History NightmareFuel / SaturdayNightLive

* Two of the three "at-home" episodes end with a silent shot of the now-darkened Home Base stage with only the credits music playing. This ends giving an errie reminder of how much the pandemic had affected many people, including SNL.

* March 9, 2019: The Creator/IdrisElba[=/=]Khalid episode features a sketch about a chicken restaurant whose mascot bears an uncanny resemblance to ''WebOriginal/{{Momo}}''. Wih a tendency to stalk kids and a creepy high voice to boot.

* September 30, 2017: Creator/RyanGosling plays the BlackSheep of a brother house-flipping trio, who continually brings up his far worse upbringing and gradually revealed depravity because of it while the others desperately try to stop him, all with Gosling's genuine acting chops making it very unsettling.

* January 8, 2011: From the Creator/JimCarrey episode, we have The Merryville Brothers. The creepy of Jim Carrey, Creator/BillHader, and Taran Killam, combined with the gruesome ending (Thompson's character was originally going to be beheaded on-screen, but the censors wouldn't allow it, though having him being dragged off-camera while a crude copy of his robot clone appears does make the point that he's going to meet the same fate as the women on the original 1970s film version of ''Literature/TheStepfordWives'') make this skit a little unsettling.

* April 16, 2016: In the Creator/JuliaLouisDreyfus episode, the last live sketch stars her and Creator/KateMcKinnon as two dark-eyed, deep-voiced HumanAliens attending a Match.com Meet N' Match at an Earthly bar. They announce that they come from a DyingRace, and find two men eager to help them reproduce. When one of the Earth women tells the aliens not to call dibs on any guys, the aliens deliver a chant that gives her LaserGuidedAmnesia and a nosebleed. Unfortunately, the men prove "too weak" for extraterrestrial procreation, as making out with the aliens causes them to become stripped to the bone. All the while, the moderator of the event tries his hardest to treat all this as an UnusuallyUninterestingSight.

* March 17, 2001: The SubvertedKidsShow from Germany that *supposedly* aired on Nickelodeon, which had the questionable title of "Der Lächeln Beherrscht" [[note]]The Smile Masters[[/note]]. Creator/WillFerrell, Creator/HoratioSanz, Creator/ChrisParnell, and host Creator/JuliaStiles all traumatized kids in the studio audience by being the {{Depraved Kids Show Host}}s with [[NoIndoorVoice No Indoor Voices]], sang freaky skeleton songs, and played extremely peculiar "what doesn't belong" games. Perverse, dissonant children's music played throughout, and everyone watching (including the kids on-screen) were mortified

''Series/SaturdayNightLive'''s humor plays NauseaFuel and ParanoiaFuel for satirical laughs, but doesn't really touch on NightmareFuel -- at least not often.

* The TV Funhouse segment "Friends Apocalypse". It takes audio from a ''Series/{{Friends}}'' episode of the group of six talking about trivial things while the end of the world happens all around them. Near the end, a creepy voice says "There is no more..."

[[folder:Season 43]]

[[folder:Season 44]]

[[folder:Season 7]]
* The infamous Creator/DonaldPleasence[=/=]Music/{{Fear|Band}} episode has a few examples:

[[folder:Season 12]]
A very, very, '''very''' disturbing sketch from 1987 where Creator/PhilHartman plays an obstetrician who People Magazine is doing a story on because in 20 years of practice, he's delivered 4,300 babies, all girls. It becomes clear though that half those babies were boys and that the doctor convinced the parents they were girls and needed to have their genitals removed! Essentially he's mutilated 2000 little boys! When the People magazine reporter realizes this and confronts him, the doctor goes on an insane rant:

[[folder:Season 17]]
* From the Creator/TomHanks episode, What happens to Creator/TimMeadows' character, the OnlySaneMan at the end of the [[http://snltranscripts.jt.org/91/91sbelvedere.phtml "Guy Who Plays Mr. Belvedere Fan Club" sketch]]

[[folder:Season 18]]
* Music/SineadOConnor's a cappella cover of Music/BobMarley's "War" enters this. Forget her infamous act after finishing the song, there's '''nothing''' right about the way she sings into the camera the whole time, with cold eyes, no music backing her, lit candles everywhere behind her, and '''especially''' when the camera zooms in towards the end. The shaved head doesn't help, either.

