couldn't care less about him, he is terrible at karate, he isn't a badass, he isn't heterosexual (he accepts/admits that in later seasons), his friends openly despise him, and that he isn't as devoutly religious as he believes himself to be. It's enough that even Dennis of all people says, "the man is in complete denial about absolutely every aspect of his life!"
• Serial Rapist: Nearly the entire Gang have been guilty of predatory behavior at one point or another. Dennis actively enjoys being one, Dee does as well but refuses to call it actual rape because she's a woman, and Mac denies he's a Stalker with a Crush because he's gay. Charlie is the only exception, but this is due to him settling on 'merely' being a Stalker with a Crush.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Lampshaded in "The Gang Goes To Hell Part 1", each of the Gang are guilty of some cardinal sin. While they may be protagonists, they are all too horrible to collectively count as Mr. Vice Guy.
• Shouting Free-for-All: This is what the Gang considers a standard way of exchanging opinions: screaming over each other no matter how inappropriate the setting (at the bar, fancy restaurants, court, etc.)
• Sibling Team: Dennis and Dee in their more courteous moments, such as when they team up for a game of "Chardee MacDennis". In general, they seem to get along pretty well away from the influence of the rest of the Gang.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: All of them swear like sailors. Dee even considers "cocksucker" to be her favorite word, and she takes great pleasure in cursing on national television when the Gang competes on a game show. The gang's most used curse words are "goddamn (or goddammit)" and "shit".
• Small Name, Big Ego: All of them fit this description, though Dennis really stands out.
• Smart Ball: Any character within the Gang can play the role of the Only Sane Man for a scene or two. From most common to least, the people likely to get the Smart Ball are Dennis, Dee, Mac, Charlie, and then Frank though this can and will change at a moment's notice.
• Smart Jerk and Nice Moron: Given that the smarter members of the Gang also tend to be the bigger jerks, this is natural when characters pair up (though the "smart" and "nice" parts tend to be quite relative). For instance, if Mac and Charlie team up, Charlie tends to be the basically well-meaning one who is also barely functional, while Mac is smarter than Charlie but also more malicious and greedy. If Mac and Dennis team up, meanwhile, Mac tends to come across as stupid-but-has-a-moral-center, while Dennis is considerably cleverer but also a complete psychopath.
• The Sociopath: Every character is essentially a sociopath (albeit to varying degrees). They're frequently doing things that are unethical if not illegal for the pettiest benefits, stabbing each other in the back, have a grandiose and delusional sense of self-importance, abuse substances, and not one of them is able to stick to a plan or think in the long term. Dennis deserves a special mention.
• Status Quo Is God: After fourteen seasons, the only two developments that have actually stuck are Mac coming out of the closet and Charlie finally sleeping with the Waitress. And even the latter is quickly downplayed by the Waitress being caught "cheating" on Charlie with a sex doll of Dennis.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Every man in the Gang thinks this, and assumes Dee will just cook and clean for them like she has no life of her own.
• The Straight Man: Can be anyone, depending on who gets the Sanity Ball, though in Season 1 this role was mainly reserved for Dee.
  • Dennis probably takes on this role most often while Charlie is least likely to get the Sanity Ball.
  • Often Dee whenever when she's paired with Charlie. This is because Kaitlin Olson is the most successful at remaining deadpan when Charlie Day starts riffing off the cuff. Though Charlie has also been The Straight Man to Dee ("The Gang Solves Global Warming").
• Straw Misogynist: All of the male members are incredibly disdainful towards women, with Mac even outright saying that he hates them. While Dee likes to think of herself as a passionate feminist, she's also more likely than not to form one-sided rivalries with any and all women she interacts with.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: Probably closer to "crabs in a bucket" than tall poppies, but whenever one member of the Gang seems to be pulling things together to potentially escape the squalor and misery of the others, the rest of the group will sabotage them.
• Teens Are Monsters: As adults, the Gang are a bunch of cruel, sadistic bullies, and always have been. In high school, Dennis would tea-bag Cricket after the latter got drunk and passed out at parties, which Mac would then take photos of and pass around the school for everyone to see. Dee once promised Cricket she would kiss him if he ate a horse turd; then, once he actually did it, she refused to follow through because his breath "smelled like shit."
