Danny boy, a lazy worker voiced by Lopez, always called into work with hilarious phone calls, making excuses for not being there. This eventually stops, and seems like Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, but considering he never showed up, he was actually probably fired.
Becomes a Brick Joke in 'George Drives the Batmobile', where the Mexican drive thru worker has the exact same voice as Danny Boy. Makes sense that someone with a shoddy work record like him would wind up in fast food, huh?
In one episode Benny says she drinks to the point where the man she's interested in looks like Tom Selleck. She drunkenly makes out with Angie's dad in one episode, and he kinda resembles him, as well as other men she's dated on the show.
When Max has his birthday party, George says he never had one and ends up meeting H.R. Pufnstuf, one of his favorite shows as a child. Since George had a crappy childhood, it makes sense he'd like a show where a child lives in a fantasy world.
In the pilot episode George makes jokes that Carmen's adopted. While this is his way to tell her to be truthful, it has some Reality Subtext since Carmen's actress is the only main cast member who's not Hispanic. (She's Albanian)
In the episode "George Helps Ernie See The Cellulight" Ernie becomes too fat to do his job, and George realizes his overeating is due to anxiety about dating after he got his own place. There are a several variables that could've triggered it:
In the episode where he moves out, he's waving to a girl outside and George calls him a creepy guy upstairs.
In the Christmas episode that same season, George and Angie become marriage counselors at church and Ernie asks for help with dating. George says it'd take a miracle to help him. Ernie's sensitive as it is, so George's comments were more than likely nails in the coffin.
His mother is a Big Eater, who is seen eating an entire box of sugary cereal in one sitting before passing out. Now that he has his own place, he doesn't have to compete with his mother over food anymore. He can now eat all he wants. He also helped her into and out of the bath tub, which was a two man operation. He probably burned plenty of calories doing that.
Also, Ernie's parents mocked him for wanting to move out, so this probably also didn't help with his image issues.
In "Sabes Gay, It's George's Fantasy Episode," where George imagines himself and Ernie as a gay couple, we don't see Benny at all in his dream. Benny's not very open-minded, so it's possible she disowned him for being gay.
Emilina, Angie's mother and Vic's ex-wife passed away in the last season. She cheated on and later divorced Vic, who is a cardiologist. What did Emilina die of? A heart attack. Karma, perhaps?
George's half-brother turning out spoiled and irresponsible makes sense. Manny admits he felt guilt for ditching George and leaving him with Benny, so his spoiling George II rotten was probably him overcompensating for not having been there for George.
Claudia, Veronica's mother, making George the trustee, makes a lot of sense when you see that her extended family and acquaintances don't seem to be good role models.
Vic admits to having spoiled Ray, turning him into a rotten con artist who stole Veronica's quinceanera money. Considering how this hurt her and her daughter, Claudia's contempt for Vic is pretty understandable.
Gloria has an abysmal love life and was desperate enough to kiss her brother-in-law. It would be understandable why Claudia doesn't think Gloria would make a good guardian for Veronica.
A lot of Claudia's other relatives, namely the ones from the Palmero family, seem to be awful snobs: one of them openly wishes Angie divorced George, one of them condescendingly assumed George was too poor to fly to Miami, one of them sued Veronica for her trustee's money and Veronica herself has a low opinion of them. Claudia would not want those relatives taking care of Veronica and would also like to get back at them by picking the guy they hate the most to be their trustee.
George, for all his flaws, is a hard-working, street-smart, self-made man, who tries to help his kids. Claudia would see George as a more reliable role model for Veronica than her family.
George and Angie both take after Benny and Vic in subtle ways, especially in parenting:
Benny was a drunken hardass who never showed much love or kindness to George, and rarely made him feel special. George himself can be incredibly insensitive and derisive to his own family, has intimacy issues with Angie, and once spent a whole episode mocking Carmen and her interest in poetry.
Vic and Emilina were the polar opposite of Benny: they spoiled their children to overcompensate for their poverty-stricken childhood in Cuba and often behaved in an arrogant manner toward others, especially George. Angie herself can be incredibly permissive to her two children and people she shouldn't really associate with like Marisol. Like Vic, Angie can be arrogant and dismissive of George's (sometimes valid) concerns and has gone behind George's back many times. Emilina is also very spendthrift, considering in her sole appearance, she tried to buy Carmen a fur coat. Angie herself once wasted money on useless message, proving she isn't above wasting money.
However, while both Angie and George share the flaws of their parents, they aren't defined by them. George can learn to be more sensitive and understanding, and Angie can put her foot down when her children act out of line and seems much humbler and kinder compared to her own overprivileged family.
In one episode, Veronica knowingly cheats with a married man. Her teacher no less. She also romances George's boss to manipulate him into making George's life miserable. Considering the failure of her parent's marriage, it makes sense why Veronica doesn't have much respect for the sanctity of marriage, let alone seems able to hold down any kind of healthy relationship.
Veronica's irresponsibility with money stems from her father being a crooked con artist who abandoned her and stole her quinceanera cash; this would've turned Veronica into a spendthrift person.
Her relatives are also apparently unpleasant snobs who wouldn't exactly impart her good values. Heck, one of them contested her own mother's will, most likely for the millions she left her daughter, so it's safe to say they don't really care much for her well-being either.
It is easy to see why Vic tried to romance George's long-lost sister and later another younger woman who cheats on him: he is deeply insecure after the failure of his marriage with Emilina, who ran off with a younger man. Wanting a younger woman and splurging on gifts shows how desperate he feels to find any kind of love.
