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  • Accidental Aesop: Seeing how aimless and unsuccessful Al's and Kelly's lives all are shows the value of a good education. Al thought he could coast through life on his football talents, while Kelly thought she could do it on her looks. When Al broke his leg and lost his scholarship, he didn't have any other skills and had to spend the rest of his life kowtowing to fat women at a Soul-Sucking Retail Job. The Bundy Curse ruined Kelly's attempts at being a Gold Digger, and when her sex appeal landed a high-paying job, she was fired on her first day due to her illiteracy.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: For each and every single Bundy, especially Al; were their horrible lives brought upon themselves because they're all some degree of lazy, obnoxious Jerkass, or did they become that way because of how horrible their lives are, after years of bitterness and misery have sunken in? Which caused which here?
  • Aluminum Christmas Trees: At the time of his appearance on the show Jerry Springer's talk show mainly covered serious issues, hence his attempt at looking at NO MA'AM from a feminist viewpoint. The Jerry Springer Show would turn into the trashy shock talk show it's widely known as not long after this.
  • Award Snub: The show ties with Baywatch for the longest running series never to win an Emmy, despite being nominated for one seven times.
  • Awesome Music:
    • Anytime "Bad To the Bone", "Tuff Enuff" or "She Works Hard for the Money" is played.
    • In "Guys and Dolls", while Steve and Al are looking for Marcy's lost Barbie doll, an instrumental version of Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City" is heard.
    • Kelly's very fanservicey dance to "Fever" in "Can't Dance, Don't Ask Me" also counts in addition to the scene being a Moment of Awesome. It certainly helps that Christina Applegate and her partner in the episode, Jesse Borrego (from Fame and who played a janitor, Bruno) have backgrounds in dance.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Jefferson's hallucination after he gets clobbered by Marcy
    Fantasy Girl: What a crummy fantasy.
    Jefferson: I know... my wife's mad at me. It's hard to concentrate.
  • Bizarro Episode: The episode "Married... with Aliens". Al's socks are needed by a race of tiny aliens so they can be used as a fuel source to power their ships and divert a comet.
    • "Damn Bundys" from the last season where Al makes a Deal with the Devil to be a pro football player and goes to hell after the season is done.
  • Broken Base: To date, fans still debate over if Steve Rhoades or Jefferson D'Arcy was the superior husband of Marcy and the funnier source of comedy.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Constantly. Particularly in the episode "I'm Going to Sweatland", when both Peg and Marcy think that a sweat stain of Al's looks like Elvis Presley, this is Al's response:
    "You wanna see Elvis? Well, here's Elvis: *pulls his collar up, sticks out his stomach and puffs out his cheeks pretending to be fat and then mimes falling backwards dead of a heart attack.* Now that we've all seen him and felt his presence, let's honor him by doing what he really loved to do; eat dinner!"
    • Then later on after the Elvis fans are at the Bundy house:
    "Why is it that Elvis is dead and I'm the one in Hell?"
    • A later episode, "Take My Wife, Please", has Al be more respectful towards Elvis, even being shocked that he was truly dead. Death's (under the guise of Peg) response, however, fits this trope:
    Death!Peg: Oh, please! It took six of us just to get him out of there! We had to take the hinges off the door!
    • Another notable example is the first Christmas Episode, which received a Content Warning. A Mall Santa gets blown off course during a skydiving stunt. The characters suddenly hear some rustling out back and then see the guy hit the ground face first. Things escalated from there. In the reunion special, cast members (Ed O'Neill in particular) recalled Corpsing and struggling to keep it together.
      Peg: It could've been worse. He could've landed on the picket fence.
    • In "My Mom, The Mom": singing the song "Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen", a spiritual song sung by slaves to keep their spirits up during their captivity? Not funny. The family mockingly singing it to Al twice after he complains about all the odd jobs he did as a teen to earn money? Absolutely hilarious.
      • A similar instance occurs in "Kelly Doesn't Live Here Anymore" when famously work-phobic Peg quotes the song to show her own mourning, about... her daughter getting a job.
    • At the end of "Requiem For a Dead Barber", both Bud and Kelly begin arguing over if they're truly Al's children, and once Peg insists that they are, they react by crying.
    • From "The Worst Noel", one of the programs that Al and Peg flip to while channel surfing is It's a Hitler Christmas.
    • The entire end scene of "Hot Off The Grill" was an absolute gut-buster, but the biggest example of this trope in that scene was the part where Bud warns Steve that Aunt Toonie's ashes were in grill the burgers were cooked on. He smiles, takes a huge bite, relishes in getting back at the woman for not leaving her estate to Marcy, tries to warn her, but lets her eat it when she tells him to shut up.
