Hilarious In Hindsight / Saturday Night Live

For every moment that is Harsher in Hindsight on Saturday Night Live, there are at least a couple of Hilarious in Hindsight moments that make the sketch funnier years after the sketch aired. Some examples:

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Season 1

• The premiere had a fake commercial for a multi-bladed razor and the slogan that pointed out that consumers are so stupid that they would actually buy this. Multi-bladed razors became very real and actually would sell well in the late 1990s. To be more specific, twin-blade razors were becoming the standard, so the mock commercial was about tri-blade razors, implying that they would be a stupid idea. Nowadays two of the leading companies, Gillette and Schick, have five-bladed razors (Fusion and Hydro 5, respectively). And that doesn't count the extra "precision" blade on the Fusion!
• In the show's first year, which included sketches with Jim Henson puppets, one of them tries to flirt with host Lily Tomlin, who says getting romantically involved with a puppet could damage her image. She later came out as a lesbian, which can make the bit come off as meaning a female puppet might have had more success.
• In the sketch "Black Takeover" during the 7th episode hosted by Richard Pryor, Dan Aykroyd, who plays the father, is seen ranting about African-Americans taking over various things; at one point, he says that "one day one's Governor, next day one's President..." Come November 2008, he was right about the "President" part.
• In one of the "Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead" skits, the latter's former Press Secretary claims that "[he] doesn't think that there will be any change in [Franco's] position". In 2019, after a long and extremely heated debate, the Spanish government ordered Franco's corpse to be exhumed from the Valley of the Fallen (a memorial to the deceased on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, commissioned by Franco himself and built using forced labor) due to considering it both disrespectful to the victims of the conflict and not wishing Franco to be honourably memorialized. Franco was then reburied next to his wife in a private graveyard.

Season 2

• In an episode hosted by Eric Idle, there are two big examples of Hilarious in Hindsight in a sketch involving Idle and Dan Aykroyd as cops who dress in drag:
  • The sketch is derailed when John Belushi (also in drag) tells Idle that drag doesn't work in America. Fast forward to the 1990s and 2000s when drag comedies starring Robin Williams, Tyler Perry, and Eddie Murphy make for some of the biggest hits.
  • Throughout the sketch, Aykroyd is doing a Jack Webb impression, yet when the sketch derails Aykroyd claims that his impression sucks. Cut to 1987 when Aykroyd did a fantastic Joe Friday impression in the major motion picture adaptation of Dragnet alongside Tom Hanks.

Season 4

• In 1978, Carrie Fisher, playing Princess Leia, appears in a sketch wearing a gold bikini at the beach. She would even take part in a beach photoshoot wearing that latter outfit.
  • That episode sees the first appearance of The Blues Brothers. She would later appear in their film.
• One "What If...?" sketch exploring "What if Superman was raised in Nazi Germany?" becomes a lot funnier thanks to Final Crisis introducing one alternate universe Superman named Overman who was raised by the Nazis. To a lesser extent, there's also Superman: Red Son, an Elseworlds story where Superman was raised in the USSR. Also, Nazi-Superman's alias is "Uberman", which becomes funnier if you've ever read Irredeemable or Über.

Season 6

• In the end of the first episode of this season, Elliott Gould introduces the new cast one more time and proudly tells the audience, "We're gonna be around forever!" Three months later, another host, Charlene Tilton, caused an F-bomb debacle which got most of those cast members fired as a result except for Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, but it also counts as this trope and Heartwarming in Hindsight considering that SNL is still the longest running sketch show on NBC.

Season 8

• In the April 9, 1983 episode hosted by Joan Rivers, Eddie Murphy stars in a fake commercial called Club Doolittle. 15 years later, he would star in a movie called Dr. Dolittle.

Season 15

• Sinéad O'Connor was scheduled to perform in the penultimate episode, but she pulled out of the episode due to the controversial choice of host (Andrew "Dice" Clay). This is amusing given that she herself would spark controversy on the show later on by ripping apart the Pope's picture while identifying him as "the real enemy." She performed on the next season's premiere (which is, by the way, NOT the infamous performance stated above).

Season 17

• All the times Al Franken played a U.S. Senator, including a 1991 Clarence Thomas skit in the Kirstie Alley episode in which he was Sen. Paul Simon, became this since he became a U.S. Senator for real.
• During a Thanksgiving skit featuring the Super Fans, the fans give thanks that Chicago has the Bears to root for while a city like Indianapolis has the Colts, who are a terrible team. Fifteen NFL seasons later, the Colts wound up defeating the Bears in Super Bowl XLI.

Season 18

• This sketch about the death of Superman from the recent comic at the time might have predicted a few things. Apart from the most obvious one, the death of Superman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, there's:
  • The appearance of both Hawkman and Hawkgirl, the latter of whom was pretty obscure at the time, but Legends of Tomorrow made sure to do the same.
  • Black Lightning (played by host Sinbad) is so obscure he's turned away at the door. Not so much now that he has an Arrowverse series.
  • Aquaman shows up with a plate full of shrimp - in Justice League (2017) it's Aquaman bringing fish to the hungry that leads Batman to find him.
  • The Flash laments that his speed is his only real gimmick, just like the one in Justice League does.
  • Tim Meadows plays the then-obscure John Stewart Green Lantern, long before the Justice League cartoon would make him the best-known one.
  • The Incredible Hulk suddenly goes completely articulate since he wrote his speech as Bruce Banner. The publicity for Thor: Ragnarok made sure to emphasize the Hulk's speech.
  • Al Franken plays Lex Luthor, both of whom have famously been involved in politics.
  • Just the idea of Marvel characters as special guests, considering the Fandom Rivalry that would develop later between DC and Marvel.
  • They even manage to predict the end of Avengers: Endgame with Hulk wearing glasses and a funeral.
• Matt Foley, who Lives in a Van DOWN BY THE RIVER, was said to be vindicated when in The New '10s people started living in vans, with even an Oscar winner built around the lifestyle.
• The April 17, 1993 episode opens with Tim Meadows presenting the show's recurring characters (e.g. Mike Myers as Wayne, Chris Rock as Nat X, and Kevin Nealon as Hans) singing a charity song. After the song concluded, Meadows said "That was very, very emotional for me, mostly because I don't have a recurring character.". A few years later, he'd have two recurring characters: Lionel Osbourne, the host of "Perspectives", and Leon Phelps aka "The Ladies Man".

