As has been shown time and time again across the many seasons of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Dennis, Dee, Mac, Charlie and Frank are terrible people. They are frequently horrible to one another, but it’s just as common to see them be horrible to others. In their dozens upon dozens of adventures (all of which can be streamed with a Hulu subscription), they have ruined many, many lives.
Who are these victims? Some of them are sad and alive, and some of them are dead – but we’ve put together this special feature to highlight all of them as we wait for the arrival of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia Season 17.
The Waitress
The Waitress, whose real name has never been revealed, started off as simply a victim of Charlie (fun bit of trivia: Charlie Day and Mary Elizabeth Ellis are married in real life), but things have gotten really bad since Season 1’s “Charlie Has Cancer.” The entire Gang has emotionally tortured her in dozens of different ways over the course of 16 seasons, and they have cost her a number of employment opportunities.
Matthew “Rickety Cricket” Mara
The Gang has been making Matthew Mara’s life a nightmare for years and years – starting with giving him the nickname Rickety Cricket back in high school. Things were bad when they were growing up together, but things have gotten much worse for Cricket as an adult. He’s a priest when we first meet him in Season 2’s “The Gang Exploits A Miracle,” and now he is a scarred, drug-addicted homeless man.
Chris Murray
When someone accuses you of a horrible crime, particularly one where the victim is children, that can be a label that is impossible to shake – even if you are ultimately proven innocent. With that in mind, it’s tremendously hard to believe that things went super well for Chris Murray (played by Saved By The Bell’s Dennis Haskins) in the aftermath of the Season 1 finale.
Ari Frenkel
It’s been proven that being a neighbor of Paddy’s Pub is not a good thing. The local fish factory has seen its business impeded by The Gang, and the Korean bar in “The Gang Solves The North Korea Situation” had to shut down on a big night. Nobody, however, suffered more than Ari Frenkel – who purchased the building next door and ultimately saw it get burned down due to the combination of a flaming bag of poop and a gas leak.
Brianna Thunderson
From what we saw of her in “Hundred Dollar Baby,” Brianna Thunderson wasn’t the most pleasant person, and her dad is certainly a jerk, but I don’t think anybody would argue that she deserved to have her neck broken due to Frank throwing a sucker punch.
Dumpster Baby a.k.a. D.B.
To be totally fair, we can’t be totally certain that Dumpster Baby’s life is ruined following his experience with The Gang, but let’s be real: they didn’t exactly set him up for success after rescuing him from the trash vessel he’s named after. After all, they tried to exploit him by making him an actor, and then he got taken away by social services when it appeared as though the Sunny crew was threatening him with a scimitar.
Liam McPoyle
It’s hard to muster much sympathy for Liam McPoyle, who is a repulsive, sick human being, but all things being equal, I think it’s fair to say that The Gang has done a good job ruining his life – the primary evidence being his missing eye (there’s a lot of blame thrown around, but events in “The Maureen Ponderosa Wedding Massacre,” “The Gang Squashes Their Beefs” and “McPoyle vs. Ponderosa: The Trial of the Century” put a lot of the mess on Dennis, Dee, Mac, Charlie and Frank.
Random Guy
There are four standout nameless victims in the history of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, but Random Guy’s moniker is unquestionably the most vague. Played by Zachary Knighton, he is introduced in Season 4’s “The Gang Solves The Gas Crisis,” which sees the episode’s titular characters spy on him and utterly destroy his car, but his sad life is further affected when he returns in “The Gang Squashes Their Beefs” and gets locked in a burning apartment.
Phil And Jonathan
Phil and Jonathan are just a couple of college kids looking to have a good time at a party mansion in Season 3’s “Dennis and Dee's Mom Is Dead.” Instead, they have a traumatic experience that will surely scar them for life.
Luther McDonald
Luther McDonald is another guy who doesn’t elicit a lot of sympathy given his history of felonious behavior, bad parenting and all-around terrifying vibes, but the guy also has his life made exponentially harder due to the existence of The Gang (but particularly Mac and Charlie). They’ve both gotten him thrown back into prison and marked for death, so he qualifies for this feature.
