Occurs in-universe and lampshaded/discussed in "The Nightman Cometh" - the rest of the Gang notes multiple times that Charlie's musical reads more like the account of a child being molested by an adult in his sleep than the romantic epic fantasy he envisioned. This also raises some distressing questions about Charlie and his relationship with his increasingly Creepy Uncle both in and out of universe.
Dee's increasing Sanity Slippage is a result of the Gang's constant putdowns and dysfunctional family life catching up with her.
Exactly what has Dennis been doing behind the scenes? It's known that he's manipulative and creepy, and it's heavily implied that he's a rapist and even potentially a serial killer, but the show shies away from truly confirming anything.
Charlie actually likes Dee. He admitts that he doesn't enjoy bullying her, but does it because his friends do, and treats her considerably more like a friend if they are alone. Notably, in The Waitress Is Getting Married, Charlie gifts Dee's boyfriend a box full of hornets after the latter makes fun of Dee and reveals he is only with her to break her heart. Their relationship only really goes sour when she sexually assaults him.
Dennis' true feelings for Mac. He has told Mac on several occasions that he hates him, and he has certainly demonstrated signs of that, especially in the later seasons: scratching Mac, pushing Mac away, slamming the door in Mac's face, etc. However, there are times where he seems to show some signs of deeper feelings (such as his initial reaction when Mac gave him the RPG in "The Gang Tends Bar") and even times where he comes across as a Crazy Jealous Guy over Mac (for example, in "Who Got Dee Pregnant?", compare his reactions to when he thought Charlie slept with Dee versus when he thought Mac slept with her). Not to mention, in "The Gang Does a Clip Show," when Charlie asks Dennis why he still lives with Mac despite claiming to hate him so much, Dennis doesn't answer (although this may be a compromised example due to it being unclear whose mind the audience is supposed to be in). Does Dennis genuinely hate Mac, or is his erratic behavior a sign of him hiding his actual feelings?
A lot of people think Dennis’s “not going to happen willingly” to Mac is giving him an out. Normally that would be unthinkable, but Dennis is… Dennis. He has a lot of issues around consent, even Word of God says his only issue with being bottom is when he’s expected to be passive, and has more respect for predatory attitudes towards sex (like him and Dee and even Frank) than desperate neediness. Tellingly he seems to like Mac far more, earlier on in the show, when Mac clearly got off on things like simulated raping him in the musical and being pushy with the buyers when they’re playing estate agents.
The season 13 episode The Gang Solves the Bathroom Problem suggests that Charlie may be nonbinary or trans femme, even outside the commentary of the episode.
Despite referring to himself solely in masculine terms, he genuinely seems uninterested in performative gender roles or asserting his gender, unlike everyone else in the gang. He may only identify as a cisgender male due to lack of access to education and resources, having gone to a Catholic school, and Dennis and Mac's pressure for him to conform more to their ideas about masculinity, which he constantly struggles with.
In the original script for the Bathroom episode, Dennis actually refers to Charlie as transgender (at least when she poops), and Charlie reveals he has named her Joyce. Dennis also has to tell Charlie he's a male, a fact that seems to confuse him.
In an earlier season episode, A Woman's Right To Chop, Charlie seems genuinely confused when it is revealed Mac's dog is pregnant why the dog wouldn't be a father to the puppies. When Mac says they don't really do gender, Charlie refers to gender as "old school".
Charlie does not like removing his shirt, and finds sex to be gross, despite also enjoying having sex. While these could also be potentially a different LGBT identity, they're also signs of body dysphoria.
Aluminum Christmas Trees: In the episode "Mac and Dennis Break Up", Charlie states that all calico cats are female. While this isn't quite the case, the vast majority of calico cats are in fact female.
Award Snub: The closest the show has ever come to getting an Emmy has been a few nominations for Stunt Coordination (which it never won). The fact that the show has never been considered for a more prominent Emmy, the cast and crew's indignation over it, and the possible reasons it's been consistently passed over were highlighted in the episode "The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award."
Sigur Rós' ethereal, heartbreaking "Varúð" serves as the soundtrack for the most moving and shockingly sincere emotional moment in Always Sunny history at the climax of "Mac Finds His Pride."
"Riders on the Storm" by The Doors in "The Gang Finds a Dumpster Baby."
"Digging the Grave" by Faith No More in "Being Frank".
Somehow, "Together Forever" by Rick Astley in "The Aluminum Monster vs. Fatty Magoo."
Base-Breaking Character: Mac became this after Season 9, where he went from simply being Ambiguously Gay to explicitly being in a Transparent Closet. While many found the increased focus on his repressed attraction to men to be both hilarious and humanizing, several others argued that Mac's homosexuality was funnier when it was merely implied, not outright stated, and claimed that his character had grown stale and repetitive as his sexuality began to overtake every other aspect of it. Both sides were ultimately appeased when Mac finally came out in "Hero or Hate Crime?", allowing his character to grow beyond his sexuality without discarding it.