Season 19

• The November 20, 1993 episode debuted a Parody Commercial featuring action figures for the film Philadelphia, with figures based on main characters Andrew Beckett and Joe Miller, featuring accessories including the Philadelphia mobile and the courtroom. Over two decades later, Clarence had a Show Within a Show centered around a Transformers pastiche centered around Supreme Court Justices called "Supreme Court Squad: Extreme".
• In the February 5, 1994 episode hosted by Patrick Stewart, he delivers a garbled version of his introductory narration from Star Trek: The Next Generation in which he misspeaks "starship Enterprise" as "Star Trek Enterprise." There was later a show called Star Trek: Enterprise.
  • During the same episode, there's a sketch that combines TNG with The Love Boat into The Love Boat: The Next Generation. In 1998, The Love Boat would receive its own "next generation"-style spinoff, The Love Boat: The Next Wave.
• The Heather Locklear episode from 1994 has Mike Myers as an infomercial pitchman who gets embarrassed by the host's racist comments. In 2005, Myers would be embarrassed in real life by co-presenter Kanye West's comments about George W. Bush "...not caring about black people" at a Hurricane Katrina benefit.

Season 20

• In the season premiere, there was the "Steve Martin's Penis Beauty Cream" fake infomerical, featuring the line "Just take a small amount and rub gently on the penis for several minutes up to a half-hour. You'll notice a difference right away!" About a decade later, Maxoderm hits the market with the exact same advertising pitch.
  • During the same show's opening sketch, the show's male performers audition to be the new Bill Clinton impersonator (due to Phil Hartman leaving the show after the previous season), with Chris Farley describing his Clinton as having a weight problem and discussing an exercise program. After leaving the White House, the real Clinton would go on a strict diet and lost a significant amount of weight.

Season 21

• In the David Alan Grier episode, Will Ferrell took part in a sketch in which he played an anchor of a local news program who can only read off the teleprompter when doing the news. Boy, why does that sound familiar?

Season 22

• In one "Weekend Update", Norm Macdonald responded to a joke comment by Joel Schumacher that all the costumes in Batman & Robin would have nipples by making a "note to self": "Do not see the new Batman movie!" Good thinking on his part!
• This cold opening from the 12th episode has Tim Meadows as O. J. Simpson quoting Cuba Gooding Jr.'s "Show me the money!" line from Jerry Maguire. 19 years later, Gooding portrayed Simpson in The People v. O. J. Simpson.
• This season featured the first Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch where the contestants are complete airheads who can't even get a single question right. On the Martin Short episode, Burt Reynolds (Norm Macdonald) doesn't remember that he was in The Cannonball Run. 13 years after this episode, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar got his own line from Airplane! wrong on a real Celebrity Edition of Jeopardy!.
• When Mike Myers hosted in March 1997, he led the SNL cast in a song about coming back as a host, with Darrell Hammond asking "You mean someday, when I leave the show, I could be asked to host?", and Mike answering "That’s right, Darrell! And none of your sketches will be cut!". After leaving SNL in 2009, Darrell would top that prospect by becoming the new announcer after longtime announcer Don Pardo's passing in 2014 and still appearing as a performer.

Season 23

• During a 1997 episode of Celebrity Jeopardy!, Michael Keaton (played by host Matthew Perry) repeatedly stated, "I'm Batman!" That specific line became much funnier after 2005.
  • Became even funnier ten years later, when Keaton himself hosted the show and actually said those words on air.
• The episode hosted by John Goodman (with musical guest Paula Cole) had a sketch where airline passengers are attacked by cobras. This first aired in 1998, a scant eight years before the movie Snakes on a Plane hit the theaters.
• One Saturday TV Funhouse sketch (from the Steve Buscemi episode) is about a fictional animated musical about the Titanic called Titey, featuring singing animals. The whole idea is just too stupid for someone to make one in real life, right? RIGHT?
  • Bonus points for both Titey and The Legend of the Titanic having whales save the passengers.

Season 24

• In 1998, Alec Baldwin hosted a Season 24 episode, and during his Yet Another Christmas Carol opening speech during the monologue, Jimmy Fallon, then a new cast member, made an appearance as the "Ghost of Hosts Future" and told Alec that he was given a prediction that he would become famous and host the show in 2011. Fast forward to actual 2011, where Jimmy is now one of TV's most popular television personalities and hosted Season 37's Christmas episode on December 17^note Specifically, he said he would host the show on December 12, 2011. The prediction couldn't come fully true as December 12 fell on a Monday that year. (Doubles as Harsher in Hindsight: The sketch stated that R.E.M. was the musical guest for the episode Fallon hosted. REM broke up earlier that year.)

Season 25

• During the 25th anniversary special (broadcast in 1999 before the beginning of Season 25), a TV Funhouse short mocking Lorne Michaels showed him, among other things, advertising some SNL merchandise. One of the products he present is the fictitious 45th anniversary special VHS tape, with a future appearance of Wayne and Garth, and Paul Simon as a musical guest, all of them very, very old-looking. Fast forward to 2015 and the real 40th anniversary, that included indeed a Wayne's World skit, and an aged Garth looks very similar to the animated depiction of the 25th anniversary (Wayne not so much); Paul Simon don't look as decrepit as in the cartoon, but the song he sings is the same: "Still Crazy After All These Years".
• The well-known More Cowbell sketch ends with Bruce Dickinson (Christopher Walken) claiming "you're all gonna be wearing gold-plated diapers." Fast forward to the Funkytown Debate in season 37, and we see an actual one!

