Nightmare Fuel / It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

"Think this guy's got any beer in his fridge?"

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

---

• All in all, the entire cast of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is composed of some of the most depraved, monstrous, unscrupulous degenerates in television history. For all their lovable quirks and eccentricities, the gang has committed acts of larceny, vandalism, grievous bodily harm, arson, sexual assault, fraud, drug trafficking, kidnapping, child abuse, extortion, emotional manipulation, poisoning, counterfeiting, slander, substance abuse, witness intimidation and terroristic threats that would ensure they spent the rest of their lives in jail. And they get away with it almost every single time.
• It gets measurably worse in hindsight given The Reveal of Dennis getting raped by a librarian when he was young and how much that has warped him, but Frank's abuse of his stepson in "The Gang Gets Whacked". He goes to extreme lengths to get Dennis to start selling himself, manipulates his eating disorder and belief that he's only worth something if he's hot and able to fuck, starts removing the rules and casually tells the Janes it'll cost extra if they want Dennis to act like he's enjoying it. And once Dennis gets smacked around, he almost immediately goes meek and compliant until Mac snaps him out of it.
• Dennis and Dee's vacation to the Jersey Shore gets really dark really fast when they tag along with a gang of criminals led by a dangerous, trigger-happy dusthead who gets one of his partners shot in a botched robbery, murders a doctor right in front of them, and is in the middle of making them dig their own graves when they finally make a break for it. All of this is scored by The Go-Go's "Vacation".
  • In the same episode Frank and Mac ended up lost at sea with their liferaft on the verge of sinking. Sure, they were saved when the party boat filled with Jersey Shore-style guidos happened to pass by, but that whole scene was a definite Paranoia Fuel. The only member of the crew that came out with nothing really bad happening was Charlie, save for the fact that the Waitress being nice to Charlie was the result of her being high on ecstasy.
• During the episode "It's A Very Sunny Christmas", Charlie tells Mac that he shouldn't get all worked up about his parents stealing other people's gifts, posing it as a holiday tradition. Then he says to Mac that he handled the news about his mom whoring herself out to a bunch of "Santas" on Xmas day quite well and then proceeds to bite the Mall Santa's neck, asking him if he fucked his mom. Despite being a funny scene, it's still kind of scary (and sad) to see a guy biting a mall Santa's neck so hard that he bleeds and repeatedly yelling "Did you fuck my mom?" and "Did you fuck her?" without any evidence to support that he ever did, especially since the acting is very believable. Poor, unfortunate mall Santa.
  • The flashback to the "Santa Clauses" shows one of Charlie's gifts was a model train, which started his addiction to sniffing glue.
  • Later on in the episode, we get a Rankin-Bass pastiche where an elf sings to Frank about how much of a jerk he's been during christmas. This culminates in an absolutely brutal scene where the elf sings exactly how The Gang will kill him, including gouging out eyes, and hanging Frank with his spinal cord. While it's insanely funny, especially with the cute Rankin-Bass style, it also is genuinely distressing, with the amount of gory detail the scene gets into.
• What the gang subjects the "Juarez" family to in the Extreme Makeover episode.
• Frank's Sanity Slippage over sanitizing everything in "The Gang Gets Quarantined".
• "The Maureen Ponderosa Wedding Massacre": The Cold Open for this one starts with a Found Footage-style video of Dennis, Mac, Charlie and Frank running away on Friday the 13th, who are soon arrested and interrogated on what happened during that day. Dennis tries to ruin the wedding of his ex-wife, Maureen, who's planning to get married to Liam McPoyle, the wedding soon devolves into a bloodbath with Maureen going missing and wedding guests start attacking Charlie, Mac and Frank like in a zombie movie. And Dee went nuts because Charlie and Mac ruined her car. The fact that the wedding guests acted like zombies because of drinking milk that Bill spiked with bath salt doesn't make it any less horrifying.
  • And then there's their patriarch, Pappy McPoyle.
    Charlie: Okay, it's time to get out of here. I mean, look at that guy.
    Pappy: (Stands up and starts pointing) ALL THE MCPOYLES SPRUNG FROM MY LOINS, FULLY FORMED! One of them babies tried to eat me - I ATE HIM FIRST! (Sobbing) I ate him first!
    Mac: Okay, I'm with Charlie. I'm leaving.
• Psycho Pete's poor, unfortunate teenage years. He was Charlie and Mac's friend and was sent to an institution because of a rumor that he killed and ate his parents. It turns out that he went away to be treated for depression and social anxiety. The fact that people legitimately thought that about a nice, soft spoken guy, and the fact that the Gang probably partially started the rumor, is horrible and could definitely happen.
