Trivia / Saturday Night Live

Trivia items with their own page:

• Hostility on the Set
• Troubled Production
• What Could Have Been

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Other examples:

General Trivia Items

• Absurdly Short Production Time: The show is infamous for its short and hectic production schedule. It typically starts on Monday morning with a pitch meeting with the week's host and continues with the cast, writers, and crew working almost all hours the rest of the week to write, prepare, and rehearse the sketches for Saturday night from scratch.
• Accidentally-Correct Writing:
  • The season 34 episode had a sketch about people who would benefit from the 2008 bailout that happened when the global economic meltdown was still fresh. Darrell Hammond and Casey Wilson played a couple named Herbert and Marion Sandler (no relation to Adam) who screwed Wachovia Bank out of a lot of money and profited from the economic meltdown. Now, considering that there were two other fictional characters introduced before them, you'd expect Herbert and Marion to be fakes, too, right? Not in this case: turns out Herbert and Marion Sandler were real people who did exactly what the sketch said they did (Lorne Michaels didn't realize this until after the sketch aired), making the brief clip of them being described as "People who should be shot" by a lower-third graphic tasteless and explaining why the NBC website video and the televised reruns got rid of that scene in the "2008 Bailout" sketch. When Netflix aired the sketch as part of their Saturday Night Live 2000s collection, they aired the scene with Herbert and Marion Sandler, but got rid of the "People who should be shot" lower-third and removed Herbert's line thanking the government for letting them get away with their crime.
  • Chevy Chase had a joke on Weekend Update about the murder of performer "Professor Backwards" (who was able to read, write and speak backwards written words). Chase said he wasn't saved because people ignored his cries of "Pleh Pleh". Chase later apologized, saying he had no idea there was such a performer and that he had actually been murdered.
• Acting for Two:
  • When he hosted in 2017, Jimmy Fallon played both 1977 John Travolta and 2017 John Travolta in a live "Family Feud" sketch.
  • Alec Baldwin appeared as both Donald Trump and Bill O'Reilly in an "O'Reilly Factor" sketch from 2017.
  • Dana Carvey once played both George Bush and H. Ross Perot in a cold open centered around a political debate (The George Bush segment was taped.) Carvey even pokes fun at this by having Bush say to Perot, "Why don't you [open the show], Live Boy?"
  • When the show did its Twin Peaks 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.
  • Gal Gadot features in a sketch about reality shows, as Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid alongside Kate McKinnon as Gigi Hadid (yes, one of the actual siblings has a much stronger likeness with an unrelated person).
    Kendall: Wait, which one am I again?
  • Thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020, all of the cast and crew end up filming their sketches from home, and Chloe Fineman gets the genius idea to play both the beleaguered AirBNB host and the kinky European guest, who thanks to the lockdown turns into The Thing That Would Not Leave.
  • The Sarah Silverman 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.
  "What is this, pretty girls in the audience night?"
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • The Tidal power outage sketch has Jay Pharaoh claiming that Chloe the intern (played by Ariana Grande) is Latino, but then she says "that's a common mistake, I'm just really really Italian."
  • Cecily Strong, who speaks French, has gotten several roles as French people like Marion Cotillard and Catherine Deneuve.
  • Vanessa Bayer is Jewish, leading to certain recurring roles like Jacob the Bar Mitzvah boy. Even when the scene involves a When Harry Met Sally..., she goes for the Billy Crystal role rather than what they normally go for.
  • Aidy Bryant is of Irish lineage, which has come up a couple of times, like the "Kiss Me I'm Irish" sketch about an Irish dating game show, and she plays an Irish-American character.
  • In the season 44 Matt Damon episode, Boston native Matt plays the boyfriend of the Girlfriend of the Boxer in Every Boxing Movie Ever, as a stereotypical Hollywood New England character.
  • Season 46 has the "Blue Georgia" sketch, with one of the characters played by Kenan Thompson, who is from Atlanta, Georgia.
  • The very next episode has a sketch about how the It Gets Better campaign has evolved, headlined entirely by the show's own LGBT players, Bowen Yang, Punkie Johnson, Kate McKinnon, and host Dan Levy.
  • Ayo Edebiri is also LGBT, and she's in a sketch in reverse-drag as a heavily sheltered boy at school, who waits till they're visited by a performing hypnotist to come out as bi even when he picked someone else as volunteer..
• Approval of God:
  • Famously, Arnold Schwarzenegger to Hans and Franz, despite their Catchphrase being mistakenly attributed to him... at first.
  • White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer not only took the Melissa McCarthy act in stride, but subtly and boldly shouted out to it in front of the White House press pit.
  • Fred Rogers found Eddie Murphy's Mr. Robinson parody amusing.
  • Gerald Ford loved Chevy Chase's portrayal of him, to the point where they became friendly. Ditto for George H. W. Bush and Dana Carvey.
  • According to Carvey himself, Ross Perot loved his impersonations of him, to the point Perot asked him on the possibility to join him onstage during Election Night in 1992.
  • Alex Trebek had spoken very highly of Will Ferrell's portrayal of him in the Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches. Not only did he cameo in one sketch (Will's last as a castmember), but he also incorporated references to the sketches during actual Jeopardy! episodes.
    • Burt Reynolds also approved of Norm Macdonald's impersonations of him in the same series of sketches.
  • Beyoncé absolutely loved the Beygency sketch, posting a simple positive review that says "Haaaaaaaaaaaa" along with a screenshot of the sketch's logo on her Instagram.
  • Miley Cyrus was a great fan of Vanessa Bayer's "Miley Cyrus Show" sketches, and even appeared in one when Cyrus hosted SNL in 2010, playing Justin Bieber to Bayer's Cyrus. Bayer would later introduce Cyrus' infamous performance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. Bayer would later that year appear as "Old Miley" in a 2013 SNL sketch traveling by time machine to convince "New Miley" (played by returning guest host Cyrus) not to perform her risqué act at the 2013 VMAs and disappoint her fans.
  • Drew Barrymore adored Chloe Fineman's impression during the show's parody of The Drew Barrymore Show and even brought her on to guest on the real show.
  • Dionne Warwick had high praise for Ego Nwodim's portrayal of her on The Dionne Warwick Show. She would later cameo at the end of the third edition of the sketch.