[[folder:Season 19]]
* The "Canteen Boy Gets Molested" sketch due to playing to the fear of child molestation (especially within a seemingly wholesome club as The Boy Scouts) for laughs. While Mr. Armstrong (played by episode host Creator/AlecBaldwin) didn't end up having sex with Canteen Boy (Creator/AdamSandler), it's still disturbing when you realize that (a) Canteen Boy can't run away because Mr. Armstrong is too fast for him, (b) he can't tell anyone what happened to him because everyone thinks he's an autistic freak, and (c) even if he did just run away into the woods, there's the chance he could die from exposure or the animals living there. Fortunately, Canteen Boy does summon snakes to get revenge on Mr. Armstrong and the reruns have a disclaimer that says that Canteen Boy is actually a 27-year-old man who just acts like a child.

[[folder:Season 21]]

[[folder:Season 25]]

[[folder:Season 26]]
* The SubvertedKidsShow from Germany that *supposedly* aired on Nickelodeon, which had the questionable title of "Der Lächeln Beherrscht" [[note]]The Smile Masters[[/note]]. Will Ferrell, Horatio Sanz, Creator/ChrisParnell, and host Creator/JuliaStiles all traumatized kids in the studio audience by being the {{Depraved Kids Show Host}}s with [[NoIndoorVoice No Indoor Voices]], sang freaky skeleton songs, and played extremely peculiar "what doesn't belong" games. Perverse, dissonant children's music played throughout, and everyone watching (including the kids on-screen) were mortified

[[folder:Season 34]]
* The Digital Short "Everyone's a Critic". The sketch verges on SurrealHorror. [[labelnote:synopsis]]Creator/AndySamberg and Creator/PaulRudd paint paintings of themselves and try to sell it in an auction. When the auctioneers see the painting, [[BrownNote they all die or kill themselves.]] Turns out that it was a clip from a movie that Samberg and Rudd made called "Everyone's a Critic". Rudd and Samberg show the interviewer [[TheUnreveal the painting]] from the movie and it ends with the reporter and cameraman dying.[[/labelnote]]

[[folder:Season 35]]
* ''The Tizzle Wizzle Show'' digital short. Besides the drug-addled knife fight and the end where Creator/JamesFranco is freaking out over what happened, what's really scary about the sketch is that you don't see any of it coming. It starts out with a kids' show flavor and, since it's a Digital Short, viewers will immediately assume it's going to be something silly and funny in an Internet meme way.
* The Creator/JonHamm & Music/MichaelBuble episode has this [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-SGJtUUu2g Game Time With Randy And Greg sketch]], which shows hosts, Randy Dukes (played by Creator/KenanThompson) with Greg (played by Creator/BillHader)[[labelnote:note]] [[SarcasmMode who's not an alien]][[/labelnote]] taking about the Super Bowl but the callers kept saying that Greg is an alien. Jon Hamm plays a coach for the Indianapolis Colts but gets attacked by Greg and turns into him. It gets ever worse that one of the callers stated that there more Gregs, which made Randy cry in fear. This sketch leads to [[JumpScare a jumpscare by Greg in the end.]]

[[folder:Season 36]]
* From the Creator/JimCarrey episode, we have The Merryville Brothers. The creepy of Jim Carrey, Creator/BillHader, and Taran Killam, combined with the gruesome ending (Thompson's character was originally going to be beheaded on-screen, but the censors wouldn't allow it, though having him being dragged off-camera while a crude copy of his robot clone appears does make the point that he's going to meet the same fate as the women on the original 1970s film version of ''Literature/TheStepfordWives'') make this skit a little unsettling.

[[folder:Season 38]]
* The Acupuncture sketch from the episode hosted by Creator/KristenWiig has been called the most terrifying sketch produced in the history of the show. Two acupuncturists (played by Kristen Wiig and then-new feature player, Aidy Bryant) attempt to give their client (played by Creator/JasonSudeikis) an acupuncture, but [[BloodyHilarious not everything goes]] [[MajorInjuryUnderreaction to plan.]]

