Characters / It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Charlie Kelly

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Main Character Index
The Gang (Dennis Reynolds, Dee Reynolds, Charlie Kelly, Mac, Frank Reynolds) | The Gang's Families | Recurring Characters | Other Characters

Charles "Charlie" Kelly

"Wildcard, bitches! Yeeee-haw!"

Played By: Charlie Day, Robbie Tucker (young, "A Very Sunny Christmas"), AJ Hudson (dream, "The Gang Turns Black")

Debut: "The Gang Gets Racist"

"I'm probably, like, the weirdest guy in the universe. Probably even weirder than someone from Saturn."

A childhood friend of Mac and later high school friend of Dennis and Dee. He is also Frank's roommate. Charlie does most of the dirty work (referred to as "Charlie Work") at the pub, is borderline illiterate, an alcoholic and substance abuser and is often seen huffing glue and paint. He suffers from deep psychological problems and lives in squalor. An abortion survivor, Charlie has extreme anger issues and often screams to get his point across. He also has a severely unhealthy obsession with "The Waitress", who finds Charlie repulsive and shows no interest in him.

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A-E

• Addled Addict: He started huffing glue when he was a kid, bored when his mom was “entertaining”, leading to an addiction with consuming and inhaling chemicals. It really messed up his brain.
• Affably Evil: He's easily the most approachable member of the Gang, and the closest they have to a "friendly" person.
• Agent Mulder: Has no time for religion, but needs to do all his superstitious rituals before the Super Bowl, believes in cryptids (notably Little Green Ghouls and Leprechauns) and gets the others to believe they’re cursed when bad things keep happening.
• Almighty Janitor: Charlie, who does most of the janitorial jobs around Paddy's, is actually the one keeping the bar afloat through his work ethic and bouts of ingenuity. However, this has also been painfully subverted on occasion, usually due to him attempting to invoke this trope with surprisingly realistic results.
  • "Charlie Work"'s plot is this trope. Charlie ensures a surprise health inspection goes smoothly and brings the bar a good grade.
• Animal Motif: Rodents are a recurring theme in Charlie-centered stories, mainly because he's the bar's exterminator. His mannerisms and quirks have more in common with scavenger animals.
  • There is an episode titled Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats where this trope heavily influences the plot.
• Anti-Hero: In his more humane moments, he is this, being a generally goodhearted guy who is also incredibly stupid and destructive.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: While “Flowers For Charlie” ends up the placebo effect mixed with arrogance, audio books do actually help out his vocabulary as he can’t read and audio is useful. His is also able to focus with the promise of candy as a reward.
• Author Appeal: In-universe, the songs he writes almost always make mention of "spiders, ghouls, and (unintentionally) rape."
• The Baby of the Bunch: While still the Butt-Monkey who is taken advantage of, he’s the closest thing to a Morality Pet the other members of the Gang have, and is constantly referred to as a "kid" despite being the same age as most of them. ^note For reference, Charlie Day is actually older than both Glenn Howerton and Rob McElhenney.
• Back from the Dead: After Mac, Charlie and Dee fake their own deaths ("Mac and Charlie Die Part 2"), they hide in the office of Paddy's. When Frank and Dennis come in, they run out — carrying sparklers — and Sweet Dee yells "Surprise, bitches! We're alive and it's blowing your MINDS right now!"
• Bad "Bad Acting": In the Lethal Weapon sequels he's probably the worst actor as Da Chief, but he's otherwise decent while playing the henchmen.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: This is a recurring theme for Charlie. Notable examples:
  • He and Dennis compete for Sun-Li's affection. When he wins and gets engaged to her, it is revealed she is 12 years old.
  • Finally hooks up with the Waitress in the Season 12 finale, only to immediately show signs of regretting it.
• Been There, Shaped History: He and Dee gave the Jan 6 rioters their iconic costumes, after making them.
• Berserk Button: People having sex with his mom or insulting/threatening the Waitress. Unfortunately for him, both of these things happen fairly frequently.
• Better with Non-Human Company: It really depends on his mood, because he can still be Bad People Abuse Animals. He has an affinity for horses, cats, and rats, and No Social Skills when it comes to people.
• Beware the Silly Ones: When Charlie has been wronged, and is on his A-Game, he can easily become the biggest Chessmaster in the series.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Charlie has some rather... strange eating habits. And his eating habits don't just extend to food — one episode implies that traces of wolf hair and newspaper can be found in his stool.
  • One of his signature dishes is a "Grilled Charlie", which is a toasted sandwich with chocolate, peanut butter, butter, and cheese.
  • He says his favorite food is "milk steak," which his friends have never heard of, but might be a steak boiled in milk.
  • He eats cat food as a sedative.
  • He requests "raw jellybeans" at a restaurant.
  • In a movie theater, he eats spaghetti out of a Ziploc bag.
  • In multiple episodes, he consumes various toxic nonfoods usually starting out as a misunderstanding that becomes a substance abuse issue, such as green paint, or sunscreen.
• Black Comedy Rape:
  • Averted with the Waitress. Throughout the first 12 seasons, Charlie isn't just stalking the Waitress to the point she has a restraining order against him, he is also constantly setting up situations to coerce or trick the Waitress into sleeping with him, since she just doesn't want to. It usually backfires. By the time they actually do have sex, it is completely consensual, and, ironically, worse for him.
  • The songs about the Nightman are specifically to play with this trope: "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."
  • The Gang's insistence that Charlie was molested as a child, and Uncle Jack's predatory behavior towards him even as an adult, is a recurring gag.
  Dennis: He did get molested by his uncle Jack.
  Mac: His uncle Jack got to him pretty good.
  Charlie: No no no, uncle Jack never molested me. I dodged him.
  Dennis: Oh, no, he got you. He got you.
• Bumbling Sidekick: Charlie almost never comes up with the Gang's schemes, and instead generally serves as the incompetent lackey to whichever one of the other four is nearest to him at any given time. Of course, since the other four are also incredibly bumbling, he's hardly ever the only reason why their schemes tend to get screwed up.