Mac would fall back into base breaking after coming out however, with some fans disliking how he no longer acts like a wannabe badass and has now become an Extreme Doormat, especially in terms of his relationship with Dennis, who he now has a barely hidden crush on, while he, and the rest of the Gang, constantly state how much they can’t stand him. "Mac Finds His Pride” is one if not the most divisive episode of the series due to portraying Mac's struggle with coming to terms with his sexuality and his father rejecting him in a serious light, which some view as jarring and unfitting for a show like Sunny. Some fans, however, argue that Mac's personality change has to due with him no longer having to overcompensate for his masculinity or crave approval from his father, and applaud "Mac Finds His Pride" for the fact it’s not played for laughs in a tear jerking yet moving and beautifully choreographed dance scene. Mac's character would get re-railed closer to his older self in Seasons 15 and 16, along with Dennis not acting completely repulsed by him, something many fans appreciated.
The more humanizing moments given to the Gang, particularly Mac, in the later seasons have proven to be very divisive. While many argue that the audience has spent so much time with the characters that it's natural for them to gain a portion of their sympathy, and that they can still remain as hilariously terrible as they've always been even when given more Pet the Dog moments, others believe that treating them as anything less than irredeemably awful Villain Protagonists is incompatible with the series' tone and humor. "Mac Finds his Pride" in particular has been both hailed as a genuinely beautiful and shockingly nuanced portrayal of a man trying to find balance between his religion and his sexuality and criticized for being jarringly earnest in a show that's rarely had such earnestness.
The increased brightness and general HD quality look of the show has divided some fans, even Charlie Day himself, who believes the show had a better feel to it in SD and with muted lighting. Some fans are even claiming the creators have fallen prey to their own satire, as in "The Gang Tries Desperately To Win an Award" they lampooned other sitcoms with bright lights and pretty actors - which the show itself has now gained in later seasons.
In general, there's plenty contentious debate as to when or if the series has ever declined in quality or jumped the shark. Different groups of fans will claim a decline started in Season 6 (with the show's switch to HD cameras), Season 11 (where a majority of the episodes are heavily meta and/or callbacks to previous moments), Season 12 (where some felt the show had started to become too gimmicky, such as the musical episode), Season 13 (where Dennis spends half the season Commuting on a Bus), and every season after 12, with general complaints being a dip in writing and comedy. Other groups don't think the show has ever declined in quality and are happy to keep watching despite any possible differences in tone/editing/lighting/humor.
Catharsis Factor: Dee's aforementioned victory in "Dee Day" is immensely satisfying after watching her put up with so much of the Gang's crap over the years.
Season 15 has Mac go back to being a wannabe badass struggling with his self-image after it was heavily downplayed the previous season in favor of presenting him as an Extreme Doormat obsessed with his relationship with Dennis (which goes completely unmentioned).
Seasons 15 and 16 have attempted to reverse some of Charlie’s Flanderization by having him play the voice of reason to the other Gang members more often and giving him more Deadpan Snarker moments than usual. He also gets a major story arc revolving around the discovery that his "pen pal" Shelley is actually his father.
Charlie is very brash, hotheaded, childish, has No Social Skills, and is very Book Dumb, though he's also quite cunning when he puts his mind to it, to the point where he's often described as a savant. Consequently, a number of audiences interpret him as being autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. note In their podcast, this was brought up. Charlie Day made the comment that both he and his character are probably autistic.
Multiple real-life therapists describe Mac as showing symptoms of Histrionic Personality Disorder; his rapidly shifting (and incredibly passionate) mood-swings, his tendency to attract everyone's attention, his gullibility, his lack of impulse control, his obsession with his appearance (maintaining his glamour muscles and false action-hero persona) and pathological lust for the approval of others (from Dennis and his dad especially).
Charlie's mom Bonnie Kelly. She is terrified of everyday things (she fears dogs will eat her face, and refuses to go to the supermarket because "shopping carts are dangerous"), switches lights on and off three times as well as locking and unlocking doors three times "so Charlie doesn't die". It is implied that it is a new behaviour, as Charlie is surprised by it, but overall it speaks to some sort of anxiety disorder.
While fans agree that most characters are jerks, Charlie is usually considered the Token Good Teammate of the Gang. The truth is that he has done many terrible things like his friends (sometimes with them, sometimes by himself) and tends to get a free pass because he's insane and out of touch with reality.
To a lesser extent, Mac has also gotten this treatment, especially after coming out of the closet in later seasons. He tends to be viewed more sympathetically than the rest of the Gang (it doesn't help that the Gang ramped up their mockery of him during that time), when in reality, he's also done his fair share of awful things, as well as being misogynistic.