Season 26

• Beginning in Season 26, the show had a recurring parody of Destiny's Child, called Gemini's Twin. In June 2017, former Destiny's Child member Beyoncé gave birth to twins whose astrological sign is Gemini (which itself is funny, since the symbol for Gemini is twins).
• A 2001 sketch (from the Jennifer Lopez episode) made fun of the soundtrack for the horror film Valentine, mainly mocking some of the bands on it for being rather unknown. As some of the bands included Disturbed and Linkin Park, it's kind of amusing now as those bands went on to be incredibly popular.
• A 2001 "Celebrity Jeopardy!" sketch opens with Alex Trebek (Will Ferrell) telling the audience "I apologize for what happened before the commercial, and would like to assure the audience that all three contestants are now wearing pants.". An outtake in ''Jeopardy!'s 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions had Alex Trebek walking onstage without his pants on, with Alex explaining to the audience that he overheard the three finalists (Brad Rutter, Ken Jennings, and Jerome Vered) say that they had considered playing the game without pants themselves. As Alex left to put his pants back on, a camera behind the podiums showed the players still had their pants on.

Season 27

• Jimmy Fallon did this Weekend Update bit in the Jack Black episode: "For those of you who don’t remember Roots, it follows a saga of Kunta Kinte from young African tribesman, to slavery, to becoming literate, and eventually being the top of his class at Starfleet Academy." And the house band on Jimmy Fallon's talk show ended up being The Roots!
• In the February 2, 2002 episode, a segment with Ana Gasteyer playing Martha Stewart has her mention that rapper Ghostface Killah is a "very dear friend". While intended as throwaway joke considering how unlikely it would be that Stewart was close friends with a rapper, in the late 2000s she struck up a friendship with Snoop Dogg after he appeared on her talk show. They had an obvious on-screen chemistry and have hosted numerous television specials together.

Season 28

• In a 2002 episode hosted by Senator John McCain, one sketch features McCain playing himself appearing on Meet the Press, and maturely swatting down attempts by Tim Russert (Darrell Hammond) to have him announce running for president again ^note McCain had previously run as a candidate in 2000, saying that he's not interested. Of course, we all know he later became the Republican nominee in 2008...
  • Full transcript of the sketch here.
• Mom Jeans mocked in the sketch of the same name became popular with Zoomers in the late 2010's-2020's

Season 29

• In an episode hosted by Ben Affleck, he touted "Bennifer" T-shirts during the monologue, explaining that he had unfortunately ordered 50,000 of them prior to his breakup with Jennifer Lopez, and went on to offer several other Portmanteau Couple Name combos such as "Benyonce", "Mary-Kate and Ashfleck", and (in the unlikely event that Matt Damon finally came around), "Ben-Gay". Only a couple years later, Affleck would get hitched to Jennifer Garner (and was with her until 2015), which made those "Bennifer" shirts valuable again. And he'd get back together with Jennifer Lopez in 2022, even marrying her in July of that year. So the "Bennifer" shirts became valuable again twice.

Season 30

• On the episode hosted by Tom Brady, there's a sketch that takes place backstage where Peyton Manning (Seth Meyers) asks Brady why he was chosen to host over Manning. The real Peyton Manning would host in Season 32 (and his brother, Eli, who was in the audience for Peyton's episode, would host five years later).

Season 31

• One of Seth Meyers' celebrity impressions back before he was a Weekend Update anchor was Anderson Cooper. On the Weekend Update for the season 38 finale, guess who Seth beats up at Stefon's wedding?
  • And during his time on Weekend Update he brought up Anderson Cooper being attacked in the Egypt riots, before adding "you cannot punch the handsome off of this guy".

Season 32

• The Weekend Update from the Jaime Pressly episode has Fred Armisen as a rather scathing Captain Ersatz of Ugly Betty (America Ferrera) called "Fugly Betsy", claiming that her show is comprised entirely of unattractive characters, calling it a "fugly superstore!"
• You'd now swear the sketch of Maya Rudolph's sultry rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner was a spoof of Fergie's at the 2018 NBA All Star Game, when it's actually from the 2006 Hugh Laurie episode.
• The infamous "Dear Sister" sketch from the Shia LaBeouf episode was a spoof of the finale for season two of ""The O.C.". Flash forward to 2019, it is revealed that Rachel Bilson (who played Summer Roberts in The O.C.) and Bill Hader (who was involved in the sketch) are in a romantic relationship.

Season 33

• In an episode where Kanye West was a musical guest, he had a guest role in a sketch in which he interrupted various awards shows to say that he should've won (including the Nobel Prize and a county fair pumpkin competition). Just two years later, West would bring down a huge controversy upon himself when he interrupted Taylor Swift's 2009 VMA acceptance speech to say that Beyonce should have won instead, and he has yet to live down that reputation.

Season 34

• The "High School Musical 4: New Senior Class" sketch from 2009 with Zac Efron himself is this now that there's actually going to be a High School Musical 4.

Season 35

• The Taylor Swift episode had a fake commercial advertising the all-star soundtrack to an animated movie called Bunny Business, including Swift as Shakira. In 2016, Shakira would sing the theme song for an animated movie starring a bunny.
• When Tina Fey hosted in 2010, she did a sketch about Sarah Palin starting her own television network. In 2014, the real Palin did just that.
• In the Alec Baldwin episode, Andy Samberg starred in a Digital Short called "Great Day", a parody of "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" about a once-successful man whose spiraling addiction to cocaine has ruined his life, lost him his job, and alienated his family. Jump forward to 2015, where Andy Samberg — now cast as Detective Peralta in Brooklyn Nine-Nine — spends an episode being held hostage by a once-successful man whose spiraling addiction to cocaine has ruined his life, lost him his job, and alienated his family. And to make it better, the addict in Brooklyn Nine-Nine is played by Chris Parnell, who also featured in the Digital Short "Lazy Sunday", which put Samberg on the map in the first place.