The Juarez Family
One can only imagine the terror experienced by the Juarez family when The Gang breaks into their home in “The Gang Gets Extreme: Home Makeover Edition.” For those who don’t remember, a vision board experiment leads to the father, mother, and daughter being abducted and their house burned down. The Juarez family does end up getting the Reynolds’ mansion that was passed down to Dee from her mother, but let’s not forget that they end up losing the estate due to property taxes (as revealed in “Charlie’s Mom Has Cancer”).
Brad Fisher
Like Rickety Cricket, Brad Fisher’s history as a victim of The Gang goes back to high school, as Dee dated him and then dumped him because of his acne, but Charlie is the one who is responsible for ruining his life as an adult. In Season 5’s “The Waitress Is Getting Married,” the Paddy’s Pub janitor “gifts” him with a box of hornets, and that ends up causing serious facial scarring, as seen in Season 7’s “The High School Reunion.”
The Attorney
Brian Unger’s The Attorney has maintained a law practice throughout his time as a victim of The Gang, but he has also been driven to obsessive madness by the zany antics of Dennis, Dee, Mac, Charlie and Frank. They’ve employed him and not paid him, and their behavior has been horrible, and those actions have festered a hate in him that sees him try and take every opportunity possible for legal revenge. He’s had some wins, but more losses.
Ben The Soldier
It’s possible that Ben The Soldier is the nicest person in all of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, but the confusion of “niceness” for “stupidity” regularly makes him a victim of The Gang. He first gets emotionally manipulated by Dee in “The Gang Wrestles For The Troops,” but he has since returned as a mark for different schemes and has been constantly bullied.
Art Sloan
We meet Art Sloan in Season 5’s “The Gang Reignites the Rivalry,” and we not only learn that he has a history of being tortured by The Gang, but that torture resumes. Not only do Dennis, Dee, Mac, Charlie and Frank storm into his restaurant to cause chaos, but Dennis and Frank also break into his house and destroy the place.
Principal MacIntyre
From what we’ve seen, Principal MacIntyre seems like a dedicated educator, but his life has been made very hard by Dee, Charlie and Mac. He has to change schools following the blackface-related events in “Dee Reynolds: Shaping America's Youth” (the only reason he isn’t fired is because he has tenure), and Charlie and Mac happen to encounter him again while armed and trying to solve youth violence in “Gun Fever Too: Still Hot.”
Brian LeFevre
The Gang has ruined many lives. In the case of Canadian businessman Brian LeFevre, they got him killed. While on a business trip to Philadelphia, he made the mistake of going to Paddy’s Pub to try and meet with Frank Reynolds (as seen in “Frank's Back in Business”). He was forced to pee in an alley due to Charlie mopping the bathroom, but because he left his wallet in the bar, he couldn’t show his ID to Mac at the door while trying to get back inside. He was forced to go out into the night to wander. He encountered a mugger, and not having any money, he was stabbed to death. Of note: he’s the only character in this feature who doesn’t physically appear in an episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
Jojo
There is an argument to be made that Jojo was too dumb to live (it’s amazing that he survived to adulthood), but the black-and-white truth is that The Gang gets him killed. Played by Dax Shepard in the Season 10 finale, he becomes a member of the cult started by Dennis, and before the end of the whole mess, he gets manipulated into setting himself on fire.
Bonnie Kelly
Bonnie Kelly unquestionably did a lot of psychological damage to Charlie as a child, but Charlie hasn’t done much to make his mom’s life better as an adult. He actively ignores her as much as possible, but let’s not forget that he’s even been a bad influence on her, as evidenced in Season 8’s “Charlie's Mom Has Cancer” (a callback to Season 1’s “Charlie Has Cancer”).
Eugene Hamilton
This one is pretty straightforward. Played by The Big Lebowski’s David Huddleston, Eugene Hamilton used to be Frank’s business partner, but Frank ended up screwing him over and taking all of his money. He gets a measure of revenge in “A Very Sunny Christmas,” which sees him hold Frank at gunpoint and steal a Lamborghini, but that doesn’t make up for years of misery inflicted by his former friend.