  • Designated Hero: While none of the Bundys can really be called "heroes", it's shown that when push comes to shove, they do love each other, and they at least make an effort to do something with their lives and be better people. Peg is the exception — she would rather sit on the couch all day eating candy and watching TV than doing anything productive or useful, squanders Al's money on useless things for herself, has no interest in being a good wife or a good mother, and will put her selfish desires above the needs of her family. While the other Bundies fall under Jerkass Woobie on account of being sympathetic in their bitterness, Peg never elicits any such sympathy.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Local reporter Miranda Veracruz de la Hoya Cardinal. Just saying her name got a huge reaction.
    • Al's ex-girlfriend Sandy Jorgensen from "I Who Have Nothing". Her comedic timing, chemistry with him and her dance moves made her quite popular with fans (as well as being played by the late Wendie Jo Sperber).
    • Vinnie Verducci if for no other reason than being a prototype Joey Tribiani, right down to being played by Matt Le Blanc.
  • Fair for Its Day: The language and acceptable targets of the 90's wouldn't fly today, but for the most part, the show's heart was in the right place.
    • The episode "The Dance Show" centers around Peggy regularly going out to a lounge where she dances with a man she met there. However, when the man's husband comes to complain to Al about how Peggy is essentially stealing his husband, Al is at first weirded out, but then comes to appreciate him because they can talk about sports and the guy's a good cook. Eventually Al feels sorry for the guy and they go to the lounge where Al convinces Peggy's dance partner to go back to his husband, and appreciate what he has or he'll lose him forever, and will have no one to to blame but himself, and the couple decides to talk through their issues and make up. At the end, Al dances with Peggy and tells her that her dreamy guy was "a homo." Although the episode features some gay stereotypes, as well as the casual use of the word "homo," it also does show the guys as a regular couple who's going through a rut, and shows that they are together because they genuinely love each other.
    • One episode has Al's football bros from high school returning to defend the team's honor, and one of them has since come out as a transwoman. The character is played by a cisgender man in a dress and there's an upskirting scene that definitely wouldn't fly today, but it's made clear that the guys' confusion is the punchline, not her gender. Thad and Peggy's greeting show that Thad's personality is the same as it was during their school years, and her patience with Al's confusion is clearly because of their friendship. Once she proves she's still game to play football, none of the guys treat Thad any differently than they always did except the episode's antagonist, the only person in the episode to treat her gender as an insult, and she decks him. The closest thing to a truly transphobic joke is Al, champion of maleness and manhood, being squeamish about Thad's penectomy while also making it clear that he doesn't think Thad's identity as a woman should demand she transition medically, which is remarkably progressive even into the 2010's. The ending also has Thad happily hooking up with a member of the opposing team, with the boyfriend even saying dating her is better than the fact that they won.
      Thad: I had to do it, Al. All those years, I felt like a woman trapped inside a man's body! I just got so tired of it!
      Al: Yeah, we get tired of our cars, too, but we don't rip the doors off!
  • Genius Bonus: One episode has Kelly complaining about her little brother being their parents' favorite just because he was the first to learn how to talk, how to walk, and the names of the twenty states. That's even funnier when one remembers that the series takes place in Illinois, a.k.a. the twentieth-first state.
  • Growing the Beard: The show became much, much funnier when Flanderization kicked in and the show turned into a live-action cartoon, while still keeping the main themes and jokes, though some have stated that the show grew the beard when Terry Rakolta complained about the show's crude humor and more people started to tune in to see what she was talking about.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • At least one episode had a joke about Kelly stuffing her bra, which is no longer funny after Christina Applegate's battle with breast cancer and double mastectomy.
    • Being considered either this or Hilarious in Hindsight (depending on your sense of humor), the "I Want My Psycho Dad" episode had Bud mentioning a fictional show called Saved by the Bell: The Prison Years. About a decade later, Screech's actor, Dustin Diamond, was sent to jail for a few months for stabbing a man.
    • In "Peggy Sue Got Work", Peggy gets a job in a department store to earn money for a VCR after Al refuses to buy her one. While working, she overhears a customer talking about Oprah doing a whole week on "Transsexuals: Which Bathroom Should They Use?" No longer funny after 2016 when this very issue became a national controversy.
    • In "It's a Bundyful Life", Sam Kinison, as Al's guardian angel, says that when he was married, he had vanity plates that said "HIT ME". Kinison would later die in a car accident after being hit by a drunk driver.
    • The "You Better Shop Around" two-parter culminated in Al and Peg competing with Marcy and Jefferson in a Supermarket Sweep-type contest for $2,000 worth of groceries, even though the place where they're doing the shopping has expired food. Years later, it comes out that the groceries on the latter show were either pretend food for display only or, indeed, had/was in the process of being expired.
    • The season six Aborted Arc (pardon the pun) of Peggy being pregnant, followed by Katey Sagal losing her child to a miscarriage, and the entire storyline being made into an elaborate dream sequence.