• Butt-Monkey: The second most abused member of the group, after Dee. The two of them occasionally bond over their mistreatment from the others.
• The Caretaker:
  • To his mom, which he has marked resentment about. In “Frank Shoots Every Member Of The Gang”, he complains he’s the one who stayed and looks after her, but his sisters got the inheritance of the teeth instead.
  • In a nicer way, he’s also looking after Frank a lot of the time, calming him down with gum when he gets claustrophobic and cat food when he gets into a state about Dee cutting her hair.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: Charlie has been caught masturbating multiple times.
• Chaotic Stupid: Charlie usually degrades into this during the gang's schemes more than the others, to the point he is labeled the "Wild Card" of the group.
• Characterization Marches On: A more subtle example than Dee or Mac. In the early episodes, Charlie's eccentricities were less pronounced, making him look more like an awkward loser than an illiterate lunatic. The later seasons have him fully embrace his Cloudcuckoolander tendencies. There is a logical explanation.
• Chekhov's Gun: Often has some sort of crazy idea, scheme or object whose meaning isn't clear until the very end, as in the episode "The Nightman Cometh."
• The Chessmaster:
  • In "Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom," he orchestrates a Batman Gambit to go on a date with the Waitress.
  • Reaches new heights in "Charlie Work", where a surprise health inspection falls on the day the rest of the Gang decide to try a Zany Scheme involving a steak delivery man and a bunch of chickens. Charlie has to scramble to move the health inspector, the rest of the Gang, and the delivery man to the right spots with pitch-perfect timing so that the health inspector won't notice the pub's innumerable code violations or the delivery man's suspicious grievances, the delivery man will think the pub is actually a steakhouse, and Mac and Dennis can contaminate the delivery man's steaks with chicken feathers. Charlie also has time to set up a Brick Joke by sabotaging a particular barstool Charlie knew Dee would sit on. To drive home the sheer skill this kind of tactical genius would take, the majority of the episode consists of an extended unbroken shot.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Easily the biggest one on the show. His favorite food? "Milk steak". Hobby? Magnets. Likes? Ghouls. ("You know, funny little green ghouls?") Dislikes? People's knees.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: He has managed to grab the attention of multiple attractive women, including Janelle, Ruby, and "Queen of Thrones", but he's only interested in the Waitress.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • In "A Very Sunny Christmas", Charlie repeatedly screams "DID YOU FUCK MY MOM?!" at a mall Santa, and then takes a bite out of his neck.
  • In "The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award", he sings a mostly bleeped-out song.
  • In "Mac & Dennis: Manhunters" Charlie drops the F-bomb. It was (obviously) censored when it aired on TV, and disappointingly censored on the Season 4 DVDs.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: He is a janitor, yet his apartment is frequently described as "a shithole".
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: He is actually aware of it and constantly trying to get away from Uncle Jack, but he makes a “fun” musical about the nightman (i.e his childhood molester) and becoming his abuser. The others try to tell him it sounds like sexual abuse, but he’s having none of it.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: When Frank wants Bonnie as a bang maid, Charlie insults his mom for being a “man stealing whore”.
• Creepy Crossdresser: Subverted. It's revealed that he can only poop while wearing a dress as a result of his mother's coddling. As a result, he typically poops in the women's bathroom, where the cross-dressing is less likely to be challenged or even noticed.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite being childish and ignorant, he can be a vicious Chessmaster when he wants to be. He's also generally the only member of the Gang besides Frank who ever does well in a fight. He possesses a savant-like skill in music and the ability to ice skate, among other things. Hidden genius beneath salient stupidity seems to be his specialty.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: For his... oddities, Charlie can be fairly sharp at times.
• Cuckoosnarker: Sometimes slips into this when faced with Mac's stupidity and Miles Gloriosus antics. A confused Mac actually calls him out on it in "The Gang Goes to Ireland".
  Mac: I can't tell if you're making fun of me or not.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Of The Ditz; his terrible upbringing and his constant usage of drugs and inhalants render him the dumbest member of the Gang. His stupidity often ruins the Gang's plans, such as the time he cut the brakes of the Gang's car.
  • Of the Dogged Nice Guy; he is so enticed by the Waitress that no other woman will catch his interest; in fact, he rejects one in front of the Waitress to demonstrate his love for her. He also goes out of his way to impress her and win her heart; eventually, it gets to the point that he stalks her and invades her house, which forces her to get a restraining order against him. Ultimately, she gives in and has sex with him only because she wants to have a kid. Not ready for fatherhood, Charlie then proceeds to ditch her, which shows how shallow his "love" for her was.
  • Of the innocent idiot, whilst easily the stupidest member of the Gang, for the most part, he is the least morally bankrupt, his stupidity and immaturity granting him a level of innocence the others lack. However, Charlie’s inability to gage the consequences of his actions, mood swings and lack of impulse control also means that he’s easily the most unpredictable, chaotic, and violent member with his go-to response to provocation being to destroy the closest thing to hand and regularly casually attacking the individual in question, with him possessing a disturbingly casual attitude to inflicting harm upon others. This likewise coupled with his stupidity and nonsensical logic often results in situations where the provocation only exists within his mind, leading to him randomly assaulting passers-by. Thus, despite lacking the other member's greed or malice, Charlie manages to be arguably the most dangerous member of the gang. Likewise, underneath his stupidity, Charlie has shown to possess on several occasions a surprisingly vindictive and vicious streak, sometimes even to levels that shock the other members of the gang, making it clear that he’s not a good person and at best only looks better in comparison to the others.
• Delusions of Eloquence: Horribly misuses various legal terms in an attempt to impress the Lawyer.
  Charlie: Look, buddy. I know a lot about the law and various other lawyerings. I'm well educated, well versed. I know that situations like this, real-estate-wise, they're very complex.
  Lawyer: Actually, they're pretty simple. The forms are all standard boilerplate.
  Charlie: Okay, well, we're all hungry. We're gonna get to our hot plates soon enough.
  Lawyer: I can see clearly you know nothing about the law; it seems like you have a tenuous grasp on the English language in general.
  Charlie: Okay, well... filibuster.
