It’s Always Sunny: 15 Times The Gang Got Injured For The Joke

15 Dee & Mac break the kids’ falls.

In a scene from “The Gang Goes to a Water Park,” Dee and Mac get stuck inside a tube slide, and are repeatedly pummeled by the kids coming down behind them.

Stunt co-ordinator Marc Scizak said, “We were literally dropping kids down on Kaitlin Olson as her face is getting smushed up against the top of the tube. She didn’t feel like it sold right, and wanted to go harder with the kids.”

14 Sweet Dee’s fishy fall.

A stunt double for the rolls, but Dee for that initial drop.

Marc Scizak (who received his third straight nomination for his work on It’s Always Sunny), described Dee’s epic fish factory fall in “The Gang Spies Like U.S.”

“The fish factory has a window up there. We had it on a raised platform, and I had a real ladder that I was pulling out from under her, and she was going to drop onto a pad. So that part was the actress — we used Kaitlin for that.

13 Rob McElhenney gained 50+ pounds as a joke.

McElhenney saw that as shows progressed, actors look better. Yeah, because they're starting to make that successful-show money.

He thought it would be funny to go the opposite route, so he tried to get the cast to gain weight and look worse over the course of season 7. Everyone passed, so he alone set out to accomplish this anti-goal, and pack on 50 pounds in five months.

He said, “The end of the show. I started at 160 and I got up to 212. And I thought, that’s enough”.

12 Kaitlin Olson goes to the hospital.

Sometimes you gotta dip to the emergency room in whatever you happen to be wearing.

She said, “I went to the emergency room this year. I ripped my leg completely wide open on a steel grate that we were running on. Poor Glenn Howerton was like, 'I'm sorry, I have to walk away. I can't see this.' It was a lot of blood. But I've had two babies, so I was extremely calm. I was like, 'Alright, well, this is a real problem, but let's get the ambulance here, and I'll apply pressure, and we'll figure this out’. You could see my bone, though… my shin bone.”

Rob McElhenney went with her to the emergency room. They couldn’t understand why the staff kept starring at McElhenney... then they realized he was in blackface as Danny Glover for their Lethal Weapon episode.

11 Charlie actually ate rum ham.

It’s no hospital trip but he deserves a little credit for stomaching it.

In season 7, this Thanksgiving treat let Charlie "eat his drinks" for the day, and it became an incredibly popular episode.

While sitting at a restaurant, he was offered some pieces of rum ham, and he actually tried it. He later said, “it was disgusting.”

10 Danny DeVito almost drowned on set.

They wanted to make him heavy. Not this heavy.

In the season 11 finale, "The Gang Goes to Hell: Part Two”, they all hold hands underwater, and DeVito needed to be weighed down so he would sink.

Charlie Day said, “Danny's incredibly buoyant, like a buoy. And when the shot was over and we were all trying to get back to the surface for air, we all quickly got through the water, but because we weighed him down, he sort of got halfway and was going nowhere. And that look of panic in his eyes of like, 'This is the end, these guys killed me.’"

DeVito said, “It was a good experience. I have lived a good life and it flashed before my eyes in that scene."

9 Charlie takes a bottle to the head.

Fans noticed he was bracing for it, but wouldn’t they? We would!

In season 2’s “Hundred Dollar Baby”, Mac hits Charlie over the head with a glass bottle during the training montage.

Charlie isn’t supposed to see the bottle coming, but he can be seen bracing for the impact right before the bottle hits him.

8 Frank gets naked in a leather couch.

It’s seared into our collective subconscious.

In season 6's "A Very Sunny Christmas”, The couch stunt involved DeVito stripping nude, being sewn inside a leather couch, and forcing his way out of it in the middle of a cocktail party, drenched in sweat.

He said, “I figure it's going to be fine, but you don't realize that you're gonna be in a cocktail party with like a hundred people you've never seen before. I had to come out of that couch like four or five times, so the first take I come out of the couch hot, hot, hot and there's a clip on YouTube you can see where she's looking at me like ... I had to go back in the couch!”

7 Mac lifted Dee by the crotch.

They just had to mention she’s his wife.

A New York Times interview with stunt coordinator Marc Scizak said that season 13 featured some shocking snippets, most notably one in which Mr. McElhenney lifts Ms. Olson, his wife, by the crotch.

6 Mac’s action movie heroics.

No prep. No problem.

In “The Gang Saves the Day,” Mac daydreams that he takes on a whole crew of Yakuza thieves.

The elaborate scene involves drop kicks, nunchucks and a samurai sword, and was shot in only a day and a half.

Marc Scizak said, “If it were filmed for an action movie, it would have taken a month. And while the Tom Cruises of the world typically have months to train for such fights, Mr. McElhenney, who performed most of the stunts, only had a day to prepare.”

5 Sweet Dee gets waterboarded with a broken back.

While it didn't happen on set, Kaitlin Olson broke her back after a neighbor held her over his head, and accidentally dropped her, and she kept filming scenes through the pain.

This included the scene where Dee gets waterboarded during "The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis.”

She said, “There have been times on the show where I have been literally in so much pain I can't believe I stuck through with it. That waterboarding scene? They put wetsuit material over my face thinking that would block it, but I got waterboarded! I had recently broken my back so I was laying on a broken back, inverted, being waterboarded. I was like, 'I'm a team player, but I can only hang in there a few more minutes.’"

4 Dee’s dance with the inflatable man.

No breaks for broken backs or for pregnancy.

About her now classic scene in “The Gang Buys a Boat”, she said, “I get tweets every single day about it. I love it so much because I worked so hard mimicking that thing. And I was six months pregnant and trying to hide it.”

“It was 3 a.m. out on a boat in Long Beach. It was freezing cold, and I was so tired. I remember being so angry that because I was pregnant, I couldn't bend backwards as far as I wanted. I just kept trying harder and harder and that stupid baby wouldn't let me do it. I'm pretty sure I ripped my stomach muscle moving like that. That's what I can thank for ruining my stomach.”

3 Charlie sacrificed his eyes.

His face was inches from that thing.

About season 9’s “Mac & Dennis Buy a Timeshare”, Charlie tells Conan, “He was stuck in a coil in a playground. And we wanted him to be in his underwear. Actually we wanted him to be naked, but we thought in his underwear would be funny.”

“And we wanted him in tighty-whities, but he came to the set in his boxer briefs. He finally relented, but his one condition was that I put them on him.”

In the clip, Charlie puts the briefs on incorrectly and had to do it twice. 

2 Frank gets pure.

Actually, you could argue that hand sanitizer and a dog cage are pretty safe.

In season 9, episode 7, Frank becomes completely germaphobic and he devolves into this slimy, slug-like shot of him covered in hand sanitizer, slithering on the floor.

For a bonus scene, Frank is locked in a dog cage and Dennis kicks it, pours beer on him, and yells, “Shut up, dog!”

1 Kaitlin Olson really rammed her head into that car door.

She really is the star of this list.

Completely unafraid to jump in there for the joke, Olson said, “They had a stunt double there, and I was like, 'I don't want someone else to do it for me.’ So, yeah, I needed to see a chiropractor many times afterwards, but whatever, it worked out."

For exclusive ComedyNerd content, subscribe to our dope newsletter:

Sign up for the Cracked Newsletter

Get the best of Cracked sent directly to your inbox!

SIGN ME UP

Top Image: 3 Arts Entertainment & FX