It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia S16E2: Frank's Beach Scene Is A Subtle Reference To S7

Contains spoilers for "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" Season 16, Episode 2 — "Frank Shoots Every Member of the Gang"

In the world of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," kindness often comes with strings attached. To wit, during "Frank Shoots Every Member of the Gang," when Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and Dennis Reynolds (Glenn Howerton) take their stepfather, Frank Reynolds (Danny DeVito) out for a nice dinner, it's not an altruistic gesture. The siblings hope to secure some of Frank's riches posthumously. Dee and Dennis are rewarded for their efforts with a bullet when Frank accidentally grazes them both while trying to open a tin can with his gun. 

Dee and Dennis then try to get into their stepfather's good graces by giving him a perfect day out, which causes Frank to worry that they're trying to kill him. Things come to a head when they bring Frank to the beach, where the twins are once more removed from his will and he feels assured that the kids don't have patricide on their mind. As the scene plays out, the audience comes to realize that the Reynolds clan has gone to the Jersey Shore — the home of many of Dee and Dennis' childhood memories, which fans will remember from Season 7's "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore."

The latter episode is much beloved among fans and is at press time the show's 10th most popular outing on IMDb. That particular adventure sees Dennis and Dee take the gang to the Jersey Shore, where they quickly learn that their summertime haunt isn't what it used to be. Fans watching "Frank Shoots Every Member of The Gang" at home most likely caught this brief reference.

A number of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" fans watching "Frank Shoots Every Member of the Gang" definitely noticed the callbacks and took to the show's subreddit to shout out various references to "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore."

"Oh my god imagine if the rum ham washes up on shore!?" said u/Galileo908, making a reference to the meat that Mac McDonald (Rob McElhenney) and Frank heavily covet during the Season 7 episode. U/bingusthebrave thought that Frank shooting at the ocean without a single beachgoer looking up from their daily activities properly captured the state spirit. "Going back to the Jersey Shore, even just for a moment, felt good man," they commented. Multiple fans had fun with Dee's proclamation that she wasn't surprised that the beachgoers didn't run off in fear at the sound of Frank's gun going off because they were standing on the Jersey Shore. 

While it appears that the seaside town has at least managed to recover its human population in the "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" universe, and is finally free of packs of roaming dogs, it looks like it's still as immune to the sound of gunfire as it always was.