  [Dennis hangs his head in embarrassment in the background]
• Department of Redundancy Department: Threatens to smack Dee's face off of her face in the episode "The Nightman Cometh".
• Depending on the Writer: While Charlie is always portrayed as being illiterate, just how exactly his illiteracy manifests tends to vary. In earlier episodes, he can seemingly spell words just fine but is incapable of structuring them coherently (with Dennis even speculating that he's dyslexic). Later episodes drop this in favor of ping-ponging between him spelling words out phonetically, using pictures in place of them, or simply having no understanding of English at all (as in he can't even come close to spelling his own name correctly).
• Disappeared Dad: He never knew his birth father. It may or may not be Frank.
  • Season 15 reveals it's not Frank - Charlie's biological father is an Irish cheesemonger called Shelley Kelly.
• Drunk with Power: Charlie is the Gang's least ambitious member and is, for most of the time, completely happy in his job as a janitor. However, on the rare occasions that he finds himself in a position of power, he completely flies off his rocker and turns into a veritable dictator. (The episode "Charlie Rules the World" is a prime example of this trope in motion).
• Dumbass Has a Point: In "Charlie Work", while preparing for a visit from the health inspector, Charlie discovers the Gang in the midst of a scam involving live chickens, prompting Charlie to tell them to move the chickens away from the front of the bar. When they ask him why they should do it, he tells them that even if they don't care about the inspection, it's still not a good idea for a government official to see a scam happening in plain sight. The Gang quickly acknowledges he has a point and moves the chickens.
• Dumb Is Good: Charlie is consistently portrayed as being the least intelligent member of the Gang, but also the least morally bankrupt. Deconstructed. As despite this, he still more often than not ends up being no less (if not arguably more due to his lack of impulse control and nonsensical logic) unpleasant or dangerous than the other members.
• Dumpster Dive: Charlie frequently searches through dumpsters to scavenge items for himself or his apartment. He also goes through the Waitress’s trash as he thinks it’s a way to get to know her.
• Entitled to Have You: Along with Never My Fault, as he complains at the Waitress for not being clear enough why she doesn’t like him, and slut shames a woman who actually does like him because “real women keep saying no for years”.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In "A Very Sunny Christmas", after Charlie tells Mac about how men dressed as Santa Claus would come to "cheer up" his mom every Christmas:
  Mac: Charlie, I hate to break this to you, man, but based on the story that you just told me, I think your mother was a prostitute.
  Charlie: No, dude, they would just give my mom money and go...
  Mac: ... yeah. Chew on that for a second.
• Extreme Omnivore: He doesn't deny the possibility of newspaper, credit card fragments, and wolf hair being in his stool in "Who Pooped the Bed?". In "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore", he drinks sunscreen. And he eats stickers "all the time, dude!" He also swallows copious amounts of gasoline and a inhales a number of live hornets on separate occasions. Though involuntary, he doesn't see any reason for concern.

F-N

• Faking the Dead: He and Mac fake their death in order to escape from Mac's father, who they believe is trying to kill them.
• Flanderization: He went from "somewhat awkward, sometimes loud, and occasionally dim-witted, with a mild crush on this one waitress" to "entirely illiterate, possibly insane and definitely a savant, Stalker with a Crush and No Indoor Voice." The episode "Flowers for Charlie" actually gives an In-Universe justification for this change, as it is explained that the much of the work the Gang has assigned Charlie to do around the bar involves him frequently handling a pontent cocktail of various dangerous chemicals, implying his increasing stupidity, illiteracy, and unhinged behavior to be the result of ever-worsening brain damage from exposure to said chemicals.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: A variant; the world of the show (barring some aspects) is grounded in the realm of observable physical possibilities, but Charlie believes there to be ghouls, leprechauns, portals back in time, and all sorts of other magical things. However, he still rolls his eyes at Mac's Christianity and hates being in church. It seems he believes in mythical beings, but not all-powerful deities.
• For Happiness: While Mac, Dee and Dennis do things mostly out of need for control and shoring up their desperately low self esteem, Charlie usually doesn't care what people think of him and shares Frank's desire in just wanting to have fun. Of course, his idea of having fun includes stalking the Waitress, so he’s not exactly better than them. Dennis gets pissy with him in “Waiting For Big Mo” when his Control Freak mentality clashes with Charlie stating the simple solution of just enjoying laser tag.
• Freudian Excuse: He was an abortion survivor (may or may not have contributed to his impaired mental faculties) with no father (though he finds his father in Season 15), an OCD, neurotic and sexually promiscuous mother, and has had to dodge his Uncle Jack's sexual advancements since childhood. It explains a lot.
• Freudian Excuse Denial: Charlie did not have a great family growing up. His sister's were bullies, his uncle was trying to molest him, and his mom was a prostitute. All he will admit to is the trauma from growing up fatherless.
  • A Bait-and-Switch happens in “Time’s Up”, as he excuses his stalking of the Waitress with he was molested. Everyone assumes he’s talking about Uncle Jack, but he denies that happened and calls Dee out for raping him.
• Friend to All Living Things: Charlie loves animals, to the point where having to clear out a rat's nest gives him a minor Heroic BSoD. Although, see Heroes Love Dogs below.
• Funetik Aksent: Whenever Charlie's writing shows up, most of the words are written phonetically, as his borderline illiteracy forces him to guess how words are spelled based on sound. In "Bums: Making a Mess All Over the City", he leaves a note for the mayor of Philadelphia labeled "4 The Mare," and in "Charlie and Dee Find Love", his list of daily activities regarding The Waitress includes things such as "woch bad stoccer" (watch bad stalker) and "chek fud fer poizen" (check food for poison).
• Genius Ditz: Charlie is good at piano, sewing, songwriting, ice-skating, and bowling; wrote and directed a musical despite being functionally illiterate; and can pull off some very Machiavellian plots when properly motivated.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Much like everyone in the main cast, Charlie has serious anger issues and tends to act loud and aggressive when he's upset such as when he violently bites a fake Santa after finding out that his mother had sex with several men every Christmas when he was young. According to Mac, Charlie has been like this for as long as he's known him.