    • The character Jim Jupiter from "Dead Men Don't Do Aerobics" who touted himself as "the healthiest man in Chicago" who later died after just two weeks of adapting Peg's unhealthy eating/smoking habits looks worse given the backlash over many controversial fad diets and eating disorders, including orthorexia which Jupiter could be looked at as suffering from.
    • The episode where Peggy has a pirate fantasy based on the Romance Novel she was reading has Marcy's character being constantly ridiculed for her supposedly gender-ambiguous looks, outright named "Cabin Boy/Girl". To the point where she has to outright expose her breasts to Jefferson's character to prove that she's a woman and still has to keep insisting that she is one, as they're apparently so small that he still can't tell. Nowadays, it just looks like cruel mockery of a non-binary person. In fact, all of the jokes and taunts about Marcy's appearance—to the point of being repeatedly mistaken for a man—come across like this.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: The Christmas Episode from 1992 features a flashback to Christmas 1974 of "young" Kelly pointing to "baby" Bud and asking her doll "Is that Daddy? No, he won't ever be anybody's Daddy." In real life, David Faustino would become the father of a baby girl in November of 2015.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • On the season six episode, "The Egg and I," Al screams, "I don't wanna be on ABC!" when he rants about his taxes and the possibility of cameoing on a TV show to pay it off. Years later, Al Bundy (or rather, his actor, Ed O'Neill) is now on the ABC sitcom, Modern Family (the actress who plays O'Neill's wife on Modern Family — Sofia Vergara, even mentioned on SNL that it's every Colombian immigrant girl's dream to move to America and marry Al Bundy).
    • In "Kelly Bounces Back" Kelly wanted a job standing in a store window (albeit as a mannequin). By the time she gets that job in "Driving Mr. Boondy", she hates it.
    • All Les Yay jokes about Marcy, once Amanda Bearse being a lesbian was common knowledge.
    • In "Sleepless in Chicago," Jefferson invites Al to a memorabilia auction. Al says he prefers to live in the present, only to then excitedly say, "Ooh, Dragnet's on!" O'Neil would be cast as Joe Friday on the short-lived 2003 remake, which also aired on ABC.
    • In the episode when Peg reveals she's pregnant, Peg says "Oh Al, isn't this a dream?" Al's response? "It better be!" Ten episodes later...
    • One early episode has Steve going to a banker's meeting where they were trying to find out a way to get rid of the penny. Nowadays, there is a stronger ongoing argument in favor of eliminating the penny in the United States and many other countries. In fact, the penny was taken out of circulation in Canada in early 2013.
    • Real life example but S6E8's episode "God's Shoes", has Al try to market "toe-shoes." This gets shot down as a stupid idea. Five years later the Vibram FiveFingers gets released to the market.
    • The season 8 episode, "No Pot to Pease In", features a TV show that has exaggerated versions of the Bundys/D'Arcys. The following year would see the premiere of Unhappily Ever After, a show infamous for being considered a blatant rip-off of Married... with Children (one of its co-creators was also the co-creator of Married...).
    • In one episode, Peg mentioned the new series "Oprah After The Show-prah". This was years before they really did make a Oprah After The Show series on the Oxygen Network.
    • As seen on the main page, Marcy was sometimes mistaken for Bruce Jenner because of her boyish looks. Well, now Bruce is Caitlyn...
    • One two part episode had Peggy feuding with a woman who had the last name Bender. Peggy's actress would later have lots of fights with an entirely different Bender.
    • One episode had a TV program announce that today's discussion would be Transgender women and which bathroom they should use. This is still a political controversy in the Untied States over twenty years later, with so-called "bathroom bills" being debated throughout the country.
    • Season 1's 11th episode "Nightmare on Al's Street" has Peg mention that Al can't attend Chicago Cubs games at Wrigley Field anymore because he once interfered with a ball that ultimately kept the Cubs out of the World Series. This is pretty much the description of the real-life Steve Bartman incident in the 2003 National League Championship Series, the round right before the World Series (with the only major exception being that Bartman isn't banned from Wrigley - rather, he just really wants to avoid the spotlight).note 
    • The episode "Rain Girl" had Kelly working at a news station (as a meteorologist, only for her to screw it up with her inability to read.) Years later, Christina Applegate would be in a role where she would actually achieve success working at a different news station, only this time as a lead anchorwoman.
    • One episode had Al try to invent shoes with lights that would allow you to see in the dark. Apparently someone saw this when they came up with Brightfeet slippers. (Only with LED lights rather than industrial lights connected to a car battery with cable jumpers.)
    • Any time Al comes out on top in a physical altercation might qualify as this knowing that Ed O'Neill has been studying Brazilian Jiu-jitsu for over 20 years.
    • Al's favorite TV show is Psycho Dad.
    • In their first Christmas Episode, a news report on a rival mall to Al's mentions that the ill-fated Santa parachuting into the mall's parking lot is wearing sneakers from a store called Weejee's.