While the show is very pointed in averting Double Standard Rape: Female on Male (while it’s still Black Comedy Rape, Dee is seen as just as bad as her brother, if less calculating and more impulsive), Dee’s Serial Rapist tendencies will often go ignored in fandom or retconned out of the picture due to still wanting to ship her and Charlie in a fluffy way. The severity of her misdeeds are also downplayed simply because some audience members sympathize with her for being the Gang's Butt-Monkey. Some will also go as far as to shoulder the blame for how Dee turned out on Barbara and the rest of the Gang, despite Dee doing many awful things completely of her own volition.
It’s definitely not about looks, but Frank probably gets way more leeway from people who believe him when he says he has nothing to do with the way the twins have turned out, than he really deserves. Barbara of course shares blame, and Dee/Dennis have agency in their awful behaviour, but the show calls him out on terrorising them as kids and exploiting them as adults, including pimping them out several times. In general, Frank's atrocities tend to be glossed over more than those of the rest of the Gang simply because Frank is funny and living life on his own terms (being played by the legendary Danny DeVito doesn't help).
Fanon: Due to the satirical nature of the show, it isn't always clear if what's happening on screen is actually happening.
Many fans choose to believe that the flashbacks depicted in "The Gang Buys a Roller Rink" are actually the Gang's unreliable memories at play given that their characterizations wildly contrast what has already been firmly established in continuity. Specifically, Dennis and Dee, who are portrayed as having been good-natured and innocent until the revelation of Frank's infidelity made Dennis a cynical, sex-crazed sociopath and a severe head injury caused Dee to develop into the temperamental and bitter Jerkass she is today.
Many fans tend to agree with the rest of the gang that The Nightman is Charlie's subconscious personification of childhood sexual abuse. This is despite Charlie denying being molested by his uncle, and Word of God being that this is actually the joke.note Glenn Howerton: A rape joke is not remotely a funny thing; a man writing a musical that he thinks is about self-empowerment, and not realizing that all his lyrics sound like they’re about a child being molested, is a funny thing. The joke is coming from confusion and misunderstanding, which are classic tropes of all comedy.
Fair for Its Day: Carmen, the trans woman is often talked about in an extremely insensitive way, and the gang often refers to her using the slur "tranny". That said, Carmen herself is portrayed as a kind, level-headed person and unlike most shows from that time, the show itself doesn't make fun of her for being trans, but instead makes fun of the gang (particularly Mac) for being transphobic idiots. She’s even one of the very few characters whose life isn’t ruined by the Gang, and her last appearance has her happily walking away with her husband and newborn baby which Dee was a surrogate for.
Fan Discontinuity: Charlie/Dee shippers like to pretend "Time's Up for the Gang" never happened due to the revelation of Dee raping Charlie when they had sex in "The Gang Misses the Boat".
With Pacific Rim, due to the presence of Charlie Day (and the fact that Newt is basically a smarter and saner version of Charlie).
With A.P. Bio, The Mick, and Mythic Quest. All three are shows starring members of the main cast (with The Mick in particular feeling like a Spiritual Successor to Sunny), and some of this show's crew have worked on the latter two as well.
With Succession. It helps that the creators love the show too, but the Reynolds are essentially a playhouse version of the Roys note even RCG teased the similarities between Dennis and Kendall, especially in “The Gang Gets Whacked” with rich idiots who don’t know how the world works, so many incest references, and abuse turning Dennis and Dee into narcissistic entitled psychotic serial rapists. There’s also plenty of cringe comedy, the blackest Black Comedy, nobody leaving the cycles, and absurd tragicomedy in both.
Genius Bonus: "Mac Finds his Pride" opens with Mac sitting on the floor surrounded by peaches. While many people caught the Shout-Out to Call Me by Your Name, there's also a peach seller in the US called "Mac's Pride."
Growing the Beard: The first season was solid but on the verge of cancellation due to having such a niche appeal. The network insisted on some form of Stunt Casting to spice up the ratings, which had some pushback, but adding Danny DeVito as someone even more insane than the main group proved to be the kick the show needed. This was coupled with having Dee turn away from being Closer to Earth and becoming just as amoral and depraved as the rest, as per the request of her actress Kaitlin Olson after landing the role. The result became one of the longest running sitcoms and a consistently well-regarded tv show in general.
When "Charlie Got Molested" aired, it was a standard humorous misunderstanding plot (except with child abuse) in which the Gang mistakenly believed Charlie had been molested. Later, once his friends become convinced he was actually molested, the episode becomes harsher. This is particularly true of the ending where he talks about going somewhere and crying now that everyone in his family believes he was molested.
Then comes Season 13, when it's revealed he was flat-out raped at one point... by none other than Dee.
