There's A Video Game From It's Always Sunny That Was Playable In Real Life
Once upon a time, in a land where the beer flows as freely as expletives are loosed, the gang from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" became addicted to an online video game. Charlie (Charlie Day), Mac (Rob McElhenney), Dee (Kaitlin Olson), and Frank (Danny DeVito) all became obsessed with a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), forgoing many of their basic needs in order to take care of their digital villages in the season 8 episode "Charlie Rules the World." (Dennis, played by Glenn Howerton, wants nothing to do with the game and goes on his own adventure.) The episode is hilarious, with the members of the gang battling one another online and in the real world to try and have the most powerful online avatar. And for a little while, fans of the series could join in on the ridiculous fun.
Back in 2012, when "Charlie Rules the World" first aired, fans could log onto the now-defunct Techpocalypse website and create their own avatar, exploring the game and even running into the characters made by the gang. It wasn't the most in-depth game in the world, but it was still pretty cool to see something from the TV world cross over into our own.
A pixelated Paddy's Pub
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter back in 2012, Howerton revealed that he, Day, and McElhenney aren't exactly gamers, but they wanted to explore ideas in that realm:
"None of us really play video games at all, but we're always looking to tell stories about the kinds of things people are getting into. The game in the episode is called 'Techpocalypse,' which is a real game. You can actually go on the game and run into our characters."
'Techpocalypse' was a real independent game from Anomaly Labs that never quite got off the ground. The game's Kickstarter wasn't fully funded, but the website stayed online for years. In fact, it was available to access as late as 2020, though there's no telling exactly how much of the game itself stayed online at that time. In 2012, when the game was at its most popular because of the series, it was somewhat buggy and didn't offer much of the experience described on "It's Always Sunny." But hey, it was free!
Exploring the world of online gaming
There is an official "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" game, and because it is 2023, it's a mobile game. The "Always Sunny: Gang Goes Mobile" game is your typical idle clicking game where the goal is to collect various characters from the series. Almost every successful series or movie has a mobile game these days, so that's not too surprising, but what is surprising is that Day and McElhenney returned to the gaming world when creating the Apple TV+ series "Mythic Quest" along with "Sunny" writer Megan Ganz. The trio came up with a story set in a gaming studio that makes a successful MMORPG called "Mythic Quest," and while the show isn't entirely about gaming, video games and game culture are a big part of the series. That's pretty adventurous considering their lack of experience with gaming, at least according to Howerton!
Plenty of comedy shows have tackled video game-themed episodes over the years, ranging from "The Simpsons" to "Community," but it's pretty unlikely that any of them had energy balls or a man giving himself fellatio in his daydreams. The gang would revisit video games with the season 12 episode "PTSDee," in which Mac and Frank get addicted to playing a virtual reality first-person shooter. Maybe next time the gang will get addicted to a strategy game like "Sid Meier's Civilization" or "StarCraft." We all know Charlie would rock those Zerg rushes...
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is available to stream on Hulu and FXNow.