Series / Shameless (US)

Absolutely, wildly, unapologetically...

"We were living out of a car once. Uncle Nick had kicked us out. We couldn't find anyone else who'd take us in. Lip and Ian and me were sleeping in the backseat when Frank pulled over. Middle of the night. Think it was Halsted. Told me to take the boys and sit on the curb and he'd be right back. I was six. Few hours later, we're still sitting on the sidewalk and Ian's head is burning up. He's hysterical. I don't know what to do. So I ran down the street, Lip under one arm, Ian under the other, trying to flag down help. It would have been easier scoring crack than a ride to the clinic. I finally made it on foot. They said Ian had a fever of 104. Another couple hours later, who knows. I didn't find Frank until a couple days later. First thing he asked me, was how much money I had on me. Wish I could say that was the only time, but it was just the first. My mother is bipolar and my father is an alcoholic and an addict. He takes what he pleases and he offers nothing. No money, no support. I've done what I could to help raise my siblings. I wish I could've done more. I'm not asking for your pity or your admiration. I just want to be able to give these kids everything that they deserve because they're great kids. And they deserve better."

Or, more succinctly...

"Nobody fucks with the Gallaghers"

— Fiona Gallagher

Based on the British series of the same name, Shameless revolves around the Chicago-based Gallagher family: a clan of poverty-struck misfits constantly finding themselves engaged in rowdy, shameless behavior, usually against their better efforts — or because of them.

Much like their Manchester counterparts, the Chicago-based Gallagher family depicted here consists of:

• Frank Gallagher, the patriarch (played by William H. Macy)
• Fiona Gallagher, the eldest child (played by Emmy Rossum)
• Philip "Lip" Gallagher, the second-eldest (played by Jeremy Allen White)
• Ian Gallagher, the older-middle child (played by Cameron Monaghan)
• Debbie Gallagher, the younger-middle child (played by Emma Kenney)
• Carl Gallagher, the second-youngest (played by Ethan Cutkosky)
• Liam Gallagher, the youngest child (played by Christian Isaiah since Season 8. Previously played by various kids ^note originally Brennan Kane and Blake Alexander Johnson, then Brenden and Brandon Sims)

Among the characters seen on this show, other notable ones include:

• Kevin Ball and Veronica "V" Fisher, their married friends/neighbors (played by Steve Howey and Shanola Hampton)
• Mickey Milkovich, the neighborhood bully and Ian's love interest (played by Noel Fisher)
• Mandy Milkovich, Mickey's troubled sister, frequently Lip's love interest. (played by Emma Greenwell ^note Jane Levy in season one)
• Sheila Jackson, Frank's agoraphobic love interest (played by Joan Cusack)
• Steve, Fiona's on-off beau (played by Justin Chatwin)

Debuting on Showtime in 2011, this version of the show is largely a successful Cultural Translation of the original, maintaining its sense of Gallows Humor dramedy while still changing enough of the concept for American audiences to resonate with. Also boasts a handful of Emmy nominations on its mantel (ironically, none for Emmy Rossum), as well as three Screen Actors Guild wins for William H. Macy's performance as Frank.

Ran on TV for 10 years and 11 seasons.

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Shameless provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: All over the place.
  • Frank's mother.
  • Frank - his general neglect, including headbutting Ian. He gets worse as the series progresses.
  • Both of them pale in comparison to Mickey and Mandy Milkovich's father Terry, who raped and impregnated Mandy in season 2. In season 3, after walking in on Mickey and Ian having sex, he gives both boys a severe beating and he forces Mickey to have sex with a prostitute in front of Ian at gunpoint.
  • Debbie's temporary foster guardian when the kids are split up by Child Protective Services in Season 3. She runs a sweatshop where she forces the foster children in her care to make jewelry to sell, and "sees all". No wonder Debbie superglues her eyes shut for all the horrible things she and the other kids there went through.
• Accidental Murder: Mickey and Debbie's plan to get revenge on Sammi for ratting on Ian by spiking her drink and torturing her ends in this. Or so they think...
• Advertised Extra: Liam Gallagher is always present in advertisements because he is a member of the Gallagher family, but he does not have a role outside being a toddler. He's finally promoted to full recurring status in Season 8, and to the main cast in Season 9, so this no longer applies.
• The Alcoholic: Frank Gallagher. Lip also starts to follow this route as early as Season 2, becoming a defining character trait in Season 6 onwards. Like father, like son.
  • In latter seasons we also have Lip's mentor, Professor Youens, as well as his AA sponsor Brad; both are on and off the wagon multiple times, which plays a big part in his own efforts to get his act together.
• Alliterative Name: Mandy and Mickey Milkovich, Casey Casden, Holly Herkimer. Sammi Slott. Oddly averted with all of the Gallaghers.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Fiona gives one to Gus in "Uncle Carl" to beg him to stay instead of going on tour without her. It doesn't work, and their marriage doesn't last much longer.
• Apathetic Clerk: A dark version of this trope appears when Fiona gets a job as a check out girl. Her manager tells her if she wants her job, she'll have to give him oral sex. She manages to record their conversation and blackmails him into giving him the job. However, she learns that the manager is forcing the other female cashiers to perform oral sex. She gets them all together to discuss coming forward and getting the manager fired. Some are on board with this, but others are against it, claiming it's not that bad. One points out the manager lets them take sick days when they aren't sick, which his replacement might not do. In the end, they put it to a vote and decide against turning in their manager. To make things worse, the other cashiers turn on Fiona after learning she hasn't performed oral sex on their manager, feeling that she's not pulling her weight.
• Armored Closet Gay: Mickey Milkovich. He eventually comes out of the closet in Season 4 and later marries Ian.
• Artistic License: Generally, if you show up with a bag of money and buy back your foreclosed house from the bank, there will be questions.
  • Also If a blonde underage beautiful girl with wealthy parents disappears from her tent just next to a military camp, with her tent showing signs of struggle and her belongings still there, it is more likely to be a worldwide news story than being forgotten and shrugged of by the next episode.
  • If you gonna throw out a seven-year-old African kid from a private school because of his dad's behavior, you at least call his guardians, if you just tell him in a private meeting and openly admit it because of his dad without notifying anyone adults about it you are in for a really big lawsuit.
  • If you are a defence lawyer, don't hold up a note that clearly says "you're dead" to the policeman that is currently testifying, especially in full view of the judge. Is getting shrugged off in the episode but in real life you are lucky if that just leads to a temporary disbarment.