[[folder:Season 39]]
* On the Creator/EdwardNorton episode, there is a sketch where two pest control workers (played by Norton and new cast member Brooks Wheelan) try to get rid of some possums in the vent. In the end, they get sucked in and presumably eaten alive while the office workers who saw then get eaten just agree that they didn't see anything.
* If the "Acupuncture" sketch from Creator/KristenWiig's episode counts, then the "Bikini Beach Party" sketch from Creator/CharlizeTheron's definitely does. The entire sketch spoofs camp 1960s TV shows, with the surf music and beaches. The characters only casually mention the "big dead whale full of deadly toxic gases". When Taran Killam decides to serenade Theron near the whale, it [[BloodyHilarious explodes]], covering the two with [[NauseaFuel blood and whale guts]], sending the audience into hysterics. (In much the same manner as the "Acupuncture", might I add!) Covered in blood, the two move over to the [[TemptingFate second decomposing whale opposite]], where the exact thing happens again. ([[SpecialEffectsFailure The explosion wrinkles the soft backdrop behind them.]])

[[folder:Season 41]]
* From the Creator/LarryDavid episode, which aired the night before Super Bowl 50, we have another Totino's pizza rolls commercial. Vanessa Bayer is again [[StepfordSmiler cheerfully]] preparing snacks for "the BIG Game," while the men repeatedly keep saying "Go go go go go! TOUCHDOWN!" or "No no no no no! FUMBLE!" Once the pizza rolls are ready, she goes to deliver them...[[WhamShot and sees that the TV isn't even on]]. As they keep cheering, she grabs scissors and yells for her daughter to get in the car, to which the men turn and reveal [[BlackEyesOfEvil completely black irises]]. Followed by a promo for ''Series/TheXFiles''.
* In the Creator/MelissaMcCarthy episode, she plays a middle-aged woman Creator/LeslieJones is stuck next to on a bus while making passively racist comments to her. Leslie repeatedly tries to find an out, asking the driver to pull over. The driver later states that there is a bomb on the bus that will detonate if he goes under 50 mph, a la ''{{Film/Speed}}''. The sketch ends as the driver pulls over and the bus explodes.
* In the Creator/JuliaLouisDreyfus episode, the last live sketch stars her and Creator/KateMcKinnon as two dark-eyed, deep-voiced HumanAliens attending a Match.com Meet N' Match at an Earthly bar. They announce that they come from a DyingRace, and find two men eager to help them reproduce. When one of the Earth women tells the aliens not to call dibs on any guys, the aliens deliver a chant that gives her LaserGuidedAmnesia and a nosebleed. Unfortunately, the men prove "too weak" for extraterrestrial procreation, as making out with the aliens causes them to become stripped to the bone. All the while, the moderator of the event tries his hardest to treat all this as an UnusuallyUninterestingSight.

[[folder:Season 42]]
* The Creator/MargotRobbie librarian sketch. Robbie plays a sexy librarian who flirts with a student, then gradually turns into a demon that eats a banana peel rather than the banana, licks him with a lizard-like tongue, vomits acid, and straight-up murders somebody.
* In the Creator/TomHanks episode, "Haunted Elevator" has a few moments.