• Happily Adopted: Not in a literal sense, but after meeting and losing his blood father in Season 15, he and Frank affirm their relationship as being closer to father and son than the Intergenerational Friendship it once was.
• Hates Being Touched: He thinks kissing, and sex, is gross and sticky. He also pulls away when people attempt to hug him, with a few exceptions. However, he likes back rubs. ^note He shares this trait with his actor.
• The Heart: He's easily the sweetest member of the Gang, and is the only one who has a genuine friendship with each of the other four.
• He-Man Woman Hater: He doesn’t hate women quite as much as the others, but is still happy to disparage all of them to their faces and behind their backs.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Zig-zagged. While Charlie is the closest thing the Gang has to a Token Good Teammate and a Friend to All Living Things, he usually does not extend his affection toward dogs, which he often talks about kicking. However, there are occasions where he shows appreciation for dogs as much as any other animal, such as when he and Mac vehemently insisted on holding a funeral for a dead dog they found in "Sweet Dee Gets Audited", and him and the Waitress playing with one in "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore".
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Frank. He's also this with Mac, who he has known since childhood.
• Hidden Depths:
  • "The Gang Goes to Ireland" reveals he can speak Gaelic thanks to years of communicating with his Irish pen-pal (actually his father), Shelley.
  • Every person in the Gang has some kind of self awareness that they’re completely fucked, and Charlie is no exception. In “The Gang Goes To Hell”, he has a breakdown that they must be dead already, and in purgatory where they’ll be judged, Laughing Mad that they will go to hell and suffer forever for their crimes.
• Hot-Blooded: Pretty much comes with being the Large Ham that Charlie is.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Along with his many hidden talents, "Charlie Work" reveals him to be the only reason Paddy's hasn't been shut down for its countless health code violations.
• Hypocrite: Like most of the gang, Charlie does not always accept that what he's doing to others is exactly what he hates done to him.
  • Charlie and Mac often steal Dee's car, and tell her off for complaining about it. But trick Charlie out of his ownership to the pub and you're a bastard man.
  • Charlie is to The Waitress what Uncle Jack is to him. But while he will never do the things Uncle Jack wants him to do, he believes the Waitress will eventually come around to him.
  • When he complains that the Waitress won’t leave him alone after she baby traps him, Dee angrily points out that he’s been stalking her for fifteen years. Charlie quickly ignores it and forces his way into hiding out at Dee's apartment.
• Idiot Ball: It's shared around, but even if Charlie doesn't technically own the pub anymore, he sure owns this. The guy's rarely on speaking terms with common sense, let's just say that.
• Idiot Savant: Charlie is an illiterate moron, but he has genuinely exceptional musical talent—he can sing, play piano, and write songs, and a brief scene in "Charlie Work" shows that he has perfect pitch. He occasionally displays skill in other areas as well, though music is by far the most common.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Deconstructed. Charlie is so desperate to be loved that he’ll go rifling through the Waitress’s garbage and ignore any and all her telling him to leave her alone.
• Incredibly Obvious Bug: When he and Mac fake their own deaths, they hide in the air-vent during their joint funeral at Paddy's, talking at full volume. This alerts Dennis that they aren't actually dead.
• Indy Ploy: Deconstructively Parodied. He self-identifies as the "Wild Card" of the team and tries to pull these off during the gang's schemes. Sadly, of course, Charlie is an idiot. All his "improvised plans" are destructive nonsense, culminating in him randomly throwing himself out a speeding car for no reason.
• Inelegant Blubbering: In a genuinely tragic scene in Season 15, he sobs in the rain at his actual dad’s corpse and berates him for never being there for him in his childhood.
• Innocent Bigot: Like the other members of the Gang, he often makes racist and sexist remarks, but that's largely due to his lack of social skills and being too dumb to know better, and he doesn't mean to hurt anyone.
• Innocently Insensitive: Other than joining in on the guys' verbal beat downs and general mistreatment of Dee and Cricket, Charlie almost never intends to offend anyone, he's just really, really stupid and naturally violent. "The Gang Misses the Boat" even has him admit he only messes with Dee out of peer pressure.
• In-Series Nickname: When Charlie gets a job as a janitor at a high school, the students take to calling him "Professor".
• Insufferable Imbecile: Charlie is easily the most innocent member of the Gang, but this stems more from his sheer immaturity than any genuine moral standing, being an unstable Psychopathic Manchild who has spent over a decade stalking a woman he doesn't even know the name of. He likewise is stupid to the point of flat out rejecting basic knowledge, common sense and even reality. Over the course of the show he's cut the brakes on the Gang's van (twice) out of spontaneity, was convinced that a little person he caught in a trap on St. Patrick's Day was really a leprechaun (to the point of threatening him with a straight razor for not giving him his gold), kidnapped a critic who wrote a bad review on impulse, and generally ignores any evidence that his blatantly incorrect views are wrong.
• Iron Butt Monkey: Often the biggest victim of physical abuse from the other members of the Gang, particularly in "Hundred Dollar Baby" when Dennis and Mac smash bottles and chairs over his head while training him to box. Being Made of Iron, any physical injury is never permanent.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: To the Waitress, but instead of letting another guy have her, he agrees to stop stalking her. This ends poorly for her, because his "activities" have actually been keeping her out of a lot of trouble. It turns out that him not stalking her was just a part of his plan to pull an Operation: Jealousy.
• Jerkass Ball:
  • He often comes across as the nicest and most innocent member of the Gang, but his shocking cruelty and vindictiveness in "Charlie Has Cancer", "Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom", and "Charlie and Dee Find Love" are excessive, even by The Gang's standards. It would appear the Waitress brings out the worst in him.
  • Briefly mentions in "The Gang Group Dates" that he once kicked a dog for barking at the Waitress and chuckles as if it's normal. In "The Gang Goes To Hell: Part 2", he imagines a dog at their pretend dinner and starts kicking it despite the others telling him to stop.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Retroactively, as while he’s grossly misogynistic telling Dee to not be a whore and try to sleep with him again, a few episodes later it’s revealed she raped him when they had sex previously.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He shows more empathy than any other member of the Gang and seems to have slightly higher ethical standards.