• Artistic License – History : In-universe, Frank's creative re-telling of the Gallagher family's arrival in Chicago and placement of a Gallagher ancestor into most of Chicago's important events.
• Artistic Title: The opening (which chronicles a day in the Gallagher's bathroom) really does nail the tone of the show.
• Ass Shove: Frank's nickname down in Mexico was El Gran Cañon because he was a drug mule who smuggled a lot of drugs into the US.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Carl.
  • Mandy. Her response to Lip having sex with a female pedophile is to get two of her brothers to start digging a grave in the woman's yard and tell the woman to leave before they finish, or else she's going in it. (Lip was pretending to be younger as part of a self-directed "sting operation.") And her response to Lip having sex with Karen (and Karen's blatant manipulation of Lip) is to run Karen over with a car.
• The Baby Trap: Svetlana becomes pregnant after Terry forced Mickey to have sex with her (although more than one person has questioned whether Mickey actually is the father or not), and thus they have to get married. Later, near the end of Season 5, Debbie tries to invoke this with her boyfriend to make a new family for herself and it completely blows up in her face.
• The Beard: Mandy for Ian during the early seasons. Svetlana for Mickey, although Svetlana was a Honey Trap and partly enforced by Terry to cure his son of being gay.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: In the Gallagher family, it's a pretty straight example with the virtuous Fiona being contrasted with the scumbag Frank, and in the Milkovich family, with Mickey and Mandy being terrorized by Terry, a balding, fat, tatted up gangster. On the other hand, every character is attractive, even monsters like Karen.
• Betty and Veronica:
  • Fiona had to choose between bad boy car thief Steve and nice guy police officer Tony. For some time, she chose neither but chose Jimmy/Steve at the end of Season 2.
  • Lip also had Karen and Mandy in the later half of Season 3, who play with this in their own ways. In "Frank The Plumber", he tells Karen he chooses Mandy because Mandy is good for him and Karen is not, officially breaking up with Karen. In the next scene of the same episode, Mandy hits Karen with her car and leaves her for dead. He abandons both in Season 4.
  • Amanda from Season 5-6 replaces Karen. Amanda comes from money, is haughty, shows Lip how to dress in dapper clothes, and puts fine accessories on him. Mandy grew up in the same messed up neighborhood as Lip and shares his hobbies, including committing petty crimes.
  • In Season 4, Fiona has her Nice Guy boss Mike and his exciting bad boy brother Robbie.
    • As of Season 5, she has her husband Gus and the now-returning Jimmy/Steve. Until Jimmy/Steve left and Gus went on tour with his band, leaving her to think about her life while being attracted to her new boss, Sean.
• Beware the Nice Ones: When two older girls at the pool are mean to Debbie, she fills two bags of sand to weigh herself down, then jumps on one of the girls when she's in the pool and holds her under, nearly drowning her. You do not fuck with the Gallaghers, even the sweet little ones.
• Big "NO!": Frank has one of these in Episode 11 of the first season.
• Bilingual Bonus: Almost all of Estefania's lines are in unsubtitled Portuguese.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • The penultimate episode of Season 2, "Just as the Pilgrims Intended". A suicidal Monica is institutionalized after slitting her wrists, leaving a numb Frank to sit down and keel over on a curb in the middle of the night. At the birth of Karen's baby, Lip is heartbroken when he realizes that the baby isn't his, and the adoptive parents leave when they find out that the child was born with Down Syndrome. Karen wants nothing more to do with "it," but Sheila loves the baby from the moment she sees him, and the episode ends with her and Jody stealing the baby and riding off, whooping and victorious, into the night.
  • The series finale. Frank dies, and Lip and Debbie aren't that far removed from the doomed cycle of Frank and Monica. That being said, they're still doing slightly better than their parents, Carl and Liam have a brighter future, and Ian and Mickey are happily married.
• Black Comedy Rape: Sheila raping Frank with a dildo in the second episode. It is the show's general treatment of their sex life.
• Blatant Lies: Everything Debbie tells the police after she returns the little boy she kidnapped. However, the Gallagher family seems to run on this a lot, especially Lip.
• Blood Knight: The Gallaghers are often accused of "being addicted to chaos". Fiona has a tendency to make a mess of her life as soon as things seem to go well for her. Lip is often on the verge of throwing his future away because of the criminal stunts he pulls. Ian is confirmed to have bipolar disorder and his manic episodes are more and more destructive. Carl is a little psycho who likes to fight and start fires. When disaster strikes, the family pulls together and everybody seem to be at the top of their game. When things become calm and routine, the Gallaghers get bored and start looking for a new conflict to jump in headfirst.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Ethel, due to being raised in a cult. She's sort of a fundamentalist Christian and is very prim and proper, but is totally okay with adults having sex with underage girls (she is 13 years old and has a child), growing pot, and taking money from a purse left on the L train. The last two are probably because she lives with Kevin and Veronica and near the Gallaghers.
• Book Ends: The pilot starts with and the finale ends with the Gallaghers standing around a fire as Frank describes them in a voice over.
• Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: V and Kev briefly separate in the middle of Season 5. V starts regretting the separation when her mother and friends remind her of how good a partner Kev is and that it's rare to get a present and supportive father in the hood. Kev regrets the separation when a bunch of male college students remind him of how hot and sexually capable V is.
• Bridezilla: Mickey becomes briefly one in Season 10, especially when the chairs are not his liking.
• Broken Bird:
  • Karen Jackson after her fall-out with her father.
  • Mandy Milkovich, thanks to her all around cruddy life and a father who makes Frank look like the Dad of the Year by comparison.
• Brutal Honesty: Neil, though due to brain damage, he just genuinely cannot filter his thoughts.
• But Liquor Is Quicker: In the first episode, Fiona and Steve have drunken sex in her kitchen, but Steve doesn't think she was that drunk.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Happens frequently throughout. The first notable example is when Fiona yells at their mother Monica for trying to take Liam away from them. Lip and Fiona are prone to doing this frequently to Frank, being the complete Abusive Parent he is. Frank does this to his own mother in Season 2's "Can I Have A Mother", when he yelled at her because he was sick of the way she was treating him. She did not care.
  • This becomes so common that even non-Gallagher characters will call Frank out on the Gallaghers' behalf, including Kev, and Ian's boyfriend Trevor.
• Cerebus Call-Back: In the first episode, Fiona and Steve start to have sex in the kitchen, but have to stop when an inebriated Frank is dragged in. During his return in "Crazy Love", they start to have sex again in the same location, but it's less sexy than it is sad, and Fiona herself ends it abruptly after she can't stop sobbing.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Earlier seasons of the show had some dramatic moments, but it was definitely still a comedy. Season 3 started a turn toward Darker and Edgier material, becoming more of a dramedy and sometimes just a full-blown drama with a few funny moments scattered in.
