It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is one of the longest-running live-action sitcoms on television. It's also widely regarded as being one of the funniest, with few shows able to match its excellent mix of topical and classical humor. Charlie is arguably the best character for this, but Frank has had his fair share of unforgettable moments over the last fifteen years or so as well.
Portrayed by Danny DeVito, Frank is one of the most depraved characters on the show. He rarely seems to think before opening his mouth, which has led to plenty of unfortunate and at times unforgivable utterings during It's Always Sunny's hugely successful decade and a half on the air. These are the best Frank quotes to have come out during that time.
7 "When I'm dead, just throw me in the trash."(S06E13)
Due to his immense selfishness, Dennis and Dee plan a Christmas Carol style life-lesson in the hopes of forcing Frank into changing his ways. First, they sew him into a couch at his old company so that he'll hear all of the horrible things that his former co-workers say about him. When that doesn't work, they decide to take him to a graveyard to highlight his bleak future. Upon seeing the fake gravestone that they've set up, however, Frank remarks that it couldn't possibly be his grave as he has absolutely no intention of being buried in one.
This thought process is revisited the following season, when Frank finds himself talking to a mortician in a public restroom. He once again states that he couldn't care less what happens to his body after he dies, claiming that he'd be fine with it being eaten, abused, or thrown into the trash. Unfortunately, Frank fails to realize that his microphone is still during the chat, meaning that a room full of children and their angry parents hear every single word.
6 "I am not gonna diddle your kids." (S07E03)
Frank Reynolds is a lot of things, but a "kiddy diddler" certainly isn't one of them. Due to a misunderstanding though, he ends up sponsoring a child beauty pageant and begins to worry that the parents may get the wrong idea about his intentions. He's so worried, in fact, that he makes a point of repeatedly telling the parents that he has no interest in "diddling" their kids and even tries to have the gang write a song to this effect.
This isn't the only time that Frank finds himself in a precarious kid-related situation either. Many years later, he gets trapped inside a piece of children's playground equipment wearing nothing but his underpants. It's never explained how he came to be trapped or why he was there in the first place, but his desperation to get out before any children show up is somewhat reminiscent of his experiences with the Frank Reynolds' Little Beauties pageant.
5 "You gotta pay the troll toll..." (S04E13)
When Charlie writes a musical to propose to the waitress, Frank is given the role of a troll. Not just any troll either, but one who charges men to enter a young boy's soul as he sleeps. Much to Charlie's frustration, however, Frank seems to have quite a bit of trouble distinguishing between "boy's soul" and "boy's hole," which makes the already disturbing musical number a whole lot darker than its creator had originally intended.
This ends up being one of many experiences that Frank would later recount to a tour group from Hong Kong upon stealing their chartered tour boat. The group is naturally quite shocked to hear about it, with poor translation making it sound even worse than it already was. With that in mind, the group probably weren't all that surprised to see Frank being arrested when he disembarked the boat a little later on.
4 "With a plastic bag for a helmet..." (S08E05)
A lot of Frank's major malfunctions can seemingly be traced back to his troubled childhood. He spent much of it in a "nitwit school" upstate where his best friend was a frog-boy named "froggy" and his first kiss was supposedly with a girl who had no lips. When the gang gets therapy to decide who has to wash some dishes though, it soon becomes clear that these troubling details are only the tip of the Frank Reynolds iceberg.
As well as revealing that Dennis and Dee had a brother named Donny who they ate in utero, he tells the therapist about his first true love and her unfortunate demise. According to Frank, the young girl accidentally suffocated herself with a plastic bag while pretending to be an astronaut, leaving Frank with some pretty deep emotional scars. With these scars now "unzipped," his sobs persist through a harrowing yet hilarious series of jarring jump cuts.
3 "We gotta start cutting the crust off this sh*t sandwich." (S08E07)
It's often stated that Frank is an excellent businessman, but, aside from his modest wealth and solid reputation, there's very little on-screen evidence to actually back this up. The closest that the show comes to doing so is in season eight, when Frank is called in to save the company that he founded during his younger days. With Charlie as his protege, he recaptures his old "Warthog" persona and begins carving Atwood up in order to sell it to foreign investors.
For anybody else, the thought of cannibalizing a company that they worked so hard to build might seem unthinkable, especially as so many people presumably lost their jobs as a result. For Frank, however, it's just business and he has no problem whatsoever with pocketing the cash. He does agree to invest some of the money into Charlie and Mac's Fight Milk idea though; a "crowtein" based energy drink for aspiring bodyguards.
2 "Some c*cks can't be unsucked." (S08E02)
Although it's typically the gang who take most of the plaudits, It's Always Sunny also has an excellent cast of secondary characters. He may not appear quite as often as some of the others, but the City Official is no less memorable. Frank initially tries to bribe him by taking him to a strip club, but soon learns that the character is actually gay. A few years later, Frank finds himself trying to bribe the same official, but this time takes him to a male strip club instead.
When the City Official seems disinterested by all of the "juicy d*ngs," Frank questions whether he's actually gay. Dee then chimes in to suggest that he may now be a "Yestergay," leading to a long conversation between her and Frank regarding some of the difficulties and pressures of being gay in modern society. When Dee expresses her belief that people can't choose to stop being gay when faced with such pressures, Frank wholeheartedly agrees, though his way of doing so isn't nearly as eloquent.
1 "I'm sorry, Rum Ham!" (S07E02)
Due to a ban on open alcohol containers, the gang needs to get creative in order to continue drinking while on their trip to the Jersey Shore. Dee and Dennis opt to hide their alcohol inside sunscreen bottles, while Charlie just settles for drinking sunscreen. As is often the case, Frank has other ideas. Rather than go with a decoy bottle, he instead decides to soak a piece of ham in rum and eat his drink; a plan that Mac wholeheartedly approves of.
Due to the beach being overrun with stray dogs and covered in used hypodermic needles, the pair end up sailing out in a dingy to get hammered in peace. Things are all going swimmingly until the pair nod off and the dingy is carried out to sea by the current. A first, Frank isn't the least bit phased by the situation, but after realizing that there's a ham overboard, he begins crying out in anguish and apologizing to the slab of alcohol-infused meat as it slowly floats away.