• Kavorka Man: He gets two very attractive girls interested in him, despite being an unstable weirdo. He has no interest at all in either, preferring to continue stalking the Waitress.
• Keet: He has a near-limitless supply of energy and enthusiasm, which unfortunately goes misplaced most of the time due to his incompetence and selfishness.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Loves cats, eats cat food, and sometimes glues cat hair to the back of his neck and pretends to be a cat man.
• Kind Hearted Simpleton: Well, "kindhearted" is pushing it, but Charlie is consistently shown to be the most decent member of the Gang in spite of his spectacular idiocy. Most of his mean-spirited actions also come off as him being more Innocently Insensitive than anything else.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: This could be applied to the entire Gang, but Charlie gets it the worst. He's by far the least-intelligent member, but is desperate to play himself as well-read and knowledgeable. He'll often pass his own Cloudcuckoolander beliefs as fact and insist the people explaining the (very basic) logic needed to disprove it as idiots. He often parrots back terms and phrases he heard from more intelligent people (and episodes of Law & Order) without putting any effort into understanding their meaning.
  Dennis: As I've tried to explain before; you cannot get honey from a hornet's nest.
  Charlie: I just don't think there's any science to support that, trust me, pal.
  Dennis: There's some very basic science supporting this.
  Charlie: No, there's not!
  Dennis: I-It's actually a fact, alright, it's not even science- aargh...
• Large Ham: In a world of hams, Charlie is one of the biggest. He often screams to get his point across or when he's met with resistance, and he describes his politicking within Paddy's as follows:
  Charlie: If you're not as educated or as informed, what you do is you start your own party and you yell the loudest!
• Like an Old Married Couple: He and Frank are frequently shown behaving and arguing like a married couple, to the point where they do actually get married for a couple of days in Season 6 (for the health benefits). It says a lot that Frank is probably Charlie’s healthiest relationship.
• Limited Wardrobe: Charlie is the only main cast member seen wearing the same clothes over and over, emphasizing his poverty, as his clothes can be seen gradually getting more worn and tattered as the seasons go on. In one episode he states that he repairs his old clothes rather than buy anything new, likely due to the fact like Mac (who also tends to rewear clothes) he grew up poor so he learned how to be resourceful. Notable favorites include a green army shirt jacket, a black and red jacket with a tiger patch, a grey sweatshirt, and a black and red horse t-shirt paired with long white thermal underwear for sleeping, while usually wearing the same pair of jeans and black and red sneakers. He also wears the same undersized brown-and-black necktie when a situation calls for formal attire. Some of these clothes are Charlie Day's actual property.
• "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Being illiterate, Charlie has difficulty reading basic words and phrases.
• Lovable Coward: Downplayed. He does have some Dirty Coward moments ^note  (leaving Dee behind when running away from a mugger, fantasizing about saving the waitress by pushing Dee (instead of himself) in front of her to prevent her from getting shot, etc), but he is the most likable and pitiable member of the Gang by far.
• Love Martyr: He does have some form of love for the Night Man (Uncle Jack), and while he is in reality so angry at the guy, denies that Jack ever hurt him.
• Loving a Shadow: Implied to be the root of his attraction to the Waitress. He doesn't really like her or make any attempt to ever truly to get to know her as a person (he never even bothers to learn her name, for crying out loud!). He's just idealized her and assumed getting together with her will fix all his problems.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father: In the finale of Season 2, it is revealed that Frank may very well be Charlie's father, being one of Charlie’s mom Bonnie's many, many hookups as a prostitute back in the day. However, in the following season premiere Frank refuses to take a test to prove it, and is certain they’re not related because Charlie's mom had an abortion, but she reveals to Charlie he survived the abortion, leaving things ambiguous. Season 10 reveals that the Gang didn't care enough to have it definitively tested. Season 15 reveals that Frank is actually not Charlie's father, but in a rare moment of sweetness, Frank states that he still thinks of himself and Charlie as more like a father and son.
• Made of Iron: It is almost canon that Charlie cannot be killed or permanently hurt.
  • Charlie's mom had an abortion while pregnant with him, but he still managed to survive it, along with living through that hilariously revolting life style of his.
  • He's literally shot in the head by Dennis in "Gun Fever". He also shoots himself in the head (with a flare gun) in "The Gang Goes to Hell, Part 2".
  • He's also been electrocuted "like, 500 times" according to Mac.
  • Charlie eats a brownie filled with drugs, even though Mac claims it has enough drugs in it to kill a gorilla. Charlie replies "I can handle my sedatives, bro." He ends up outlasting most of the contestants after several hours (despite being barely conscious), and manages to come in third place before finally passing out.
  • He mentions to Dennis in one episode that he's thrown himself in front of cars several times to swindle the drivers.
  • Mac and Dennis consider him to be almost indestructible. They train him to be a pit fighter by repeatedly smashing him with various objects.
  • In “Charlie's Home Alone”, he falls victim to a variety of his own Home Alone-like traps. He gets his leg caught in a spiked bear trap, burns himself on red-hot metal, accidentally drops a full can of paint on his head, steps on broken glass barefoot, and gets shot repeatedly with a nail gun. In the next episode, he gets his leg stuck in the bear trap again. He shows no signs of suffering from any long-term injuries afterwards.
• Malaproper: Throughout the series, Charlie's illiteracy causes him to confuse words when they're spelled somewhat similarly, such as paragon/paradigm, pirate/private, pride/prize, and Coors/closed. In "The Waitress is Getting Married", he attempts to impress a date by telling her he works as a philanthropist, but struggles to pronounce the word and tells her he's a "full-on rapist" instead. It's not just limited to single words:
  Charlie: [reading a sign] "Brett DeLawyer. A denial correlation." What does that mean?
  Mac: Pretty good. That's close. It's "Brett DeLawter. A dental corporation." Guy's a dentist.
• Man Bites Man:
  • Charlie realizes that his mother was a prostitute who slept with men at Christmas, and those men often dressed (sometimes shabbily) as Santa Claus to fool Charlie. He has something of a freak-out, and winds up sinking his teeth into the throat of a mall Santa.