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: They can't stand each other more often than not, but they'll work together to achieve whatever goal or scheme they're running in that particular episode.
• Theme Twin Naming: Dennis and Deandra Reynolds.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: At first glance, you might think the Gang are just everyday citizens of Philadelphia. They're actually a quintet of Villain Protagonists with rap sheets a mile long who have been responsible for countless robberies, assaults, sexual crimes, vandalisms, and even a few deaths.
• Three Plus Two: Dennis makes it clear in an early episode that he considers "The Gang" to be just him, Mac and Charlie. Notably, the original pitch of the show only featured Dennis, Mac and Charlie; Dee was added early on into the series' development in order to give it a major female character, while Danny DeVito was cast at the start of Season 2 to increase the show's middling ratings. By the later seasons they seem to have more or less accepted Frank and Dee as "official" members - not that it makes their treatment of them, especially Dee, any better.
• True Companions: Very deeply dysfunctional, yes, but a fellowship nonetheless. The bizarre co-dependence that the group has cultivated over time only becomes more pronounced as the show progresses and they become more and more wrapped up in their own strange little world separate from the reality. In a major subversion of this trope, it's debatable whether or not this is in any way a good thing. True Companions or not, the Gang loves to back-stab one another and sell each other out, which only winds up reinforcing their co-dependence.
• Two Girls to a Team: Temporarily in the Season 13 premiere, which reveals that another woman, Cindy, has joined the Gang in Dennis' absence. While also a Jerkass, she proves to be a much more effective leader than Dennis ever was and the other members of the group are much less dysfunctional people for it. It doesn't last as the Gang are quick to accept Dennis back into the group when he returns at the end of the episode — including Dee, who dismisses Cindy's membership on the grounds that she prefers being the only woman in the Gang as it makes her "feel special."
• Ultimate Job Security: Actually justified in-universe. Frank is incredibly wealthy and can keep the bar afloat no matter how little actual business they do, and Charlie always manages to miraculously prepare the bar before health inspections to ensure that it gets a decent grade.
• Unreliable Narrator: The Gang's memories are never to be believed, in part due to alcohol abuse and because they’re usually so self-absorbed and out-of-touch with reality that they'll rewrite history if it suits their own desires. "Who Got Dee Pregnant?" and "The Gang Does a Clip Show" are classic examples of this.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: In case you haven't figured it out yet. Their rude, immoral behavior and misfortunes are Played for Laughs, the most sympathetic being Charlie and the least sympathetic being Dennis.
• Villain Protagonist: Don't hang out with these guys, or they'll crush your spirits and make you as vile as them.
• Villains Out Shopping: Even as late as Season 14, the various members of the Gang can be found around Philadelphia passing the time in rather mundane ways like playing basketball.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: At best. How fond the members of the Gang are of each other varies, but they have a true sense of camaraderie... when they’re not ripping into each other or arguing about something. Lampshaded in "The Gang Goes to Hell Part 2" when the Gang spend over four hours arguing about what kind of sound a boat makes when it breaks down. Dennis tries to raise their spirits by pointing out they've cut their usual conflict resolution time in half.
• Who's Watching the Store?: The creators made the main characters bar owners so that they could believably get into hijinks during the day. Even still, the trope is lampshaded in one episode where a newspaper reviewer writes that patrons of Paddy's Pub must often serve themselves because the owners are too busy arguing with each other to actually tend bar.
• With Friends Like These...: They constantly sabotage each other with dangerous stunts and yet they're still close enough to do things like make a board game to play together, have regular movie nights, and sing a capella every once in a while.
• Would Hit a Girl: None of the guys have any problems physically assaulting Dee or putting her in harm's way.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: All of them seem to believe that, should they desire it to, the universe will bend itself to follow the structure of whatever movie or TV series they currently wish to emulate. Similarly, they tend to act as though the world is governed by Negative Continuity, and that nothing they do will ever have any lasting consequences.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: They are often punished, mostly undeservedly, when they let their guards down to try and do normal, non-malicious, and totally legal pass times. Such as visiting a public pool and jumping into it only to discover that its bottom is covered in broken glass. Or having a genuinely nice Christmas with a newly empathetic Frank just to be robbed at gunpoint by one of his ex-business associates.

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