Season 36

• Amy Poehler's monologue actually depicts her "worst nightmare", which includes her well-known Kaitlyn role (a precocious kid) being stolen by Nasim Pedrad. Nasim would later debut as a fundamentally similar character, Shallon.
• During the SNL Digital Short in the Gwyneth Paltrow/Cee Lo Green episode, Andy Samberg asks Anderson Cooper if he ever "got freaky with Barbara Walters". Cooper's response is along the lines of "Are you insane?" The joke when the episode first aired was funny because Andy was drunk off his ass, but now that Anderson Cooper revealed that he was gay, it makes Andy look like an idiot.
  • Gwyneth appears in the Secret Word game show, partnered with Kenan who plays a urology professor who tells his students on live TV that they will have a quiz on asparagus. It's a little funny considering that Gwyneth's Goop lifestyle company would later have a Never Live It Down reputation for its emphasis on feminine hygiene.
• "The Duh Winning" sketch features Bill Hader as Charlie Sheen and Miley Cyrus as Lindsay Lohan. One year later, it was revealed the two (Sheen and Lohan, not Hader and Cyrus) would star in Scary Movie 5.
• During one sketch, Miley Cyrus played Justin Bieber saying that he would smoke Salvia (which Miley herself had done) because it's legal. In 2012, images of Bieber smoking the illegal marijuana surfaced and when Justin Bieber hosted SNL, he appeared as a Bieber-hating member of Miley Cyrus' fan club who told Cyrus that he heard that Justin Bieber had smoked marijuana and was sorry for doing it.
  • In turn, any post-salvia incident humor on the sketch depicting Miley herself as a stoner, as she revealed in 2013 she actually is one.
  • Part of the humor taken from the "Miley Cyrus Show" sketches derived from teenage Miley maintaining her Contractual Purity on one hand, while awkwardly straining to break free from it and move on to a more mature image. Contributing to the humor were various hints that all in Miley's life were not as squeaky-clean as believed, and her "musical director" Billy Ray Cyrus' obliviousness to it all as it plays out in front of him. Now that the real Miley has changed her image entirely and distanced herself from her Disney Channel/family-friendly days, the sketch would far less plausible as of 2016. It may explain why Bayer hasn't performed her Miley impression since the real Miley hosted in 2013, and even then, performed as "old Miley" time travelling to advise "new Miley" not to go ahead with her notorious performance at the VMAs that year.
  • The sketch itself becomes funny when Miley actually did have her own talk show...for one day when she filled in for Ellen DeGeneres.
• One of John Mulaney's few on-screen appearances in Season 36 was in one Weekend Update from the Emma Stone episode, where he talked about movies with an animal as the main character, specifically about how they enjoyed all this attention from the cast and crew without ever knowing why. Fast forward to 2018 and John's first major movie role is Spider-Ham, who's already shaping up to be the Ensemble Dark Horse.
• One episode hosted by Anne Hathaway had Anne playing Kate Middleton - it was intended at the time as Actor Allusion to The Princess Diaries, but nobody would have predicted an actual American becoming a princess of THAT royal family for real!

Season 37

• One "J-Pop America Funtime Now" sketch had Special Guest Katy Perry as a Hello Kitty enthusiast who'd even written a song about Hello Kitty. It's definitely something you'd expect Katy Perry to try and not say, Avril Lavigne... oh wait...
• The "Bounce in California" sketch has Josh Brolin as a mad scientist type caught in a hallway where everything slows down, and the red liquid in his beakers is really a gel to make it flow more slowly. Now Josh plays Thanos, who's hunting for the Infinity Stones - and one of them is the Aether, which first appears as a red liquid.
• In a sketch about Dateline's murder of the week, Bill Hader as Keith Morrison mentions at the end that at age 4, he witnessed a clown drown himself in a pool, where he just floated. Cut to 2019 and Hader would be fighting against another clown, Pennywise.
• Nasim Pedrad gets the role of Princess Jasmine in the "Real Housewives of Disney" sketch - fast forward to 2019 and Nasim appears in the official Live-Action Adaptation of Disney's Aladdin — pretending to be Jasmine in one scene, to boot.
• One Digital Short had a police precinct making music on objects around the building, eventually turning into a parody of Stomp. This becomes funnier for three reasons, all connected to Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
  • One of the two cops that gets the party started is played by Andy Samberg, who would find his post-SNL Star-Making Role as Jake Peralta on B99 (although he's a detective, as opposed to a beat cop, which he and Bill Hader are implied to be in the sketch).
  • Hader's fellow cop has a badge saying his name is "Santiago." Jake's fellow detective, later lieutenant and eventually wife on B99 is named Amy Santiago.
  • Hader himself would eventually appear on B99, but rather than being the fun-loving cop who joins in the playing here, he plays a replacement captain who's no-nonsense, overly strict, and dies of a heart attack within minutes of giving his opening address to the precinct.