Any scene featuring the saintly Bruce Mathis is now very uncomfortable after Stephen Collins was revealed to have molested/exposed himself to at least three underage girls, especially since a big part of Bruce's character is that he's great with children. And of course, there's this exchange:
Dee: What are you expecting to find?
Frank: Lot of shady shit.
Dee: Like what?
Frank: Like maybe Bruce is banging dudes!
Dee: Why would that be shady?
Frank: Maybe the dudes are babies!
Dee: What?! Bruce is not banging any baby dudes!
In "The Gang Saves the Day", we see Mac's homoerotic idea of Heaven where God and angels are all buff, shirtless men who invite him to laugh at sinners with them. This becomes a lot less funny after the next time we see how Mac visualizes God in "Mac Finds His Pride", where God is now a beautiful woman who comforts and accepts him in one of the show's biggest Tearjerkers. The latter episode also makes a point of driving home how painful it was for Mac to reconcile his religion with his sexuality, making the scene in "The Gang Saves the Day" even sadder.
In Season 1, Dee refuses to kiss a high school student on the grounds that statutory rape isn't a line she is willing to cross. In Season 4, she makes it very clear to the audience of The Nightman Cometh that she would "never have sex with a child." In Season 13, she accidentally sleeps with a teenager after mistaking him for another woman's husband.
In "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire", Frank's plan to go to Chinatown and interview a sick guy about a "new pandemic" is a lot rougher to watch during the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated upswing in anti-Asian hate crimes.
Frank's paranoia about getting arrested for pedophilia in "Frank Reynolds' Little Beauties" is much darker after the Season 15 subplot about Frank being involved with Jeffrey Epstein.
The Gang's love of Kanye West gets substantially less funny after West came out as an antisemite and Nazi in 2022. Given that even they draw the line at overt racism, that likely put a damper on their appreciation for him.
Not that it excuses any of the misogyny or being a rapist himself, but there’s a lot of moments with Dennis that get worse after it’s revealed he lost his virginity to a teacher: telling Mac they should go to the library for good girls turning wild, using the age of 14 as the last time he felt normal emotions, his subplot with being made by Frank to be a hooker for old women who don’t care if he doesn’t enjoy it, hallucinating another version of himself forcing him to give a blowjob (like he did with the woman in the sex tape), raging that if women “rate” him then he’ll “rate” them, and a Self-Serving Memory memoir where he was “reborn” with a woman much older than him.
Mac’s Aren't You Going to Ravish Me? in “Charlie Gets Molested” is both funnier and sadder when you realize he thinks literally any affection has to be a good thing, not getting any from his parents.
The episode where Mac and Dee become the adoptive parents of a baby they found in the dumpster is this now that Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olson have children together.
In "The Nightman Cometh", Mac says the line "Laughs are cheap, I'm going for gasps." Come "Mac Finds His Pride", the next time he gives a performance in live theatre, and he's sure got those gasps.
Charlie Day does a fantastic job of portraying Charlie's grief over having to grow up without a father in "The Gang Carries a Corpse Up a Mountain". His breakdown when he cries "You were supposed to carry me!" is a straight-up Tear Jerker.
Kaitlin Olson does a pitch-perfect job conveying Dee's depression over being the Gang's Butt-Monkey in "The Gang Broke Dee".
While many fans believe that Glenn Howerton is one of the best actors in the main cast, some episodes still stand out in terms of his acting ability, most notably "Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs" and "Dennis Takes a Mental Health Day". "The Gang Tends Bar", "Sweet Dee Gets Audited" and "PTSDee" are also favorites, really showing how broken Dennis is.
Zig-zagged with Dee and Charlie. While they are played by the pretty Kaitlin Olson and the adorable Charlie Day, their long list of character flaws and poor personal hygiene in the latter's case routinely earns them scorn from the other members of the Gang, along with the fact the Gang are just assholes in general. Dee in particular manages to entice several potential romantic partners before later driving them away with her awful personality, along with outsiders to the Gang acknowledging she’s quite attractive. Although worth noting is that Olson much prefers playing the "ugly Dee" over a standard closer-to-Earth female character.
Averts this trope with Margaret McPoyle who is hideous. As it turns out Margaret McPoyle is played by the very attractive Thesy Surface under a lot of makeup. Don't believe it? Margaret McPoyle vs. Thesy Surface
The Waitress gets this treatment, too, from just about everyone besides Charlie (who is, interestingly enough, played by Mary Elizabeth Ellis's real-life husband). Shallow Dennis talks about her as if she were downright repulsive, even only giving her one star on the sex tape they made, but she is actually quite pretty. It could be assumed that she's rejected by most men because of her alcoholism and toxic behavior.