  • According to "Charlie Got Molested", he had a habit of suddenly biting people when he was excited as a child.
• Manchild: His general Cloud Cuckoolander personality, and the fact that he found himself to have plenty of things in common with a 12 year old all give this impression. “Charlie’s Home Alone” is a Shout-Out to the film, and it’s no big difference to how he usually acts when he copies lines from it.
• Manipulative Bastard: Not his most defining trait, but when he really puts his mind to it, he can be quite effective. Best seen in "Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom" and "Charlie and Dee Find Love"
• Men Can't Keep House: Played with. On the one hand, he can't be bothered to keep his apartment clean (and its horrible state reflects that). On the other hand, he shines in his job as a janitor at Paddy's.
• Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency: While he is nicer then the rest of the Gang, that's not saying much. There's been several moments (most famously "Charlie And Dee Find Love") where it's made clear that, despite his disabilities, he's still a total bastard and very much capable of genuine, intentional malice.
• Misplaced Retribution: In "A Very Sunny Christmas", after realizing what the guys dressed as Santa were really doing with his mom during his childhood, he goes to the mall, screams "DID YOU FUCK MY MOM, SANTA?!" at a random mall Santa and bites him.
• Money Dumb: Charlie is very poor with his personal finances. He lost all of his ownership shares in the bar because he kept giving them to Dennis and Mac in exchange for things like half a sandwich. And this was after he agreed to an equal partnership with them despite being the one who fronted about 87% of the investment money.^note He had $57,000, Dennis had $5,000, and Mac had $4,000.
• Mood-Swinger: He's one of the most emotional members of the Gang and is known for his intense rage, so he naturally has extreme mood swings.
• Morality Pet:
  • A very mild example of this to Frank, as he appears to be the only person Frank genuinely cares about besides himself. This doesn't mean much most of the time, but occasionally causes Frank to back down.
  • For Dennis at times; Dennis seems to be the best at calming Charlie down when he's upset and he treats him noticeably better than he does the rest of the Gang whenever they're alone together. It also helps that, according to commentaries, Charlie is the only one who Dennis feels nothing but platonic feelings for. For Charlie’s part, he (rather bizarrely) feels safer around Dennis.
  • In Season 2, after he gets stabbed by the McPoyles, the other three angrily tell them to get out. While they yell at Charlie after too, Dee actually tends to his wounds.
  • In the Season 15 finale, the Gang all comes back at Charlie’s lowest moment, apologise for abandoning him, and help him throw his dad’s corpse off a cliff. In general, Charlie seems to be the only member of the Gang that the other four all genuinely like.
• Never Learned to Read: Charlie has difficulty reading and writing, which is often pointed out by the rest of the Gang as a learning disability or outright illiteracy. His writing is either garbled gibberish or at least partially in pictoral form, though he does manage to write a musical, albeit translated by Artemis to proper English for the rest of The Gang's sake.
• Never My Fault: Charlie refuses to admit to any wrongdoing in regards to his treatment of the Waitress. When faced with a hypothetical scenario involving a waitress being stalked by a customer, he says the blame goes to her because she doesn't realise "true love is in front of her stupid face" (clearly projecting his own feelings about his relationship with the Waitress). He then tries to downplay his behavior by claiming that he gets a pass because he was molested by Dee in the past - which, while terrible, still doesn’t excuse his stalking.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Interested in ghouls, writing creepy songs about spiders and 'The Night Man," wandering the sewers (sometimes naked), and "anything dead or decayed."
• No Indoor Voice: After the first season, CHARLIE SCREAMS ALL THE TIME.

O-Z

• Odd Friendship:
  • He gets along rather well with Dee, especially in comparison to how the other members of the group treat her. This is most notable in "The Gang Misses the Boat" where when the Gang breaks up, he and Dee spend the time bonding, encouraging each other [and eventually making out and sleeping together. Their friendship becomes slightly strained after the events of "Time's Up for the Gang", where Charlie admits that he was raped by Dee, as she ignored him telling her to stop and told him to "be quiet and hold still" so she could get off. Dee doesn't deny that it was non-consensual. This carried over into "The Gang Chokes" where a running gag shows Charlie not wanting to be alone with Dee and acting really uncomfortable around her, and while they do hang out after, it’s far more strained.
  • His friendship with Frank seems to be this at first, until it becomes clear that they're not all that different and actually closer to Birds of a Feather.
  • He and Dennis bond over having “real trauma” or missing out on childhood while at the same time refusing to admit that either of them have been molested, and deal with this by doing a Parental Incest stripper routine or going off to find an animatronic robot’s tits. Charlie also functions as a rare just-friendship for Dennis, as Dennis has no sexual interest in the kid.
• Only Sane Employee: While Charlie is about as far from sane as you can get, several episodes, most notably "Charlie Work", show that he's the only employee at Paddy's capable of doing his job (as a janitor) competently, albeit only in the form of a last minute game of Xanatos Speed Chess.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Charlie is extremely grossed out hearing revelations of his mother's expansive sex life. He takes a bite of a Santa thanks to thinking he’s one of the clients his mom had, and when she shares too much about a threesome she had with Luther and Eduardo Sanchez, he has a rant about not needing to know any of this and asks her to stop banging every guy who passes through her house.
• Paste Eater: Aside from his regular choice of foods, Charlie likes eating things that no one should be eating and has at one point asked to eat an eraser just because he's hungry. This earned him the nickname "Dirtgrub" back in high school.
• Pathetically Weak: When complaining about how girls can’t fight because they have no muscles and can’t pull trucks through the snow, Dee points out he can’t either, and he can’t even walk in the snow.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Towards the end of "The Waitress Is Getting Married", Charlie gives the Waitress's ex-fiancé Brad a hornet's nest as an "engagement gift". Given that Brad revealed to Charlie that he only agreed to marry the Waitress so that he could dump her as revenge, and stated he was planning on doing the same thing to Dee, Charlie (who was planning on giving him the nest anyway) giving Brad his "gift" was hardly the former's most egregious crime.
• Peer-Pressured Bully: Admits that he doesn't really enjoy making fun of Dee and only does it to avoid being on Mac and Dennis' shit-list.