Season 38

• In the 2012 episode with Seth Macfarlane, there's a sketch where a war veteran played by Bill Hader takes a puppetry class to loosen up. In the show Barry, the premise is that a war veteran played by Bill Hader takes an acting class to loosen up.
• An episode had a fake trailer for a new Disney kid com about Kristen Wiig as the typical sitcom mother... except she died in Korea and came back as a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl, while still "living" with her family like normal. Fast forward to 2017 and we get Santa Clarita Diet...
• One of the "Booker T Washington High" sketches involves Jay Pharoah as the principal catching two teens for "fornicating in a Mufasa costume". Fast forward to season 44, and there's a fake commercial about an oversized dog costume designed just to have sex in.
  • An SNL alum would later pen a musical that included a joke about high schoolers hooking up in a lion costume.
• They cover the General Petraeus scandal with Seth Meyers saying that whoever writes the next Petraeus memoir is about to make bank, since anything about what came before the scandal is like "reading Batman up to the point his parents were killed." Now the movie Joker (2019) not only ends on that very point, but it's way more popular than Seth could have predicted.
• In the "It's a Date" sketch, the Dick in a Box duo are one of the bachelors in the show and both answer a question about how a night at home in the rain with them would go by watching DuckTales. What makes it funnier is that one of the bachelors is played by Bobby Moynihan, who would eventually voice Louie in the 2017 reboot.
• In a spoof of The Carrie Diaries, the show features a fake trailer for The Sopranos Diaries, with Tony Soprano and his buddies as high-schoolers. Fast-forward to 2021, and we have The Many Saints of Newark.

Season 39

• Beck Bennett's first recurring role before Vladimir Putin was Mr. Patterson, the intelligent and successful CEO who somehow still has the underdeveloped body of a baby. This was long before The Boss Baby (and for that matter, Boss Baby VA Alec Baldwin's burst of popularity as Donald Trump).
• One episode has Charlize Theron bringing up her previous appearance 14 years ago, complete with archive footage showing her alongside Maya Rudolph and Ana Gasteyer as a spoof of Destiny's Child. Just one week later, the elevator fight between Jay-Z and Solange Knowles is made public, and the show covers it by having Maya appear for real, as Beyoncé!

Season 40

• The 2014 Halloween Episode hosted by Jim Carrey has a sketch about a ghost-hunting reality series, where the token skeptic is played by Leslie Jones.
• The 2014 episode with Amy Adams starts with Amy mentioning offhand that she was almost tricked into accepting a part in a nonexistent Iron Man 4. Amy would return as Lois Lane for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, intended as DC's answer to a movie that's sometimes referred to derisively as Iron Man 4, Captain America: Civil War.
• On the Blake Shelton episode, the show spoofed The Deflategate scandal and revealed that the assistant equipment manager was behind it all. Just two days later, it was revealed that the NFL had begun investigating a locker room attendant.
• "Office Christmas Party" (from the Amy Adams episode), which involved Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, starts with someone complaining that Kenan is playing just one song over the speakers: "Ghostbusters".
  • Aidy Bryant plays Carol from New Media, who gets drunk and trashes the office Christmas tree - in the John Cena episode, the Christmas tree gets its revenge, when Aidy climbs up and tries to place the angel on the top of the tree... until she winds up toppling out the window along with the tree. And only the tree is saved.
  • Kate McKinnon would later appear at a different office Christmas party.
• Following Pete Davidson's engagement to Ariana Grande, he mentioned in an interview that he was being randomly congratulated by strangers, which mirrors the premise of his Hot for Student courtroom sketch during the Taraji P. Henson episode. Though the boy's father buying him his first beer takes it into a bittersweet place, since Pete actually lost his father at a very young age.
• The parody of Bambi as an action movie, starring Dwayne Johnson as the titular character, became even funnier in 2017 when Johnson starred in an actual Disney movie. Doubly moreso in 2020 when Disney announced a real live-action Bambi was in development. Triply moreso when he announced he’s producing a remake of the Disney film he was in, and reprising his role as Maui to boot.
• Bill Hader portrayed The Cat in the Hat in one of the the sketches. Take a guess who was chosen to voice the Cat in the upcoming animated film adaptation.

Season 41

• The first episode of season 41 has a sketch about a slew of now-fallen Republican hopefuls, like Taran Killam as Rick Santorum, and Beck Bennett as Jim Gilmore, who looks very similar to Beck's later role as Mike Pence, who does get elected... as Vice-President.
• From the Amy Schumer episode, a deliberately uplifting commercial about random people from families to couples finding a special connection... with guns. Not so implausible after the NRA made a proper Valentine's Day message in 2018. Unfortunately it turns into Harsher in Hindsight when they have to pull it after a mass shooting in Florida.
• Larry David's performance as Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders looks prophetic when it is discovered that David and Sanders are third cousins.
• In one Weekend Update from the Larry David episode, surprise guest Derek Zoolander mistakes Michael Che for Lester Holt, which Michael looks miffed at. This comes across as hypocritical now that Michael actually plays Lester Holt in the next season.
• Shortly after Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released, Adam Driver hosted a skit parodying Undercover Boss that featured Driver in character as Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order. Kylo goes undercover as "Matt", a radar technician. One scene features "Matt" in the cafeteria, claiming that one of his friends saw Kylo shirtless, and that Kylo was shredded. The officers who "Matt" is sitting with don't believe him, saying that Kylo is far too skinny. However, Star Wars: The Last Jedi shows Kylo shirtless, and he is indeed very muscular.
• Donald Trump's stint as guest host involved being endorsed by the Former Porn Stars (played by Vanessa Bayer and Cecily Strong), which takes on new meaning after allegations that he was involved with an actual porn star. As if acknowledging this, SNL cast Cecily as said porn star, who just happens to be blond like the one she played then, but is most certainly a different character.
• From the Chris Hemsworth episode comes a sketch about a bunch of gal pals at brunch discussing their favourite movie hunks, with Chris in drag as one of them trying to get them to bring up Chris Hemsworth. Instead one of them questions whether there needs to be a third Thor movie, which is a little funny now that Thor: Ragnarok is one of the most popular Phase 3 movies.
• One sketch from the Brie Larson episode (set in 2018) outright predicted Donald Trump winning the election, and all society having taken a leap forward as a result... before revealing that America's fallen headlong into dystopian fascism.
  • Brie also appears as 60s songbird Lesley Gore - hmm, a MCU superhero turned into a black and white 60s character, that'll never catch on...
  • The above sketch was about using technology to recreate the performances of artistes long gone, which is slowly becoming a reality due to the advent of AI generated content.
• A parody of The Sound of Music had Ariana Grande in the role of a sassy Fraulein Maria - a few years later, Ariana would deliberately send up "My Favourite Things" in her hit song "Seven Rings".

