It's Always Sunny In The Fantastic Four: The Viral Marvel Mashup Explained

Is "the gang" headed to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Almost definitely not, but the idea has gone viral in recent days thanks to jokes, memes, and some pretty astonishing fan art. Visual artist Kode Abdo — widely known as BossLogic on Instagram — shared his own imagining of the four main characters of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" as the Fantastic Four. The general online consensus agrees with Abdo's casting, which sees Dennis Reynolds (Glenn Howerton) as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, his sister Dee (Kaitlin Olson) as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Charlie Kelly (Charlie Day) as Johnny Storm/the Human Torch, and Mac McDonald (Rob McElhenney) as Ben Grimm/The Thing. Frank Reynolds (Danny DeVito), meanwhile, was hilariously (mis)cast by Abdo as Victor von Doom.

Whether ridiculous or ingenious, the idea spawned from the realization that Matt Shakman — who will helm Marvel Studios' "Fantastic Four" reboot, following Jon Watts' exit — was once an integral part of the "Always Sunny" directing team. In addition to directing 43 episodes (the most of any director to work on the long-running FX series), Shakman is responsible for some of the series' most beloved stories, including "Charlie Work," "The Nightman Cometh," and "The Gang Goes to a Water Park," all three of which are ranked as the top three "Always Sunny" episodes on IMDb. 

In addition to the above connection, the most recent wave of "Always Sunny"/"Fantastic Four" memes also seems to have been inspired by recent comments Shakman made about the series in relation to his work with Marvel's first family.

Speaking with Comic Book earlier this month, Matt Shakman shared that working with the cast of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (most of whom are also crew members themselves, including Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton, who created the series in 2005) imparted to him the importance of creative collaboration, flexibility, and compromise — qualities that are vital to a show that relies heavily on improvisation. "[T]he rule of improv ... is you say 'yes and.' If you're in an improv skit with somebody, you say, 'Well, I'm a doctor,' and they go, 'No, you're not.' It's over," he told the outlet. "What do you do? And that rule of improv is such a good thing for the creative process ... 'Yes, I like what you're bringing. Now let's also do that plus this.'"

Shakman, whose resume also includes episodes of "Game of Thrones," "The Boys," "Succession," and all nine installments of the Disney+ Marvel series "WandaVision," further explained that this approach has allowed him to produce work he's proud of regardless of a project's scale. "['Yes and' is] the essence of collaboration and it's how I think anything good, whether it's a giant awesome show like [Monarch: Legacy of Monsters] that's made across continents, or whether it's something [like "It's Always Sunny"], made for two nickels with four or five people," he said. "So that spirit infects, I think, or informs, I should say, everything that I do."