History WesternAnimation / FIsForFamily

** Frank makes a public declaration of love for Sue with an affirmation that he believes in their marriage while he is being held hostage at the airport, inviting Tecumseh X. [=DuBois=] to shoot him. Tecumseh does shoot him.

* RealSongThemeTune: "Come and Get Your Love" by Redbone.
** In the season 4 episode, "R is for Rosie," Frank cuts the regular theme song off (which is playing on a radio) as it is beginning. The opening credits for the episode then show Rosie flying through the air like Frank, to the tune of "Shining Star" by Earth, Wind and Fire.

** The Murphy family ends the series [[spoiler: on reasonably high notes. Sue has a successful business, and Kevin is back with Alice (though her OverprotectiveDad has now given him a "stay away from my daughter!" warning). The kids' Christmas presents are a reflection of their parents' CharacterDevelopment and learning to accept their kids for who they are rather than who Frank and Sue want them to be. Kevin gets an electric guitar amplifier, Bill finally gets his new hockey stick, and Maureen gets a mortician's playset. Despite spending his morning in his usual trademark rage over his job and his father's memory, Frank finally starts to make peace with his life and realizes that his family is the most important thing he has. The final scene in the series is an almost exact re-creation of the first scene, only Frank chooses to ignore the phone this time and have a genuinely happy Christmas dinner with his family.]]

* LoveRedeems: Deconstructed. Both Frank and Big Bill see their wives as a balancing point that stops them from being completely irredeemable. However, it's not really enough to redeem them and it's a weak justification for how they treat their offspring. It's just a benchmark for them and a way of telling themselves that they aren't completely irredeemable despite beating their children and inflicting all sorts of life-long trauma.

** [[spoiler:At the same time, Sue might be the thing stopping Frank from being as bad as his dad, it's not enough and Frank realizes through Sue that he needs to do more to be a better parent than just [[WantsAPrizeForBasicDecency restricting his abuse to just verbal insults]].]]

* LoveRedeems: Deconstructed. Both Frank and Big Bill see their wives as a balancing point that stops them from being completely irredeemable. In his narration about his childhood, Frank says that it wasn't the realization that Big Bill was beating his own son that made his father see that he had hit rock bottom; Big Bill saw the disappointment in his wife's eyes after beating Frank and he was immediately ashamed of himself after falling from grace. [[spoiler:At the same time, Sue might be the thing stopping Frank from being as bad as his dad, it's not enough and Frank realizes through Sue that he needs to do more to be a better parent than just restricting his abuse to just verbal insults.]]

** The public schools in Rustvale are named after victims of assassination or murder, such as JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Huey Long, Anton Cermak, [[UsefulNotes/CharlesManson Sharon Tate]], and Archduke Franz Ferdinand. There are also a number of adult learning institutions named after musical artists who died in vehicular crashes, such as Patsy Cline and Buddy Holly.

* LoveRedeems: Deconstructed. Both Frank and Big Bill see their wives as a balancing point that stops them from being completely irredeemable. In his narration about his childhood, Frank says that it wasn't the realization that Big Bill was beating his own son that made his father see that he had hit rock bottom; Big Bill saw the disappointment in his wife's eyes after beating Frank and he was immediately ashamed of himself after falling from grace. [[spoiler:At the same time, Sue might be the thing stopping Frank from being as bad as his dad, and while Frank is trying to be better by restricting his abuse to just verbal insults, it's not enough and Frank realizes through Sue that he needs to do more to be a better parent.]]

* LoveRedeems: Deconstructed, both Frank and Big Bill see their wives as a balancing point that stops them from being completely irredeemable. In his narration about his childhood, Frank says that it wasn't the realization that he was beating his own son that made him see that he had hit rock bottom, Big Bill saw the disappointment in his wife's eyes after beating Frank and he was immediately ashamed of himself after falling from grace. [[spoiler: At the same time, Sue might be the thing stopping Frank from being as bad as his dad, and while Frank is trying to be better by restricting his abuse to just verbal insults, it's not enough and Frank realizes through Sue that he needs to do more to be a better parent.]]
* TheMafia: As it was in real life, organized crime is heavily entrenched in society in the early 70's, and Rustvale is no exception. Both the city government and the local trade unions are either directly led by, or working with the mob, headed by Lou "Snub-Nose" Gugliardi. While the Murphy family doesn't deal much with them, other than Frank negotiating with the union, it becomes part of Rosie's character arc after he's elected alderman, and is increasingly forced to come into conflict with the corrupt mayor and his mob supporters. [[spoiler: This finally comes to a head in season 5, where Rosie and Bob Pogo team up to expose the mayors corruption, and Gugliardi outright tries to murder them]].