  • Eminem loved Pete Davidson's portrayal of him in the show's music video parodies of "Stan" and "Without Me".
  • Several members of Celtic Woman have praised the aptly-named season 46 finale sketch as hilarious.
  • Andrew Giuliani admitted he found Chris Farley's parody of his antics at his father's NYC mayoral inauguration hysterical and wishes he could've met the man before he died.
  • ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith found Chris Redd's portrayal so "hysterical" he retweeted it.
  • Hot Ones host Sean Evans loved the "Hot Ones with Beyoncé" sketch starring Mikey Day and Maya Rudolph.
  • Peyton and Eli Manning enjoyed the parody of their ManningCast so much that they actually brought Jon Hamm (who made a cameo in the sketch) on their next broadcast and Peyton wore the same quarter zip sweater Miles Teller wore while portraying him.
  • Gumby creator Art Clokey and his family greatly enjoyed Eddie Murphy's famous Gumby skits.
  • Rachel Dratch impersonated Senator Amy Klobuchar during the 2020 Democratic primary, to Klobuchar's unabashed delight.
  • Jennifer Coolidge praised Chloe Fineman's impression of her in a Season 48 Christmas sketch.
  • Chance the Rapper as Lazlo Holmes, sports commentator sent to cover sports he has no clue about like ice hockey, but ended up getting the real NHL's attention, to the extent that they brought him on to interview real hockey players.
• Ascended Meme: After Devon Walker joined the cast in Season 48, many viewers noted that he bore a strong physical resemblance to recently departed cast member Pete Davidson. The show would acknowledge this when Davidson returned to host in Season 49 by having Walker play "Black Pete" in the "I'm Just Pete" sketch.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Roughly sums up Leslie Jones' initial response to being cast as Oprah Winfrey after the 2018 Golden Globe Awards.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Bill Murray auditioned for the first season, but narrowly lost out to Dan Aykroyd. Then when Chevy Chase announced he was leaving the show in 1976, Lorne Michaels reached out to Murray to take his place.
• The Cast Showoff: There have been past cast members who have proved that they can do more than just funny characters and spot-on celebrity impressions:
  • Garrett Morris was a talented singer who would occasionally get to sing classical music on the show. One segment featured Morris singing a Schubert aria whle captions rolled on the screen explaining that the show only let him sing because everyone was scared of him.
  • Charles Rocket from the Jean Doumanian era was an accordion player (on the Season Six premiere, there was a sketch where he played a deranged man who killed his dates with accordion music, only to get killed by bagpipe players) and an actual news anchor (making Rocket the first and, so far, only Weekend Update anchor who actually had experience as an actual news anchor).
  • Maya Rudolph has shown off her singing ability (she was a keyboardist for the Weezer spin-off band The Rentals before being on SNL and had parents who were involved in the music industry; her mom, Minnie Riperton, is best known for the hit song, and famous high note, "Lovin' You", a song conceived as a lullaby for baby Maya).
  • Fred Armisen is another cast member who has shown he has music ability (He was the drummer for '90s indie rock band Trenchmouth, also plays guitar, and later went on to become the band leader for the studio band of Late Night with Seth Meyers, though whenever he played Liberace, he faked playing the piano. He also made a special, Standup for Drummers.)
  • A. Whitney Brown (a writer-cum-feature player from 1985 to 1991 who often appeared on Weekend Update's "The Big Picture" segment) can juggle, as seen in this video, a talent he picked up while doing time in a Texas prison.
  • Jason Sudeikis was a college basketball player, so that scene on the LeBron James episode from Season 33 where he plays a boom mike operator who challenges James to a game of basketball was just an excuse for Jason to show off his moves.
  • More recently, the Chris Hemsworth episode allowed Cecily Strong to show some considerable pipes in the "Sing Along" sketch.
  • Cecily Strong speaks French, which she used following the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, delivering a tribute message in French as well as English.
  • The episode with Donald Glover has him singing in nearly every sketch.
  • Justin Timberlake may already be known as a singer, but the "Mascotville Mascot" sketches also show off how he can still dance in awkward and constraining mascot suits.
  • Kristen Wiig has clearly had some dance training, which pretty much forms the premise of her Triangle Sally character (well, that and the triangle).
  • Lizzo not only pulls double duty as host and musical guest in 2022, but gets to show off her flute playing skill, particularly in one sketch where she can't sit still while playing or she turns Hollywood Tone-Deaf.
  • Marcello Hernandez speaks fluent Spanish and demonstrates this ability in several of his sketches.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • There is a common misconception that Steve Martin (one of SNL's most frequent hosts) was a cast member. He was on Lorne Michaels' failed ABC sketch show The New Show, but he was never an SNL cast member.
  • It has become almost memetic over the years to reference how Norm Macdonald was fired from SNL because "he wouldn't stop making O. J. Simpson 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 Ohlmeyer, 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 Ohlmeyer openly stated that he didn't like Macdonald making OJ jokes, and that was the reason for his removal from Update. While it's true Ohlmeyer didn't like the jokes, his solution was to actually fire Jim Downey, who was Macdonald's writing partner for Weekend Update and the one responsible for writing them. He was content with having Macdonald continue the segment with another writer, but Macdonald refused to do it without Downey which led to Ohlmeyer having Macdonald removed from the segment.
  • It's commonly believed that Steve Carell auditioned for Season 21 and lost out to Will Ferrell due to Carell making that claim during his monologue when he hosted in 2005. Carell clarified years later on Twitter that it wasn't actually true and he had in fact never auditioned for the show.
  • Tina Fey's monologue in one of the episodes she hosted begins with her saying she is excited to do all of her characters, before saying that she "actually" didn't have any. She actually had three original characters and some celebrity impressions she did twice.
  • During the 40th Anniversary Special, Martin Short mentioned that he only hosted SNL once. He actually hosted three times at that point.
    • When James Franco hosted in Season 43, guest star Seth Rogen said he himself only hosted SNL twice. He actually hosted three times.
  • During Elon Musk's hosting gig in Season 46, he revealed he has Asperger Syndrome and claimed to be the first host publicly known to have the condition. That distinction actually belongs to Dan Aykroyd, who hosted the show back in Season 28 after being an original cast member.
• Creative Differences: A notable play on this phrase came when Harry Shearer left the show in 1984. When a reporter mentioned to Shearer that this trope was the show's stated reason for his departure, he quipped, "Yeah, I was creative, and they were different."