Benny scaring a young George with stories about the Zodiac Killer makes a ton of sense: they both lived in a rough neighborhood with dangerous criminals and while Benny was rough, she didn't want to wake up finding out her son nearly died. In this instance, Benny's rough parenting is somewhat justified, since she wanted George to be street-smart and wary of anyone who could hurt him.
While Benny's really awful parents explain her own less-than-stellar parenting, it could also explain her promiscuity and her failed marriage with Manny: her father was apparently a wife basher who hit Luisa. Seeing her father behave this way negatively impacted her relationship with Manny and why she spent most of her life sleeping around with other men rather than staying in any committed relationship.
We don't see Zack Powers again in his last appearance. There are a couple of reasons why:
Mel initially brushed off George's demands that he rein Zack in, but after he ran off with one of his employee's daughters and stole thousands of dollars from him, Mel finally reached his limit with Zack. He either forced him back to therapy or into a military school or disowned him and kicked him out of the house. It is telling that he didn't fire Benny for smacking his son with a wrench, implying that he also felt Zack had it coming.
She stood up to an Alpha Bitch to protect one of her friends, and not only did this girl have it in her for her, but her real friend moved away, leaving her without a support network.
At her old school, she dated two guys who only wanted her for her looks. One guy got back at her for breaking up with her by making up a rumor that she was a slut. Even when he recanted this rumor, she was still so badly bullied that she had to be pulled out of school.
Zack Powers also used and manipulated her to sleep with her.
Vic is nominally more successful than George, at least in financial terms, but he's shown to be far more emotionally naive than George. He spoiled his children rotten, his marriage with Emilina collapsed, and he nearly married a cheating Gold Digger, even tearing his prenuptial agreements, and he let himself be conned by Ray. George, for all his flaws, has the uncanny ability to see through others and has far fewer personal failures than Vic.
Emilina has only one appearance on the show (a Christmas Episode) and isn't shown visiting the Lopez family to the point where her death left no emotional impact on her grandson Max. But it is understandable why. In her first appearance, she is just as snobbish to George as Vic, but while Vic did grow out of it once he moved to Los Angeles, Emilina was never shown changing her opinion about George. Later she cheated on Vic, something that angered Angie so much that she called her mother an ungrateful tramp in their last phone conversation, and George felt bad for Vic. Her lack of appearances was because she left a poor impression on George and Angie and wasn't allowed to visit.
Benny didn't let George drive as a kid, partly because she was afraid he would die in an accident and partly because wrecking the car would've bankrupted her. But it is important to remember that when George was a teenager, vehicle safety laws and auto safety regulations were far laxer. Seeing how driving was much more dangerous in the 1980s, and the ability to prosecute reckless drivers was harder, one can see Benny's point.
While Benny normally doesn't show much of a conscience, she immediately attacks Zack Powers with a wrench after he runs off with Carmen. Manny ditching her and George is a sore spot for her, which is why she would have so much hatred for Zack, someone who knocked up another girl and showed no remorse about doing it to Carmen.
Max's Flanderization into a Dumbass Teenage Son as the show goes on might actually have a fairly heartbreaking In-Universe explanation. Early on Max was actually shown to try hard at improving his school performance and impressing his parents, but every time he did one of Carmen's antics would distract them from him, during his fifth-grade graduation, instead of celebrating Max's achievement afterwards, they were calling the police because Carmen had run away with Zack, when Max wins second place at the science fair, instead of taking him to dinner like they planned, George and Angie had to go to the police station because Carmen and Jason had been arrested, leaving Max to eat a can of frosting at home alone for dinner. Due to these constant distractions, as well as seeing that bad behavior receives more attention than good, it makes sense that Max no longer say any reason to put any effort into his school work.
Discussed in "George Helps Ernie See The Cellu-Light." If Ernie didn't lose weight, he could become as big as his mom. She's morbidly obese, and except from the waist down she isn't seen. Her size is Fridge Horror in itself.
He could fit in her pants so he wasn't very far off.
Ernie's mom is big enough that she's too lazy to pick something off the ground she dropped and needs help getting into the tub. It's possible she doesn't leave the house anymore and that those pants don't fit her anymore.
While defending Zack Powers, Carmen blames Zack's problems on his family life. While none of this excuses his behavior, she might have a point:
On top of being corrupt, Mel has no problem with wanting to flirt and sleep around with Veronica, a young intern. This alone would be an incredible ethical violation, even if Veronica did consent to the sex. Worse, he apparently has "magic pills" to get himself in the mood. They could just be Viagra or some aphrodisiac, but what if turned out to be some roofie? This could explain why Zack has no problem getting Carmen drunk: because he's seen his father do that all the time. It is implied that Mel also was a lousy husband to Zack's mom, which would explain, in part, Zack's general lack of respect for women.
Mel, as a whole, seems to have given up on trying to raise Zack. While he might be kind of justified, George at one point, calls Mel out for being a lousy father. Zack would have no real reason to change his ways in this environment.
Carmen describes Zack's mom as a "bitter old drunk." If Zack's mom was as bad to Zack as Benny was to George, this abuse by his mom could've warped Zack into a misogynist.
Zack is a rotten person who does deserve to get hit with a wrench by Benny, but his incredibly dysfunctional childhood would mess anybody up. While George might be justified in hating Zack, his refusal to treat him as anything but a nuisance probably isn't helping matters and would only contribute to Zack's delinquency.
While it doesn't excuse her one bit, George (jokingly) claims that Benny's mom had a husband who also beat her. Luisa herself insists her husband was a "good man", so it is possible she genuinely believes her awful behavior is normal parenting, insisting to George that she was too soft on Benny. The other possibility is simply Luisa taking her frustrations out on her daughter. Or possibly both.