• Performance Anxiety: He’s amazing at piano, but it’s a Tragic Dream that he never pursues because he’ll fall apart if people don’t like him.
• Perpetual Poverty: While none of the Gang are financially secure, Dennis, Dee and Mac live in nice apartments and frequently spend far more money than they actually possess, putting them all in severe debt. Charlie on the other hand lives in an apartment that is nothing short of terrifying, lives off of cat food and wolf hair and generally never seems to have any money whatsoever.
• Phrase Catcher:
  "God damn it, Charlie!"
  "So stupid, Charlie..."
• The Pigpen: He lives in squalor and has limited personal hygiene. Mac says that he has never seen Charlie put on deodorant.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Sometimes veers into this. Charlie often acts like a kid, and he is prone to psychotic rages when he's provoked.
• Rape as Backstory: Subverted. Uncle Jack has expressed a sexual interest in his nephew, and makes Charlie visibly uncomfortable. As they shared a room when Charlie was a child, the gang believes he molested Charlie, which was then expressed through the Nightman character. Charlie's insistence that they are mistaken only fuels the belief.
  Mac: You wrote a whole play about it!
  • In "Time's Up For the Gang", it is revealed that after the camera cut away during "The Gang Misses The Boat", he was raped by Dee who made him be still and stop talking so she could "get off" after he changed his mind.
• Real Men Wear Pink: He’s still terribly misogynistic, but unlike Dennis and Mac who refuse to do anything unmanly or try to justify it, he sews and cross-dresses like it’s no affront to his manhood.
• Rejection Affection: The Waitress has told Charlie, point blank, on numerous occasions, that she will never ever go out with him. Despite this, Charlie continues to pursue her.
• Relationship Upgrade: He actually manages to sleep with and maintain a relationship with the Waitress during the Time Skip between Seasons 12 and 13. It doesn't last, and she breaks up with him in the Season 13 opener.
• Renaissance Man: Surprisingly, despite his lack of intelligence, Charlie is shown to be the most artistically gifted and versatile of the group.
• Screaming Warrior: While assaulting a mall Santa in the Christmas special.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath and Gluttony.
  • Wrath: To fit his Psychopathic Manchild tendencies, Charlie has a habit of shouting at random and acting without thinking.
  • Gluttony: He has a strange addiction to cheese, indulges himself by huffing paint and eats various inedible things including wolf hair, paper, erasers and gasoline (and this is not to mention his alcoholism). In "The Gang Goes To Hell Part 1", Charlie and Frank end up getting thrown in the brig in their efforts to find alcoholic drinks, something lampshaded by Dennis.
• Shared Family Quirks: His real dad, Shelley loves cheese, music, and ghouls, and bashes rats, just like him.
• Single-Target Sexuality: The Waitress, for the most part. In thirteen seasons, Charlie has dated exactly one other woman, with the sole intention of using her to make the Waitress jealous. While he goes on several group dates alongside Mac and Frank in "The Gang Group Dates" Charlie explicitly says that he's only doing it to improve his game with the Waitress. However, he has slept with, or attempted to sleep with, hookers and strippers, and made out with Dee (who then raped him).
  • He had very explicit sex with a prostitute named Tatiana while on a ski trip. The latter instance can at least be explained by the episode's central mantra of "things are different on the mountain".
  • After Charlie's relationship with The Waitress falls apart, he and Frank end up having sex with two co-eds they meet through Airbnb in "The Gang Gets Romantic".
• Skewed Priorities: His main concern when the Gang are informed about a suicidal man on their roof is “we’re not going to get our fish and chips”.
• Snark Ball: Picks it up on occasion, usually when he's a playing as a Foil to Mac.
• Some of My Best Friends Are X: Right in the first episode, as he tries to find Black friends to prove to the Waitress he’s not racist.
• Son of a Whore: Charlie's mom is a sexually promiscuous woman who hooks up with several men, sometimes multiple at once. She is confirmed to be an actual prostitute in "A Very Sunny Christmas" as Charlie recalls several men dressed as Santa coming over to "cheer her up." When Mac spells it out for him, Charlie doesn't take the realization very well.
• Stalker with a Crush: Has been obsessed with the Waitress for years, to the point where he often has to live off of cat food because he spends all of his money paying spies to follow her. He even wrote and staged a musical to propose to her. She has multiple restraining orders against him. Ironically, the actress who plays the Waitress is Charlie Day's real-life wife.
• The Stoner: He huffs glue and spray paint, which is part of where his Wild Card and Butt-Monkey status comes from. He is also ready to consume the large quantity of cocaine he and Dee find, and their tie-in self help book claims that Charlie plied the book's editor with copious amounts of weed and alcohol upon meeting her.
• Straw Loser: Charlie manages to make Mac, Dee and Dennis look pretty successful and well-adjusted in comparison, as they all have fairly nice apartments and have had multiple relationships in contrast to Charlie's near literal Hell Hole of an apartment and fixation on a single woman who hates his guts.
• Sweet Tooth: Manages to be manipulated into actually focusing if there’s a possibility of getting candy at the end.
• This Loser Is You: Even more than the rest of the Gang given his poor living conditions, extreme social ineptitude, and unsuccessful attempts to woo the Waitress.
• Threatening to Cut Ties: In "The Gang Gets A New Member," Mac and Dennis decide to invite their old pal Schmitty into the Gang. Charlie, feeling insecure about it, gives an ultimatum that if Schmitty joins, he'll leave the Gang for good. Mac and Dennis don't really give a shit and Charlie leaves, humiliated.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • Dennis, Mac, and Dee spend an entire episode trying to do this to Charlie when Frank tells them it's his birthday and he seems pretty depressed. Though things like taking him to a movie and a spa backfire horribly due to his insanity, they eventually find a book where he catalogs his dreams in pictographs and recreate some of the items in it. Charlie feels pretty happy.