Fat Mac falls into this. Rob McElhenney gained sixty pounds and grew his beard out for Season 7 to look as unattractive as possible to subvert sitcom actors getting better looking as shows go on, with The Gang constantly making fun of his weight gain and finding him/the show portraying him as repulsive. However, many fans have admitted they found Fat Mac very attractive, even moreso than when he went the opposite extreme in Season 13 and got ripped. Even Kaitlin Olson, who plays Dee and is married to McElhenney, admitted to have been more into Fat Mac over Ripped Mac.
Ho Yay: Constantly between Mac/Dennis, so much so that the creators have claimed their relationship to be effectively a romantic one that neither is entirely conscious of.
Hype Aversion: It's been going strong for sixteen seasonsnote officially making it the longer-running live-action sitcom in American history so far and it's been the longest time Danny DeVito has worked in a single seriesnote for comparison, Taxi only ran for five seasons and there are many, many talks about how the Emmys overlook it; but those who dislike the show point out how it's fifteen seasons following some of the most loathsome examples of the Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist that have ever appeared on screen.
Incest Yay Shipping: Dennis and Dee, due to the large amount of Incest Subtext between them, which has included stuff like them playing lovers in Charlie's "The Nightman Cometh" play, posing as a married couple more than once, Dennis believing he drunkenly impregnated Dee at a Halloween party, and to say nothing of Dennis' Anguished Declaration of Love to Dee in "The Gang Broke Dee". Moreover, Dennis, for all his putting down of Dee's appearance and dreams, also has the most Pet the Dog moments towards her and while Dee herself doesn't vocally reciprocate it, she is shown to still care for him. Considering how screwed up all of the main characters are, it wouldn't be surprising if this one actually became canon at some point. Even their actors ship it, with Kaitlin Olsen and Glenn Howerton admitting that Dennis and Dee have a very deeply dysfunctional and codependent relationship that makes them, in a twisted sort of way, perfect for each other.
Jerkass Woobie: Really, everyone in the Gang qualifies as this. They're all terrible, terrible people, but they're also just so pathetic that you really have to feel for them at times.
Dee is the group's Butt-Monkey and The Friend Nobody Likes who has been mercilessly put down by her family (especially her mother) her entire life. It's also clear all she really wants is to win the Gang's approval. However, she's so shrill, angry, and spiteful — not to mention a shameless rapist — that she often brings her misfortunes on herself.
Mac. One of the biggest aspects of his character is that he wants to be accepted by people, but he especially wants his father's love and acknowledgment, as Luther had been absent during much of his childhood. This is especially evident when Mac choreographed a stunning interpretive dance performance, only for his father to walk out halfway through. Mac actually predicted the rejection and worked it in his performance, expressing his genuine heartbreak.
Dennis's extreme vanity is clearly a mask for his insecurities, and his unhealthy sexual behaviors stem from being a victim of statutory rape himself, as well as what sounds like textbook grooming from his mother (Word of God confirming Frank had pimped him out made him worse too). When his facade cracks and he regresses to crying like a little child, it's hard not to feel bad for him despite him being the worst of the Gang.
Frank's backstory is equally hilarious and sad. He got into a fight as a kid and was put in a mental institution, where he was treated horribly. When he came back, he was mocked by the other kids. He keeps his trauma buried deep down, but it all comes out after a short therapy session. The self-help book also gives him Abusive Parents too, as his father hit him for asking questions, and he calls his mom his "first love".
Charlie is a Stalker with a Crush to the Waitress who keeps saying he will leave her alone but never actually does, was seconds away from torturing a "leprechaun", and is just as sexist as Mac and Dennis when he's angry enough. But he's a victim of CSA by his uncle, and no matter how much he tries to deny it, he wrote a whole musical about being in love with his abuser. He was also raped by Dee, and doesn't want to be alone with her after (although he does quarantine with her during the COVID pandemic later on, along with him joining her on her excursion to get ice in "The Gang Solves Global Warming", albeit the promise of free cat food). He also grew up fatherless and never knew who his father was as his mom was a prostitute. When he finally does meet his biological father, he dies a few days later, leading him to have an emotional breakdown over having to carry his corpse up a mountain when he was never there for him growing up, and only finding closure in the fact his death means he doesn’t have to wait for him to show up.
Rickety Cricket. By now, he's a completely insane, barely human wretch who openly has sex with dogs, does every hard drug under the sun, enjoys animal cruelty, is a compulsive thief and in later seasons, someone who pimps out homeless teenagers. That said, his descent into this is heartbreaking. He started out as a happy, well-kept priest whom the Gang manipulated over the years, caught several diseases, forcibly turned into a drug addict, got horribly mutilated several times, had both people and animals force themselves upon him, and ultimately has become so broken down both mentally and physically that he's completely lost any ability to return to a normal life.
Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Charlie. He's been shipped with all 4 of the other members of the Gang, the Waitress and even with ScienceBitch (an unnamed scientist in "Flowers For Charlie" who gave him fake intelligence pills). Though admittedly, the last one stems from the fact that their actors (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman) played the Fan-Preferred Couple scientists in Pacific Rim.
LGBT Fanbase: The show, especially the later seasons, has become very popular with LGBT fans, particularly because of both having a now-openly gay main character in Mac, as well as all the Homoerotic Subtext that's built up over the course of the series. Everyone in the main cast has been very vocal about their support for the LGBT community, which has endeared them to the fanbase even more. Rob McElhenney has gone on record saying that Mac going back in the closet at the end of "The Gang Goes to Hell, Part 2" caused such a huge backlash amongst this specific fanbase that it motivated him to rectify it, not only having Mac come out for good in "Hero or Hate Crime?" but also creating the moving dance sequence seen in "Mac Finds His Pride".
Like You Would Really Do It: "The Gang's Still In Ireland" ends with a deranged, murderous Dennis swinging an axe at Dee's head, which might be a cliffhanger — if not for the fact that the next episode is called "Dee Sinks in a Bog."
While this could be applied to every member of the Gang, Dennis in particular qualifies. While he's by far the least sympathetic member of the Gang, he's also a hilarious Large Ham who has provided a countless number of the show's most quotable lines.
Bill Ponderosa also qualifies. While he's quite possibly the only person in the world who could accurately be described as worse than the Gang, he's also a riot every time he appears.
Several fans are grossed out by the McPoyles due to their many incestuous moments and overall Squick factor. Despite this, they are also behind some of the funniest and most standout episodes of the whole series.
Magnificent Bitch: Abby is a con artist who Dennis meets at a water park. Scamming Dennis into giving him money by acting as his neglected daughter in front a woman he was trying to seduce, Dennis takes an interest in her, and decides to take Abby under his wing. After being taught to steal right in front of the victim's face by Dennis, the two go on a scamming spree throughout the water park, putting all the valuables in a locker. Eventually, Abby tells Dennis that she's being forced to leave by her mother, and gives Dennis a memento as thanks for being the first adult to care about her. When Dennis confronts who Abby said was her mother, Dennis finds out that the woman isn't Abby's mother at all, and that Abby took the opportunity to swipe the locker key from Dennis and make off with all their stolen goods for herself, further impressing him.
Many fans of color find Dee's characters and the Gang's use of Blackface and Brownface hilarious and not offensive at all, specifically because the Gang are idiots whose use of stereotypes is seen as offensive and tasteless In-Universe. Needless to say, fans were displeased when several streaming websites removed these episodes.
Misaimed Fandom: The show has gotten both praise from racists and criticism from activists for its occasional depictions of Blackface and Brownface with Dee's acting characters and the Gang's Lethal Weapon sequels, both of which have led to five episodes of the show being banned/pulled from streaming services. Both sides completely miss the point that, not only are the characters all terrible racists, but the portrayals are depicted as offensiveIn-Universe, with bystanders of all races reacting to the acts with horror and anger.
Moral Event Horizon: While the gang has certainly committed such horrendous acts to place them well beyond the horizon, a few key moments stand out. Quite a few other characters have crossed it as well.
Dennis definitely crossed it with the D.E.N.N.I.S. System and "The Implication" alone.
Leaving their enemies to burn to death in the Season 9 finale. Granted, there was a fire escape, but they still actively placed the party in danger of burning alive. Although the only one harmed was Cricket, of course.
Dee crossed it Season 10 when she raped Charlie, though this is a retroactive example. If not that, then she definitely crossed it with her actions in "PTSDee" and how she ruined the life of a male stripper just because he said that sleeping with her was "rock bottom" for him.
Charlie crossed it in Season 8 when he publicly dumped and slut shamed Ruby Taft all while revealing this was an elaborate plot to make the Waitress jealous and ask for him back. Ruby's understandable reaction just makes it worse.
Kidnapping Lyle Corman in Season 4 certainly qualifies. All because he wrote a (justifiably) bad review of Paddy's Pub.
Newbie Boom: There are a lot of Vinesauce fans who got into this series due to Vinny and Joel's frequent references to Frank as the Trashman.
Pepper Jack, the smooth-talking pimp who tries to chat up Dee and is bribed with Dennis' Fraggle Rock thermos. Fans were happy to see him return in "The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 7".
Dr. Zimmerman, since it was was Aubrey Morris's final on-screen role prior to his death in 2015.
The cop in "Thundergun Express" who urges the Gang on to see the movie, citing the impressiveness of the dong scene.