    • In "God's Shoes", Al learns the reason Knots Landing was never cancelled is because God loves that show. 18 months later, the show would air its last episode.
    • In "Kelly Does Hollywood: Part 2", one of the posters hanging on the wall at the TV studio is for a show called "Amos and Andrew", starring a black man and white man. Over a year later, a film called Amos & Andrew, starring Nicolas Cage and Samuel L. Jackson, was released.
    • In the early episode, "Born to Walk", Al gripes about having to go to the DMV over an expired license and describing what a horrible experience it is. A later episode, "Driving Mr. Boondy", we actually see why it's so bad (even with the wild exaggerations aside.)
    • The season 3 episode "The Computer Show" depicts computers as a useless fad. By the last few seasons of the show, MWC would advertise its own website during the credits.
    • The working title of the show was "Not The Cosbys". As of 2018, Ed O'Neill's career is still thriving while Bill Cosby's career is essentially over after his sexual assault conviction.
    • As mentioned underneath Creator's Pet, Michelle Tanner was the executives' inspiration behind the creation of Seven. Not only did Seven quickly become a much-hated character, but around the same time he was being written out of the show, Michelle's own Scrappydom was reaching a fever pitch.
    • In "Psychic Avengers" when Al was bragging how much money he was making from his psychic hotline and that the family was stupid for not knowing about it, he says that Bud wouldn't know that the house was on fire if it wasn't on Nick at Nite. The show itself would air briefly on Nick at Nite in 2011.
    • "Assault and Batteries" has Al thwarted in his attempt to see the John Wayne movie Hondo, which he claims airs "once every 17 years." Just months after the episode aired, the movie was released on VHS.
    • In "Take My Wife, Please", Al asks Death to take whoever wrote the The Facts of Life theme. One of the co-writers was Alan Thicke, who would later appear on the show during the last couple of seasons.
    • In "A Babe in Toyland", children's television host Kelly demands to have purple M&Ms, only to be told that they don't exist. If she had waited another five years, then she would have gotten her wish.
    • In "Impo-Dent", to get back at Marcy wrecking Steve's Mercedes, Al tells Steve ways to kill his erection, one of which is wondering how Bruce Willis got on television. This was right before Die Hard came out and made Willis a megastar, but when the episode aired, he was mostly known for being the guy on Moonlighting and that one Bartles & James wine cooler ad.
    • One episode has Bud offering some of Kelly’s bath water for sale as a throwaway line. In mid-2019, Instagram star Belle Delphine began selling her own bath water.
    • "Kelly Knows Something" has Al being rejected as a contestant for a sports trivia game show due to being so unlikable, his personality is ranked somewhere between "Joe Piscopo and the fat kid on the Head of the Class." Said fat kid would eventually become a powerful player at Nickelodeon, having created the hit shows Drake & Josh and iCarly.
    • The episode "Fair Exchange" where Kelly is upstaged by a more popular French foreign exchange student is basically the plotline of the 2002 film Slap Her... She's French.
    • Some earlier episodes had Bud predicting that Kelly would become a waitress/a Burger Fool due to her lack of skills and intelligence. These predictions eventually came true in "Kelly Doesn't Live Here Anymore" and "Kids! Wadaya Gonna Do?", respectively.
  • Hollywood Homely:
    • Bud is depicted as very unattractive and someone that only a woman with no standards would date or have sex with despite being played by the not remotely ugly David Faustino.
    • Marcy counts as the female equivalent, as the actress playing her, Amanda Bearse, was far from unattractive. For example, in the episode "The Egg and I", she shows off her body in lingerie; Al screams "I'm blind! My eyes, my eyes!" (and later, "Peg, I'm blind! I saw it again and saw darkness!") but the studio audience goes ballistic with Wolf Whistles. To be fair, it's Al who's the one doing it. Shortly after Steve left Marcy, Bud made more than a few attempts to date her.
    • Peggy wasn't considered attractive by her husband. Many fans though found Peggy Bundy incredibly hot. Of course, in this case, there's plenty of people in-universe who found Peg plenty hot. It was simply Al feeling like sex with his wife was little more than another chore at this point combined with finding her utter uselessness a major turn off (on the odd occasion she actually does something, like preparing the backyard for their Fourth of July barbecue, Al can't keep his hands off her.)
      • With Bud, Marcy, and Peggy, it seems that the problem is really their personalities rather than their looks: Bud is an obnoxious pervert, Peggy is lazy and clingy, and Marcy is histrionic and stuck up.
    • The three fat women, Alexis, Pauline and Monique from "Ride Scare". While depicted as unattractive due to their size and diet, the three of them are Big Beautiful Woman (particularly Monique, the blonde) as well as being models (for Victoria's Big Secret) and not at all unpleasant in personality like the other fat women Al encounters. More than one upload of "Ride Scare" on YouTube has drawn comments from viewers who find Alexis, Monique and Pauline hot.