• Not shit-your-pants scary, but pretty unsettling. When Dennis and Dee have to decide whether or not to take their grandfather (who they know used to be a Nazi) off life support, they visit his apartment and find some old movie footage of them hanging out with Pop-Pop when they were kids. They look on fondly at the child versions of themselves smiling in the backseat of his old car, getting hot dogs, and all's well and good while they think this confirms that he came to America and left his Nazi past behind him... until they see themselves being brought to a Hitler Youth camp, Pop-Pop telling them they need to take the country back from "these niggers and Jews," and gleefully doing the Hitler salute. Did they really just not remember that or did they block it out? Either way, seeing the child version of yourself cheerily yelling "Sieg Heil!" would be disturbing to anyone.
  • Then they decide to kill someone less important so they can get to know what it's like to pull the plug.
  Dee: Okay, that settles it. Let's fry this turkey.
  Dennis: Yes. All set.
  Dee: Ready?
  Frank: Hang on. Hang on a second. Are you sure you want to watch him die?
  Dennis: What do you mean watch him? We have to watch him die?
  Frank: Well, you could do something like pull the plug and you gotta stay there until the lights go out.
  Dee: You know, maybe we need to experience that on a smaller scale first and then just kind of see how we feel about it.
  Dennis: Kill something less important first.
  Dee: See what that does inside. Move up.
• In "Psycho Pete Returns" the scene of Frank wandering through the abandoned mental hospital, and the flashback scenes of young frank at the same mental hospital, are shot and acted in a genuinely disturbing and disorientating way.
• An overlooked bit but still very nightmarish in a sense. Most sitcoms go on an episode-by-episode format, meaning after thirty minutes, the problem is solved and the day is saved for the most part, but the downside is that there is no continuity. Sunny is all in the same continuity, even if there is an adventure every episode, meaning any and all amoral choices the Gang makes has long-lasting effects on their characters and their world. Need an example? Look at poor Rickety Cricket◊.
• To those suffering from depression or those who know someone that suffers from depression, Dee going through it in "The Gang Broke Dee" can be a little unsettling, especially with all the suicide references.
• When Dee wanders into the hallway of Charlie's building in the middle of the night in "Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life". It's a creepy hellhole, and ends with a reference to The Shining. Turns out Dee got high on glue.
• The ending to 'Mac Is A Serial Killer'. Specifically, the reveal that Dee's neighbor has a fridge full of severed heads.
  • The episode is implied to have ended with the Gang killing him (with Frank revving up his chainsaw).
  • Just the shot of the refrigerator being opened, showing all of the severed heads, still manages to be shocking.
  • Given the killer's obvious crush on Dee, and her constant use and abuse of him, and that all the victims look like Dee, it's entirely possible that Dee is what drove him to murder in the first place.
• "Chardee Macdennis 2: Electric Boogaloo" reveals Dennis' idea of love: a woman's head in a freezer.
  • Frank's inclusion of "Round 4" sees the Gang needing to remove a key from their arms with tweezers in a messed up Saw/"Operation" deal. Hell, Charlie winds up being the only one to go through with it... and almost bleeds out.
• Dennis' Daydream Surprise in "Mac & Dennis Move To The Suburbs." After Wally tells Dennis about the weather again, Dennis strips nude & threatens to punch Wally so hard his heart stops. Then Dennis lets out a scream right from the bowels of Hell.
  • Then Mac distracts him, and he looks back to see that Wally was never there. Was he there any of those other times? Was there ever even a "Wally" to begin with?
  • From the same episode, Mac kills the ridiculously cute dog that Dennis got for him and feeds its remains to Dennis in their evening meal as a cry for attention, which is somehow made even worse by the fact that he named the dog "Dennis Jr." and promised to raise it "like their own son". The fact that he manages to out-crazy Dennis is terrifying enough on its own, and his manic laughter after he reveals what Dennis has been eating is just downright unsettling.
    • During that same dinner scene, Dennis is so completely broken that he barely speaks, instead staring straight ahead with wide, deadened eyes as he mindlessly shovels the food into his mouth. That, coupled with Mac's histrionics, sets a deeply disturbing tone for the last minutes of the episode.
  • After The Reveal described above, Dennis gets ready to leave the house, and opens a closet; hundreds of boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese pour out. Throughout the whole episode, Mac has been making "Mac's Famous Mac and Cheese" for Dennis, claiming it's his own recipe... but the discovery of the boxes proves otherwise. Dennis slowly begins to smile and demands that Mac tell him about the "special" dinner and Mac starts desperately begging for forgiveness, and it's only the doorbell ringing that prevents Dennis from attacking him. But that doesn't mean Dennis is calm—instead, he slowly walks over to the fireplace and picks up a poker, ready to brutally kill whoever is at the door (he suspects it to be Wally, who, as mentioned above, might not even exist). Dennis's previous breakdowns are largely played for laughs—and this one is too—but he does seem as though he's ready to actually commit murder right then and there. That's how absolutely over the edge he's gone.