** BLABLA, the left-wing radical group responsible for the hijacking at the Mohican runway in season 2, is based on the Symbionese Liberation Army. The leader, Tecumseh X. Dubois, is based on Donald [=DeFreeze=], the founder of the SLA, while the young blonde woman is based on Patty Hearst, the wealthy heiress of the Hearst media empire. However, the real life SLA operated in Southern California rather than the Northeast in which the show is set. The hijacking is based on the real-life hijacking of a Mohawk airliner at Westchester County Airport in 1972.

** Sue's WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant father cites Frank being Irish-American as one of the reasons why he hates him, showing how Irish-Americans were still targeted by Anglo-Americas during this time.

** Sue's WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant father cites Frank being Irish-American as one of the reasons why he hates him, showing how Irish-Americans were still targeted by Anglo-America during this time.

** Sue's WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant father cites Frank being Irish-American as one of the reasons why he hates him, showing how Irish-Americans were still considered AcceptableEthnicTargets by Anglo-America during this time.

** Frank panicking and locking his car doors when a "black" man (actually TV anchor Jim Jeffords in blackface) asks him for money, because he is stranded on a dark street with his son, is played on TV during Jeffords's newscast that night, making Frank look racist. Rosie sees the broadcast, and tells the rest of the Mohican ground crew that Frank can't be trusted, making a strike all but inevitable.

** Frank panicking and locking his car doors when a "black" man (actually TV anchor Jim Jeffords in blackface) asks him for money is played on TV during Jeffords's newscast that night, making Frank look racist. Rosie sees the broadcast, and tells the rest of the Mohican ground crew that Frank can't be trusted, making a strike all but inevitable.

** Sue's answering machine that she wins after setting a sales record for Plast-A-Ware provides several such moments that come back to bite Frank because he is unaware the tape is still rolling. Frank uses a remote-listening function to demonstrate the answering machine to his co-workers at the airport while trying to defuse a potential strike. Among the moments that are caught on tape are a message from Bob Pogo calling the ground crew "baggage-handling donkeys," which only upsets them further and leads them to mock Frank and Bob. Frank then hears a message from Vivian, where she reveals that Frank had told her that Sue was declining an offer for a full-time job, which Frank had lied about because he didn't want Sue working outside the home and leaving him to take care of the kids and dinner, without even telling Sue that Vivian had made the offer. Frank realizes that he's in 'very' deep trouble and races home to try to intercept the message, only to see Sue's face full of TranquilFury, and he realizes that she already knows that he lied.

** Frank has to deal with realistic and difficult concerns with a middle class family, but finds little sympathy from Rosie, who tells him that his lowest is still several levels above what the black community has to deal with.

* TheDanza:
** Eileen Murphy shares a name with her voice actress, Eileen Fogarty.
** Nią Roosevelt is voiced by her Real Life counterpart, Nia Renee Hill. Though the Roosevelts aren't shown interacting with the Murphys other than Frank and Rosie, there is a scene in the last season where Bill and Nia see each other from separate cars during a tense scene where Rosie is being harassed by the police, alluding to their future relationship. Hill also voices Georgia Roosevelt, Rosie's wife and Nia's mother.

** Nią Roosevelt is voiced by her Real Life counterpart, Nia Renee Hill. Though the Roosevelts aren't shown interacting with the Murphys other than Frank and Rosie, there is a scene in the last season where Bill and Nia see each other from separate cars during a tense scene where Rosie is being harassed by the police, alluding to their future relationship.

* InkSuitActor: Kevin and Sue bear a fairly strong resemblance to Justin Long and Laura Dern. However it’s completely averted with Frank who looks nothing like Bill Burr. However Bill Murphy is based on Bill Burr and looks like what you’d picture a childhood version of him to look like.

** Despite being a parent himself, Frank's resolution of his childhood traumas comes when he finally understands, having been disappointed in the resolution of his father's [[LastWords cryptic "Box 16" remark]], that his parents were "two messed-up people who fucked and made me. And nothing more."

** Alaquippa Ed points out to Frank that [[spoiler: Mohican's questionable business practices and lack of employee discipline are why part of why Mohican was in such poor financial shape that it was bought out by Alaquippa.]]

* ArtisticLicenseCars: During the show, numerous cars and trucks baring GAZ, ZIL, and Moskvitch likenesses and names are featured. These were all manufactured in the then-existent [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]] and, [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar for obvious reasons]], were never sold or seen on roads anywhere in the United States, much less upstate New York. Though, since the Cold War is never mentioned once, this could charitably be chalked up as the result of the story taking place in an AlternateTimeline.

** Big Bill. He is dismissive of Frank's complaints about how he raised Frank and Eileen, remembering himself as a good father who tries to pass of his jokes about Frank's masculinity as [[JustKidding]] jokes and chiding Frank for still being too sensitive. His behavior around the family when he first meets them casts doubt on some of Frank's horror stories about his childhood, until his abusive side shows itself when he is at the sporting goods store with Bill. He does show some remorse for his parenting when Bill and Maureen call him out for it, claiming that he didn't know any better about being a father, but he still has a tendency to make it about him rather than his wife and kids.