• Characterization Marches On: Mandy was originally portrayed as a Perky Goth, but from the second season onward, she became more of a calm Broken Bird, yet still angry, who ends up being a Sugar-and-Ice Personality.
  • Karen Jackson was originally much more sympathetic, showing some shades of questioning her promiscuity. But then she Took A Level In Jerk Ass and turned into The Sociopath.
• Chosen Conception Partner: Bizarrely enough, Kevin chose Veronica's mother. They had a threesome.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: During the finale of Season 9, Lip tells Sierra he's not sure if he's actually in love with her or not and their relationship seems to end as he also encourages her to take back Charlie as well since his getting another girl pregnant was something Charlie didn't know at the time. As far as the audience is aware, she still works at the diner and still would be in Fiona's life—and by extension, Lip's. By Season 10, she's totally gone without another mention.
• Citizenship Marriage:
  • Between Jimmy and Estefania, a Brazilian drug lord's daughter. Jimmy was forced into it.
  • Between V and Svetlana in Season 6, though Season 7 finds that it was invalid due to her already being married — to a man she knew before Mickey!
• Cliffhanger: Every season except for Season 7 ends on one.
• Coitus Uninterruptus: This has happened with Fiona walking in on people, especially Veronica and Kevin. It's also happened to Mandy.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Implied by Jimmy/Steve, when talking about Estefania's father.
• Comedic Sociopathy: A common occurrence for many of the Gallaghers, particularly Frank.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Frank quits drinking, he becomes a great dad to Debbie and Carl. Lip warns them he won't always be like this by relating their situation to a pet turtle the kids forgot about and accidentally killed. Carl believes Frank is buying them a new turtle.
  • In Season 5 when Carl gets arrested for drug trafficking, Fiona tells him to lie about feeling remorse in court. Carl protests lying in court is illegal... even though the ten pounds of heroin got him there in the first place.
• Contrived Coincidence: A lot of the show's Dark Comedy is derived from highly unlikely events happening to the characters.
  • Shelia has almost conquered her agoraphobia when a wheel falls off a plane and lands right in front of her.
  • Carl wants an air-rifle and coincidentally a criminal tosses a machine pistol out of a car and it lands in front of Carl. Carl uses it to kill a bald eagle.
  • Ian spends the night with some random older guy he met at a nightclub. Who turns out to be Jimmy/Steve's father.
• Cop Hater: All of the characters despise the police, usually because it runs the risk of interrupting some sort of scam they're running, but also because the police are presented as corrupt at best.
• Couch Gag: Every episode opens with a character (usually Frank, occasionally Fiona or Lip), often in the middle of a Noodle Incident, Breaking the Fourth Wall to contemptuously tell the audience "This is what happened on Shameless last week," before shifting into the Previously on… segment.
  • It has also doubled as foreshadowing once or twice: a Season 4 episode begins with Debbie and Lip on a staircase, with Debbie demanding to go home and this is the place where Ian has been hiding away all season. Another has Svetlana interrupting Mickey's bathroom time to give us the usual spiel and Mandy later does the same to Mickey, demanding that he finds Ian and send him back home.
• Darker and Edgier: Season 3 is darker than the previous seasons, including a sub-plot with Estefania's brutal Cartel Faux Affably Evil father coming to America, Frank becoming even worse, and Jimmy being forced to find a job by Estefania's father's right hand.
  • Season 4 is even darker than this, with Frank becoming terminally ill and needing a liver transplant, Liam almost dying after eating cocaine Fiona left out on the table, and Fiona becoming a convicted felon.
• Darkest Hour: Fiona in the latter part of season nine. She has lost everything after having had money, own place, dog and a boyfriend and is bankrupt. She is forced to work in an extremely dangerous liquor store at night when her business partner comes in and offers her a huge lump sum to buy her out of a delayed project. She accepts and uses it to start a new life outside of Chicago while giving her siblings a good amount of the money.
• A Day in the Limelight: Carl gets his own day in the limelight when he goes to cancer camp, as part of another one of Frank's schemes. Carl's time there goes about as well as you'd expect.
• Dead Man's Chest: When Aunt Ginger died (before the start of the series), Frank buried her in the backyard, and began collecting and cashing her Social Security checks years after. However, in Season 3 when the city has to dig up the yard to fix the water pipes, the kids have to dig up Ginger's body before the city does or they face charges.
• Deer in the Headlights: The older siblings' reactions to seeing a CPS worker in the house. She comes in to find a dozen screaming kids and a man in scrubs pulling bullet fragments out of the ass of a screaming teenage boy. Then Fiona comes in looking visibly filthy. This is bad enough on its own, then Debbie seals the deal by bursting into the house crowing about how she nearly drowned that "slut" at the public pool.
• Derailing Love Interests: Though he was never quite able to be the Knight in Shining Armor that he tried/wanted to be, Jimmy/Steve's reappearance in Season 5 as a full-blown Jerkass received some complaints that he was only written that way to force Fiona to end their relationship for good and push her to explore other love interests.
  • Considering that Mickey/Ian is one of the most popular ships of the show, a lot of fans weren't happy that Mickey was painted as the bad guy in the breakup when he was genuinely trying to be the good guy, whereas Ian's culpability was mostly ignored. This was rectified somewhat during his return near the end of Season 7.
• Destination Defenestration: "The Defenestration of Frank" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Frank's homeless shelter finds his stash of money and they promptly throw him out the window.
• Deus ex Machina: Lip abruptly getting an offer from a stranger to pay his remaining tuition after he's unable to get his grant paperwork in on time. He even says as much to Amanda.
  • After spending most of Season 4 dying and seemingly having no hope, Frank abruptly gets a new liver in the penultimate episode.
• Did They or Didn't They?: At the send of Season 2 after a great amount of teasing, Estefania asks Lip to sleep with her. But it's not crystal clear if it's literal sleep or "sleeping".
• The Diss Track: Fiona briefly marries a musician, only to leave him not long after. When she tries to talk to him, he insists that he feels no ill will towards her. He then proceeds to perform a song titled "Fuck You Fiona".
• The Dog Bites Back: The "Fuck You Fiona" song.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female: The "wifely duties" are handwaved as a release of tension, not gay sex.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male:
  • The first time Sheila and Frank have sex, he tells her repeatedly to stop, then ends up limping for the rest of the day because she shoved a big dildo up his ass, which is supposed to be hilarious.
  • The show's treatment of Karen raping Frank. It even comes back in Season 2's "Father's Day", when Sheila had found out and consoled Frank after Karen told the "truth" to a detective who was looking into Eddie's death and found the video of Karen and Frank online, wanting to arrest him for having sex with a minor.
  • Jimmy and his wife Estefania. She puts his hand under her dress, despite his repeated objections. When her father's dragon scolds him for cheating on Fiona, he insists he never moved his hand while it was underneath. The dragon doesn't care and continues to act as if Jimmy's a cheating jerk rather than a person who was just sexually assaulted.