** David Pumpkins and his skeletons are either masters of OffscreenTeleportation or the elevator just stops in the same room, given they appear on at least four floors, and he's on 78 total. The last one is the worst: he somehow gets behind the people in the elevator seats, [[{{Jumpscare}} grabs their shoulders]], and whispers, "[[{{CatchPhrase}} Any questions]]?" You can't blame Kate and Beck for screaming at the top of their lungs.
* Creator/DaveChappelle plays a parody of Negan, the BigBad of ''Series/TheWalkingDead''. He ultimately chooses to kill Tyrone Biggums, and uses Lucille to knock his head clean off.
* A sketch in the Creator/KristenWiig episode features a family overlooking the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in their apartment. The character balloons (portrayed with the actors' real faces, with unblinking eyes and [[StepfordSmiler creepy grins]]) start creeping towards the window, with freaky close-ups. Even worse is when one of them holds Creator/KristinChenoweth while hundreds of feet in the air, and we hear her shrieking before the balloon lets her plummet to the ground. (Though one character's comment that she failed to [[Theatre/{{Wicked}} defy gravity]] provides NightmareRetardant.)
* Steve Bannon, known for turning Breitbart into a "platform for the alt-right" and was one of President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's main advisers is portrayed as TheGrimReaper, and is accompanied by dramatic, scary music whenever he appears.
* A parody of ''Film/FatalAttraction'' sees Trump's borderline insane adviser Kellyanne Conway (Creator/KateMcKinnon) try to seduce and kill Jake Tapper of CNN when he refuses to allow her on air after she made up a massacre to try to cover Trump's ass (which happened in real life). She nearly throws a knife into Jake's head, nearly slits his throat, and when he finally relents, she falls out of the apartment to her death. We see her corpse with her limbs all flayed the wrong way, but she then revives and reforms. She says she still has three lives.
* Creator/LouisCK plays a lonely, pathetic middle-aged man who hires a birthday clown so he won't have to spend his birthday alone. The poor clown gets more and more weirded out as he just blankly watches the act, until he warns a couple other kids' entertainers "You don't want this!" and casually accepts the guy revealing he's going to murder him, saying it fits perfectly.
* In the Season 42 Creator/JimmyFallon episode, Bannon is fired as the ''de facto'' president, and Trump has him dragged back to hell by a bigger, scarier Grim Reaper. It's a pretty awesome moment that's also pretty damn terrifying, particularly since the actual Bannon is still high in Trump's hierarchy.
* The final episode of the season, hosted by Wrestling/DwayneJohnson, had a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IZrYeUX3MI commercial parody for a rather shady male enhancement drug known as Xentrex]], which contains ingredients like rhino horn and ammonia hydroxide. The commercial has Johnson's character acting increasingly hostile towards his doctor, resulting in him beating said doctor up. The drug in question contains a rather disturbing list of side effects, and near the end, Johnson's character has a nosebleed while he lists off some of these side effects, which ends with him uttering "Hail Satan."

* Creator/RyanGosling plays the BlackSheep of a brother house-flipping trio, who continually brings up his far worse upbringing and gradually revealed depravity because of it while the others desperately try to stop him, all with Gosling's genuine acting chops making it very unsettling.
* If you thought Kellyanne Conway as Alex Forrest was bad, just try her as [[Film/{{It 2017}} Pennywise]]. And she's already killed Rachel Maddow when Anderson Cooper runs into her, and gets him by turning into UsefulNotes/HillaryClinton.
* The gift wrapping sketch in the James Franco episode approaches the acupuncture sketch in levels of [[BloodyHilarious disturbing bloody mutilation.]]
* An [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWBNCnU_PK0 unaired sketch]] is an ad for a "step child" doll, with a CreepyChild pretending she's its evil stepmother, while Natalie Portman as the girl's mother is disturbingly supportive, much to her husband's dismay.

* Creator/AdamDriver's utterly committed and terrifying performance as Abraham H. Parnassus, basically exactly how you'd expect [[Film/ThereWillBeBlood Daniel Plainview]] to turn out in his old age, still ranting about how he's spent his life destroying everyone who stood in his way, and whose final revenge against his greatest rival was having a son with the man's granddaughter.
* The Creator/SteveCarell episode has a sketch about a space station accident that leads to the deaths of some monkeys brought on board for experiments - the freeze-dried monkey props are one thing, but then we have Creator/KateMcKinnon turning in another landmark performance as ''a frozen dead cosmonaut'' that keeps bumping into the same porthole.
* The Creator/MattDamon episode has a sketch about Christmas tree decorations that really shouldn't be used anymore but get hung up at the back of the tree anyway. Cecily Strong is the angel that originally graced the top of the tree, until a bad bulb caught fire and caused ''half her head to melt off'', executed by a simple but still unnerving green screen effect. And then the creepy singing starts...
* The ''Film/{{Scream}}'' parody with Creator/JohnMulaney as the killer pulls of the horror parts surprisingly well, including the grisly death of the pizza guy the killer deliberately called there to freak out the victim - but there's plenty of MoodWhiplash as well when you consider that the "victim" is the emotionally detached and fatally indifferent Chad - who survives regardless. Hard to believe that the creepy killer is also [[WesternAnimation/SpiderManIntoTheSpiderVerse the voice of Spider-Ham]], isn't it?
* The Creator/IdrisElba[=/=]Khalid episode features a sketch about a chicken restaurant whose mascot bears an uncanny resemblance to ''WebOriginal/{{Momo}}''. Wih a tendency to stalk kids and a creepy high voice to boot.
* A Discover credit card ad campaign touting the ease of getting a real person on the line at customer service by showing people talking to themselves is spoofed with the customer service people actually being [[Film/{{Us}} the Tethered]], who are just as creepy as in the actual movie.