Season 42

• Speaking of Miranda, his monologue from his hosting stint mentions that "it takes 7 years to write a show, so I have no idea when I'll be back". Now Miranda's a part of the unofficial "friends of the show" clique, making unannounced appearances like one Cold Open in season 45 as Democratic candidate Julian Castro.
• A sketch where Kellyanne Conway defends the Trump administration's Blatant Lies as "alt-true" (a play on the alt-right movement) aired just a couple weeks before the real Conway literally made almost the exact same defense (refering to misleading information as "alternative facts").
• The Weekend Update segment of a post 2016 election episode mentions "the series finale of American Horror Story: Election". Now American Horror Story is doing a season based on the election.
• The sketch mocking La La Land fans who viciously attack anyone who say the film is anything less than perfect has Aziz Ansari say he liked Moonlight (2016) better, to which the cops arresting him hem and haw over how good it is before admitting they haven't seen it. Moonlight went on to win the Best Picture Oscar, but only after La La Land was mistakenly announced as the winner, creating a vicious Fandom Rivalry between the two films complete with many accusations that the La La Land defenders likely haven't even seen Moonlight.
• In a 2017 episode hosted by Octavia Spencer:
  • One of the first sketches featured her, Sasheer Zamata, and Leslie Jones as three women suing Merck Millipore for stealing the names of them, and other African-American people they knew, and slapping them on their medicine. Shortly afterwards, the writers of this sketch also became suspected of stealing: Years earlier, David Alan Grier improvised a bit on a radio show about what African-American parents might say to kids with the same names as medicine. After he learned about SNL's piece, he called them, "Thieves!"
  • In the same episode, they do a Real Trailer, Fake Movie about an unnamed Republican politician who turns on his party and takes down the Trump administration. Some of the biggest thorns in Trump's side afterwards included Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is Republican, and Mitt Romney, the previous Republican candidate for president; in 2020, the latter voted for the impeachment of Trump.
• The second Sean Spicer parody (in the Alec Baldwin episode) had him demonstrating the travel ban by representing non-white immigrants with a Moana doll. Just hours before the 2nd travel ban went live, the state of Hawaii filed suit and succeeded in blocking it nationwide.
  • The Alec Baldwin episode also had a sketch about Leslie Jones petitioning to play Donald Trump that was intended as a one-off joke - in season 43 she got to play Oprah Winfrey at the 2018 Emmys, after which the rumor mill was saturated with talk about Oprah running for president, meaning that part of Leslie's dream may come true. (While Oprah has publicly denied all of it, Leslie's role as Oprah proved very popular for a first attempt despite massive Playing Against Type in effect.)
• One Cold Open (in the Felicity Jones episode) has a news reporter (Sasheer Zamata) ask Donald Trump how he could repeal Obamacare, despite all the Americans that would consequently lose their healthcare. Trump answers by announcing that he'll replace it with the Affordable Care Act, which Sasheer points out as the official name for Obamacare. The Trump Administration's actual efforts to try and come up with an Obamacare/ACA replacement would later become so controversial, that they'd retract several attempts to repeal it.
• One Cold Open (in the Kristen Stewart episode) shows Steve Bannon/Grim Reaper secretly being the one pulling the strings behind the administration, with Trump acting like a servant doing his bidding. It turns out that Trump actually saw this skit and became extremely bothered by it, leading to Bannon being demoted from the NSC.
• Harry Styles makes a surprise appearance as a Confederate soldier in a sketch set in the Civil War with Jimmy Fallon - which retroactively makes his apparently random casting in Dunkirk more relevant in comparison.
• One of Season 42's Sean Spicer sketches (when Melissa McCarthy hosted) was about Sarah Huckabee-Sanders briefly filling in for Sean during the infamous "hiding among the bushes" incident, and all the reporters commenting that they'd rather have Sarah in the role instead. Just after the season ended, Sean Spicer resigns from the press secretary role for real and Sarah really does stand in for him, ironically after Sean was growing more popular than her instead, in part because Sarah herself slowly became even more hated in contrast.
• One of the more short-range ones during 2017's Weekend Update Summer Edition, where Leslie Jones reveals she's been on a workout routine, and even shows off her biceps. Which is hilarious when season 43 starts and one sketch has Leslie rip up a pair of jeans in jealous rage - only she can't quite do it.
• Also from Weekend Update Summer Edition, a Cold Open has the Grim Reaper-like Steve Bannon pulling a "I shall become more powerful than you could ever imagine" on Donald Trump as retaliation for being pushed out of the White House. Now Bannon has fallen so far out of favor with Trump that he's been testifying in the Russian investigation, while earning a Trump nickname on the side.
• Tom Hanks' appearance in the tail end of 2016 involved him acknowledging his wholesome image and appeal as "America's father", even donning a sweater for a special speech. Someone must have been paying attention, as Tom donned a sweater again in the role of an even more well-known "America's father" and the reference they were clearly going for, in the biopic of Mister Rogers.
• While discussing Colin Kaepernick during a Weekend Update Summer Edition segment, Pete Davidson says that the NFL should give him a job as long as it's not with the New York Giants (Davidson's favorite team) because "they have a shot this year". The Giants' 2017 season turned out to be an unmitigated disaster as they went from being predicted to possibly win the Super Bowl to finishing as the second worst team in the league. The cherry on top was that the Philadelphia Eagles, their hated rivals, wound up winning the Super Bowl.
• The sketch of a group of friends starting out election night absolutely sure that Hilary Clinton will win, then watching in horror as it turns in Trump's favor, includes one of them saying there might never be another Republican president, which the sketch laughs off as being ridiculously naive. Fast forward four years, when Trump was kicked out after a single term, and several political pundits actually predicting that he'd done so much damage to the GOP's image that they might never get into power again, and have to be replaced by another conservative party.