  • When Mickey's father comes in and sees Mickey and Ian having sex, he beats them up and forces Mickey to have sex with a Russian hooker under threat he will literally shoot him and Ian. The next day, both Ian and Mickey are shell-shocked. Played straight because nobody subsequently treats it as rape, even though Mickey is forced to marry the prostitute, Svetlana, when she becomes pregnant. In a bit of surprising hypocrisy, Mandy is even angry with Mickey when he doesn't want to go be with Svetlana when she gives birth, and he points out he doesn't even really know if the child is his.
  • Happens again with Lip and Mandy, after he had learned she had run Karen down and crippled her. He objects and Mandy doesn't listen because they hadn't done it in a week.
  • When Lip, Ian, and Mickey discover a female pedophile has moved into the neighborhood, Lip wants to drive her out of town. Ian defends her because he thinks Carl would be "lucky" to be targeted for sex by an adult woman, whereas a man of the same age going after Debbie would be "different." It's ultimately averted here when Mandy helps Lip get rid of the woman.
  • In Season 5, Debbie loses her virginity this way. An older male friend of hers, on whom she has a crush, gets drunk and passes out. She notices he has an erection and has sex with him. The next morning he is disturbed by what happened and cuts off contact with her, which baffles and upsets her, and Lip even says that a guy would be lucky to be raped by her.
• Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male:
  • The show depicts Ian rationalizing his underage sexual relationships with Kash and Lloyd as acceptable despite him being a minor and both men being adults. Lip later makes clear in a later episode that he thought Kash was a sexual predator and his behavior was unacceptable.
  • In "I'm The Liver", Mandy, Ian, and Mickey plan to drug and rape the leader of a Westboro Baptist Church-esque cult, taking and posting compromising pictures of men giving him oral sex in order to discredit him. They end up getting compromising pictures of him while he's conscious, and although the guy was a sleazy scumbag, it's portrayed as perfectly okay because they're the good guys.
• Downer Ending:
  • Season 3's "Frank The Plumber" hits a downer note. Mickey and Ian break up, and Karen is run over by Mandy (who was intending to kill her).
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Eddie killing himself in the Season 1 finale.
  • Monica trying to do the same at the end of Season 2. Her attempt is unsuccessful.
• Dumb Blonde: Monica, Jasmine, Holly Hickemer. Averted with Bianca, who is book smart, but as a result of the knowledge of her impending death displays some bizarre behavior regardless.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Peggy Gallagher genuinely cared about her children and grandchildren. Except for Frank.
  • Even when Sammi goes off the deep end in Season 5, she still loves Chuckie, even if her means of showing it can be... unique at times.
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: So much so that Debbie feels like she's a late bloomer for not having lost her virginity by thirteen; Mandy even asks her what took her so long. Deconstructed, as teen pregnancies (and unplanned pregnancies in general) are a real concern, and promiscuity doesn't make every character happy.
• Evolving Credits: In the third season after Karen leaves, the portion in the intro sequence featuring her and Lip is cut in favor of Lip and Ian rough housing.
  • A significant portion of the credits were reshot for Season 10, after Liam and Tami are promoted to main cast, Fiona leaves, and Mickey returns to the main cast:
    • Fiona's scene dragging Frank out of the bathroom and then using the toilet is replaced by Debbie doing the same.
    • The scene where Debbie wraps Liam in toilet paper is replaced by a scene where Liam does the same to Frannie.
    • Frannie also gets Liam's scene, brushing her teeth with toilet water.
    • The final scene, of Fiona and Jimmy/Steve having sex is replaced by intercut scenes of Ian and Mickey having sex and Lip and Tami having sex.
• Expy: Amy Smart is basically playing the same character she plays in Crank up to eleven.
• Extreme Omnisexual: Frank advocates for having sex with anyone who will have you. Anything too.
• Fake Alibi: After the police discover Eddie's body, Frank is the prime suspect. His initial plan is to get his sons to claim he took them on a camping trip around the time Eddie died. He then tries to goes to Terry, who suggests Frank say he was at a gun show at the time. He even gets Frank a gun he allegedly bought at the gun show and a phony witness to claim he saw Frank there.
• Faking the Dead: Frank.
• False Rape Accusation: After cousin Patrick outwits the Gallaghers to get the house, Debbie claims that he molested her to force him to give them the house back.
  • Mickey's reason he needs to find Frank and kill him is that he raped a girl.
• Fanservice: Fiona, big time. And there has to be some reason Ian is shirtless all the time. Lip, Steve, Kevin, Veronica, Mandy, and Estefania are major sources of this too. And Jody, who appears fully nude on some occasions.
  • During Fiona's arrest and processing while in jail her nudity is very much Fan Disservice, particularly the Inelegant Blubbering look of horror on her face.
• Fille Fatale: Karen is stated to have first started experimenting around sexually when she was just 11 years old and Mandy is implied to have started around the same time, as is evidenced when she asks Debbie (who was 13 at the time) why she waited so long to lose her virginity. Subverted with Holly Hickemer, who thinks she's this but she's still too young to actually be sexual.
• Fingore: Jimmy in season 3, in a scene that manages to be horrifying and hilarious at the same time.
• Foreshadowing: In one episode, a grocery checkout clerk goes berserk because Debbie was insisting on using multiple coupons, all while the manager keeps telling her to go on her break. The next episode reveals these "breaks" are when the manager is expecting to get blowjobs.
  • In the first episode of the show, Ian says that Frank hates him, and Fiona says that Ian probably scares him because he looks more like Monica than the rest of the children; Ian replies that "he ain't seen nothing yet." Ian later develops bipolar disease, which Monica has, and his behavior has clear parallels with Monica's.
  • In the first season, Debbie shows particular interest in babies and young children. In season 4, she finds out that she’s pregnant and decides she wants to keep it.
  • In Season 4, Lip stating that alcoholism is the nature part of nature vs. nurture (which is somewhat Truth in Television). He himself goes off the deep end in a massive alcoholic downward spiral later on.
• Funny Background Event: In Season 5's "Carl's First Sentencing", Frank takes Doctor Bianca Samson to her first drug buy. Everything goes smooth until she decides to yell, "Hands up! I'm a cop! You're under arrest!" The drug dealer isn't amused and Frank smooths things over quickly, but as the camera pans between them, you can see all the other dealers in the alley running out of there.
• Furniture Assembly Gag: Lip and Brad are brought in to see the most powerful mobster in Chicago and fear that they are going to be killed. However, the mobster just needs some skilled mechanics to fix his kid's birthday present: a kid-size car powered by an electric motor. The assembly instructions were apparently incomprehensible. Lip and Brad successfully assemble the car and seem to be off the hook. However, Lip tells Brad that they better get out of there quickly because he found some left over parts that he really hopes are not vital to something like the brakes.