    • "The Razor's Edge" has Steve growing a beard after coming back from a conference. While Marcy is immediately turned off by it to the point of her refusing to sleep with him until he shaves, he looked rather handsome with it.
  • Ho Yay: Al seems to catch a lot of this:
    • In "Dance Show", Al meets the husband of a man that Peg would go out dancing with (played by Dan Castellaneta). Upon learning that he cooks, cleans, has a job and loves sports, he tells him he loves him and even flirts with him after he makes him dinner.
    • In "Heels on Wheels", Al tells Peg and Kelly that he was flirting with this "tall, willowly brunette" who came into the shoe store, who turned out to be a transvestite. To make matters even worse, not only do the women proceed to make fun of him, but it was Kelly who sent him to the store in the first place.
    • An excerpt from "So This Is How Sinatra Felt":
      Peggy: You wouldn't leave me for another woman?
      Al: Of course I wouldn't leave you for another woman! I don't want a woman!
    • In "Her Cups Runneth Over", his only objection when he and Steve are mistaken for a gay couple is that he feels he could do better than Steve.
    • Al and Jefferson get this a lot. One episode had the men hugging over something the former was grateful that the latter did, only for him to chide his friend that what he's feeling "better be dimes in your pockets", to which Jefferson replies "Mostly". Another episode had Al stroking his arm (due to him using a moisturizer) and complimenting its softness which ends in what can easily be seen as mutual flirting and Held Gazes...only to switch back up and start talking about football.
    • Another episode had a Noodle Incident where Al accidentally went into a gay bar, claiming that he had no knowledge of what the song "Macho Man" (which he liked and was dancing to) was really about and his belief that all the women in the club were just in the bathroom together.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • As much as Al can be an utter jackass, you can't help but feel sorry for him on account of just how miserable his life is: a crappy job, a layabout wife, two kids who don't respect him, a Straw Feminist neighbor who will interfere when he does something she dislikes, and an entire neighborhood (and possibly universe) who curses the day he was born.
    • Marcy as well. As much as an uptight, shrill and neurotic snob she is, it's discussed plenty of times what a rotten childhood she had. Her parents were insensitive and verbally abusive, especially her mother, who predicted that she would never get married and shamelessly played favorites with her sister, and she had no friends and was very lonely. As an adult, her first husband and true love left her out of the blue, and she remarried a pretty-boy who turned out to basically be the male version of Peg. It's also shown that while she may have a better job than Al at the bank, in their own ways they treat her just as badly as Gary treats Al.
  • Les Yay:
    • Played for laughs between Marcy and Peggy in the episode "Live Nude Peg", when Peggy complains that she's lonely:
      Peggy: It's been so long since someone touched me.
      Marcy: (puts her arm around Peggy) Poor Peggy. I'm so sorry.
      Peggy: You know, Marcy, that boyish cut really becomes you.
      Marcy: (takes her arm away) Well, Peggy, there must be something you can do. With Al.
    • And then there were the moments involving Kelly. One episode involved Marcy and Peg getting tickets to a stage performance of The Jeffersons and dragging their husbands along with them. Al and Jefferson forced Bud and Kelly to go in their place, disguised as them. At one point during the performance, Marcy starts talking dirty to Kelly, who she thinks is Jefferson, and mentions what they could do while the lights are out. The play ends with this exchange.
      Bud: I can't believe this actually worked. Mom was so convinced I was Dad, she actually picked my pocket during the show.
      Kelly: What are you complaining about? At least you didn't get a hickie.
    • When Al joined a softball league and went on a road trip, he forced Bud and Kelly to fill in for him at the shoe store. They discuss the effects the job had on them:
      Bud: I don't know what it is, but something about this job makes me want to start telling old high school football stories.
      Kelly: Yeah? Well, something about this job makes me want to start reading Big 'Uns.
    • In "What Goes Around Comes Around," there's a scene of Marcy dancing with a girl.
  • Misaimed Fandom:
    • The show tends to attract fans from men's rights activists circles, who see Al Bundy as a hero standing up for traditional masculinity, not realizing that the show is parodying such notions by showing Al as a loser whose situation is as much a result of his own shortcomings as it is the result of women, fat people, the government, etc. The showrunners were well aware of this segment of their fandom while the show was on the air and mocked it by:
      • Creating NO MA'AM (National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood), a group of slovenly losers who do little more than drink beer and complain about their wives with Al as their leader. Whenever they get the idea to try and assert their masculinities, they usually end up in jail, publicly humiliated, or both.
      • Making Al a fan of Psycho Dad, a show that is about an ultraviolent lunatic who's also a "durn good pa", that eventually goes off the air because the star becomes disturbed by the kinds of people who like his work.