• Creator's Apathy:
  • Frank Zappa was banned from ever appearing on the show again after his one and only time as a guest host. Zappa (a vocal straight edge) frequently clashed heads with the cast and crew over their more lax stance on drug use in their skits, and decided to get back at them by giving an abysmal performance as a host by frequently mugging into the camera and informing audiences whenever he was reading from cue cards.
  • Since the series was unionized, The Land of Gorch skits from Jim Henson were left in the hands of the show's unenthused writing team; who often tried to avoid the skits as much as possible due to the stigma of Puppet Shows being children's material. Head writer Michael O'Donoghue made his feelings for the skits clear when he was tasked with developing them:
    Michael: I don't write for felt.
• Creator Backlash:
  • For years, Eddie Murphy refused to acknowledge his characters from the show (Gumby as a faded, Jewish comedian, Mr. Robinson,^note a squatter and petty thug who hosted an inner city take on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood Buckwheat, etc), though they are some of his most enduring legacy and he even performed them when he came back to host in 2019. It's probably because of a 1995 "Weekend Update" sketch in which David Spade, as part of his "Hollywood Minute" segment, made a brutal Take That! at Murphy's then-fading Hollywood career, saying "Look, kids, a falling star! Make a wish!" (Murphy wasn't amused), and also due to fans asking Murphy to do those sketches for them when they meet him. Allegedly, he wrote the SNL sketch where Buckwheat is assassinated for this reason.. Although Murphy finally reembraced SNL and his characters 20 years later.
  • Garrett Morris was frequently unhappy during his tenure, and expressed the opinion that he was usually typecast in stereotypical roles.
  • Laraine Newman was also unhappy during her tenure, as she disliked living in New York.
  • Chris Rock has expressed disdain for the famous "Chippendales" sketch, claiming that exploiting Chris Farley's physique for laughs only to have his character rejected by the judges was "just fucking mean". Former SNL writer Bob Odenkirk has said in several interviews that he also despises the sketch for the same reason and refuses to rewatch it, because in his words, "It played right into Chris' own worst opinions about himself."
  • Colin Quinn admitted he was never comfortable being the Weekend Update anchor, especially since he only got the gig because NBC forced Lorne Michaels to replace Norm Macdonald, and he preferred his prior role as a writer and featured player.
  • During an interview that took place during Season 45, Pete Davidson expressed being unhappy with the frequency the other cast members made jokes at the expense of his personal life during sketches as well as typecasting him as Book Dumb characters. The following seasons would see both of these practices die down, which made Davidson feel better about the show.
  • Leslie Jones stated a year after leaving the show that she didn't miss it at all, as her five year run was incredibly stressful and restrictive to her style.
  • Taran Killam disliked working on the 2015 episode hosted by Donald Trump, stating the production "was not enjoyable at the time" and that the episode "only grows more embarrassing and shameful as time goes on."
  • Alec Baldwin wasn't shy about discussing how he absolutely despised playing Donald Trump on the show. He only took the job in the first place because he figured it would only last a couple months, which then turned into four years when Trump unexpectedly won the presidency. This was actually noted as improving the period's political sketches, as the writers often couldn't count on Baldwin making an appearance and were forced to develop numerous other members of Trump's cabinet to focus them on.
  • Tina Fey would later express regret at the Weekend Update sketch she participated in following the 2017 Charlottesville attack, in which she suggested protesting from now on by doing things such as eating cake, agreeing with the criticism that it came off as out of touch and it looked as if she was implying that protesting/arguing with people of different views was pointless.
  • In a slightly milder example, John Mulaney regretted his joke about how the 2020 election was an "elderly man contest" and that "some things will never change," as it gave the impression that he had no clear preference for one or the other when there was one he actually supported and one he despised.
  • The show acknowledged that the "Wario on Trial" sketch during the Elon Musk/Miley Cyrus episode wasn't very good when they jokingly included it as the only season "highlight" in a montage during the Season 46 finale Cold Open.
  • The 12 episodes produced by Jean Doumanian during the 1980-81 season has been barred from syndication (in America, barring the Bill Murray episode that aired on Comedy Central in the 1990s and the Jamie Lee Curtis episode that aired on NBC in 2005^note though, due to Pope John Paul II's funeral at the time, not many affiliates aired this episode; Canada's Comedy Network has aired all of Jean Doumanian's episodes) in America due to how poorly it was received by viewers and the network. Netflix did have the Jean Doumanian episodes (albeit edited to only the best^note to use the term loosely performances and to get rid of the musical performances due to copyright reasons. Also, Charles Rocket's "fuck" in "I'd like to know who the fuck did it" was bleeped out, and has been ever since) and two episodes (one hosted by Robert Hays and the infamous Charlene Tilton episode) aired during VH-1 Classics SNL Rewind marathon (again, edited down to one-hour episodes).
  • Season 11 (the 1985-1986 season) is also a season everyone would like to forget, most especially for the writers at the time (many of whom went on to write for The Simpsons 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 Comedy Central, 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 Vindicated by History for the most part and does have memorable moments/performances/facts — specifically, Terry Sweeney as Nancy Reagan, Dennis Miller reviving Weekend Update with his brand of snarky humor, the fact that most of the writers would later be famous for The Simpsons, 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, and the fact that the show had the actor who would later be known for playing Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.).
  • Janeane Garofalo described her time on the show as the most miserable of her life, citing the sexist, juvenile and homophobic humour of the sketches as why she left midway through season twenty. On an HBO special, she said it was like "...being the Indian who was given the smallpox-infested blankets by the white settlers").
  • The Season 46 finale makes clear that just about everyone regretted giving Morgan Wallen a second chance to be a musical guest on the show after he was dropped the first time for going to a party with no COVID-19 restrictions, after his career was killed for good when he was recorded making a drunken, racist rant at some fans.
  • The Muppet Performers almost uniformly hated the aforementioned Land of Gorch sketches from the first season, feeling that the sensibilities of their crew and the SNL writers just didn't match. Jim Henson's wife Jane in particular loathed the sex and drug jokes, feeling they went far afield of what the Muppets were supposed to be. Despite that, performers like Frank Oz and Richard Hunt later said that they enjoyed the working enviroment and rubbing shoulders with all the famous names on the show, just not the material they were performing.