[[folder:Season 45]]
* A spoof of ''Film/{{Joker|2019}}'' offers a similarly DarkerAndEdgier origin story for [[Series/SesameStreet Oscar the Grouch]], and despite how ridiculous the premise is, Creator/DavidHarbour gives a quite legit threatening and scary performance that can actually make you want to see a full movie of it.
* The Halloween episode features a snack food commercial where Chance the Rapper eagerly shows off his bounty of snacks despite his famously strict parents, and it gradually becomes clear that he's murdered them to his friends' increasing horror as he makes some very unconvincing denials.

* Another sketch from the Halloween episode features several ghosts singing about how they died. Chance the Rapper's character sings about how he developed a fetish for electrical shocks, which eventually led him to shove a metal pole up his ass during a lightning storm and climb on the roof. He goes into pretty disturbing detail about being fried from the inside out, much to the disgust and horror of the other ghosts.
-->"I started to smile
-->Then quietly stopped
-->When my insides fried
-->And my colon popped
-->And my ass burned off
-->And my thing caught on fire
-->And my face caught on fire

[[folder:Season 46]]
* The Music/{{Adele}}[=/=]H.E.R. episode gives us another horror-themed sketch starring Chad, which is creepier than the last. In this one, Adele plays a ghost whose house Chad happens upon one night, who asks him to tell the world the truth about her death; she was believed to have killed herself, but was really murdered by her husband. At this reveal, she unclasps her necklace to reveal a surprisingly graphic bloody gaping wound on her neck. Later, after Chad promises to reveal the evidence so she can move on, he leaves...through a wall. Adele turns to see Chad's dead body crushed under the suit of armor he tripped over earlier, with blood pooling underneath him.
* ''The Dividend'' is a take on the influx of children interrupting video calls. John Krasinski plays the father of a pair of CreepyTwins who unsettle the viewers with disturbing art projects, demonic voices and eventually appearing in the Dividend's studio.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5dQpHfbbrk The Negotiator]] leans ''hard'' into the MarijuanaIsLSD trope after a cop played by Regina King bites into a weed gummy while on the job. What follows is a cavalcade of UncannyValley nightmare fuel, including but not limited to Pete Davidson and Aidy Bryant in extremely creepy gummy bear suits, lava people from hell coming up through the ground, and Marge Simpson morphing into Satan with EmptyEyes. It's perhaps the densest concentration of NightmareFuel in an SNL sketch to date.
* An exercise "mirror" that projects various instructors guiding your workout turns out to actually be some kind of hell dimension, with Kate [=McKinnon=] as a woman who's trapped there with the others as her guards. Rather unusually, she plays the role totally straight and it’s very hard not to sympathize with her. And in the end, she escapes by tricking one of the customers into saying a spell that switches their places (though he's a bit of an AssholeVictim who didn't seem to care about her at all, unlike his friend).
* A spoof of ''Series/TheMuppetShow'' features Waldorf and Statler finally confronted by security over their heckling, culminating in Statler getting a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown. Seeing such a beloved childhood character beaten to the point his eyes are swollen shut, complete with disturbingly realistic puppeteering of an old man's shaking hands as he struggles back to his feet, is an image that's not leaving your mind any time soon.

