As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- On their parody of Celebrity Jeopardy, Sean Connery's tendency to insert or remove the spaces in category titles is funny enough on its own but it just occurred to me that he's old english (well, sort of... it's funnier that way). -gibberingtroper
- The famous $3000 dollar offer to The Beatles to reunite and perform three Beatles tunes is already a Comically Small Bribe, but it's even comically smaller when it clicks that it's not even a $1000 per Beatle.
- The Kristen Stewart monologue leads to Kate Mckinnon joining her on stage, saying "I just wanna be like you, sleep all day, party all night". That last part is from the tagline of another vampire movie famous for pandering to the young adult demographic, The Lost Boys. If that's not enough, Kate's gratuitously Butch Lesbian outfit and hair mimic Keifer Sutherland in that movie.
- Kate McKinnon's Gonktastic character, Shud the blobfish-mermaid, is dressed in some messy junk including a fishing net with a weight still on it - hinting that she was not only caught by accident, but thrown back in such a hurry they didn't want to keep the net.
- Hillary Clinton (the openly gay Kate McKinnon) noting to bartender Val (the actual Hillary Clinton) that they could've been quicker to promote LGBT rights.
- Taran Killam as Jebediah Atkinson reviewing the Tony Awards nominees ended up mispronouncing "Tony" into "Tommy", then just rolls with it... interestingly, there actually is a stage musical named Tommy.
- A parody of Aliens includes a Captain Ersatz of Vasquez played by Cecily Strong, well before the practice of casting white actors as ethnicities they didn't have yet was phased out. It's a little known fact that the original Vasquez was played by Jeannette Goldstein, who's no more Latino than Cecily is.
- One sketch parodying the Indiana Jones-style adventure has Dwayne Johnson as the head adventurer and Pete Davidson as the sidekick, who keep getting hit by poison darts and opt to suck the poison out of each other wherever it lands, rather than let the female scientist (Kate Mckinnon) near them, as much as she's really like to. It's possible they just didn't want to risk the life of the one person smart enough to bail them out if need be.
- The Margot Robbie episode has a Scooby-Doo parody, where one of the guys says he hears someone coming and Margot's character asks "who would have sex in this filthy old castle?" It's also a nod to the longtime fan theory that all of the focus on Shaggy and Scooby's shenanigans was due to Fred and Daphne off having teenage nookie at the time.
- Natalie Portman appears in full costume as Queen Amidala threatening someone to badmouth the Star Wars prequels at gunpoint. Even if you never heard of The Professional, Amidala has been depicted as deadly with a gun (something Leia inherited).
- Beck Bennett cuts an imposing figure with his deep voice and chiseled jaw, but is actually one of the shorter guys in the show. Which explains all the scenes he gets alongside Natalie Portman, who isn't completely dwarfed by her leading man for once.
- The 2018 episode with Chadwick Boseman has Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump claiming that "nobody is tougher on Russia than me... not even Hitler." It makes a funny kind of sense if you know that Hitler did try to attack Russia in World War II... and failed.
- Chadwick also reprises the role of T'Challa in a new Black Jeopardy, where he behaves a lot more idealistic than what we've seen in the movies. Then you realise that with zero mention of Black Panther, the whole thing could have been before the events of Civil War.
- During the "Does It Even Matter Anymore" sketch, which addresses all the ways in which Donald Trump has avoided justice, Jessica Chastain and Cecily Strong are the only ones closest to a nervous breakdown - because they have a personal stake in it. Cecily attended the last White House Correspondents' Dinner for Barack Obama and gave a memorable speech, while Jessica famously starred in Zero Dark Thirty, about one of the operations that took place during the Obama administration that Trump might have some trouble reversing like he did all the others. (Cos yknow, you'd have to unkill Osama...) And then Kate Mckinnon acts first to reach out to Jessica, much like she did for all of America with a memorable piano solo in the previous season.
- One Secondhand News segment on Weekend Update had Anthony confuse Charlie Sheen with Charlie Rose...which gets more understandable when you remember that Two and a Half Men had a character named Rose.
- On Weekend Update Michael briefly looks at the news of Kanye West claiming that "slavery was a choice" before just passing on it. It's actually a sneaky Call-Back to a past Weekend Update when Colin pointed out that the Irish were driven by the potato famine to emigrate to the US, while Michael quipped "at least they had a choice".
- The Republicans celebrate the voting of Brett Cavanaugh to the Supreme Court despite him being mired with sex crime allegations - so it makes perfect sense that they'd have the famously misogynistic-sounding "Blurred Lines" playing in the back.
- Donald Trump Jr (Mikey Day) reads The Night Before Christmas to Eric (Alex Moffat) at bedtime, and right off the bat Eric has trouble understanding the first word ("'Twas the night before Christmas..."). Eric deserves some credit though; it's not exactly a commonly used word anymore.
- Season 45 starts out with a sketch about a live news program that almost goes butt-shaped for real, after a stagehand is seen fixing up Aidy's outfit when the cameras cut back. Since news program bloopers have been getting popular on Youtube for a long time, some would argue that the whole sketch is actually more authentic as a result.