• Creator Killer:
  • The horrid sixth season, one of three (alongside 11^note 1985-1986 and 20^note 1994-1995) to have actually threatened the show to be cancelled, was not kind to the career of Lorne Michaels' replacement showrunner Jean Doumanian (she resurfaced in The '90s as the producer of a number of critically acclaimed and moderately successful Woody Allen films, until she suddenly backed out of a movie in 2000, leaving Allen stranded, eventually resulting in both of them filing lawsuits against each other) and most of the names she brought for the cast and writers - when the season ended, only Joe Piscopo, Eddie Murphy, and writers Pam Norris, Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield remained; Gilbert Gottfried broke out later as he reinvented his comedic persona and distanced himself from the disastrous season. The denouement of that season may have literally killed Charles Rocket. Before that season he was seen as an up-and-comer whose "Rocket Report" newscast segments made him seem like a natural successor to Chevy Chase. But after the series and his dismissal, he got only supporting roles in films like Dumb and Dumber and failed TV pilots. It was enough to pay the bills, but he never became the big star he could have been, and in 2005 he was found dead in a field near his home with his throat cut, apparently a suicide.
  • In his 2019 memoir, Chris Kattan revealed that the true reason his career declined so sharply after he left the show was a severe neck injury he suffered while filming the show. Not only did this seriously interfere with his extremely physical comedy style, but caused an addiction to painkillers and even ended his marriage.
• Creator's Favorite: Laraine Newman named Lina Wertmuller as her favourite character of her own. She described her as a character "which, I think, pleased only me and no one else".
• The Danza:
  • The second person to play Special Counsel Robert Mueller after Kate McKinnon, Robert De Niro.
  • While obviously a coincidence, season 45 newcomer Bowen Yang is going to be saddled with the role of politician Andrew Yang for a good long while.
  • In 2024 we have newcomer Michael Longfellow as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who even resembles him to a degree.
• Dawson Casting: Many sketches in which the cast members play teens or children (usually if they're making fun of a live-action kids' show or have a sketch featuring a family with kids or a sketch about kids or teens). Obviously unavoidable, but it has become prevalent in latter-day seasons where most of the cast members currently hired are younger than the show itself (starting with Kenan Thompson, who was born three years after SNL premiered).
  • One of Amy Poehler's recurring characters was Kaitlin, who is supposed to be ten years old (and remained that age for several years).
• Defictionalization: Alec Trebek loved the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches and used several fake categories in real episodes. These include:
  • "'S' Words" and, in Double Jeopardy!, "Swords" in the May 19, 1999 episode;
  • "Surprise Me, Trebek!", "Therapists", "Things You Shouldn't Put in Your Mouth", "The Number After 2" and "Rhymes With Dog" in the September 5, 2001 episode;
  • "Japan-US Relations" on June 27, 2006 and "Answers That Start With 'Feb"" on November 16, 2006 (based on "Months That Start With 'Feb'");
  • "States That End in 'Hampshire'", "What Colour is Green?", "Current Black Presidents", "Sounds That Kitties Make" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Word That Rhymes With Star" on November 23, 2009;
  • "The Pen is Mightier" on May 15, 2015;
  • "States That Begin With California", "Is That a Hat?", "Catch These Men", "A Petite Dejouner", and "'S' Words" on July 8, 2016;
  • "An Album Cover" on July 10, 2019.
• Dueling Shows: ABC's Fridays, SCTV Network 90, The New Show, House of Buggin, The WB's Hype, FOX's Saturday Night Special, and FOX's In Living Color! and MADtv (1995), to name a few — all of which were canned for one reason or another:
  • Fridays had been initially panned by critics for being a cruder, less funny carbon copy of SNL, but in its second season it started finding its own niche with elaborate parodies and topical satire (exemplified by "The Ronnie Horror Picture Show"), while SNL struggled with its 1980-81 cast. The show has been cited by critics and viewers as the only sketch show that could have easily surpassed Saturday Night Live in terms of humor and quality had ABC treated it better and/or SNL was canceled with no chance of coming back and Fridays channel hopped to NBC. Unfortunately, Fridays ended up suffering from a timeslot change thanks to Nightline and a failed attempt at trying to beat Dallas in the ratings as a primetime sketch show. It was canceled after its second season^note listed as the third on Wikipedia and the DVD collection. The show did rerun on the USA Network in the late 1980s, but got pulled for reasons unknown and for a while, there were no video or DVD releases of episodes, though the later success of Fridays cast members Larry David and Michael Richards with Seinfeld boosted its reputation and created some demand for it. As of 2015, Fridays is available on DVD and Tubi TV thanks to Shout! Factory — initially, it was supposed to have all the seasons, but it was changed at the last minute to just sixteen episodes that are considered the best/most memorable. Fridays sketches (some of which are from Shout Factory, but most are from videotaped airings) are also available on YouTube.
  • The New Show: Once upon a time in the mid-1980s, while Dick Ebersol was struggling to keep his version of Saturday Night Live afloat after Eddie Murphy left for a movie career and Joe Piscopo left due to exhaustion, Lorne Michaels decided to create a new version of SNL for NBC. The show included a lot of '70s-era SNL hosts like Buck Henry and Steve Martin, but sadly, even with a talented cast at the helm, the show was a failure. It only lasted two months (January 1984 to March 1984) and made Lorne rethink his decision of leaving SNL, prompting an initially shaky, but overall satisfying return to the show in November 1985.
  • In Living Color was Screwed by the Network from Executive Meddling over censorship and eventually died when the Wayans siblings left and Jim Carrey pursued a movie career. A revival was planned for 2012, but due to negative test audience reactions and fears it would only last one season, it's been shelved until it can be fixed. As of now, it looks as if an In Living Color reboot will never happen.
  • House of Buggin, Saturday Night Special, and Hype weren't received warmly by critics and ended up being canceled as quickly as they premiered.
  • MADtv (1995) — serving 14 years as SNL's worthiest late-night sketch show rival — was canned in 2009 due to low ratings and budget constraints. There was word of MADtv coming back as a cable show, but, unless one were to count the Cartoon Network sketch show MAD and Comedy Central's Key & Peele, MADtv as viewers know it is gone. It did briefly come back in 2016 on The CW, but was hardly seen by anyone (and those who have seen it panned it for its bad writing and acting).