  • And the horrifying music playing under the scene—deliberately referencing The Shining—doesn't help matters...
• Dennis pulling a gun on the women in the Paddy's Wagon in "Charlie Catches a Leprechaun". Between his Suddenly Shouting moments, forcing them to smile as he takes pictures of them, and the revelation he has a "weird website", this is definite Nightmare Fuel.
  • He never mentions what's actually on the "weird site", either. It's less than consoling.
  • After Mac leaves Charlie alone with said "leprechaun", things take a turn for the Reservoir Dogs.
    Charlie: (armed with a straight razor; over the strains of "Stuck in the Middle with You") Well, you may be a man. You may be a leprechaun. But only one thing's for sure: you're in the wroooong basement. (menacingly approaches the leprechaun with the razor)
    "Leprechaun": (muffled and panicked) No, no, no!
    Charlie: I'mma see if you bleed green...
    • "All right, well, that just leaves you and me, and, uh, we both know there's no pot of gold at that gay bar. So the question is... what to do with the little liar..."
• In "The Gang Goes To Hell", Dennis is trying to proposition a young woman on the ship. Despite him thinking it's totally normal and (as per infamous "implication") insists that he will obviously back off if she says no, he comes off as extremely threatening, and the girl runs away screaming like a bat out of hell.
  • In "The Gang Goes To Hell", Dee actually understands Dennis's rapey implications and admits to threatening guys who don't sleep with her by saying she will file a false rape report if they don't do anything with her. They talk about it so casually, like it's a bonding moment, and neither of them give a shit about the other one being a rapist.
  • Mac's zealous religiousness can become disturbing when you imagine what he went through as a child. Especially when he openly thinks being whipped in public is a thing that is done that helps him be a "better boy". Whatever happened to him as a child is kind of unnerving.
  • In part 2, the Gang going through the Despair Event Horizon when they believe the ship is sinking. What is especially startling is when Charlie suddenly claims they are already dead and the brig is some sort of purgatory and tries to prove it by casually shooting himself in the head with a flare gun, thankfully he quickly comes to.
• More minor, but "The Gang Goes To A Water Park" is mostly lighthearted (for this show), but the scene where Mac and Dee (as well as a bunch of kids) get stuck in a slide is tough for claustrophobic viewers.
• The episode "Ass Kickers United: Mac and Charlie Join a Cult" devolves into a competition between Dee, Dennis, and Frank to see who can manipulate Mac, Charlie, and two other guys the most under the guise of commands from a mysterious "master" they are all following. Dennis' endgame is to command that they all douse themselves in lighter fluid and set themselves on fire, sacrificing themselves for the master. One of the other guys actually does it. The episode ends with him dying in the flames as the others walk off to continue their argument, totally indifferent to the death they just witnessed. Definitely one of the darker moments on the show.
  • Worse still, the character who died in flames is shown to have successfully “ascended” to a higher plane of existence of sorts, where he’s slowly floating through a psychedelic space on the back of a turtle while weird music plays. Imagine an eternity of that.
• "Being Frank" shows us, well, an entire day from Frank's point of view, and it's unsettling for reasons you wouldn't expect. From the beginning, it becomes clear that some combination of Frank's age and hedonistic lifestyle have taken a toll on his mental faculties, to the point where he rarely remembers where he is, or what he's been doing. At one point, he struggles to remember his own son's name. All of this is combined with the mid-episode revelation that he evidently may have an unaddressed terminal illness that isn't specified. As horrendous as his behavior can be, the feeling that one of the core members of the gang might not be much longer for this world is definitely jarring.
• What, no love for the sequence that follows Dennis getting shot in the head (in his own fantasy, no less) in "The Gang Saves The Day"?
  • Dennis' fantasy ends with him "mercy killing" (smothering with a pillow) Jackie Denardo after an accident ravages her body, but specifically, destroys her breasts. Made worse by the fact he appears to be getting off on it.
• If you examine the group in the POV of an outsider who interacts with them then the group as a whole can be considered Nightmare Fuel Incarnate.
  • Just ask the therapist from "The Gang Gets Analyzed", who witnesses Charlie's dead pigeon and Dennis' "executioner's switch" monologue, just to name a few.
• The dreams Mac has about his dad in "PTSDee."