    • The show attracted a similar following in right-wing circles in general, complete with the GOP-leaning National Review praising it for its alleged conservative values, which is also quite surprising given the number of jokes aimed at the expense of Republicans and conservatives in general (to the point Marcy, Al's snobbish Arch-Enemy, is stated to be a registered Republican). Ironically, when the show was originally on the air, the mainstream right considered it immoral trash (as illustrated by Terry Rakolta's boycott against the series during the third season, which ultimately backfired).
    • Plenty of times, you will see Peg on lists of "Great/Best Television Moms". While Peg is indeed a great source of humor and certainly easy on the eyes, she is shown to be a dreadful mother. Aside from ignoring Bud or Kelly whenever either is sick or upset, she is known for giving dubious advice, regularly starving them and openly mocking them. Even when they were younger, incidents of her neglectful or otherwise lackluster parenting include putting makeup on Kelly when she had the chicken pox and sending her off to school and leaving Buck to babysit Bud instead of an actual sitter. This is lampshaded in-universe as well by both of them on occasion.
    • The show has been airing on Logo, a LGBT-themed cable channel, since 2019 in spite of there being several episodes that either have uncomfortable jokes about the LGBTQ (season three's "Her Cups Runneth Over") or are outright homophobic/transphobic (season ten's "Calendar Girl").
  • Nausea Fuel: Many things about Al and the Bundy home itself. His notorious foot odor is enough to not kill a plant but to make humans sick, including an assassin sent to kill him.
    • The house, aside from occasionally crawling with cockroaches and mice, but the cabinets in the kitchen is used so infrequently, given Peg's lackluster housekeeping, that there's a bat living inside of them.
    • Another episode had Peg grooming Al to go to a family wedding. After brushing his teeth, she then uses the toothbrush on his underarms, only to bemoan about her not doing a good job and then using the same brush on his teeth again!
  • No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: A woman's attempts to boycott the show succeeded only in making it more well-known.
  • Once Original, Now Common: In a world with crude shows that live to make censors and Moral Guardians cry like Family Guy, South Park, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it's hard to believe that this show and the early Simpsons pretty much started the trend of censor-pushing sitcoms.
  • Production-Related Period Piece: The episode "Assault and Batteries" was originally broadcast in 3D. As such, it makes a number of jokes about 3D throughout the episode. The fact that it was aired in 3D isn't indicated during syndication airings or (possibly) the DVD releases, so the jokes during the episode no longer make sense.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
    • Pamela Anderson (often appearing in Al's dreams as a nameless bimbo, as seen in "Al with Kelly" and part two of the episode "Route 666,"note ) Debbe Dunning, Milla Jovovich, Chip Esten, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Dorff (both of whom were in the same episode playing Bud's friends), Matt LeBlanc, Joey Lauren Adams, Kari Wuhrer, Eric Dane, Bill Maher (as the host of a game show called You Can't Miss), Keri Russell, Dean Norris, Dot Jones, Michael Clarke Duncan (as a security guard), Julie Benz, Lisa Robin Kelly, David Boreanaz (as one of Kelly's many boyfriends, you might remember him as the one who got beat up by Al in a movie theater), Jane Lynch... all before the roles that made them famous.
    • A behind-the-scenes crew example: Director of Photography Thomas W. Markle became much more famous as the father of a duchess.
    • Mr. Mallman in "You Better Watch Out" is played by Supermarket Sweep host David Ruprecht.
    • In the popular "It's A Bundyful Life" Christmas Episode two-parter, among the children who Al "babysits" to earn extra money includes Tim Eyester, who went on to play Sponge Harris on Salute Your Shorts and Thomas Ian Nicholas, who went on to star in hit films Rookie of the Year and American Pie.
    • "Baby Makes Money" features Charlie Brill as Uncle Eugene, a doomed prison inmate. A few years later, he wound up completely fine as the Police Captain on Silk Stalkings.
    • Artie the pizza delivery boy in one episode is played by Jay Anthony Franke, who would later be more known for voicing JC Denton and Paul Denton in Deus Ex.
  • The Scrappy: Seven, who was intended to become a permanent addition to the cast. However, the fans despised him at once and the writers realized that the show's humor became very uncomfortable when a child was around. Before season seven closed out, he went the way of Chuck Cunningham on Happy Days (climbed up the stairs and never came down again). Later episodes have Seven's face on a milk carton (even though it was implied that his parents didn't want him back, which is why they left him with the Bundys) and no one noticing or caring that he's gone.
  • Seasonal Rot: Season seven when Seven was brought in to the Bundy house after being left by his parents was not liked by fans or even the cast. The show did return to its former glory in season eight, but, ratings-wise, the show took a nosedive (and things got worse when FOX changed its timeslot and other sitcoms like The Simpsons, Martin, and Living Single were becoming popular).
    • Season 11 was another low point as both the creators had left and the show became more sentimental in their absence. The sudden cancellation also prevented the series from having a real conclusion, ending on a whimper.