  • Almost Live! lasted 15 years and kickstarted Bill Nye's television career while also providing early exposure for Joel McHale, but got cancelled as ratings dropped heavily in later years, and a new company bought the hosting station in Seattle.
  • The only competition Saturday Night Live has these days in terms of ratings and quality are: [adult swim]'s Saturday anime line-up, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart^note which doesn't air on weekends, The Colbert Report^note also a weekday-only show, Comedy Central's comedian-headlined sketch shows, like Inside Amy Schumer and Key & Peele, and Internet-based comedy troupes (some of which can be found on YouTube) and humor sites, like CollegeHumor and Funny or Die.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Barbra Streisand's appearance on Coffee Talk with Linda Richman was kept secret - Streisand had just made an appearance across the street, and Lorne Michaels saw a golden opportunity. Mike Myers, Madonna, and Roseanne all managed to stay in-character when reacting.
  • Stefon's giggly delivery and habit of hiding his face behind his hands was due to John Mulaney rewriting jokes between dress rehearsal and broadcast, meaning Bill Hader had no idea what he was going to read off the cue cards and would start Corpsing.
  • Chris Farley loved to make his co-stars break character, and it often shows. Best case is the first Matt Foley sketch, as he surprises everyone by throwing himself on a table.
  • Colin Jost and Michael Che write offensive jokes for the other to read on "Weekend Update". Neither sees what the other is doing until it's time to present the joke, resulting in genuine discomfort and corpsing as they try to get through the cue cards.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Norm MacDonald's dismissal from Weekend Update was this, albeit with Norm not being the intended target. Don Ohlmeyer, NBC's West Coast Executive, demanded that Jim Downey, who wrote Weekend Update with Norm, be fired due to Downey repeatedly writing the attacks on O.J. Simpson, who was a close friend of Don's. Norm refused to do the segment with another writer and told the executives that if they fired Downey, they would have to fire him too. They called his bluff and removed him from the sketch as well. Interestingly, Don never had any animosity towards Norm himself, with Don forgiving Norm for accidentally launching a Precision F-Strike live on air (and then calling attention to it) and being perfectly willing to let Norm keep his job as long as he accepted Downey's firing.
  • Season six (1980-1981): The first season without Lorne Michaels. Jean Doumanian was hired as the new showrunner (it would have been Al Franken, but he pissed off Fred Silverman with his "Limo for the Lame-O" segment on Weekend Update, and Harry Shearer even expressed an interest in being showrunner, as he felt the show's current sensibility didn't mesh with his brand of humor), and, with every agonizingly unfunny episode, it became clear that Doumanian was in over her head (though Doumanian claims that she was doing the best she could with a limited budget and NBC staff treating her like crap because she's a woman). Add to the fact that she rejected a lot of potential cast members (Jim Carrey being one of them), relegated Eddie Murphy to background roles (which would be her undoing, as Eddie Murphy's stand-up piece on the Ray Sharkey episode would be the guarantee that he'd be the show's next big star), and was accused for setting up Charles Rocket saying "fuck" at the end of the Charlene Tilton episode (though Rocket himself has stated that it wasn't a set-up and he didn't know he said anything wrong until the backlash), and NBC had to be rushed in to save the show with new blood, knowing full well that they would probably have to give it a mercy kill (they didn't, but back then, they were thinking it and jokes were made about how Saturday Night Live should be called Saturday Night Dead due to its drop in quality).
  • Season 11 (1985-1986): Another bad season, only this time, it was Lorne Michaels' fault. After his sketch show The New Show got canned and learning that NBC was going to cancel SNL after its 10th season due to low ratings and Dick Ebersol deciding to quit after NBC nixed all the ideas he had planned for his vision of SNL, Michaels swooped in to rebuild his show, with a new cast and new writers. With the exception of Dennis Miller, Jon Lovitz, and Nora Dunn, no one cared much for the new cast (which included such now-famous faces as Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr., Damon Wayans, and Randy Quaid, along with the first time the show hired homosexual cast members^note Terry Sweeney, an openly gay white man, who was on the show before as one of Jean Doumanian's writers, and Danitra Vance, a black lesbian and the only time the show hired a teenager^note Anthony Michael Hall was 17 and already famous as a star of The Breakfast Club when he joined the cast, making him the youngest ever cast member.), and, after the bizarre debacle that was the March 1986 episode hosted by George Wendt with Francis Ford Coppola and musical guest Phillip Glass, NBC rushed in again and decided to shut the show down for good. While the season 11 finale did end with everyone locked in a room with Lorne setting it on fire and saving Jon Lovitz, Lorne begged NBC to give his show another chance, which they did, but only for 13 episodes of season 12 (they later rescinded this after season 12 brought SNL back from its early 1980s slump). Lorne fired everyone (except for the three aforementioned newcomers who were actually good, along with Al Franken and A Whitney Brown), brought in people like Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson, and Kevin Nealon, and everything about season 11 was written off as a bad dream.
  • Season 20 (1994-1995): Unlike seasons 6 and 11, which were bad because of new cast members who were barely experienced with working in sketch comedy and/or as an ensemble and writing that wasn't top shelf, this season was plagued with an overcrowded cast that hated each other, Phil Hartman leaving for other projects (mostly The Simpsons and News Radio), and overexposure of Adam Sandler and Chris Farley. Once again, NBC confronted Lorne Michaels about it and told him that the show was ending due to low ratings and bad reviews — and Lorne Michaels, once again, dodged cancellation by weeding out the bad cast members and writers^note though most of them left on their own accord because they were tired of the show, in the cases of Kevin Nealon and Ellen Cleghorne, or found out how daunting working at SNL is, in the cases of Morwenna Banks and Chris Elliott, keeping in the good ones, and hiring newer, better talent. Lorne Michaels has cited season 20 as the closest he's been to being fired and having his show canceled.
  • Lorne Michaels forbade the writing staff from attacking Donald Trump as hard as they wanted prior to the 2016 election, not least because he'd actually hosted the show. After he actually became the president, the gloves promptly came off and they proceeded to tear into Trump in every way, shape and form.
• Fake Brit:
  • Several times of course, but one standout example is a spoof of The Great British Bakeoff wherein the only real Brit in there is Special Guest Emily Blunt.