Maureen Ponderosa
Maureen Ponderosa seemed like a totally normal person when we first met her in “Mac Fights Gay Marriage.” Her updated bio now reads “dead after multiple plastic surgery operations to try and turn her into a cat.” Her marriage to Dennis clearly broke her brain, and there still hasn’t been any definitive proof that he wasn’t responsible for her death.
Bill Ponderosa
I’m not sure there is a worse sponsor/sponsee relationship in all of pop culture than Frank Reynolds and Bill Ponderosa. Bill is a bad person by all accounts, but The Gang regularly brings out the worst in him – whether he is doing drugs that Frank provides him with or breaking his marital vows with Dee.
The Waiter
It’s bad enough that The Gang has treated Michael Naughton’s The Waiter rudely during their times dining at Guigino's Italian Restaurant – but their abuse of the man goes far beyond just those encounters. In Season 13, he ends up as a victim both at the Super Bowl and on an airplane, and more recently, Frank tried to take over his life in Season 14’s “The Gang Chokes” and checked his ill mother in an abusive nursing home.
Ruby Taft
Against all odds, Ruby Taft (played by Alexandra Daddario) actually falls in love with Charlie in Season 8’s “Charlie And Dee Find Love,” but it turns out that all seemingly reciprocated emotion was fake. Instead, Charlie was just using her to try and make The Waitress jealous. One can assume that she rebounded from the relationship, but she will forever carry an emotional scar.
Dr. Larry Meyers
Dee might have looked up to Dr. Larry Meyers as a teen when she was his student and he was her drama teacher, but things go from bad to worse when she reunites with him in “The Gang Gets A New Member.” She ends up disrupting his class, and when she gets him to stage a performance of Frankenstein, he ends up breaking his hip (a direct result of Charlie waxing the stage after getting employed as the school janitor).
Roxy
Roxy wasn’t exactly killing it before spending time with The Gang in “Frank’s Pretty Woman,” but we can’t put aside that her time with Dennis, Dee, Mac, Charlie and Frank ends in her death. She likely didn’t have long to live, but the shock of getting a marriage proposal proves the proverbial nail in the coffin.
“Psycho” Pete
Pete perhaps could have been a normal guy, but he made some bad choices in terms of high school friends. While dealing with emotional issues and chemical imbalances, he got terrible encouragement from Mac and Charlie to act like a horrible demented person (doing stuff like screaming in the faces of babies). This behavior resulted in him spending much of his adulthood in a mental health center, and in “Psycho Pete Returns,” The Gang ships him off to Los Angeles when they don’t want to deal with him.
Mike
Ashamed to be employed as a dancer and estranged from his daughter, Mike is ready to turn his whole life around when we meet him in “PTSDee”… but Dee very much puts the brakes on that. Not willing to accept him seeing her as his “rock bottom,” she enacts a revenge plot that sees him give an erotic dance for his own daughter – traumatizing both of them.
Aunt Donna
Played by Nora Dunn, Aunt Donna loses two people close to her before we meet her in “The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention,” but her time with The Gang makes her life exceptionally worse. She has to fight off the advances of both Frank and Mac, and the whole incident sets off terrible behavior from her adult daughter, Gail The Snail.
Chase Utley
It’s a terrible thing to be the victim of a stalker, and that very much describes the relationship between Mac and former Major League Baseball player Chase Utley. The bodyguard-obsessed bouncer obsessively tries to get in contact with him, and manipulates him by making him think that he is a young kid – culminating with an uncomfortable meeting in Season 16’s “The Gang Gets Cursed.”
Shelley Kelly
Shelley Kelly may have had many more years of life ahead of him if not for meeting The Gang in Season 15’s “The Gang’s Still In Ireland.” Unfortunately, he does meet them, and while he has an emotional father-son reunion with Charlie, he ends up dying from COVID-19, which he contracts from an unvaccinated Dennis.
Donald McDonald
This is a case of life-ruining via inattention. Mac could make Donald McDonald’s life great if he were just to recognize the potential of seeing him as a father figure (they share a great deal in common, and as featured in “Frank Shoots Every Member Of The Gang,” he is hungry for the companionship), but Mac is almost willfully ignorant of his silent cries.
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