  • Signature Scene: Al's hilariously crass yet accurate explanation of how advertising and marketing for companies work in "Kelly Breaks Out".
  • Special Effects Failure: Whenever Al or anyone else is thrown about/punched across the room or otherwise involved in physical comedy/pain, it is obvious that it is a not-too-lifelike dummy in its place. Among the most telling ones were with Al in the "Business Still Sucks" episode where "he" is thrown across the room for mistaking Marcy's female muscle, Dot for being a man and even more telling is in the "Just Married... With Children" episode where he and Peg are on a game show and "she" is being swirled around on one of the games, a giant spinning wheel, viewers can easily see it is just a bundle of clothing and a red wig. In fact, sometimes the effects were so laughably bad, it would appear they were aiming for Stylistic Suck (they did eventually Flanderize themselves into a farce.)
  • Squick:
    • While it could be chalked out to Values Dissonance, a lot of episodes had minors juxtaposed with sexual situations:
      • "Fair Exchange" has a French foreign exchange student played by Milla Jovovich be more popular than Kelly and was at one point groped by a group of guys. Even though her character, Yvette, is supposed to be a high school senior like Kelly, Jovovich was at the time just thirteen.
      • In "How to Marry a Moron, Part II", Bud says that Kelly lost her virginity in 1979. It's stated in other episodes that Kelly was born in 1971. Do the math and puke. (And no, Bud doesn't sound like he's kidding.)
      • Another last season episode, "Requiem For a Chevyweight" has a flashback to the Bundys in the 70s featuring a toddler Kelly and infant Bud. For some reason, they thought it would be funny to have baby Bud masturbating.
    • One episode found no better way to show how much of a loser (and malnourished) Al was than having him make a sandwich out of toothpaste. When he appears to comtemplate eating it, the live audience audibly groans, with one audience member being heard clearly (and sounding genuinely concerned) saying "Don't do it, Al..."
  • Strawman Has a Point:
    • Al's fight with the Mall Santa in "It's A Bundyful Life" is joked about as a case of Never My Fault. While Al could've asked him to tone it down in a more polite fashion, he never actually threatened the Mall Santa so trying to punch Al for it was both an act of aggression and highly unprofessional since he was dressed as Santa in front of kids. Al punching the guy in the stomach was simply him acting in self-defense, and while the kids were upset realizing he wasn't the real Santa, the other guy should've been blamed when he escalated it far beyond what was necessary.
    • The episode "I Want My Psycho Dad", where a violent comedy was cancelled, has Al point out that he grew up watching violent cartoons but he's never done anything overly violent himself.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song:
    • The theme song (which is a real song. It's called "Love and Marriage" and it was sung by Ol' Blue-Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra) is replaced with a cheery, instrumental soundalike song in the Hulu broadcasts and on the DVD release. Hulu eventually got the rights to use "Love and Marriage" straightened out, but the filler themesong still shows up on an episode here and there. The show's really just not the same without the original theme.
    • "Married...Without Children" plays a generic soundalike to The Beastie Boys "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" during Kelly's party at the Rhodes'.
    • In syndication, later episodes, and on DVD, Queen's "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions" were replaced with generic soundalikes due to music licensing issues.
    • "How Bleen Was My Kelly" uses a guitar riff that sounds very similar to the one used in "Black or White" by Michael Jackson as the episode features Al morphing into other people, similar to the effect featured at the end of the song's music video.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: It wasn't the show's fault, as they weren't told they were canceled till after the final episode aired, but two of Season 11's episodes could've functioned as series finales had they not had the Reset Button ending, these two being "The Stepford Peg",note  and "Damn Bundys"note 
  • Ugly Cute: The benevolent aliens from "Married...With Aliens" who used Al's socks as fuel to save the world.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: The portrayal of Jerry Springer in "No Ma'am". At the time the episode was made, Springer's talk show was much more mainstream and dealt with social issues, hence the portrayal of Springer as the "Masculine Feminist". It was later that the show became associated with freaks and shock value, so the episode's portrayal no longer makes sense.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: Al is a classic example of an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist but his life is just so horrible that after a while you can't help feeling sorry for him, more so than the series writers probably intended. Even though his current life is supposed to be depicted as Laser-Guided Karma for how he acted in high school, it's shown repeatedly throughout the series both his parents were horrendous role models and his life was bad until high school.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: Al is probably the biggest loser ever in-universe, but try telling that to the studio audience. Each of the main characters were typically greeted with applause upon entering as the seasons wore on, but Al was first. Most notably, one episode had Al making a sandwich out of toothpaste, and when he appears to comtemplate eating it, one audience member can be heard clearly (and sounding genuinely concerned) saying "Don't do it, Al...". In the last few seasons, the audience would cheer uproariously every time Al would get the upper hand, even if temporarily, such as commandeering Marcy's backyard or dumping a truckload of wet cement on Marcy's Mercedes.