    • There's a Call-Back of sorts in the more recently-recurring baking competition sketch, where Ego Nwodim plays the one English judge.
  • The whole point of "British Movie".
• Follow the Leader: Norm Macdonald has admitted that "Celebrity Jeopardy" was inspired by the recurring "Half Wits" sketch on SCTV, but says that he got Martin Short's blessing before debuting it.
• Harpo Does Something Funny:
  • Defied. Improvising is a good way to find yourself banned from the show by Lorne Michaels if you're a guest (unless something really goes wrong and you have to do something to keep the dead air at bay). Just ask Adrien Brody (who introduced musical guest Sean Paul while dressed as a rudeboy and rambling in a Jamaican accent when he hosted during the penultimate episode of season 28^note 2002-2003).
  • Damon Wayans had a rather dull part as a prison guard in a "Mr. Monopoly" sketch (based on the game). He decided to ad-lib and play the character as a gay stereotype (who sounded like his Blaine Edwards character from the "Men on Film" sketches). He was immediately fired by Lorne Michaels, which is why he was available when In Living Color! premiered.
  • When Bill Murray wrote sketches that Gilda Radner appeared in, he would often write part of the sketch and then simply, "Gilda does something funny".
• Hey, It's That Sound!: Various game show skits over the years have recycled sounds, generally ones from whatever they're parodying; some of the Celebrity Jeopardy! skits have utilized the "Fast money board reveal noise" from Family Feud, and the "square reveal" noise from Classic Concentration (which also aired on NBC and was hosted by Alex Trebek); both of those noises in-turn originated from the short-lived Trivia Trap. One mid-90s skit (not Jeopardy) even recycled "Tuning Up" by Ken Aldin, better known as the 70s theme of Pyramid, albeit sped-up and high-pitched.
• Hide Your Pregnancy:
  • Averted with Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, and Amy Poehler who all appeared pregnant in SNL sketches before going on maternity leave (some of which had their pregnancies written in the sketches, such as the case with Amy Poehler in the "I'm No Angel" Perfume Commercial parody on the Josh Brolin/Adele episode of Season 34 and a sketch where Ana Gasteyer played Elizabeth Hurley, who was also pregnant at the time).
  • Tina Fey, however, didn't appear in any sketches for the first couple episodes of Season 31 because of maternity leave. However, when Tina Fey hosted the 700th episode (on season 36), this trope was zigzagged. Some sketches (like the monologue, "The Little Mermaid Meets bin Laden's Corpse" sketch and the "2012 Presidential Candidates" sketch, where Fey once again appears as her doppelganger Sarah Palin) had Tina Fey's pregnancy hidden (albeit poorly in the "Little Mermaid Sketch" — you can tell she's pregnant because of her large breasts peeking out of the seashell bra and the beginnings of her baby bump can be seen between the seashell bra and her mermaid tail half); others (like some of the commercial bumpers and the "Home Pregnancy Video" sketch) had her pregnant for all to see.
• Hostility on the Set: Has its own page here.
• In Memoriam: SNL often pays tribute to deceased cast members, guest hosts and musical guests. Sometimes, they'll have a photo and a moment of silence (like they did with Charles Rocket^note though the fact that he was recognized at all, given that he was part of a season that most people despised, counted for something and Don Pardo), but other times, they'll take time off from the laughs to say goodbye and do a memorial piece:
  • When John Belushi died in 1982, a rerun of a season seven episode had a monologue from Brian Doyle-Murray, who told the story of how Belushi cared for him when he was just starting out in comedy and saved him from getting hit by a truck (with Belushi taking the hit and not getting injured).
  • Gilda Radner had died the same day of the 1988-89 season finale, so instead of his planned monologue, host Steve Martin replayed a 1978 sketch featuring himself and Radner.
  • When George Carlin died in June 2008, rather than rerun a 2008 episode hosted by Elliot Page, the very first episode of SNL, which was hosted by Carlin, was aired instead.
  • Jan Hooks also received a tribute on October 11, 2014 (the episode hosted by Bill Hader and the 39th anniversary of the show's first episode) with a reprise of a skit she performed with the also deceased Phil Hartman ("Love is a Dream," a Tom Schiller-written short film about an elderly woman who visits a bank vault to wear her old jewelry and is transported into a musical where she dances with a prince who turns out to be the bank's elderly security guard).
    • The same short was showed in the 25th anniversary special in 2000, as a tribute after the tragic death of Phil Hartman. Jon Lovitz and Jan Hooks presented the skit (visibily grieved), together with the main cast of the Hartman's era (Nora Dunn, Victoria Jackson, Kevin Nealon, Dennis Miller and Mike Myers; Dana Carvey wasn't present).
  • The 40th anniversary special featured a lengthy tribute, presented by Bill Murray with Leon Pendarvis at the piano, to all the deceased SNL cast and crew members in the show's history (from cast members like Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Phil Hartman, and Jan Hooks, to behind-the-scenes people like Tom Davis, Michael O'Donoghue^note even though Davis and O'Donoghue are considered members of the original cast, just not ones most people would readily remember, Dave Wilson, Bernie Brillstein, and Don Pardo). But to keep things from being too depressing, the final tribute was to cast member Jon Lovitz. The cameras then cut to a very alive and confused Lovitz sitting in the audience. A similar gag occurred during Steve Martin's opening monologue. At the end of the segment, Bill Murray give the audience one last death notice that came later to included it properly on the tribute.
    Bill Murray: (in a respectful and solemn manner) This just came in from Spain. Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
  • When David Bowie died during Season 41, Fred Armisen returned to the show for a special tribute segment to the singer, in which Armisen recalled watching Bowie's musical performance in Season 5 in high school. A clip of Bowie singing "The Man Who Sold the World" during that appearance shown immediately afterwards.
  • Prince died later in Season 41, and instead of a segment during the show like Bowie got, SNL produced an entire hour-long memorial special featuring his various appearances over the years (and some clips from the recurring sketch, "The Prince Show", which had Fred Armisen as Prince).
  • At the end of Adam Sandler's hosting gig in Season 44, he performed his song "Farley" from his 100% Fresh special in tribute to Chris Farley.
  • In season 45, in the At Home episode, the final segment is a giant eulogy for music director Hal Willner, with appearances from Mulaney, Sandler, Fey, Poehler, Shannon, Rudolph, Armisen and Hader, among other alums.
