It’s Always Sunny: Guillermo Del Toro’s Pappy McPoyle Explained

Here’s Guillermo del Toro’s It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia character Pappy McPoyle explained. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia follows the depraved adventures of Paddy’s Pub gang Charlie, Mac, Frank, Dennis and Dee. They’re all varying degrees of awful with Dennis, for instance, being a vain, sex-obbessed sociopath who may actually have killed people. While the comedy of the show might be pitch black it’s also genuinely hilarious, which is one reason it’s run for fourteen seasons thus far.

While It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia may mostly revolve around the gang, there are lots of memorable supporting characters too. There’s Rickety Cricket, who started as a do-gooding priest but after becoming involved with the gang became a homeless crack addict who seems to decay a little more with each season. There’s Charlie’s eternal love interest The Waitress – played by Charlie Day’s real-life wife Mary Elizabeth Ellis – who utterly despises him, or The Lawyer, whose open disdain for the gang still never saves him from getting sucked into their schemes.

Maybe It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s best – or at least the grossest – supporting characters are the McPoyle twins Liam and Ryan. These twins come from a “pure,” inbred family who love milk and have terrible skin conditions. They’re intensely creepy, which also goes for their extended family. Cause in point is Pappy McPoyle, played by director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape Of Water).

Pappy McPoyle is Liam and Ryan’s grandfather and is first introduced in It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia season 8’s episode “The Maureen Ponderosa Wedding Massacre,” where he rambles to the gang about his babies springing from his loins fully formed, and when one tried to eat him, he ate the baby first. He later reappeared in season 11’s “McPoyle Vs. Ponderosa: The Trial Of The Century,” where he’s called to the stand by Charlie. The Lawyer is suing Bill Ponderosa on behalf of Liam McPoyle, who lost his eye after the former spiked the wedding milk back in season 8. Charle calls Pappy to the stand who again rambles nonsensically before Charlie removes his hat to reveal Royal McPoyle, Pappy’s pet bird who lives on his head and is responsible for gouging out Liam’s eye.

The trial ends in chaos and Pappy then orders Royal to gouge out The Lawyer’s eyes and bring them to him. That’s the last time Pappy McPoyle appeared on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and it was down to the friendship formed between Charlie Day and Guillermo del Toro making Pacific Rim that the director agreed to cameo as Pappy.

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Padraig Cotter
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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