  • Values Dissonance: Even with the controversy of the show (or just plain Black Comedy of its nature), some elements of the show, given its genre and prime-time hours (and the basic cable channel it was on), wouldn't fly nowadays.
    • In the first couple of seasons, Peg smoked like a chimney.
    • While it was only for a few episodes and with that blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments, Kelly wore a bomber jacket with a Confederate flag patch on it.
    • An especially bad one involving Bud when he decides to get revenge on a girl who's been stringing him along in the hopes of making another guy jealous. He convinces the guy—who couldn't care less about the girl—to entice her into meeting him under the bleachers for sex. Later, we see the girl emerging from the bleachers, adjusting her clothes, completely unaware that she just had sex with Bud, as we see him coming out a few seconds later. As a YouTube commentator put it: "Why is the audience cheering the fact that Bud just RAPED that girl?"
    • Along the same lines, anytime Al had sex with Peg against his will (or vice versa), or Bud was grabbed by a fat woman and forced to have sex with her. Played for laughs, but would be viewed as spousal rape and female-on-male rape, respectively, today.
    • Also, in the episode "Her Cups Runneth Over"note  has Steve ogling a mannequin dressed in a leather mini-skirt and match pasties, which he then begins to poke at. Al wanders over, comments to him "Steve, aren't you ashamed of yourself?" for doing it, which makes him reply back, "Oh, come on, Al; she was asking for it! You can see the way she's dressed!"
    • Both of the episodes "Requiem for a Dead Barber" and "Calendar Girl" would cause a lot of controversy and backlash if aired today. The former can come off as homophobic (particularly the part where Al complaining to his friends about their ridiculous hairstyles and saying how they need to put their heads under a hose and "wash the gay away") and the latter's ending (where Bud learns that his dream girl Cristal Connors was born a man and all of the NO MA'AM members and Al's shoe store rival big Floyd are completely squicked out, Bud's classmate Little Floyd laughs at him and Bud is left all alone and "frozen" in shock) can be seen as extremely transphobic.
    • Speaking of transphobia, the show probably couldn't get away with all the jokes about Marcy being a man or being confused for a man anymore, now that misgendering is such a sensitive issue.
    • The closing credits of "I'm Going To Sweatland" has the one Asian Elvis (who's implied to be Japanese) listed as "Oriental Elvis". It's highly unlikely that this word would be used on television these days.
    • "Teacher's Pet" has a subplot of Al wrapping empty cardboard boxes to use as a decoy present to get into kids' birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese so he could eat for a change. The plot can still be done nowadays, but not without at least one instance of Mistaken for Pedophile.
    • In "How Green Was My Apple", Marcy insults the Bundys using terminology like "mud people" and "aboriginal behavior". Terms like those and others that denigrate First Nations peoples are now unacceptable on broadcast television.
    • One of the favorite put-downs Kelly and her friends loved to use for other girls was "slut", ironic as the term usually means promiscuous woman, and Kelly and her friends were proudly promiscuous. They meant it as a derogatory term for any girl they hated, but considering how over the years it has been co-opted by toxic misogynists to mean almost any woman who owns her sexuality and/or won't sleep with them, it's unlikely such a word would be used with such frequency today.
    • Bud could barely think about anything but sex, and the only reason he didn't have hundreds of partners like Kelly is that he tended to turn women off. It didn't stop him from trying to have as much of it as possible, making the only real difference between he and Kelly their success rates. And in fact, at the time, sitcom men were typically portrayed as having a new sex partner every week. But Kelly was endlessly made fun of for her "sluttiness" and was the topic of endless jokes about her sex and dating life.
  • Values Resonance:
    • In "Teacher's Pet", Bud is dating his very attractive teacher. Once Al, of all people, learns of the whole thing, he does the right thing and calls the cops to have her arrested. While the scene never loses hilarity due to Al accusing the wrong woman, thereby making Bud look like he slept with an old woman, and the hilarious cracks he makes at her age while chewing her out, this is surprising due to the fact both Double Standard Rape: Female on Male and Teacher/Student Romance are defied given the time period. While the former is still present, if not as frequently, the latter would continue to be portrayed as romantic in other shows in the 90s before the power dynamic came under scrutiny.
    • As mentioned above, Al Bundy defends the presence of violent comedy saying he's never done anything overly violent himself despite having grown up on the sorts. This type of issue has become increasingly scrutinized more than ever with people actively seeking out things from older popular TV shows to be offended by. Many of the supporters saying that they grew up listening to these jokes and haven't let it shape their world views because they know the line between laughing at a funny joke and cheering on the rhetoric.
  • The Woobie: Bud is this more often than not, as is Buck as he got older. Al is also occasionally this in addition to being a Jerkass Woobie.

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