  • During the Season 47 opener, Colin Jost and Michael Che ended Weekend Update by paying tribute to the recently deceased Norm Macdonald before playing a clip show of some of his Weekend Update jokes.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • Chris Farley, who played Chicago Bears Superfan Todd O'Connor, was actually a fan of the team's longtime rivals the Green Bay Packers.
  • Kate McKinnon, who usually plays heterosexual women, is a lesbian in real life.
  • Vanessa Bayer, cast as the lead in a Real Trailer, Fake Movie about the Christian baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding, is actually Jewish.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Zigzagged. Seasons one to five are available uncut and uncensored on DVD, Hulu, and on Peacock, but every season after that^note including season six, but, due to morbid curiosity, Charles Rocket's 2005 suicide, that one time that most NBC affiliates aired the season six episode hosted by Jamie Lee Curtis [while some ignored it in order to air Pope John Paul II's funeral and memorial service], and word that Gilbert Gottfried was a cast member on SNL, has become somewhat of an obsession to find to see if that season was as bad as people claimed is a bit of a struggle to legally find. NBC once aired older SNL episodes after Showtime at the Apollo^note so, in case you found yourself not liking a current episode, you can watch an older one until 2007. Comedy Central and E! aired the 1980s to the early 2000s episodes (as does VH1 Classic^note though VH1 Classic once had a two-week marathon of select episodes from seasons 39 all the back to the very first season to celebrate the show's 40 years on the air, but regular VH1 only airs the late-2000s into the New-Teens episodes). Netflix once had every episode from seasons one to 38, and even then, seasons six to 38 had sketches and musical performances cut for licensing issues, the sketches not being memorable/funny enough to be included, and/or particular performances being too controversial to air. Some other examples of such edits made to these seasons include the complete removal of Charles Barkley's monologue from the beginning of the September 25, 1993 episode and different songs being used on the Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches. Hulu only aired the first five seasons, edited-down versions of seasons 30 to 38, and full episodes of seasons 39 to whatever the current season is. If you want to see an old episode of Saturday Night Live these days, your best bets are semi-legal tape/DVD trades, torrenting, or watching the collections of memorable sketches on YouTube and NBC's webpage for SNL.
  • As of October 2020, however, all of Saturday Night Live's episodes are available for streaming on NBC's Peacock service. However, the episodes from seasons 6 to 38 are the same ones from the Netflix/Xfinity version where the episodes are cut down to less than an hour. Also, seasons 1 to 46 are free, while the current season (season 47) is only available for those who bought a paid subscription to Peacock (though, for the latter, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to see for those who can catch it on free-to-air TV, cable, or even on Hulu).
• Killed by Request: Eddie Murphy got so sick of playing Buckwheat that there was a sketch where he was shot dead. He did resurrect the character when he returned to host in 2019.
• Make-A-Wish Contribution: The opening monologue of one of John Mulaney's episodes partially centers around his experience spending the day with Make-A-Wish kid Elizabeth, including touring around the SNL set.
• Missing Episode: There are a few episodes that have only aired once and were either never seen at all (or in full) after that point:
  • The Season 4 episode hosted by Milton Berle was so fraught with cast tension over Berle overrunning the show (which he did, if the Texaco Playhouse cold open is indicative of anything) that Lorne Michaels barred the show from being rerun on TV. The full episode does appear, however, on the Season 4 DVD set and the "Saturday Night Live: The 1970s" collection on Netflix.
  • The Season 5 episode hosted by Strother Martin was scheduled to rerun during the summer of 1980, but then Martin died (the fact that the episode contained a sketch with him filming a video will didn't help matters). This episode, too, can be found on the Season 5 DVD set and the "Saturday Night Live: The 1970s" collection on Netflix.
  • Season 6 was so poorly received that it's been disowned by all involved (including NBC). Very few 1980-1981 episodes have ever aired on American TV since then, and there will likely never be a DVD release (because of that and music licensing issues). The versions of season six usually shown are clips used for an Eddie Murphy retrospective or a documentary about Saturday Night Live's history. Netflix once had season six in their "Saturday Night Live: The 1980s" collection that featured episodes from seasons six to fifteen^note covering 1980 to 1989, but those were edited to remove poor(er)-performing sketches, the musical performances, and Charles Rocket's infamous "I'd like to know who the fuck did it" line on the episode hosted by Charlene Tilton. Netflix has since removed that collection (and the others). Season six was also shown on Xfinity OnDemand's Streampix, which had every episode of SNL from season one to season 38 (also gone).
  • The Season 7 Halloween episode hosted by Donald Pleasence (with musical guest F.E.A.R.) was banned after its first appearance due to Fear's raucous performance and the dark, disgusting humor of the sketches. They were rather tame compared to what was supposed to air — a sketch about Nazi soldiers thinking of "good reasons" for killing Jewish people, another sketch in which Donald Pleasence drains his date's blood and serves it as wine ^note (yet the "Acupuncture" sketch from the Season 38 episode hosted by Kristen Wiig got away with Kate McKinnon's character tricking Jason Sudeikis' character into drinking the blood leaking from his back), and a third sketch featuring puppets cannibalizing Jane Fonda. The Donald Pleasance episode, like all of season six, was shown on Netflix's Saturday Night Live: The 1980s collection.
  • The Season 23 episode hosted by Chris Farley (with musical guest The Mighty Mighty Bosstones) in his final SNL appearance, two months before his untimely death, has never re-aired due to the physical duress Farley experienced in the last months of his life. Though the Cold Open in which Tim Meadows and Chevy Chase vouch for Farley and his last appearance as Matt Foley can be seen on SNL's YouTube channel, and the memetic ""El Niño" Is Spanish for "The Niño"" is also available elsewhere.
  • For reasons unknown, the Season 27 episode hosted by Alec Baldwin (with musical guest POD) never reran after its premiere, though some of the sketches featured can be found on the DVD release of the special Saturday Night Live: The Best of Alec Baldwin and it is available on Peacock (albeit edited down).
  • Many NBC affiliates refused to air the Season 29 episode hosted by Rev. Al Sharpton – at the time of airing, he was a U.S. Presidential candidate, and affiliates didn't want to break equal-time laws. The episode itself lampooned this with frequent impersonations of other candidates and a "Weekend Update" segment entitled "Jimmy and Tina Make Fun of the Cities that Won't Be Airing SNL Tonight".