Season 43

• On September 30, 2017, SNL had a sketch where host Ryan Gosling played a man named Steven who has a nervous breakdown over the usage of the Papyrus font in Avatar. On October 2018, Lightstorm and Fox were revealed to have updated the Avatar franchise's logo.◊
• In the Saoirse Ronan episode, one sketch, called "Bachelor Action", is based on Pete Davidson as an extremely unattractive person who is somehow extremely desirable to a feverishly bidding audience. Later, Davidson famously became engaged to singer Ariana Grande.
• Jessica Chastain plays the host of game show "What Even Matters Anymore" where they talk about which news would impact the Trump presidency the worst, and Kate McKinnon suggests "he cancels the Olympics because 'flags are gay'". The Winter Olympics a couple of weeks later draws criticism from a right-wing pundit who claims they've placed diversity over athletic talent, complete with his suggestion to replace the slogan "Faster, Higher, Stronger" with "Darker, Gayer, Different".
• "Natalie's Rap 2" has Natalie Portman randomly revealing that Jar Jar Binks has "17 dicks". Considering Jar Jar is amphibious and the timing of this sketch, one has to wonder how many of the writers had The Shape of Water on the mind at the time.
• The Michael Cohen wiretap cold open in the Donald Glover episode has "Trump" (Alec Baldwin) saying "How you holding up in prison?" When "Cohen" (Ben Stiller) says, "I'm not in prison", Trump says, "Give it a couple weeks." A couple of months later, Cohen pleaded guilty to several felonies. Additionally, one of the people Cohen calls is "Omarosa" (Leslie Jones), who says, "Yeah, this is Omarosa and I'm still pissed off." The real Omarosa would start doing a book tour savaging the Trump administration within a few months.
• One sketch is about Aidy as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, passive-aggresively berating the press in a briefing that eventually mutates into a music video for "Confident" by Demi Lovato. Demi would later release another hit song, "Sorry (Not Sorry)".
• Tina Fey's episode has a sketch where she tries to join the cast of the Mean Girls musical she wrote, to disastrous results as she has no singing or dancing talent. Five years later, the musical was adapted for a musical movie, with Tina reprising her role from the original film as Mrs. Norbury.

Season 44

• The Steve Carell episode had the host star in two space-related sketches - one where he's a NASA astronaut on the International Space Station, and the other where he's celebrating Thanksgiving on an alien planet. Two months later, Netflix announced that Carell would be appearing in a TV series based on Donald Trump's Space Force.
• The first episode of 2019 spoofs Deal or No Deal, with assorted people from the news holding the briefcases instead, and Chris Redd as Senator Cory Booker had a case that just says "Booker 2020". About a week later, the real Cory Booker announced his presidential bid.
• The Seth Meyers episode from October had a sketch where the host shares a jail cell with Bill Cosby (Kenan Thompson), who says that he loves being in prison. The following February, a spokesman for Cosby revealed that he described prison as an "amazing experience".
• Just before the 2019 Oscars, they do a Celebrity Family Feud with Cecily as Olivia Colman who's had a few drinks before the game. Fast forward to the actual ceremony and Olivia, having just won Best Actress, manages to outdo that by turning into a nervous, blabbering mess... who could probably use a drink.
  • Host Don Cheadle plays Spike Lee, who says that "I've been buying New York Knicks tickets for the past 25 years, you think I like winning?" Spike would end up winning for Best Adapted Screenplay.
  • Melissa Villasenor as Lady Gaga is actually her second time doing this role, complete with Kyle Mooney returning as Bradley Cooper even though he doesn't qualify for the Newbies' team (he's been nominated before for Silver Linings Playbook), but Gaga says "he has to be with me, it's the rule". Now the Oscars ceremony is remembered for Bradley and Gaga ending up a lot closer than that.
• Adam Sandler as Operaman accused Seth Rogen of ripping off the Ugly Guy, Hot Wife concept present in his movie for the upcoming Long Shot, where Rogen plays a guy who dates a character played by Charlize Theron, the catch being that Theron's character also happens to be running for president. It goes two levels deep if you know that Adam's character in Pixels is best friends with the president (Kevin James).
• When Kit Harington hosted the show shortly before the end of Game of Thrones, his wife Rose Leslie asked where their money would now be coming from since his film career up to that point had been extremely mediocre. She got her answer just a few months later when he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Black Knight.