• Generation Xerox: Fiona and Lip have more than a few similarities to their dear old dad, particularly in the selfishness department. Fiona slept with a married man even though she knew she would regret it. Lip especially showed signs when he tried to break Karen and Jody up by sending Mandy to their house so Mandy would sleep with Jody. This trope is even lampshaded in "A Beautiful Mess."
  Frank: Why do you have to be such an asshole?
  Lip: The apple fell where you left it.
  • In Season 4, Ian begins to show signs of bipolar disorder, just like Monica, which is confirmed in the next season.
• Genki Girl: Though she may be a a bit older than most examples, Sheila Jackson when she's not in a rough patch.
• Go Seduce My Archnemesis: Lip sends Mandy to do this to Jody.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Kevin usually grows a few marijuana plants in the basement, mostly for his own consumption. In Season 2, he has a great growing season and ends up with a basement full of high quality weed worth thousands of dollars. However, if caught, he would face some serious prison time for trafficking. Veronica makes him destroy most of it
  • At the midpoint of the season, Kevin reveals he didn't destroy all of the weed but buried it; Ethel and Malik later dig up the buried weed and sell it to leave town together.
  • Since Shelia is a dominatrix with a pegging fetish and Jody is a recovering sex addict who can only have sex for romantic purposes in missionary style without losing control, Shelia grows bored with her and Jody's sex life. Shelia enlists Frank's help in convincing Jody to be more adventurous in bed. Jody warns them both if he starts, he won't be able to stop, and they won't like what happens. Eventually they wear him down, and it takes all of a week for his fetishes to blow past Shelia's comfort zone.
• Harmful to Minors: Everything and everyone on the show. Even the somewhat conscientious Fiona accidentally leaves cocaine where Liam can get to it! These kids see more harmful stuff than many small town cops would! Extends all the way down to Mickey's newborn son, who was being raised by prostitutes.
• Has a Type: Ned, as lampshaded by Lip in Season 4's "There's the Rub".
• Hereditary Homosexuality:
  • Debbie eventually comes to identify as a lesbian, making her the second openly queer Gallagher child. Their mother Monica, on the other hand, was bisexual.
  • Sandy Milkovich is introduced in season ten and identifies as gay, much like her cousin Mickey.
• Hollywood Law: After Fiona gets slapped with a 6 million dollar lawsuit from a roofer who broke his leg falling from the roof of her building, her lawyer advises her that this basically means financial ruin and her only chance to escape is to sell the building, spend the money and declare bankruptcy. Suffice to say, this is terrible legal advice and realistically the roofer could never have hoped to sue her for even a fraction of that amount.
• Hope Spot: Sammi and Sheila apparently secure Frank a badly-needed new liver (illegally) near the end of Season 4 at the steep cost of $20,000, but later find out that not only did he not get a new liver, they actually stole one of his kidneys. Though the last seconds of the episode have him getting fast-tracked into receiving a new liver.
• The Immodest Orgasm: Estefânia
• Insurance Fraud: Frank is supposed to have a car torched for the insurance money but stops for a drink first and it is stolen instead. Since the car was not insured against theft, he owed some gangsters a lot of money... until he faked his death.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing : Karen's attitude towards her Down Syndrome afflicted son.
  "I don't want that fucking thing anywhere near me, okay?"
• It's All About Me: Frank and his mother. Also Karen got into this territory.
• Jerkass: Frank. As of Season 2, Lip starts taking a few levels up in this, but he does get better by Season 4.
  • Karen increasingly becomes this after her fallout with her father.
  • Monica's girlfriend Bob is rude, psychopathic (she tries to run down Frank and Kev with her 18-wheeler), and basically announces she's going to take Liam because he needs to be raised by a black person.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Absolutely awful as Frank is to ruin Fiona's wedding to Sean, the single bright spot is that it allowed her to learn of his relapse, and though Sean leaves Fiona, his weak and remorseless attempts to minimize his continued doping prove that Fiona's trust in his promise of going sober were unfounded, and regardless, his priority was always his son over Fiona. Not to mention that, as crude and horrible as his calling out of his own children's flaws is, he's completely correct.
• Karma Houdini: Frank. One moment he's in deep trouble, then the next he's off the hook somehow. Actually getting a liver transplant near the end of Season 4 was widely criticized for being an unbelievable Deus ex Machina.
  • The event in the spoiler is an especially egregious case of this trope considering it wasn't too long ago that he cheated someone else out of getting the organ transplant they needed, and then literally shagged them to death.
• Last-Name Basis: Mickey always referred to Ian as either "Gallagher" or by any of a number of nicknames for much of the first three seasons. Eventually he starts using his first name as their relationship develops.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Karen and Mandy both end up pregnant as teens when they have no interest in being parents, but Veronica wants to have a baby and can't get pregnant. Reality bites back in Season 3, Veronica tells Kevin the STD she got from a rapper when she was a teenager is likely the culprit behind her infertility (most likely chlamydia, which doesn't present symptoms in women until several weeks later. By that time, significant damage to the reproductive system has been done).
• Law of Inverse Paternity: Liam turns out to be Frank's son even though everyone assumed he was not. Similarly, Lip hoped he was not Frank's son but turned out to be his. However, Ian is not actually Frank's son, but his nephew. Likewise, Lip wanted badly to be the father of Karen's baby, despite Karen explicitly stating at least twice it may not be his. He continues being involved with Karen's pregnancy, even going so far to help her look for potential parents to adopt her baby after it is born, and making a videotape for the parents to give it when it's older. However, when Karen gives birth, he realizes it is not his when the baby turns out to be part-Asian. In Season 3, Mickey winds up getting the hooker his father forced him to have sex with pregnant. This leads to a forced marriage organized by his abusive father and destroys his relationship with Ian.
• Little Brother Is Watching: Ian and Lip make their little brother Carl wear earmuffs at night so they can talk about various illegal activities openly. However, Carl is naturally more sociopathic than either of his older brothers.
  • Ian has trouble during one of his "anytime blowjobs" from Mickey. Not the least reason is Liam watching from the corner.
• Living MacGuffin: Any of the numerous babies on the show (Liam, Yevgeny, Franny, et. al.) usually fill this role at some point, mostly serving as catalysts for others and not much else. Liam is the only one who has fully progressed to being a true "character" with their own personality and storylines.
• Mafia Princess: Estefania, as her father is a high ranking Cartel leader.
• Man on Fire: In Season 6, Kevin's neighbor Yanis burns himself to death with Molotov cocktails by accident after learning it was Kevin who's responsible for him being paralyzed.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Occurs twice in the Season 4 premiere episode.
  • Once per Episode if you count Ian in the title sequence.
  • Frank tells Carl not to masturbate in the shower, but in season 11 Frank masturbates in the shower.
  • Frank tries to do some good by giving the teenage Carl advice on masturbating and how to avoid accidentally impregnating his own sister.
  • Mickey asks anyone who knows him about Ian. He later tries to masturbate to a photo of Ian but instead becomes angry, putting his fist into the bathroom mirror.