- At the end of his Weekend Update segment in the David Harbour/Camila Cabello episode, Pete Davidson calls out Colin for making a joke at his expense the previous week while Pete was out, then remarks, "by the way Colin, I don't know if you've seen Joker, but I think you should start being way nicer to me." On the surface it's a reference to Pete's well-publicized mental health and self esteem issues. However, it gains a potential second meaning when you remember Pete was out for the first two weeks of season 45 because he was filming for an upcoming DC movie, James Gunn's The Suicide Squad. As such, Pete's joke can also be interpreted as, "You're gonna wish you were nicer to me when you learn I'm in a huge DC movie myself."
- Speaking of DC, a sketch that parodies Batman has host Chance the Rapper and several other residents of The City Narrows pointing out how Batman has been cracking down on them for petty crimes by hanging them from wires by their underwear. It's most certainly a reference to the Remote Claw from the Arkham games, meaning that this is less a case of Adaptational Jerkass and more of Batman's anonymity bringing out the Video Game Cruelty Potential in him.
- Stephen Miller is represented as a serpent speaking in parseltongue as he communicates with Mike Pence, who's a famously devout Christian - meaning that his loyalty to Trump has blinded him so much that the irony of confiding in a talking serpent is lost on him.
- Chris Hemsworth, best known as Thor, once appeared As Himself but dressed in drag in order to befriend women and suss out their opinion of him, somehow doing it so well that they believe he's always been one of them. It's also a meta reference to the mythology of Thor, who once dressed up as a princess to be brought into Jotunheim.
- Timothee Calamet and Pete Davidson play a pair of soundcloud rappers. When asked who their musical influences are one mentions that they like "Fall Out Boys". Fall Out Boy collaborated with a lot of rappers on their music, including even an opening from Jay-Z on their song "Thriller".
- A deliberately offensive joke Michael Che wrote for Colin Jost is about the role of Sammy Davis Jr. going to Colin's significant other Scarlett Johansson. It crosses back over the line when you realise that they're both Jewish. Not to mention Older Than They Think, as Sammy was once played by Billy Crystal! On SNL!
- As host of Weekend Update, Jimmy Fallon once reported on the son of the writer of The Birds being attacked by birds himself, following up with asking the son of "whoever wrote The Blob" if he was scared now. It seems a little lazy of him to not refer to the writer by name, but not a lot of people would know that information right off the bat. If Fallon had referred to the writer of The Blob by name, only people who recognized the name would get the joke.
- In the No Time to Die skit, James briefly mentions that "[his] heart is beating so fast, this is just like, uh...", which refers to the events of Casino Royale (2006), where his martini was poisoned and he flatlined before being saved by Vesper. Things turn out much better for him in this case.
- In season 47 they reference the case of Gabby Petito as an example of missing white women getting way more attention than others, represented by Ego Nwodim as a woman who's been missing for 10 years. Apparently the media used a less flattering picture of her, which was really her role as a Tethered in a spoof of Us. The twist at the end of that movie - the Tethered had kidnapped and replaced the original woman as a child, meaning that that woman was still missing, for even longer.
- The "Car Heist" digital short from the Kieran Culkin/Ed Sheeran episode has Chris Redd as a burglar whose attempt to steal a vintage Lamborghini is stymied by his inability to work (or recognize) a manual transmission. His Russian handler has to walk him through working the transmission. It makes more sense for her to walk him through it if you remember that being able to use a manual transmission is one of the requirements to get a Russian driver's license.
- The episode with Will Forte started with a joke about how Lorne Michaels was trying to contact Willem Dafoe instead, but then autocorrect struck. Which is going to happen when you go professionally by the Dutch reading of "William" instead.
- The most famous installment of "The Chris Farley Show" sketch was perhaps the one where Chris Farley interviewed Paul McCartney. How did the two get along so well? They both had a mother named Mary whom they were very close with (Paul's mother Mary was the inspiration for "Let It Be").
- Angel (Heidi Gardner) gets blindsided by the appearance of Adonis Creed (host Michael B. Jordan) on Weekend Update, revealing that one of her children was his. An early appearance by Angel to review recent movies led to her having a lot of grief over the actual Creed movie - likely the reason she left him in the first place.
- The Christmas sketch with Eddie Murphy as a Christmas elf leads up to The Reveal that he has an Unfortunate Name, "Kiddle Diddle" - he's visibly the oldest elf there, meaning that he was definitely named during a more innocent time. And these are elves so that's going to be centuries ago.
- One music video in season 49 has Ryan Gosling as an ex CIA psy ops agent who goes by "the Shredder." While using names from cartoons as callsigns isn't that unusual, it's also a Meaningful Name as he knows how to Un-person someone, which would involve shredding documents.
- The Justin Timberlake episode of season 38 sees the return of the Wild and Crazy Guys (Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin) who still claim to be from Czechoslovakia... which shouldn't exist anymore. Were they stuck in the US since then like Tom Hanks in The Terminal?
- For those who don't "get" the Season 43 sketch involving R. Kelly inhabiting the "Disney Princess Magic Mirror" attraction, it's not really a weird non-sequitur but a commentary on his notorious treatment of women and young girls (he's targeting and weirding-out Leslie Jones throughout the skit). The Fridge Horror aspect is that the attraction in question is for children. Lord knows how many innocent little girls may have encountered R. Kelly (eating popcorn and subs in sexy fashion) in place of a Disney Princess.
