'Full House's Michelle Tanner Didn't Wear Chanel, and Other Lies the Tanners Told Us

In Season 4, a 15-year-old DJ gets an invite to a co-ed pool party, and decides that she needs to lose weight immediately to look good in her bikini. So for a few days, she skips meals and works too hard on the elliptical, until she finally collapses from exhaustion and has her secret revealed to her family. By the end of the episode, DJ’s eating habits and body confidence go back to normal. Sure, her anorexia was short-lived, but an eating disorder is serious stuff. Yet according to Full House, being told “you’re beautiful just the way you are” and hugging it out is all one needs to be cured. Image: ABC

In Season 8, Michelle holds a lemonade sale that somehow nets her over 200 dollars. If that wasn’t the most unbelievable part, she uses the money to buy a donkey. Yes, a donkey — and the family, of course, has no problem with it! Sure, they complain a little and end up deciding to give the donkey to a petting zoo, but they’re perfectly fine with Michelle’s decision to buy the donkey in the first place and letting it stay in the house for a night. Those crazy Tanners. Image: ABC

When Jesse’s very old, very Greek grandparents visit the Tanners to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, chaos ensues. Jesse and Becky almost break up but instead get engaged, both Olsen twins appear on-screen together for only the second time in Full House history, and DJ gets married to a random Greek dude. It turns out that there’s a tradition in whatever part of Greece the relatives live that if two people walk around a table together, they’re married. To undo it? You just walk backwards around the table, of course. It turns out that in real life, table-walking is actually a part of Orthodox Greeks’ marriage ritual, but a lot of other stuff has to happen before and after to make it official. If only the Tanners had had access to Google back in 1990. Image: ABC

One of the most famous episodes of Full House is Season 8, Episode 3, “Making Out is Hard to Do,” and for good reason. Stephanie’s cool friend Gia invites the awkward Tanner to a “make-out party,” which is exactly what it sounds like. A couple dozen kids sit in a room and do nothing else — seriously, there’s no music, no dancing, no food — except make out with each other until they get bored. For young Full House fans, it came as a major shock when it turned out that real-life junior high parties weren’t exactly like this. Image: ABC

True Full House fans know that DJ’s real soulmate is Steve, the on-again, off-again boyfriend who finally confesses his love for the eldest Tanner child in the series finale. Yet, for the few seasons beforehand, DJ’s love life consisted of juggling two different guys, both of whom were insanely overqualified to be the boyfriend of a girl who spent more time whining to her dad than being a normal high schooler. Thankfully, DJ ends up with neither Viper, a 21-year-old wild, long-haired guitarist, nor Nelson, a filthy rich student who ends up dating Kimmy (!), but it’s still unclear what either guy saw in Deej. All we can thank the love triangle for was raising our expectations of the kind of boys available to date in high school. Image: ABC

This joke went way over our heads as kids, but now that we’re old enough to know what Steph really meant, we’re shocked it managed to slide by the censors and get put on a family-friendly show. Image: ABC

In the first Full House two-parter, a Season 1 episode ends with Danny finding a note from Jesse informing the Tanners that he’s left home and doesn’t know if he’ll be coming back. When the girls come in and ask where Jesse is, Danny tells them that their uncle has “run away from home,” because that’s what 25-year-old guys do. Kid viewers were just as shocked by the news as Steph and DJ were, but adults — and Bob Saget — knew that the line was completely ridiculous. Image: ABC