* The infamous Creator/DonaldPleasence/Music/{{Fear}} episode has a few examples:

-->And my face caught on fire..."

** From the same episode, a fake commercial sketch about a fancy restaurant called, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDKgo3jFwFE Hamm & Bublé]] founded by Jon Hamm & Michael Bublé[[labelnote:note]]Now pronounces as Bubly. This became a [[HilariousinHindsight hilarious in hindsight]] when Bublé started in a bubly Sparkling Water commercial in 2019[[/labelnote]] that only serves [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs pork & champagne, champagne soaked ham & champagne with pork chunks.]] Michael sings about the restaurant [[ToTheTuneOf in the tune of his 2010 song, Haven't Meet You Yet]] but when Jon Hamm walks away, he started singing about how this was [[DidntThinkThisThrough a bad idea for a restaurant,]] having a story of meeting John at a party who got drunk & wanted him to make fortune, then got slapped by him and [[HostageSituation being held hostage.]]

[[folder: Season 7]]

[[folder: Season 12]]

[[folder: Season 17]]

[[folder: Season 18]]

[[folder: Season 19]]

[[folder: Season 21]]

[[folder: Season 46]]

* From the Creator/JimCarrey episode, we have The Merryville Brothers. The UncannyValley on the faces of Jim Carrey, Creator/BillHader, and Taran Killam, combined with the gruesome ending (Thompson's character was originally going to be beheaded on-screen, but the censors wouldn't allow it, though having him being dragged off-camera while a crude copy of his robot clone appears does make the point that he's going to meet the same fate as the women on the original 1970s film version of ''Literature/TheStepfordWives'') make this skit a little unsettling.

** Another sketch features simply a pair of hands carving a jack o' lantern against a black background. What should be a simple Halloween-themed bumper is elevated to deep horror by the fact that every time the pumpkin is cut into, ''blood seeps out of the cut'' (and is visible on the knife in some shots). Towards the end, the insides of the pumpkin are scooped out, and rather than pulp and seeds, what looks like '''human intestines'' come out instead. Add to the fact that the sketch goes by without any dialogue or explanation, simply PsychoStrings and some ominous drumming and chanting, and the whole thing becomes deeply unsettling.

* The "Canteen Boy Gets Molested" sketch due to playing the AdultFear of child molestation (especially within a seemingly wholesome club as The Boy Scouts) for laughs. While Mr. Armstrong (played by episode host Creator/AlecBaldwin) didn't end up having sex with Canteen Boy (Creator/AdamSandler), it's still disturbing when you realize that (a) Canteen Boy can't run away because Mr. Armstrong is too fast for him, (b) he can't tell anyone what happened to him because everyone thinks he's an autistic freak, and (c) even if he did just run away into the woods, there's the chance he could die from exposure or the animals living there. Fortunately, Canteen Boy does summon snakes to get revenge on Mr. Armstrong and the reruns have a disclaimer that says that Canteen Boy is actually a 27-year-old man who just acts like a child.

* From the Creator/TomHanks episode, What happens to Tim Meadows character, the OnlySaneMan at the end of the [[http://snltranscripts.jt.org/91/91sbelvedere.phtml "Guy Who Plays Mr. Belvedere Fan Club" sketch]]

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5dQpHfbbrk The Negotiator]] leans ''hard'' into the MarijuanaIsLSD trope after a cop played by Regina King bites into a weed gummy while on the job. What follows is a cavalcade of UncannyValley nightmare fuel, including but not limited to Pete Davidson and Aidy Bryant in extremely creepy gummy bear suits, lava people from hell coming up through the ground, and Marge Simpson morphing into the Satan with EmptyEyes. It's perhaps the densest concentration of NightmareFuel in an SNL sketch to date.

* In another "at-home" sketch, Melissa and Mikey play ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'' over Facetime, when the game starts insulting Melissa, and denies her the ability to visit Mikey's island, before suddenly killing her character, stating "foul play is suspected". The whole thing feels like a Video Game {{Creepypasta}}.