‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Green Man Is Based on A Real-Life Green Man

Charlie Kelly’s alter ego and aspiring Philadelphia Phillies mascot Green Man has his roots in reality, unlike Charlie Kelly’s normal mind.

Of all the important and politically pressing questions that the satirical sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia asks about American society, one of the most enduring and sadly unanswered challenges has long been Charlie asking our culture to explain why a baseball team can’t have two mascots: one that’s officially sanctioned by the franchise, and one that’s fueled by riot punch. But while Charlie may be the famous face of this philosophical and occasionally physical fight for equal mascot rights, he is not, in fact, the Green Man who started the push.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator Rob McElhenney has a tendency to pluck plot lines for the show from his real-life experiences, and every now and then, he’ll pull an entire costumed character straight from the real world and turn him into a Philadelphia folk hero. The morph-suited, viridescent and occasionally violent Green Man is one such hero, as McElhenney explained during a speaking engagement at UCLA back in 2009.

When a young Always Sunny fan showed up to McElhenney’s appearance at a UCLA Campus Events Commission event in a bright green morph suit and asked whether Green Man would appear in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season Five, McElhenney revealed that, yes, Green Man will return to the show, once he secures the life rights from the original unlicensed mascot. 

“The character of Green Man, which is surreal, is a real person. It’s a buddy of mine that I went to high school with who’s a doctor. And he’s in his first year of residency, and he’s a full on… doctor,” McElhenney explained to his collegiate follower of Green Man’s real-life inspiration. “And we went to an Eagles game, at the end of the game — they beat the f--- out of the Cowboys, it was a Monday night game, two years ago — and at the end of the game, we go back to the parking lot to continue the festivities, and he starts taking off his clothes and getting into this green Lycra suit.”

Unlike Charlie’s iteration of the masked mascot, the real Green Man was an immediate hit with Eagles fans. “He’s walking around, taking pictures with everybody, calling himself the Green Man," McElhenney said of his friend’s warm reception from the postgame tailgaters. “I instantly wrote it down on a piece of paper, and when I flew back to L.A., we put in the show, and it’s become a little bit of a cultural phenomenon.”

This makes us wonder what other cultural phenomenon that Always Sunny popularized had their roots in real-life Philadelphians. For instance, does McElhenney’s doctor friend carry around monster condoms, and does he possibly go by the name “Toboggan?”