  • In the season 9 mid-season premiere, 17-year-old Carl is challenged by his father to a masturbating duel. Frank bets his son that Carl can't successfully rub one out in under three minutes — of course, this is all a ruse to procure healthy young semen that Frank can later give to the fertility doctor. Carl wins the bet, earning $100 in the process.
• Mexican Standoff: Mickey and his dad have one in season 10. Both give a vibe that it is not the first time the two have done it. They even have the same type of gun from the same place.
  • At one point, Frank spends his time masturbating in the graveyard of Bianca while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Veronica thinks Kevin is cheating on her with another woman and follows him to her apartment. After Kevin leaves, she confronts the woman but realizes the woman is just teaching Kevin to read.
• Mistaken for Murderer: When Eddie is found dead, people assume Frank did it.
• Mood Whiplash: Heavily used. One moment the show is dramatic, then the next moment something funny happens.
• Moose and Maple Syrup: In Season 1, after his usual drinking session, Frank wakes up the next morning in Toronto. The scene features a gratuitous use of a Mounty on a horse wearing full ceremonial uniform in downtown Toronto. Later, in Season 8, Frank goes through a brief arc where he opens a business buying cheap medicine from Canadian pharmacies for Southside customers along with a little human smuggling.
• Morality Pet: Sheila could be seen as one to Frank and Karen.
  • Debbie used to be one for Frank.
• Mr. Fanservice: Jimmy/Steve, Lip, Jody, Kev, Ian, and Mickey.
• Ms. Fanservice: Fiona, Karen, Veronica, Mandy, Estefania, Sierra, and Svetlana.
• Never Learned to Read: Kevin has severe dyslexia, and since he spent his childhood being shuffled from foster home to foster home, it was never treated. He can read enough to get by in his job as a bartender, but has problems with more complicated writing. He's been attending special tutoring sessions so he can finally learn to read and write properly.
• Never Mess with Granny: Frank's mother Peggy Gallagher, who went to prison when her meth lab exploded and killed some people.
• Nice Guy: Jody does not seem to have a selfish bone in his body. He puts up with Karen's tantrums and her rampant cheating. He takes care of a sick Peggy Gallagher even though she threatened him with a gun during his wedding. He wants to take care of Karen's baby even after Karen dumps him and it is clear the baby is not his. However, by the end of Season 2, even he cannot be nice to Karen anymore.
• Official Couple: Subverted with Fiona and Steve/Jimmy. Though the very first episode points to them being a sure thing, and their UK counterparts are married, the US versions end up breaking it off for good in Season 5.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Subverted. Ian returns in Season 4 abnormally full of energy, talkative, and bubbly, which surprises his family, but due to a slew of other pressing matters, they don't think much of it until his mood turns the other way and confirms his bipolar disorder.
• Out of Focus:
  • Ian in Season 2, especially in comparison to the rest of the Gallaghers.
  • Carl, in general, compared to the other Gallaghers until Season 4 or 5. He would usually show up to cause antics for a "CARL!" and rarely get a storyline. In the next few seasons, Carl drifts in and out of focus as he gets a spot at military school that takes him away from Chicago for months at a time.
• Pair the Spares:
  • Sheila and Jody, after Karen ends her relationship with Jody and Frank goes back to Monica.
  • Lip and Mandy, at the end of Season 2.
• Parental Abandonment: Monica Gallagher left her husband and six children almost two years prior to the start of the series. Frank stuck around but has been completely useless most of the time. When he actually moves out, it makes things easier for the kids.
  • Fiona gets custody of the rest of her siblings during Season 3. In Season 6, she starts pushing Debbie away during her pregnancy, and from Season 8 onwards, she spends most of her time at the apartment building she owns, and very little time actually with her siblings. Finally, in Season 9, Fiona decides to leave for good. By this point, Lip and Ian are adults, and Debbie and Carl are somewhere between 16 and 18, but Liam is still only 11.
• Parental Incest : Played with, when Frank tracks down his oldest daughter and tries to get her to give him her liver in Season 4.
  Sammi: You dry-humped my leg for half an hour yesterday.
  Frank: Dry humping is not incest.
  • Played straight with Terry Milkovich, who drunkenly molested his daughter, Mandy, and impregnated her.
• Parental Neglect: Frank, obviously. In one episode, he even gives a speech claiming that being negligent is the best way to raise independent kids.
• Perpetual Poverty: Frank gets his money by abusing the worker compensation system but he spends it all on alcohol and paying for the damage he causes while drunk. As Lip points out they could easily pay their bills with that money. Instead Fiona, Lip, and Ian have to work and steal enough to cover the bills and pay for food. Whenever the kids manage to save up money for the future, Frank finds it, steals it, and spends it on alcohol or drugs.
  • Later seasons start to play this down a lot more. Fiona eventually manages to start investing in real estate, and the family do now own the Gallagher house again, but they're still generally struggling for money, even if not on the day-to-day anymore.
• Platonic Co-Parenting: Siblings Fiona and Lip raise their younger siblings, because their parents are useless at best.
• Popularity Cycle: Frank treats his family and the people around him this way, favoring those who are willing to help him out the most. Initially, Debbie is his favorite due to her unconditional love for him. However, she turns on him after he destroys her school project and shows no remorse. Carl then becomes Frank's favorite due to his hero worship of his dad. When Frank needs a new liver, he turns to Sammi his long lost daughter. Sammi takes the role of Frank's favorite, but he gets bored of her because she's too needy. Sammi doesn't take this well and eventually shoots Frank so he will be dependent on her.
• Pregnancy Does Not Work That Way: Karen's pregnancy in season 2 may have lasted most of the season, but it's actually quite short. She tells Lip she's pregnant over the summer (when she isn't showing at all), doesn't start showing until school starts, then has a big baby belly and gives birth on Thanksgiving.
• Primal Scene: When Frank and Monica briefly get back together, they had sex with little regard for who would see. Including their kids, who are appropriately disgusted.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Seen most starkly in "When There's a Will", when cousin Patrick takes the house and outwits the Gallaghers at nearly every turn. To try to get it back, they order a hit on him, Carl poisons him to try and kill him, and then they only manage to get it back after Debbie claims Patrick molested her. Though they were desperate to not be homeless, this is still some pretty dark behavior that is mostly Played for Laughs, in contrast to Frank's comparable manipulations that are usually designed to show how horrible he is.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Ethel, Malik, and their children. They literally did leave on a bus.
  • Karen leaves the Jackson household at the end of Season 2, and comes back mid-way Season 3, apparently reformed. Then, at the end of Season 3, she once again leaves, though this time with Hymie and Jody, as Jody is taking her to Arizona where he knows people who he believes can try and heal her brain damage. Sheila herself leaves during Season 5.
  • Sheila leaves in Season 5, not on a bus but driving an RV...which requires the same class license to drive as a bus, class B or C depending what type of bus!
