It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Trivia | 50 facts about the series

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is FX’s longest-running show, which also happens to have one of the network’s most devoted fan bases.

Let’s find out more about the series!

1. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is an American sitcom.
2. It premiered on FX on August 4, 2005.
3. It then moved to FXX beginning with the ninth season in 2013.
4. It was created by Rob McElhenney, who developed it with Glenn Howerton.
5. It is executive produced and primarily written by McElhenney, Howerton, and Charlie Day.
6. All of them star alongside Kaitlin Olson and Danny DeVito.
7. The series follows the exploits of “The Gang,” a group of narcissistic friends who run the Irish bar Paddy’s Pub in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
8. The series’ fourteenth season concluded in November 2019.
9. The series was renewed for a fifteenth season in May 2020.
10. This made it the longest-running live-action comedy series in American television history, replacing The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which ran for 14 seasons between 1952 and 1966.
11. However, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which ran for fourteen seasons (1952-1966), still holds the record for most episodes at 435. In order for Sunny to surpass the earlier show (and considering only 10 are made a season) it would therefore have continue to run until 2033.
12. In December 2020, the series was renewed for a total of four additional seasons, bringing it to season 18.
13. The show uses recurring orchestral production music selections. “We had a music supervisor called Ray Espinola and we said, ‘Give us everything you have in a sort of Leave It to Beaver with a big band-swing kind of feel,’ and the majority of the songs are from what he sent over,” Charlie Day explained. “When you set it against what these characters were doing—which often times can be perceived as quite despicable, or wrong—it really disarmed the audience. It just became our go-to library of songs.”
14. The theme song is called “Temptation Sensation” by German composer Heinz Kiessling.
15. Kiessling’s work (“On Your Bike” and “Blue Blood”) can also be heard during various scene transitions throughout the show, along with other composers and pieces such as Werner Tautz (“Off Broadway”), Joe Brook (“Moonbeam Kiss”) and Karl Grell (“Honey Bunch”).
16. Many of the tracks heard in the series are from Cafe Romantique, an album of easy listening production music collected by Extreme Music, the production music library unit of Sony/ATV Music Publishing.
17. Independent record label Fervor Records has also contributed music to the show.
18. Songs from The Jack Gray Orchestra’s album Easy Listening Symph-O-Nette (“Take A Letter Miss Jones,” “Golly Gee Whiz,” and “Not a Care in the World”) and the John Costello III release Giants of Jazz (“Birdcage,” “Cotton Club” and “Quintessential”) are heard in several episodes.
19. The soundtrack, featuring most of the music heard on the show, was released in 2010.
20. It was almost canceled after its first season, but renewed at the last minute when FX executives decided to give it room to grow. It has gone from the brink of cancellation to being one of the highest rated and most popular shows on FX, and with its fifteenth season has become the longest-running live-action sitcom in television history
21. Charlie (Charlie Day) and the Waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) are married in real life.
22. Creator and star Rob McElhenney and co-star Kaitlin Olson got married in 2008. They have two children.
23. The character of Dee Reynolds was originally going to be the voice of reason, but quickly became an equal participant in the gangs illicit and morally questionable schemes
24. Charlie Day once called the show’s opening credits sequence the cheapest credits ever, saying they shot the montage footage on a digital camera while driving around Philadelphia one night
25. In season two, episode ten, “Dennis and Dee Get a New Dad”, we can clearly see Charlie giving himself a tattoo, which is meant to say “Bad News” in his apartment, while he and Mac try to “get hard”. They are, however, interrupted by Frank and Charlie never finishes his tattoo. His tattoo, which says “Bad New” is visible in every episode afterwards
26. During a convention interview, Glenn Howerton was asked why his character was named Dennis, whereas Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney’s characters are named after themselves. Howerton responded by saying that he wanted to distance himself from his character as much as possible.
27. In June 2011, it was reported that Rob McElhenney had gained fifty pounds in the previous six months. McElhenney has stated that he noticed characters from other sitcoms get better looking as the series progress (because the budgets get bigger, and that means more and better make-up people), but McElhenny wanted his character to do the opposite. Co-star Glenn Howerton started referring to the character Mac as “Fat Mac”. When McElhenney asked if he could be called “Big Mac”, Howerton said he would call him “Big, fat Mac”.