Periphery Demographic: The show has a hefty subsection of abuse victims who appreciate how the show handles trauma and abuse. It's all Black Comedy, but it still matters and makes sense in such a warped way; Charlie getting abused by his uncle and making a whole musical about it, Dennis refusing to believe he was raped by a teacher and so seemingly punishing every woman he can, Mac's internalized homophobia and abandonment issues, and Dee growing up with no boundaries from her brother and stepfather with constant emotional abuse, so she manipulates men into sleeping with her. In addition, Dennis' D.E.N.N.I.S system and "implication" are often praised by victims and feminists for calling out tactics used by abusers meant to create a Plausible Deniability, instead showing how chilling and disturbing they are when broken down.
Replacement Scrappy: Cindy's character, while genuinely necessary to fill Glenn Howerton's absence in the first episode of Season 13, was a deliberate invocation of this trope — a new character played by a well-known celebrity, made to fill a void yet always feeling somewhat out-of-place. Many viewers who got the joke still hated the character regardless.
Retroactive Recognition: Quite a few minor characters from early episodes are played by then-unknown celebrities:
Annalisa Cochrane, who plays Yasmine on Cobra Kai, appeared one year earlier as the Birthday Girl that gets a faceful of her dad's crotch in "PTSDee".
Britt Lower plays the female Air BNB lodger at Mac and Dennis's apartment in "The Gang Gets Romantic," three years before her breakout performance as Helly in Severance.
Lyle Korman in "Paddy's Pub: The Worst Bar in Philadelphia" is played by Fisher Stevens, who would later go on to play Hugo Baker in Succession.
Season 13 was less well-received by fans, due in large part to Dennis's reduced number of appearances (only being in 6 out of the 10 episodes) as well as a perceived inconsistency with the quality of its comedy. Even the generally well-received finale had its criticism from detractors who saw the show's sincere and guileless acceptance towards Mac's struggle with his sexuality as incompatible with its usual subversive, cynical edge.
Season 14 has also been divisive, though less so than the previous season due to Dennis returning to the cast full-time. The biggest complaint is about the perceived lack of subtlety and Anvilicious nature of some of the plots, such as a scene in "Thunder Gun 4: Maximum Cool" where Dennis stops the episode in its tracks to speak for a full minute about the growing trend of audiences pirating movies. There are also some who feel that Frank and Dee haven't been utilized well compared to the previous seasons, and have bemoaned the lack of many of the popular recurring characters making an appearance.
Mac and Charlie mocking Dennis and Dee for getting addicted to crack in "Dennis and Dee Go on Welfare", for being one of the first moments to actually show the group being completely sociopathic towards each other.
Dennis' implication speech in "The Gang Buys a Boat", due to marking a turning point for his character from "perverted dickhead" to "sociopathic monster."
In terms of episodes, "The Nightman Cometh" is probably the most well-known one and is frequently cited as one of, if not the best episode of the series.
The infamous "Pepe Silvia" scene from "Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack" is one that even people who don't watch the show are familiar with due to its popularity in memes.
Dee eating her hamburger like a bird in "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters" and running headfirst into the side of a car in "Who Pooped the Bed?" The former as part of the Running Gag of the Gang calling her a bird and both scenes as a showcase of Kaitlin Olson's brilliant knack for physical comedy.
Frank crawling out of a couch naked and drenched in sweat in "A Very Sunny Christmas" is one when to comes to demonstrating the sheer vulgarity of the show and the lines it is willing to cross.
Mac's artistic dance in "Mac Finds His Pride", for being one of the few moments on the show not Played for Laughs.
Similarly, Charlie's breakdown in the Season 15 finale "The Gang Carries a Corpse Up a Mountain" is just as noteworthy, due to being one of the more effective Tear Jerker moments in the whole series.
Special Effect Failure: When Frank crashes his car into Dennis' in "Reynolds v. Reynolds: The Cereal Defense", Dennis throws his bowl of cereal over the windshield in a rather delayed fashion, about half a second after he is hit. Not to mention, the throw looks rather deliberate too.
The show is frequently described as Seinfeld on crack. Seinfeld may have featured assholes as its main protagonists, but the protagonists in Sunny are outright depraved, all of them having committed multiple sexual offenses and other criminal activity throughout the series.
The show's signature black humor, its manic approach to storytelling, and its fearless usage of satire have led many to describe it as a live-action South Park.
Nearly every aspect of Charlie and Frank's living habits. Charlie has such bad oral hygiene that he can effortlessly pull out his teeth without feeling anything, and he presumably doesn't change or wash his underwear as it started to fall apart after a failed attempt at a wedgie. Frank poops wherever he feels like it because it's funny to him, and he clips his toenails with a steak knife which he also uses to peel fruit.
Gail the Snail giving Frank, her uncle, a handjob under the table. Thankfully, they aren't biologically related.