  • At the end of Season 3, Ian leaves on a bus after stealing Lip's identity and joins the army. The Bus Came Back shortly in season 4.
  • At the end of Season 5, Mickey is arrested for trying to kill Sammi. In the first episode of Season 6, he is serving a lengthy jail sentence for said crime. The Bus Came Back briefly near the end of Season 7, and then again in Season 9. The bus comes back properly in Season 10, with Mickey being back in the main cast.
  • Mandy and abusive boyfriend Kenyatta leave for Indiana during season 5, and Mandy returns on her own in season 6.
  • Carl leaves for military school about halfway through Season 7 and only returns for the finale, whilst Mickey returns towards the end but leaves again in the penultimate episode.
  • At the end of Season 9, Fiona decides to leave Chicago.
• Promotion to Parent: Fiona, without a doubt. It gets heavier when she is legally promoted legal guardian to her siblings in Season 3's "A Long Way From Home".
• Rage Against the Heavens : Frank, in the Season 4 finale.
  "Is that all you got? I'm still alive, motherfucker!"
• Rape by Proxy: In Season 3, Terry catches Mickey and Ian having sex. He then forces Mickey at gunpoint to have sex with a Russian prostitute while Ian watches.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: More specifically, child rape. As shown in "May I Trim Your Hedges?", pretty much everyone in the neighborhood agrees to go beat up a pedophile that Lip found living near them.
• Really Gets Around: Karen, Lip, and Fiona.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • When Karen calls the cops because Sheila and Jody took the baby from the hospital, the officers who arrive listen to the story, realize what a jerkass Karen is and then decide the baby is going to be much better off with his loving grandmother than being left in the hospital and ultimately ending up in the foster care system. They refuse to arrest Sheila, ignore Karen's protests, and decide to go get some Thai food.
  • The judge presiding over the legal guardianship hearing quickly recognizes Frank's lies and concludes that the children would be much better off with Fiona as their legal guardian. His main concern is whether the strain of assuming guardianship might be too much for Fiona, who would be committed to spending the next 15 years of her life taking care of the kids.
    • As Fiona leaves at the end of Season 9, when Liam is just 10 or 11, the judge kind of had a point...
• Reformed, but Rejected: Season 7 has Lip go before the board in college to see if his expulsion can be revoked. Even though he's sobered up and brought Ian as a character witness, the expulsion stands. That starts him on an alcoholic binge.
• Refuge in Audacity: Might as well be the show's subtitle.
  Debbie: (to Frank) What's that?
  Frank: Valium. (pops a pill into Hymie's mouth)
  Debbie: Are you supposed to give babies Valium?
  Frank: I don't know. It worked for you.
• Retcon: Fiona is brought into a diner by her PO at the end of season 4 ("Lazarus") to get a waitressing gig. She's welcomed with open arms by the manager Charlie (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and they both go to an NA meeting. Season 5 starts with Fiona still waitressing and going to NA meetings with her manager, but the restaurant is now Patsy's Pies and the manager is now Sean (Dermot Mulroney). Dialogue between him and Fiona confirms that she's been working at Patsy's since she got out of jail, and her fellow waitress Jackie appears in both seasons.
• Revenge by Proxy: After Carl (and Frank) get Chuckie arrested, Sammi gets Ian arrested as revenge.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Season 11 takes place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Running Gag: Someone shouting "CARL!!!" at one of his antics.
• Russian Roulette: The Gallaghers feel cursed that because they're Monica's children, they'll never know if they or their children will get bipolar disorder, which Ian is confirmed to have in season 5.
  • In the Season 5 finale, Frank's girlfriend Bianca plays this with herself for the rush.
• Sadist Teacher: Lip has a sadist professor at the start of Season 4, complete with him locking Lip out of a midterm because Lip was just a few minutes late.^note In real life, depending on the university, some professors may indeed lock the door after exams (or even classes) start, but students at other locations may go an entire college career without this happening. Considering the rising cost of university tuition, some students feel that with what they're forced to pay, they should walk into class whenever they want.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Season 7 introduces Etta, the manager of Wendell's Laundromat. Fiona has to put her in assisted living due to Alzheimer's.
• Scenery Porn: The final scene of Season 4 shows Frank and Carl overlooking the frozen Lake Michigan, one of the most gorgeous examples of cinematography from the show.
• Sex Montage: "The Helpful Gallaghers" starts this way.
• Sexless Marriage: Mickey and Svetlana, since he's gay and the one time they did actually have sex was a case of "corrective rape" orchestrated by Terry. Svetlana seems genuinely frustrated that Mickey just isn't into her, eventually reaching the point where she attempts to increase her allure to him by dyeing her hair red like Ian's and presenting herself to Mickey wearing a strap-on. They finally divorce by Season 5.
  • When Frank meets the parents of the young man from whom he got his new liver, he finds out that they haven't had sex since the couple's son died, leading the wife to come on to Frank.
  • Another one involving Frank: he becomes the centre of a Love Dodecahedron amongst the parents at Liam's school, having sex with half of the mothers. Given who did and didn't get Frank's ST Is, it's easy to tell that some of the parents' marriages were this trope.
• Shout-Out: At one point, Monica dates a meth dealer who cooks in an RV named Walter.
• Sibling Rivalry: One begins between Lip and Ian in season 2; Lip has an inside for Ian to get into West Point, but his plan backfires, and Lip is the one who is offered recruitment instead. Ian becomes so furious he even refuses to speak to him. Not until a second No-Holds-Barred Beatdown won by Ian did get the two back on speaking terms.
• Sleeping with the Boss: In Season 3, Fiona gets a low-paying job at a supermarket, and soon learns that most of her co-workers have been pressured into doing sexual acts for the boss, Bobby. When she gets them all together to talk about it and find a way to get rid of him, some of them actually defend it on the grounds of Better the Devil You Know.
  • Fiona in Season 4 with Mike and Seasons 5-6 with Sean.
• Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: The end of Season 4 has Frank yelling at God that he failed to kill him this time, celebrating by having a drink at the waterfront.
• Smoking Is Edgy: Lip Gallagher is often seen with a cigarette as a way of expressing his rebellious and edgy personality.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Subverted. They definitely exist and pop up regularly. However, the sheer dysfunction of the Gallagher household should result in everyone being shipped out to foster care. Rationalized by the system being overextended, which is to some extent Truth in Television.
• The Sociopath:
  • Frank's mother definitely. She didn't care at all about those two college kids who died in the meth lab explosion that got her jail time.
  • Karen increasingly became this as she Took a Level in Jerkass. Confirmed as of the penultimate episode of season 3. A brain-damaged Karen admits to Lip she can't "feel things inside".
  • Frank, of course.
• Sorting Algorithm of Deadness: Jimmy/Steve had his fair share of runs through it at the end of season 3 and all of season 4.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Ian insists Mickey loves and wants to be with him and Mickey doesn't deny this. However the obstacles outside their relationship – Mickey's homophobic father, a forced marriage, and Mickey's total inability to be out in the environment he was raised in – is what drives them apart and nearly ends their relationship on several occasions.