  • Gets a more legitimate one in "McPoyle vs. Ponderosa: The Trial of the Century" where the numerous antics from the rest of the Gang nearly cost Ponderosa the case. Through the whole thing Charlie is the closest thing to an Only Sane Man, and his seemingly ridiculous Bird Law-heavy approach to proving Ponderosa innocent turns out to be correct, with the case ultimately thrown out and the Lawyer losing an eye to add injury to insult.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Charlie stands 5'6 and fits this trope when paired with Dee, who is 5'8. The two of them have an impromptu hookup, later revealed to be a rape, in "The Gang Misses the Boat". When Dee insists Charlie didn't tell her to stop in "Time's Up for the Gang", Charlie claims he was too intimidated by Dee's "larger frame" to fight her off.
• Token Good Teammate: Charlie is the closest thing the Gang has to a moral compass and genuinely seems to have a good heart under his rage and idiocy. He’s also the least racist when the rest of the Gang complain that all lives matter and it’s black people’s fault for only realising that “recently”.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Combined with Took a Level in Dumbass; in Season 1, Charlie was a loser but not insane, and lied about having cancer and exploited an ex-girlfriend's child in order to win over the Waitress. After Flanderization, his actions seem more based in insanity than maliciousness, making it easier to sympathize with him.
• The Tooth Hurts: While it's mostly an Informed Attribute as they don't appear decayed or crooked, Charlie's teeth are sometimes mentioned to be in very bad shape as part of his non-existent hygiene, with one episode revealing he doesn’t own a toothbrush. When Mac tries to extract one with pliers to fake their deaths in "Mac and Charlie Die", he's shocked to witness it come out quick and painlessly, with a soft squishing noise and no blood, and Charlie pulls several more single-handed out of curiosity.
• Trademark Favorite Food: The mysterious "milk steak". His addiction to cheese is also a Running Gag.
• Tragic Dream: He wants to be loved and liked so badly that he’s never been serious about his amazing piano skills due to the fear of getting booed and the belief that he’ll crumble if that happens.
• Trauma Button: After the truth about what happened with Dee in "The Gang Misses the Boat" comes out in the open in Season 13, there are times where Charlie clearly doesn’t want to be left alone with her. He’s notably pleased in "The Gang Solves Global Warming" when he exposes her being nasty to everyone on Instagram.
• Underdressed for the Occasion: He has maybe one blazer and one tie for formal/lawyering business. One time he wears cargo shorts for when they’re all meant to look fancy.
• Unknown Rival: He believes himself to be the Lawyer's Worthy Opponent despite it being about as far from the truth as possible. The Lawyer frequently reminds him that this isn't the case but occasionally plays along to get him to leave him alone. Despite this, he actually ends up defeating the Lawyer the one time they actually go against each other in court in "McPoyle vs. Ponderosa: The Trial of the Century" (or rather, the judge threw the Lawyer's case out as a result of all the Courtroom Antics that went on).
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Unknowingly yanked Dee’s chain back in the 90s, as she’d grown out of teenage horror, and had dreams and friends by that point. He didn’t slow her roller skates down like she asked, she hit her head painfully, and she was set being terrible and hopeless.
• Verbal Backspace: In "Mac Kills His Dad", while trying to get his mother to disclose information about a criminal with whom Luther associates:
  Charlie: Tell me everything!
  Bonnie: Okay. They were both here. They were both inside me. Eduardo was in my mouth, and Luther was in my butt.
  Charlie: Oh my God, no. Don't tell me everything.
• Villainous Breakdown: He gets even more shrill and angry after gaining power in a social game in "Charlie Rules the World" and having his plans compromised.
• Villainous BSoD: He’s really upset to find out that his “Christmas tradition” was just his mom being a prostitute. He buries it after a Freak Out bite with a mall Santa, pretending it never happened, but it contributes to his increasing resentment with his mom.
• Wacky Marriage Proposal: The entire point of "The Nightman Cometh" was to propose to the Waitress during the final musical number, in which Charlie is lowered from the ceiling in a yellow suit and white hat. Needless to say, she refuses.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: Realizes this after finally sleeping with the Waitress and finding out that she's clingy and argumentative. As Dee points out, she's always been this way, but Charlie's been so blindly devoted to her and convinced she was the love of his life that he didn't bother to notice.
• Wardrobe Flaw of Characterization: Charlie wears shabby clothing and is the only character with a Limited Wardrobe, showing that he's quite poor and downtrodden compared to the rest of the cast.
• We Want Our Idiot Back!: In "Flowers For Charlie," a pair of scientists study Charlie after giving him an "intelligence pill." The rest of the Gang get irritated by his new stuck-up behavior, with Frank saying they need to talk him down because he's their foundation (and foundations belong on the bottom). It's all subverted when the pill turns out to be a placebo; the scientists note Charlie only thought he was smarter, when the only uptick they saw was his arrogance.
• Wild Card: Mac assigns him this role in "The Gang Solves The Gas Crisis"; however, it ends up deconstructed when Charlie's randomness ruins the Gang's plans in the same episode. In the sequel "The Gang Recycles Their Trash", the rest of the Gang, now knowing better, have to get rid of him so that their get-rich scheme can actually succeed.
  Mac: Charlie, having somebody making wild decisions that make no sense, that benefits nobody.
• Would Hurt a Child: Mac and Charlie spend an episode getting bullied by a pack of middle schoolers, only to finally snap and unleash a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on them. After fleeing, Charlie suspects that he may have killed at least one of them.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: He pretends to have cancer to get the Waitress to agree to a date with him out of pity.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: "The Nightman Cometh" and "The Gang Saves the Day" hint that in his view, his life is an enchanted Coming of Age Story meets Rom Com where he's the plucky underdog hero and the Waitress is destined to be with him. In reality, his stalking of her is incredibly creepy and when they do get together, it's not near as romantic as he thought.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • In "The High School Reunion Part 2: The Gang's Revenge", the Waitress is so drunk and depressed that she says she'll have sex with whoever talks to her next. Charlie is right in front of her and is about to speak... and then Schmitty appears out of nowhere and says "hi".
  • At the end of “Charlie Work”, he gets a high passing grade for the inspection and the Gang for once follows his lead, but he gets zero credit for it and they forget about what happened almost instantly.

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"I EAT STICKERS ALL THE TIME, DUDE!"