  • Related to that is the VR game that he and Frank play that portrays the war in Iraq a little too realistically, where they both end up killing an insurgent in front of his son.
  • In the same episode, we get to witness the darkest deed that Deandra has committed: in the guise of helping him overcome his post-traumatic stress disorder, Dee convinces a male stripper to give a lap dance to a young woman for her birthday despite his reluctance. Both he and the birthday girl discover that they are actually father and daughter. Yes, "Sweet" Dee Reynolds just pressured a traumatized exotic dancer into unknowingly pressing himself against his daughter... and laughs at them for it. Even the rest of the Gang are genuinely disturbed and appalled by it, with Dennis of all people stating "it's the darkest thing you've ever done", calling it her rock bottom.
• In "The Gang Cracks the Liberty Bell", 1776!Frank accidentally shoots Colonel Cricket with a musket. And we see all the gory details. Not even in the realm of fantasy can Rickety Cricket catch a break.
• The fate of Maureen Ponderosa in "Making Dennis Reynolds a Murderer" is very nightmare fuel worthy as it is learned that she fell to her death from the roof of Paddy's... or was she pushed? Although Dennis frequently denies pushing her and the gang admits to editing the footage of the documentary to make Dennis look guilty, when the subject is brought up again in "The Gang Has a Jumper", one can see a slight smile on his face when remembering that Maureen landed on her head and how fortunate it was (especially for Dennis as he doesn't need to pay alimony anymore which in turns funds Maureen's transformation into a Cat)
  • Also in the same episode Dennis' interrogation tape after being questioned on Maureen's death in which after the detectives leave the room, Dennis drops his composure and then Kubrick stares into the camera for supposedly two hours, not blinking, not moving.
    • Also shout out to Maureen Ponderosa's psychological breakdown following her marriage to Dennis and sleeping with Dennis at her wedding to Liam McPoyle which leads to her getting several plastic surgery operations to make her look like a cat. This can be first seen in "Mac Kills His Dead" in which it is revealed she has moved her breast implants from "The Maureen Ponderosa Wedding Massacre" into her cheeks and when we next see her in her final appearance prior to her death in "McPoyle vs. Ponderosa: The Trial of the Century", Maureen has gone full cat wearing cat eye contacts, a full costume complete with ears and only answering with meows and hisses. The final straw is when Dennis uses a laser pointer to show she is not mentally competent to receive his alimony.
• When the rest of the Gang insults Frank for 'losing it' after losing his shoes in "Charlie's Mom Has Cancer", Frank leads the Gang on a wild goose chase staging the possibility of Barbara Reynolds faking her death and leaving a treasure hunt for her kids. This all culminates in the Gang digging up Barbara's grave to find the jewels, only to find her rotting skeleton. The usually stoic Dennis (who, earlier in the episode, claimed he couldn't remember the last time he had feelings) immediately bursts into tears screaming "I feel too much" and "My mommy's a skeleton" whilst Frank celebrates getting one over on the gang whilst the rest of them are freaking out. While Rule of Funny redeems this somewhat, it's still as horrifying as it is funny.
• "The Gang Escapes" shows that Dennis' room is soundproofed and has locks on the outside. There's also his automated video recording (which already gives off Saw vibes) and one of the most chilling lines he's ever delivered: "Remember, if you're having too much fun, it ruins it for me."
• "The Gang Does A Clip Show" starts bordering on Surreal Horror when, after a flashback ends, a second Charlie walks in. The Gang realise with horror that they're still in a flashback, and the soundtrack gets more unnerving as they desperately try to figure if they're in reality or not. They never confirm either way, and the end strongly implies they're still in a clip.
• "The Gang Chokes" has Dennis and Dee looking calm when Frank is choking. Worse, Dee actually looks interested in what was going on and she got a sick thrill over it.
• "Charlie's Home Alone" becomes increasingly unsettling as the episode goes on, with Charlie getting his leg snapped in a bear trap, his head clobbered by paint cans, bleeding profusely across the bar, and going into some extensive hallucinations.
  • One particularly horrifying moment comes when Charlie encounters a live rat in the bar...and proceeds to swallow it whole while it's still alive as part of his "eat brown" superstition to make sure the Eagles win the Super Bowl. We're later treated to shots of Charlie vomiting up parts of the rat.
• "The Gang's Still in Ireland:" After 15 seasons, Dennis finally turns murderous when, in a COVID-induced fever state, he comes after Dee with an axe.
  • Of course, it's all subverted in the next episode, where Dee reveals that Dennis was actually too weak from COVID to even lift the axe and fell unconscious, while also proceeding to shit his pants.

---