Numerous scenes involving the McPoyles. In "Charlie Goes America All Over Everybody's Ass," Ryan openly makes out with his sister Margaret while their brother Liam happily watches and mutters "...yeah." In "The Maureen Ponderosa Wedding Massacre," there's an extended shot where Ryan appears to be giving Liam a blowjob (he's crouched at Liam's crotch, making gagging noises, while Liam looks quite pleased) - turns out he's "begging [him] for forgiveness."
In "Who Got Dee Pregnant?" the episode begins with the guys discussing a plan to spend the night at the city museum, dodging security and generally enjoying themselves. This quickly gets pushed aside once Dee tells them one of them got her pregnant and they spend the rest of the plot trying to figure out who. While the episode was good, it would have also been interesting to see the museum hijinks come to pass.
Charlie and Dee working at a high school, which lasted for all of two episodes.
During the season finale of "Dennis's Double Life", there could've been a good season worth of the Gang adjusting to not having Dennis in their lives and a nice change of formula. That potential got squashed in the span of one episode when Dennis returned, which is acknowledged in the same episode.
The premise of "The Gang Does a Clip Show" involves the Gang altering reality through false memories, but half of the run time is wasted on being an actual clip show.
Relatedly, some fans were disappointed that Season 15's "2020: A Year in Review" was a clip show of brief riffs on the past year, rather than a more sustained arc.
Too Cool to Live: Country Mac. But it's less an example of him being killed off because he will make the Gang look bad in comparison and more because it's an unspoken rule that no one cool can be a part of the Gang.
Thanks to the large number of references to the then-current events of the Turn of the Millennium. The show debuted during that decade, as such many episodes make references and jokes that seem to be ripped from that decade's headlines, such as references to the gas crisis, terrorism, waterboarding, Hurricane Katrina, North Korea, and the bar getting a new flatscreen TV and Blu-ray player, just to name a few. Notably, there have been plot lines based around an episode taking place during the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations.
In the episode "Mac and Charlie Write a Movie," a running gag is that Dennis is spending all of his time typing on his phone, which was supposed to be inherently ridiculous. Years later, with the popularization of smart phones, it's a ubiquitous complaint that people spend too much time on their phones.
"Charlie Catches a Leprechaun" has the Gang's attempt at running a "mobile bar" on Saint Patrick's Day failing because Dennis insists on an online pay system instead of cash, with the joke being that Dennis refuses to accept online pay systems are a novelty and too complex for the average consumer. By The New '20s, mobile pay systems such as Venmo and Apple Pay became mainstream and the most popular payment methods for many consumers, so Dennis insisting on his method would be considered a normal business practice.
Charlie and Dee are at the bottom of the Gang's personal pecking order, and are constantly abused both physically and verbally as a result. Despite this, both are beloved characters who have provided a countless amount of the series' most quotable lines, with Charlie in particular becoming something of an unofficial mascot to the series.
Mac undergoing visible Character Development and gaining a more sympathetic portrayal overall directly coincides with him becoming more openly hated by the rest of the Gang.
Rickety Cricket. He's seen as subhuman scum by the gang, and eventually grows to embrace being a depraved street rat. He's incredibly beloved by the fandom, however. Both because of his insane depravity, and because of the sad, seasons-long decline into what he is now.
The Waitress. Everybody in the Gang except Charlie completely disregards her, not even bothering to remember her name.
For those who didn't like Seasons 13 and 14, the Ireland Story Arc is commonly seen as revitalizing the show and consistently returning the Gang to the fucked-up Band of Brothers they were in Seasons 2 to 12. Charlie gets some Character Rerailment and an emotional story arc revolving around his long-lost father, Dee and Dennis share several diabolical Sibling Team moments again, Mac gets things to do other than pine after Dennis, and Frank receives more depth thanks to his father-son relationship with Charlie in the season finale.
While Season 16 still has some detractors, several fans and critics have praised it as a return to form, featuring more grounded storylines, the return of executive producers Scott Marder and Rob Rosell, and the reappearance of several fan-favorite side characters, such as Uncle Jack, Gail the Snail, and even the McPoyles. It also continues the trend started in the previous season of pitch black comedy with underlying sadness (consisting of several insights as to why the Gang are all like that), as well as the Gang just giving a shit about each other in general. Several fans have attributed this change to The Always Sunny Podcast, which started around the time that writing and production of this season took place.
Rickety Cricket is introduced this way and steadily gets worse with each appearance.
Psycho Pete, who instantly jumped from The Dreaded into this trope with the reveal that he is a sad, lonely Gentle Giant who desperately craves friendship, developed anxiety and suicidal tendencies and the rumor about him killing his family is false.
" serves as the soundtrack for the most moving and shockingly sincere emotional moment in Always Sunny history at the climax of "Mac Finds His Pride."