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Ambiguously Bi / It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

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A great number of the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia gang's actions have homoerotic undertones.

A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples for episodic works shouldn't be added until end of season for the season introducing the ambiguity (or after 3 months, for episodic works without seasons). This is to allow time for the story to develop the character and resolve ambiguity. There is no waiting time for non-episodic works.


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     General 
  • Charlie and Frank have a very strange living arrangement in their apartment. They sleep in the same bed and are committed to continuing that arrangement. They frequently play the game "nightcrawlers," which involves them wriggling around on the ground together. Frank also peeks at Charlie while masturbating.

     Season One 
  • "The Gang Gets Racist"
    • Dennis is flattered by men flirting with him at the bar and changes his personality so they will like him better.
    • Terell, who we later learn is gay, says "I tore his ass apart," to which Mac responds, "I would love to do things like that"
    • Mac's gay cousin tells him he has "come a long way"
  • In "Underage Drinking: A National Concern," Mac and Charlie pass out while drunk and wake up cuddling
  • In "Charlie Has Cancer," though Carmen is a woman, Mac seems to see her as a man and continues a relationship with her
  • In "Charlie Got Molested," Mac is sad that he didn't get molested and attempts to seduce the gym teacher

     Season Two 
  • In "Hundred Dollar Baby," Mac and Dennis train Charlie as an underground street fighter. Mac and Dennis primp Charlie before training by massaging his hand and shoulders respectively. After they insist that Charlie trains without his shirt, they decide to get wasted before they continue training. Charlie motions Dennis to continue the shoulder rub, and Dennis stands suggestively close... while moaning in his ear.

     Season Three 
  • In "Dee and Dennis' Mom Is Dead", the gang tries to make some new friends and get Mistaken for Gay by every guy they approach. They later find two college guys, tie them up and say they're going to shove stuff up their butts to haze them because "that's what friends do."
  • In "The Gang Sells Out" Dennis explains "bottoms," "power bottoms" and "twinks" in graphic detail to Frank and Mac, who listen with great interest. This scene is given a callback in "The Gang Recycles Its Trash," where Dee explains other aspects of gay culture to Frank and later to Dennis. In another episode, Dennis is impressed by Dee's assessment of a gay man and states that he "could never satisfy him."
  • When Frank briefly leaves in "Dennis Looks Like a Registered Sex Offender", Charlie is distraught and makes a plan to get Frank "back into [his] arms." He tells his mother that she doesn't know Frank like he does, and calls her a man-stealer.

     Season Four 
  • Lampshaded in "Mac & Dennis: Manhunters" by Frank, who just can't understand this teabagging, male-nipple-rubbing generation. Also subverted, since Frank immediately chalks it up to the generation gap.
  • In "Mac and Charlie Die," when Charlie fakes his own death, Frank creates a life-sized Charlie doll, pretends that it's him, and possibly has sex with it.
  • In "The Nightman Cometh," Dennis accuses Mac of getting aroused while pretending to rape him.

     Season Five 
  • In "Paddy's Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens," Dennis wears a thong while telling Mac he's wearing it for him while Mac presents a towel that insinuates his ass and his enormous penis, and in a later scene Mac pumps a shotgun up and down before firing its liquid into a kneeling Dennis's awaiting mouth.
  • The title "Mac and Dennis Break Up" jokes that the two are in a relationship
  • In "the Gang Reignites the Rivalry," a couple of the ways Dennis would haze his fellow fraternity members was by sticking the tip of his dick in their mouths for a short amount of time (while they sleep) and shoving bananas up their butts in front of their best friend.

     Season Six 
  • In "Mac Fights Gay Marriage," Charlie and Frank get a civil union, though only for the insurance. They act every bit like a married couple, even when they get divorced in the next episode.
  • In "The Gang Gets a New Member," while working as a school janitor, Charlie volunteers to clean facepaint off of a student by bathing him. The principal nixes the idea, so Charlie suggests the kid should bathe himself while he watches.

     Season Seven 
  • In "Thunder Gun Express", the gang talk excitedly about how the male lead "hangs dong" in the movie. In "The Gang Squashes Their Beefs", Dennis says he likes that the Thunder Gun DVD is unrated because of the possibility the dong scene might be a couple of seconds longer.

