History Trivia / SaturdayNightLive

** It's particularly evident whenever Creator/RyanGosling hosts - pre-recorded digital shorts like "Santa Baby" and "Papyrus" have Ryan turning in fine performances as befits a known screen idol, but during the live parts he's damn near losing it in every other sketch. It reached its zenith in 2024 with the "News Nation" sketch where Gosling played a [[WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead Beavis]] lookalike whose presence in the studio audience disrupts a serious town hall discussion broadcast. Gosling constantly smirked and clearly seemed on the verge of breaking, which caused Heidi Gardner (playing the town hall host) to visibly have trouble concentrating, but then when Mikey Day showed up as a Butt-Head lookalike, Gardner completely broke and started laughing, and struggled to regain her composure (Gardner later said the same thing happened in dress rehearsal and she tried in vain to stay focused in the air version).

** It's particularly evident whenever Creator/RyanGosling hosts - pre-recorded digital shorts like "Santa Baby" and "Papyrus" have Ryan turning in fine performances as befits a known screen idol, but during the live parts he's damn near losing it in every other sketch.

** Season 11 (the 1985-1986 season) is also a season everyone would like to forget, most especially for the writers at the time (who would go on to write for ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' during its golden age) who simply didn't know how to create funny material for the cast hired at the time. Unlike season six, season 11 has aired in reruns on Creator/ComedyCentral, Comedy Channel in Canada, NBC (during its NBC All Night block on Saturdays), and E! and, while being regarded as the weirdest/most disconnected season, has been VindicatedByHistory for the most part and does have memorable moments/performances/facts -- specifically, Terry Sweeney as Nancy Reagan, Creator/DennisMiller reviving Weekend Update with his brand of snarky humor, the fact that most of the writers would later be famous for ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', Danitra Vance's characters[[note]]even though Vance was often typecast as slave girls, pregnant teen girls, welfare moms, and black women with low-level jobs, like secretaries, nurses, and waitresses[[/note]], and the fact that the show had the actor who would later be known for playing ComicBook/IronMan (Creator/RobertDowneyJr).

** Shane Gillis (a stand-up comic who was hired alongside Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang) was fired just ''one week'' after being chosen as a new cast member for Season 45, when a clip of him making horribly racist and sexist statements on a podcast a few years earlier was unearthed, and he didn't help at all by defending it as being edgy.

** It has become almost memetic over the years to reference how Creator/NormMacdonald was fired from ''SNL'' because "he wouldn't stop making Creator/OJSimpson jokes" on ''Weekend Update''. In fact, in the wake of Macdonald's death, numerous headlines, TV journalists and fellow comics referenced that scenario all over again. There are several problems with it, however. One is that Macdonald wasn't fired from ''SNL''; he was removed from the ''Weekend Update'' segment at the demand of then-NBC President Don Ohlmyer, while Lorne Michaels announced specifically that he was not firing Macdonald. Instead, Macdonald left on his own several episodes later, because he didn't like acting in sketches and thought he "stunk" in them (though fans of his Burt Reynolds impression likely would not agree). The second problem is the idea that Ohlmyer openly stated that he didn't like Macdonald making OJ jokes, and that was the reason for his removal from Update. This might be the unspoken reason, though Ohlmeyer insisted it was simply because he didn't think Macdonald was funny, but it gets repeated today as if it were confirmed fact. This doesn't explain, however, why Ohlmyer only stepped in where Macdonald was concerned, but said nothing about more than two years' worth of SNL as a whole producing sketch after sketch about OJ, or that when Macdonald was removed, it was well after the OJ trial was over and he wasn't making OJ jokes nearly as frequently.[[note]]If anyone is wondering if perhaps the full sketches regarding the OJ trial were less pointed and brutal, don't worry, they were not. The entire point of over 90% of them was the appearance of OJ Simpson's obvious guilt, the defense team's theatrics trying to distract from their lack of a case, Judge Ito's frequent refusal to allow critical evidence, and OJ himself practically dancing up and down wanting to admit he did it. Tim Meadows played OJ (and defense lawyer Johnny Cochrane), as a complete psychopath who seems almost to want to be caught, yet his position at the show was never threatened by Ohlmyer.[[/note]] By the time of Macdonald's removal, Macdonald had moved on to repeated "notes to self", non-sequitur humor concerning [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff Germany's love of David Hasselhoff]], Frank Stallone [[TheChessmaster Chessmastering]] everything suspicious, and jokes about the Clintons. A final note is that SNL may be done live, but all jokes are pre-written well in advance and any time a player has gone completely off-script, making jokes that weren't approved, they are met with immediate loss of their jobs, not removal from just one segment or sketch.

** Marcello Hernandez speaks fluent Spanish and demonstrates this ability in several Season 48 sketches.

** Creator/PeteDavidson was set to host May 6, 2023 with Music/LilUziVert as musical guest. Then the show was forced to cancel the episode due to the WGA voting to go on strike midway through production week.

** Creator/ChrisRock has expressed disdain for the famous "Chippendales" sketch, claiming that exploiting Creator/ChrisFarley's physique for laughs only to have his character rejected by the judges was "just fucking mean".

*** Creator/BurtReynolds also approved of Creator/NormMacdonald's impersonations of him in the same series of sketches.

** Season 11 (the 1985-1986 season) is also a season everyone would like to forget, most especially for the writers at the time (who would go on to write for ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' during its GoldenAge) who simply didn't know how to create funny material for the cast hired at the time. Unlike season six, season 11 has aired in reruns on Creator/ComedyCentral, Comedy Channel in Canada, NBC (during its NBC All Night block on Saturdays), and E! and, while being regarded as the weirdest/most disconnected season, has been VindicatedByHistory for the most part and does have memorable moments/performances/facts -- specifically, Terry Sweeney as Nancy Reagan, Creator/DennisMiller reviving Weekend Update with his brand of snarky humor, the fact that most of the writers would later be famous for ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', Danitra Vance's characters[[note]]even though Vance was often typecast as slave girls, pregnant teen girls, welfare moms, and black women with low-level jobs, like secretaries, nurses, and waitresses[[/note]], and the fact that the show had the actor who would later be known for playing ComicBook/IronMan (Creator/RobertDowneyJr).

** Music/{{Beyoncé}} [[https://www.eonline.com/news/538682/beyonce-reacts-to-saturday-night-live-s-the-beygency absolutely loved]] the Beygency sketch, posting a simple positive review that says "Haaaaaaaaaaaa" along with a screenshot of the sketch's logo on [[https://www.instagram.com/p/nnxg_TPw9R her Instagram]].

* TheWikiRule: [[http://snl.wikia.com/wiki/Saturday_Night_Live_Wiki The SNL Wiki]].

** When show did its ''Series/TwinPeaks'' parody, Jan Hooks played Nadine Hurley and then, because (as explicitly noted during the sketch) the show only had two female castmembers at the time, dashed off stage, changed outfits and came back on as the Log Lady.

* TalkingToHimself: The Creator/SarahSilverman monologue in 2014 leads up to Sarah taking questions from archive footage of herself when she was just the plant in the audience, more than once.
-->"[[ShamelessSelfPromotion What is this, pretty girls in the audience night?]]"