Season 45

• During the season premiere with Woody Harrelson, there's a sketch involving the Democratic presidential candidates featuring several examples:
  • A group of newscasters are trying to be optimistic about the crop of Democratic presidential candidates...except Kenan, who bluntly keeps insisting that Trump's going to win again, regardless of their collective distaste for him. Well...he was wrong! Also, Harrelson's Biden says that the primaries have made clear that absolutely no one wants him to be the Democratic nominee for President, before the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries proved that wrong.
  • Maya Rudolph makes a surprise appearance as Senator Kamala Harris, sarcastically saying it would be terrible if Biden dropped out of the race, which works twofold: It was Harris who dropped from the race before even reaching the primaries, while Biden won the nomination... and then picked Harris as his running mate.
  • Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris is able to summon a gust of wind on cue that affects her hair (which is in itself an Actor Allusion to all the times Maya played Beyoncé). Just before the season premiere, this interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi started gaining memetic traction due to an oddly precise gust of wind that only affected Nancy's hair.
• Bowen Yang was once voted Most Likely To End Up On SNL.
• After the Oscar nominations were announced, the show did a song about how so many of the Best Picture nominees were about "white male rage." Then the winner ended up being Parasite, a South Korean film and the first ever non-English-language winner of the award.
• Apparently the COVID-19 Pandemic led to a Colbert Bump of sorts for World War Z - which then led to surprise guest Brad Pitt in the role of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
• A cold open sketch on the Scarlett Johansson episode where three sets of families are trying to make sense of Trump's impeachment: a conservative family thinks the whole thing is nonsense, a group of liberal roommates want to see Trump get taken down, and a black family know Trump is going to get acquitted and then get re-elected and try to change the subject by talking about The Masked Singer. Only the acquitted part came true come 2020, and even then, none of the families considered Trump getting impeached (and acquitted) again.
• Kyle Mooney's parody of "Baby Yoda" sounds more like an adult living the Hollywood Hookers and Blow life. Turns out Baby Yoda really is Older Than They Look.
• In "Medieval Times", host Adam Driver portrays an overzealous amateur actor who gets way too much into his role in the hopes of getting discovered. As of 2021, "Cameron Brissle, SAG-AFTRA eligible" must have gotten his big break and portrays a knight in The Last Duel.
• Chance the Rapper's recurring character Lazlo Holmes is a sports commentator who ends up at sports events that he has no clue about, like a video gaming tournament. Fast forward to 2024, and real life sports commentator Stephen A Smith started getting questions about Fortnite, leading to him gaining memetic popularity in the gaming community.

Season 46

• In the last episode before the 2020 election, Mitch McConnell tells Joe Biden he's secretly rooting for him. McConnell ended up turning hard against Trump after his refusal to accept his election loss which ultimately led to a terrorist attack by his supporters on the Capitol Building, saying he was pleased when Trump was impeached again over the attack as the Republican Party's only hope of survival was to distance itself from him.
  • Mikey Day plays a researcher who tries to demonstrate the 1-in-6 chance of Biden losing with a regular 6-side die... then keeps rolling a 1 for some reason. It's funnier if you've ever heard of the Wil Wheaton dice curse.
• The "Sportsmax" sketch featured two Jets fans who still think the team will win the Super Bowl, with Pete Davidson's character telling the audience to place their bets. Fast forward ten months later, the "Squid Game" sketch has Pete blow all of his prize money by betting on the Jets.
• The first episode after Biden's inauguration uses Marjorie Taylor Greene's appointment to an education committee after she called the Sandy Hook and Parkland school massacres hoaxes to argue that the government still isn't working. It seems the government took notice, as less than a week later, Greene was forcibly expelled from all her committee appointments.
  • In the same skit, Kate McKinnon comes to a conclusion that the only thing that still works is Tom Brady. Brady would go on to win his seventh Super Bowl and would become the MVP of that game a little over a week later.
• Two months after SNL aired The Dionne Warwick Talk Show Dionne Warwick created her own talk show on YouTube called Dionne Speaks.
• The cold open for the last April episode before the month-long break had two black news-anchors (Kenan and Ego) have tepid expectations for the results of the Derek Chauvin trial in comparison to the two white anchors (Kate and Alex,) even going as far as to say "we've seen this movie before." Well, they luckily hadn't this time, because he was found guilty on all three charges.
• In the cold open for the episode hosted by Daniel Kaluuya, Lil Nas X (Chris Redd) appeared on Britney Spears' "Oops, You Did It Again" show due to the controversy surrounding his newest single "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)". It would later be announced that Lil Nas X himself would be the musical guest for the season finale hosted by Anya Taylor-Joy.

Season 47

• In the first episode of Season 47, one sketch featured a send-up of Star Trek called "Star Trek: Ego Quest" featuring Jeff Bezos (played by host Owen Wilson) and satirizing Bezos' earlier space flight and the "Billionaire Space Race" in general. Two days after the sketch aired, Bezos' space flight company Blue Origin announced that they were sending William Shatner, one of the most recognizable faces in the entire Star Trek franchise, into space.
• The same episode featured a sketch centering around Wilson recording dialogue for another sequel in the Cars franchise. Just a month later, Disney+ announced that a new series based on the franchise titled Cars on the Road would debut in 2022, with Wilson reprising his role as Lightning McQueen.
  • Even better, both the sketch and the new show feature a new character who is Mater's sister.
• The Kim Kardashian episode features an Aladdin sketch, with Kardashian as Jasmine and Pete Davidson as a self-conscious Aladdin. The climax of the sketch sees the two of them making out. Weeks later, both Kardashian and Davidson were spotted holding hands, which drove social media into a frenzy over the possibility of them dating, which they confirmed several weeks later.

Season 48

• One of Kenan Thompson's recurring characters is retired football player DC Timmons, who's a train wreck of a man due to suffering repeated head trauma in his time on the field. This season has Kenan take on the role of senate candidate Herschel Walker, a former football player who's known for showing all the signs of repeated head trauma.
• Molly Shannon's recurring character Sally O'Malley was supposed to be 50 years old (obviously older than Molly) and stayed that age in all her appearances - by the time Molly came back to host in 2023, she really was over 50.
• A sketch about members of an AA group attempting to make a movie where sentient pieces of lost luggage try to reunite with their owners (a la The Brave Little Toaster) becomes even funnier when it was discovered that a movie like that was actually made. The Titey effect strikes again!
• The American Girl Doll Movie sketch which featured host Ana de Armas will become an actual movie!
• Weekend Update covered the story about Scott Adams' racist comments by saying that the newspapers were replacing Dilbert with nothing but Peanuts strips giving focus to their Token Minority Franklin. Turns out he's getting his own animated special!

Season 49

• Dakota Johnson hosted an episode to promote the then-upcoming Madame Web (2024), including a sketch in which she and the Please Don't Destroy team engage in (playful) Snark-to-Snark Combat. This includes Dakota making fun of the low Rotten Tomatoes critics' score of please don't destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain. When Madame Web released, however, it got a much lower score, giving the PDD guys one more piece of ammo to use against Dakota.

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