On It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, there is no shortage of terrible and heinous acts that the gang has committed, not only to other people but even to each other. There is no other member of the gang who has experienced this more, though, than Dee Reynolds.
She has been emotionally tormented by the gang all throughout the 14 seasons this dark comedy has been on the air. Time and time again Charlie, Mac, her brother Dennis and her sort-of-father Frank have all gone out of their way to make her life hell.
While it’s hard to narrow down the worst of the worst that the gang has done to Sweet Dee, we’ve managed to do just that with the top 10 worst things they’ve done to Dee.
When They Set Her On Fire
The episode title tells you mostly what you need to know: “Frank Sets Sweet Dee On Fire.” But honestly, the entire gang had their own ways of being involved in the matter.
Frank is the one who technically lit the flames that set Dee on fire not once, but twice. But Mac and Charlie were there as accomplices who tricked Dee into being apart of their news segments after suggesting it would make her famous.
Both times she was told she would be saving kittens, and the second time she kept making sure they would not set her on fire again. Of course, that’s exactly what they did.
Wrecking Her Car (Multiple Times)
Pretty much every time Dee would get a new car, the gang would wreck it in one way or another. This has literally happened several times throughout the series.
Whether it was the time Mac and Charlie stole her car and set it ablaze to fake their own deaths, or when they decided to pick up a hitchhiker on the way to the Grand Canyon (and the hitchhiker then stole the car), or when Mac and Charlie crashed the car into a tree when fleeing the Maureen Ponderosa wedding. Every time it is the gang who is at fault for her cars’ demise.
And no, not once have they owned up to it, let alone fixed the damage.
Dennis And Frank Tied Her To A Bed
When Frank was worried neither of his children would take care of him when he’s old, he enlisted Dennis’s help in making Dee become dependent on him, so when he took care of her, she would have to take care of him later.
So they decided to not just help Dee with her cold but actually tied her to a bed, drugged her, and caused way more harm to her than originally planned because of it.
Then, they left her there, causing her to miss her favorite musician’s concert in the park, all while she had a bedbug rash forming on her face. Yikes.
Poisoning Her Over Flip Cup
Here’s the setup: the gang had a rivalry with another local bar for over a decade. They always competed in a flip cup tournament against them, and the final year they played, the gang poisoned the opposing bar, getting them banned for ten years from the tournament.
Fast forward a decade later, and now they were ready to reignite the rivalry. After a series of mishaps, they also develop a new rivalry with a group of frat guys. They end up challenging them and tell Dee they believe in her, even though she routinely chokes.
Long story short, they end up poisoning her and their opponents with the beer they were drinking just to get back at the frat guys. It was not a pretty sight.
Frank’s Fake Out
In the one and only Christmas episode of It’s Always Sunny, we go back to each member of the gang’s childhood and how they celebrated Christmas growing up.
All of them had some pretty messed up stories, but Dee, along with her brother Dennis, had one of the most diabolical ones. Turns out, their father – who isn’t really biologically their father, as they found out earlier in the series – had a holiday tradition of his own. He would pretend to buy them the most lavish gifts they had ever wanted and then when they opened the gifts, they would be empty, and he’d simply yell, “FAKE OUT!".
Evidently, he carried on this tradition into Dee’s and Dennis’s adulthood, scarring them forever.
When They Ruined Her Apartment To Find Her Cat
Dee finds herself in a predicament when her new cat somehow gets into the wall of her apartment. She keeps trying to find a way to get the cat out safely, and even when the rest of the gang keeps popping in, their “help” only makes it worse.
By the end of the episode, Dee’s entire wall where she originally heard the cat is bashed in with Charlie’s Cheeto fingerprints adorning what is left of it.
Then, when Dee finally had enough and went in the wall to get the cat, they all left her as she struggled to get back out.
They Didn’t Care About Her Pregnancy
During the sixth season of It’s Always Sunny, Dee is pregnant. Of course, we don’t find out who the father is of her baby until the end of the season, but during the entirety of her pregnancy, the gang completely ignored it.
They even would make fat jokes about her. It wasn’t until the final episode of the season when Dee gives birth that the guys actually start to care. But even then, it’s only because they think Dee is too irresponsible to raise the kid on her own and are getting excited about raising it themselves.
They Convinced Her To Spy On The Fish Factory
While Dennis and Mac are living in Dee’s apartment – after they set their’s on fire – Charlie and Frank are noticing they’ve become closer, which is off-putting for them. Then, Dennis and Mac create an elaborate scenario that sends Dee to “spy” on the fish factory that is next door to their bar.
Really, they sent her to do this just so they could have the apartment to themselves to do as they please for less than honorable reasons. Meanwhile, during her time at the factory, she got into disgusting and harrowing situations that were all for naught.
All Of The Times They Called Her A Bird
We already know that every member of the gang has emotionally – and sometimes physically – tormented Dee over the years. And we also know that Dee’s self-esteem has always been alarmingly low, even if she tries to act tough a lot of the time.
She may not be a saint herself, but the gang goes out of their way to make her feel as awful as possible about herself. There’s no better example of this than all of the times throughout the series that the gang has referred to Dee as a “bird.” This is in reference to how she looks and even sometimes in her behaviors. There’s no doubt that this has caused Dee to have even lower self-esteem than before.
When The Gang Broke Dee
This is by far the worst thing the gang has ever done to Dee. She has always hoped to have a stand-up comedy career yet normally let her insecurities get in the way, causing her to literally gag before telling her jokes on stage.
But in this episode, Dee embraces her insecurities and the self-loathing she feels thanks to how the guys have treated her over the years. This causes her stand-up career to go sky-rocketing into sudden fame…at least, that’s what she thinks.
It turns out that the gang – excluding Dennis – set the entire thing up to pull one epic prank on Dee, making her believe she achieved superstardom when she really hadn’t.