     Season Eight 
  • In "The Gang Recycles Their Trash", in a moment of excitement, Mac actually tries to kiss Dennis.
  • In "The Gang Gets Analyzed," Mac picks up a black pen and accuses a therapist of using it to make him think of a penis. He then starts unconsciously stroking and sucking on it. Dennis says that Mac sucks on pens at their apartment so often that he has to hide them.
  • In "Frank's Back in Business", the investors say they paid to have Dennis and Dee both jerked off at a massage parlor, though the genders of the masseuses aren't specified. The bloopers for the scene reveal that Dee's masseuse was a woman too.
  • In "The Gang Dines Out," Charlie and Frank dine out to celebrate their "anniversary" while Mac and Dennis have their monthly dinner together. Each pair acts like a romantic couple. Also in the episode, several characters try to fondle a hostess by shoving a tip down her blouse, but Mac shoves a dollar bill into a male waiter's pant pocket.

     Season Nine 
  • "Flowers for Charlie" features Dennis, Dee, and Mac trying to catch a mouse running within the walls of the bar. When Dennis and Mac are alone, Dennis reveals his idea for a mouse trap: luring it out with cheese and soft music. He plays the song "You're the Inspiration" by Chicago, which they both start swaying along to, staring and smiling suggestively at each other. Mac then starts moving closer to Dennis, which could've led to something, but the moment is ruined when Dee comes into the room, causing Dennis to walk away.
  • "The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 6"
    • An awkward shower wrestling scene between Mac and Dennis is followed immediately by a cut to a strip club. This was done so that the characters could establish that they "aren't gay." Note that this was after a scene imitating the volleyball scene from Top Gun, including the music.
    • Dennis remarks that the film has "four extra seconds on the dong shot"

     Season Ten 
  • Starting around Season 10, Cricket becomes a prostitute catering primarily to men, receiving compensation primarily in beer. By "The Janitor Always Mops Twice", it seems he's stopped faking his enjoyment and started enjoying it for real, as he never asks Charlie for money before assuming they're doing some kind of choke-play fantasy.

     Season Eleven 
  • In "Dee Made a Smut Film," Dee becomes fixated on the main actress's breasts and compulsively keeps talking about them even when telling her how she should be emoting.

     Season Thirteen 
  • In "The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies' Reboot", famous tennis player Martina Navratilova appears to Dee in a hallucination in order to give her a pep talk, much like Charlie hallucinated Wade Boggs in the original episode. Towards the end of the moment, Dee asks Martina if she and Chris Evert (another female tennis player) ever had sexual relations with one another. This makes Dee's declaration of the Waitress being "my Chris Evert" earlier in the episode a little more suspicious in hindsight. To stoke the flames even further, Gail the Snail then declares herself as Dee's "Chris Evert" right after that.

     Season Fourteen 
  • In "The Gang Texts", Charlie, Dennis, and Frank all piss on Mac at various points in the episode while they're visiting the zoo. Yet, it's only when Dennis does it that it gets mistaken for something sexual, when a man walks in on them in the bathroom and assumes it's an encounter from the Grindr app.
    Grindr Dad: You guys grinding?

     Season Sixteen 
  • In "Frank vs. Russia", Dennis reveals that he has a version of the D.E.N.N.I.S. system designed to seduce men. When Mac and Dee ask why, he shushes them and doesn't elaborate further, essentially telling them to move past it. In the same episode, he seems to take sexual pleasure in vibrating anal beads inside Frank against his will, the same anal beads he used for sexting Mac, under the guise of a fake, anonymous boyfriend named Johnny, with the excuse of getting Mac out of the apartment.
    • It's also worth noting that this system for men (called the S.I.N.N.E.D. system) is nowhere near as cruel as the D.E.N.N.I.S. system. While the D.E.N.N.I.S. system involves having sex with, psychologically torturing, and ultimately dumping a woman, the S.I.N.N.E.D. system simply revolves around keeping a man's affections long enough to secure a second date.

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