What Inspired Charlie's Love Of Ghouls In It's Always Sunny
On "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," Charlie Kelly (Charlie Day) is one seriously strange human being. He eats cat food and drinks beer in order to get to sleep, huffs enough paint and glue to kill a horse, and shares a single-room walk-up and a bed with a man named Frank (Danny DeVito). He also has an unhealthy obsession with a local coffee shop waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), and when the gang finds out that she's getting married, they do everything in their power to find a new love interest for Charlie. That means setting him up with an online dating profile and asking for his likes and dislikes, which gets as weird as one might expect. In "The Waitress is Getting Married," Dennis (Glenn Howerton) and Mac (Rob McElhenney) discover that Charlie is really into "ghouls," and when they ask for clarification, they don't really get much.
On a May 2023 episode of "The Always Sunny Podcast" where they discuss "The Waitress is Getting Married," the guys talk about the origin of Charlie's love of ghouls, which went on to become a running gag throughout the series. It turns out that the ghouls Charlie describes come directly from Howerton's childhood.
Ghosts, goblins, and ghouls, oh my!
According to Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton, the scene where Dennis and Mac help Charlie make his dating profile was scripted but "loose," leaving Day open to riff on the scripted elements to try and make his co-stars laugh. The idea for ghouls, however, came from Howerton, who explained their origins:
"Now, where that came from was when I was a kid, we had this book, this Halloween book and I think it was called, 'It's Halloween.' And it was a book of, like, little Halloween poems and all these, like, little Halloween stories. And I just remember this one story, like really standing out to me where there was like a ghoul sitting on a tree outside of this kids window. And the kid didn't know why the ghoul was there. And just thinking that that was a funny, I don't know why, but I don't know why, but I remember it striking me that that would be a funny thing for Charlie to like. There's something funny about just, like, it's not a ghost. It's not a ghost."
This leads the guys to discuss the differences between goblins, ghosts, and ghouls, revealing that the main difference is that there's a light-hearted nature to a ghoul that isn't there in the other two. In fact, Howerton and Day really have a lot of opinions about ghouls and goblins.
Little green ghoulies
Ghouls, which Charlie Day describes in the television series episode as "little green ghoulies," are relatively harmless, it seems. During the episode "Mac Day," we hear that the gang was forced to look for ghouls all during "Charlie Day," and he talks about the awesome ones they found. He fully believes in ghouls, as well as leprechauns and other magical beings, and it sounds like Day almost does as well. He and Glenn Howerton describe ghouls as having "a sense of mischief" whereas a goblin is "up to no good." Rob McElhenney throws in that they're "nefarious," and Day clarifies that ghouls are also "up to no good," but that they have a sense of humor. Apparently, they're silly and might bite, but that doesn't make them dangerous. In fact, Day says that you could "probably kick it across the room." He also said that goblins are particularly smelly, apparently, while "ghouls are relatively odorless."
I have no idea where Day learned all of these things about ghouls, especially since the idea originally came from Howerton's childhood book, but the man's imagination knows no bounds.