• Start My Own: Season 7 has Frank start up a new family from people he recruits from the homeless shelter he stays in after getting kicked out once again by his family.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Mandy. The only people who ever see her soft side are Lip and Ian.
• Surprise Car Crash: It plays with this in season 3 (episode 9). Karen, Lip's on-again, off-again girlfriend, pisses off Mandy Milkovich, Lip's other interest. After a heated conversation, Karen walks home alone, and as she crosses the street a car veers very close to her and she has to leap out of the way. As it speeds off, she flips it the finger — only to be hit by another car coming from the other direction, driven by Mandy.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Sandy Milkovich in Season 10 for Mandy, with some Remember the New Guy? thrown in, as Mandy was Put on a Bus and was awkwardly absent from her brother and long time friend Ian's nuptials. Their manner of dress and personalities resemble each other and their names even rhyme!
  • Fiona's manager in season five is clearly supposed to have been the same manager she had in season four. Due to schedule conflicts, they needed to cast a new actor, and made the decision to flimsily cover it up instead of a recast.
• "Take That!" Kiss: After Ian points out Mickey is too afraid to kiss him.
• Tangled Family Tree: The Gallaghers, especially with the reveal Ian is one of Frank's brother's sons.
• Those Two Guys: Kermit and Tommy, the two patrons at The Alibi Room that are there from opening to closing.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Lip starts the series a genius, but gradually succumbs to the inevitable realities of his position as well as his own self-sabotage such as squandering his chance at an education or high-paying job. By the final season, he's outright stated to be not as smart as he used to be to the point where he may as well be the next Frank. Even his sale of the house is tainted with this, since he ends up selling it a fraction for what it's going to end up being worth after the neighborhood development is finished.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Lip and Karen in season 2.
  • Debbie suffers from this when going through puberty in season 4, and again in season 6 and 7 as her teen pregnancy (and motherhood) has a tendency to bring out the worst in her.
  • Debbie's level in jerkass can certainly be blamed on Fiona's own, who from Season 6 onwards starts dishing out various ultimatums to her siblings, and generally running an unfairly tight ship, especially considering how little time she eventually spends at the Gallagher house herself. Granted, the ultimatums aren't exactly unprecedented – she did the same to Lip in Season 2 when he almost dropped out of high school – but they're certainly more frequent in the later seasons.
• The Unfair Sex: Veronica intentionally dry humping a stranger to orgasm is made to be Kevin's fault for his failure to fulfill her sexual needs while he's busy taking care of their children. Had the roles been reversed, a husband cheating on his homemaking wife because she's focusing on raising the children instead of having sex with him probably wouldn't go over as well.
  • Averted with Fiona, whose cheating (on Mike with Robbie and on Gus with Jimmy/Steve) almost always has negative consequences that she has to face and own up to.
• The Un-Favourite: Frank Gallagher to his father Neville and his mother Peggy.
  • Though Frank treats all of his children with varying degrees of apathy, Ian seems to be his least favorite child, since he apparently resembles Monica the most (and later is revealed to actually be the son of Frank's brother).
• Villainous Breakdown: Frank is not a nice person, but when horrible things happen to him, he starts to lose it.
• Vorpal Pillow: Averted. When Sheila gives a Mercy Kill to Peggy, she finds herself struggling to actually kill her (especially when the latter's survival instincts kick in and she starts thrashing), and she has to sit on the pillow to get the job done.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: When Frank signs up for a medical study and has to stay sober for two weeks in order to get paid, he becomes much nicer. However, he also becomes hyperactive and his attention span starts getting shorter. This starts out as endearing, then becomes disruptive, and ends up as destructive. When he starts to break down walls with a sledgehammer and wants to cut a hole in the roof for a skylight, the kids have enough and knock him out with a stun gun and pour liquor into him. They don't actually want their abusive father back but know the money he'll make from staying sober will only lead to more blackouts, and they prefer to end this before he causes a disaster.
• Wham Line: Season 5's episode "Rite of Passage" ends with a huge one;
  Fiona:^note To a female customer at the diner she works at who is apparently infatuated with her Hey, you came back after all!
  Jimmy:^note who had been sitting opposite the female customer with his back to Fiona I did.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Kash abandons a pregnant and bedridden Linda at the start of Season 2. Though this could have been usable plot material, and Ian and Mickey continue working at the store through Season 3, Linda's final appearance is in episode 2 of Season 2, and even then that was just her voice.
  • Season 6 also has Chuckie and Queenie Slott both at the hippie commune the last time we see them. They don't get an appearance or mention in season 7.
  • Season 9 has Ax-Crazy Kassidi disappearing in the season premiere. A cadet implies that he killed her, but she never appears again, dead or alive.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Emmy Rossum has a hard enough time concealing her native New York accent that her attempt at a Chicago accent can be... dicey at best. Though a few other characters (who are ostensibly Chicago natives) are Not Even Bothering with the Accent. Cameron Monaghan also uses a bizarre accent in later seasons.
• Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: "White Swallow" and "Fairy Tail", the gay bars where Ian works, are a step up for people used to the Alibi.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Molly was raised as a girl with a "girl penis", and clearly thinks of herself as a girl. However, everyone else tends to think of her more as this trope.
• Who's Your Daddy?:
  • Monica Gallagher did a lot of drugs while married to Frank and does not really remember what she did during those times. There is a fair chance some of her kids might not be Frank's. Turns out Lip and Liam are Frank's sons but Ian is actually the son of one of Frank's brothers.
  • Then played with for Karen's child, as it could be Lip's or someone else's. Though in her own words, it's Jody's because real dads are overrated.
    • It turns out neither Lip nor Jody is the father of her baby, but rather an Asian guy Karen was having sex with on the side.
  • Svetlana's son Yevgeny. Given she is a prostitute, it is unclear whether or not Mickey is actually his father.
  • Carl does a DNA test to prove he is part black. Turns out, he isn't, but he is part Native American. Frank can't be his dad, since the black DNA comes from him.
• Will They or Won't They?:
  • Ian and Mickey are on and off for much of the series, constantly being driven apart by both conflict and outside forces. They apparently break up for good and Ian begins dating other people as Mickey is intermittently Put on a Bus, but eventually he comes back to resume their relationship, and finally, they get married at the end of the tenth season.
• Yandere: Kassidi, Carl's love interest in Season 8. Hoo boy...

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