The Untold Truth Of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

Whether you laugh, cry, or cringe, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia always gets a reaction. It's gone from low-budget cult favorite to one of the longest-running television shows around, and it's done that by doing what other TV shows won't do. (Some might say there's a reason no other TV shows do those things, but those people are called haters.) Let's take a peek behind the curtain and see what you might not know about this binge-worthy favorite ... even if you own a pair of Kitten Mittons.

Danny DeVito brings something epic to the world, and his presence makes things feel complete. According to what Charlie Day told Conan O'Brien (via EW), his time on the show — and on Earth — almost came to a horrible end while filming.

It happened during that underwater scene, and when they all needed to sit on the floor of the flooding room, DeVito had some issues. "Danny's incredibly buoyant," Day explained. "It was hard to get him down, so we really had to weigh him down to get the shot where we're all holding hands." Cameras cut and everyone else surfaced, but they'd had to add so much weight to DeVito, he couldn't swim up for air.

Rescue divers were on hand and pulled him to the surface, but it was such a close call the visibly shaken actor put an end to filming for the day and headed home.

If you happen to watch through the end credits, you may have heard some gibberish on the soundtrack, playing over the title card for RCG, which produces the show. It's not quite gibberish; it's actually a series of messages recorded and played backward before being embedded into the credits. Because that's exactly the sort of thing the internet loves, the messages have been decoded and turned into YouTube videos, like the one above.

They're messages like, "You're stupid for playing this forward," "Next stop, brown town," "Sorry for wasting your time and money but thanks for your money," and some others that aren't entirely repeatable in polite company.

IASIP is filled with those moments that make you wonder if you actually heard what you think you just heard, and it'll leave you wondering just how far is too far for the show. Howerton perhaps put it best when he told The Guardian, "We don't mind pushing boundaries, but it's never our intention to be insensitive or offensive. ... It's one thing for the characters to be misinformed, ignorant, or bigoted. It's another thing for the show to be misinformed, ignorant, or bigoted."

Not only does a plot have to have some kind of humor before it's taken from pitch to screen, but it also has to make sense as something the character would actually do. Howerton also told Vice it was crucial to have stories come from a place the audience could always understand, even if they didn't agree. During the same interview, Charlie Day also mentioned the show is pretty careful not to take a stand when presenting political views — it just presents them in a way that's as outrageous as possible in hopes that people start talking about the issues behind the humor.

We're used to characters changing their hair or style, but Rob McElhenney completely reinvented himself for the show's seventh season by gaining 50 pounds. The show talks a bit about what was going on in Mac's life, but what about his real-life counterpart? According to an interview with MTV, McElhenney had a very specific reason for getting fat.

"Vanity is such a huge part of television, and if you watch any average sitcom, you notice that the actors get better-looking as the years go by. ... I thought, if we were being true to the characters ... this is what we would look like." For all Mac's obsessions, there's a lot of eating, a ton of drinking, and not too much exercise going on. And it would all take a toll. McElhenney continued, "It was less of a stunt or a gag and more of an actual representation of what Mac really might look like at this point in his life."

McElhenney said he was eating around 5,000 calories a day (including a ton of donuts, ice cream, and milkshakes laced with weight gainer) to pack on the pounds. It wasn't easy, and he noted that it wasn't easy to drop the weight, either — about 12 pounds refused to come off.

For most sitcoms, the decision to do a musical episode is one that's questionable at best. But IASIP isn't the usual show, and "The Nightman Cometh" was such a popular episode it was adapted into a completely live, honest-to-gosh rock opera (via Playbill). It wasn't just a random bit of schtick they needed someone else to write, either, as Day is an honest-to-gosh musician.

He told Spin that he "grew up in a house full of musical instruments." His parents were both music teachers, his sister has a degree in choral conducting, and he always counted songwriting as one of his hobbies. Vanity Fair adds he started playing the violin when he was 3, later picked up the trombone, the piano, and the Dylan-inspired combination of guitar and harmonica. Day, who grew up about six hours outside of Philadelphia, said music was a must in the car, too — especially since their 1985 Honda Accord didn't have a radio.

After more than a dozen seasons, it's safe to say the cast, crew, and writers have come a long way since filming that first pilot episode. Coming up with new ideas isn't all fun and games, either, and while the characters might not change, McElhenney says the writing has become much more focused. He told IGN that even starting after the first few seasons, they got a feel for everyone's strengths and weaknesses, and wrote to that. He also said some episodes can take a week to write while others sit for months, but they all start with someone seeing something in the real world and pitching it to the others: "How can we make that funny?"

Since the core group of writers are also the stars, you might think they know their own characters best, and push for episodes that revolve around themselves. That's not the case, though, according to what Howerton and Day told Collider. Day in particular says he tends to pitch ideas that revolve around Dennis because it's his favorite character to write for, and added he tends to forget about his own character. They've learned some important lessons over the years and take copious notes when they're discussing ideas.