28. The show was almost cancelled during the first season of shooting. The President of the FX Network wanted to add a new character, and he was friends with Danny DeVito, so he decided to approach him to ask about joining. DeVito’s children were big fans of the first season of the show, so he decided to sign on for ten episodes. DeVito enjoyed being part of the show so much, he became a regular member of the cast.
29. According to Rob McElhenney, the name “Sweet Dee” was the nickname of one of his friend’s girlfriends. He liked the nickname and later thought of it while creating the character of Dennis’s sister.
30. In response to theories of Dennis being a serial killer, Glenn Howerton has confirmed Dennis is a sociopath, but he likes to leave if he’s a serial killer ambiguous.
31. The exterior used on the show for Mrs. Mac’s house is actually next door to Rob McElhenney’s childhood house in Philadelphia.
32. Since Danny DeVito was only available for twenty days of shooting during season two, the production crew had to work on all ten episodes of the season at once, often shooting scenes from multiple episodes in one day
33. In the first season finale, “Charlie Gets Molested”, it is revealed that Charlie has a sister. However, she is never mentioned by name, nor seen in the episode, and is never once mentioned or referred to in any episode since
34. The show’s budget was originally very tight, so much of the music featured on it is from a stock library, including the theme music “Temptation Sensation” by Heinz Kiessling
35. Charlie, Rob, and Glenn’s wives all co-star alongside Charlie, Mac, and Dennis in the show. Glenn Howerton’s wife played Caylee in season five, episode ten, “D.E.N.N.I.S. System”.
36. The set for Paddy’s pub is also the set for MacLaren’s Pub on “How I Met Your Mother” only stripped down and shot from different angles. The two shows also share street sets, most noticeably the famous NYC street featuring the downstairs entrance to MacLaren’s Pub can be clearly seen in S12E6 Hero or Hate Crime
37. Despite the reports that the show’s pilot was shot for two hundred dollars, it has actually been revealed that the pilot may have cost as little as eighty-five dollars to shoot. The budget went almost solely to tapes for the camera.
38. When it got the renewal for season eighteen, it became the longest running cable television comedy, with more than 190 episodes.
39. The pilot was created by four Hollywood actors (Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day, and Jordan Reid) about struggling as actors in Los Angeles. The show was initially titled, “It’s Always Sunny on TV”.
40. The original, unaired pilot only cost two hundred dollars to make, and was shot on a digital camera, with the actors taking turns holding the boom. It was then shopped around to different networks, and was picked up by FX. They then moved the setting of the show from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, and re-shot the pilot.
41. During the development of the series, the writers were offered five hundred dollars to come up with a title that the creators liked better than “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. The title remained unchanged.
42. In season four, episode ten, “Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack”, the mental health clinic where Frank (Danny DeVito) ends up is a nod to the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), in which DeVito appeared.
43. According to Glenn Howerton, the first working title for the show was “Jerks”.
44. Kristen Wiig auditioned to play Sweet Dee.
45. According to Rob McElhenney, Charlie’s “Green Man” character is an homage to a friend who used to dress in a green body suit after Eagles games.
46. Per Rob McElhenney, the McPoyles are named after a family he knew from growing up in Philadelphia and, while they aren’t as bizarre as seen in the show, they are extremely numerous.
47. Season four, episode eleven, “The Gang Cracks The Liberty Bell”, was inspired by a historical tour of Philadelphia that the cast went on
48. The show’s original pilot was a short film version of season one, episode four, “Charlie Has Cancer”. The story was later re-used in the series.
49. Season six included an episode titled “The Gang Gets Successful” that was never aired on FX. In season seven, some of that footage was used for episode ten, “How Mac Got Fat”. In addition to showing Rob McElhenney before his fifty-pound weight gain, the story explained that the Gang had a Dee-conceived plan to hire individuals who looked like them as “avatars,” so they could enjoy their newfound good fortune, but Mac’s efforts to emulate his bodybuilder avatar went disastrously awry (and everyone else forgot the plan about ten minutes after it was proposed)
50. Jimmi Simpson (Liam McPoyle) joined the series because he was friends with Charlie Day. In general friends of the cast often play bit parts on the series.