  • The season 30 episode hosted by Kate Winslet (with Eminem as musical guest) has not been seen since it premiered and is not included on Hulu or Peacock (going from the Jude Law/Ashlee Simpson episode to the Liam Neeson/Modest Mouse episode). It's currently not known why the Kate Winslet episode isn't included, though speculation ranges from the episode being so bad that no one wants to see it again to some kind of copyright issue involving Winslet's appearance.
  • A handful of skits/bits have never been re-aired thanks to the negative response from the public or sponsors. Some examples include: Martin Lawrence's infamous monologue about female hygiene (in reruns, the first half of the monologue is seen before it fades into a series of title cards saying that the rest of the monologue is so raunchy that it can never be aired again, it nearly got everyone fired on SNL, and Martin Lawrence is not allowed back on the show), Sinead O'Connor's infamous musical performance where she attacks the Catholic Church, a skit titled "The Attack Of The Masturbating Zombies" (which Conan O'Brien wrote), which many advertisers found so offensive that they yanked their promos from the show, the TV Funhouse cartoon, "Conspiracy Theory Rock" that originally aired on the Julianne Moore episode from season 23 (1997-1998 season)^note "Conspiracy Theory Rock" can be found on many video websites and on the SNL Best Of... special centered on Rob Smigel's TV Funhouse cartoons in the "Extras" section.
  • A Season 44 sketch titled "Dad Christmas," in which two kids spend their first Christmas with their father after a bitter divorce, was removed by NBC, presumably due to backlash over negatively stereotyping divorced fathers.
  • A 2017 sketch about a middle school production of Legally Blonde, based on a real and memetic So Bad, It's Good production of the show, has been removed from reruns and official SNL social media, possibly to avoid sending negative attention towards the child actors involved in the real show.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: Zigzagged. The child actors they sometimes use do slip up at times but can also turn into the high point of the sketches, while anything involving animals will definitely go sideways at some point. "Whiskas R We" sometimes has younger cats that are a little harder to control, and any dogs they bring on will sometimes mess with the props. One sketch about "The Dionne Warwick Talk Show" involved Andrew Dismukes as an animal expert bringing in a parrot, who kept cawing loudly before it was introduced, and then started crawling all over Andy once the camera was on it - fortunately the real joke was Dionne singing over them regardless.
  • One digital short in season 36 found a way around this, as it's done in Candid Camera style with host Zach Galifianakis interviewing a string of kids to employ an assistant.
• On-Set Injury: Chevy Chase suffered a groin injury doing a pratfall with a podium in the first episode. This caused him to miss the second and third episodes.
  • During the "Samurai Stockbroker" sketch, host Buck Henry was accidentally hit in the head by John Belushi's katana, causing him to wear a bandage on his head for the rest of the episode.
• Only Barely Renewed: Having NBC exec Dick Ebersol take over as producer was probably the only thing that saved it from getting the ax after season 6. NBC did in fact cancel the show after season 10, before Brandon Tartikoff decided that it was worth another shot if he could talk Lorne Michaels into coming back to produce. The plan worked.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Zigzagged and justified in some cases - impressions of actual people can be passed on to a remaining actor, like Alec Baldwin famously taking over as Donald Trump from Darrell Hammond, and sometimes depends entirely on the guest host at the time (Margot Robbie played Ivanka Trump one time, but Scarlett Johansson's take was so popular she was brought back three times). Original characters tend to be retired when the actor departs since they are very often the actor's own creation, except in special cases, when Melissa McCarthy got to be Chris Farley's Matt Foley for a Milestone Celebration. Certain other characters don't fall into either category and are subject entirely to availability - after Andy Samberg's take on Batman in one digital short, a more recent episode with Chance the Rapper has Beck Bennet as Bruce Wayne instead.
  • In a case of this being played straight, after Mike Myers left the show, John Goodman took over his role of Chicago Superfan Pat Arnold for a sketch airing after Michael Jordan announced his return to the NBA. The difference in appearance was handwaved by the group claiming Pat had gained weight due to the depression resulting from Jordan's retirement causing him to overeat.
• The Pete Best: George Coe, one of the original cast members of the show, who was hired against Lorne Michaels' wishes and was let go after only a few episodes.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Leslie Jones, often saddled with the "loud and horny" characterization, as Oprah Winfrey.
  • In "The Loser," instead of being a weird outcast, Kyle Mooney plays a bully towards a weird outcast.
  • Mikey Day, usually the Only Sane Man, plays one of two Too Dumb to Live kids in the Science Room sketches.
• Post-Script Season:
  • More of a mid-script season if there's such a thing. The infamous and memetic political upheavals of early 2017 led to the SNL crew making a special half-hour Summer Edition of Weekend^note Shouldn't it be Mid-Year instead? Update well before the actual premiere of season 43.
  • Seasons 6, 11, and 20 were all slated to be the final seasons for the show due to how disastrous they were and how much they were hated by fans and critics for being weak and humorless (11 and 20 especially, since people complained that Lorne Michaels has lost his touch and Saturday Night Live has gone bad because it's not like the 1970s episodes most fans remember). All three of these seasons were saved from the chopping block by cast and crew overhauls and, for better or worse, SNL is still on the air.
• Production Posse: Chances are if a SNL cast member is working on a movie or television show, one or more other people associated with SNL will be involved as well. In fact, there have been a number of collaborative duos and groups that have come about because of SNL. Some noteworthy examples are:
  • Dan Aykroyd/John Belushi
  • Chris Farley/David Spade
  • Will Ferrell/David Koechner/Adam McKay
  • Tina Fey/Amy Poehler
  • Tim Herlihy/Adam Sandler/Rob Schneider/Robert Smigel.
• Promoted Fangirl: Emma Stone grew up doing Roseanne Roseannadanna for her friends, and got to play the character in the anniversary show.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor:
  • As an open lesbian, Kate McKinnon often plays lesbian characters, such as Barbara DeDrew in the "Whiskers R We" sketches and the Butch Lesbian Dre who (alongside Aidy Bryant's Megan) mistakes Themyscira for an island of lesbians and ends up kissing Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman.
  • A Season 46 sketch about the "It Gets Better" project had all the gay characters in the sketch played by gay cast members (McKinnon, Bowen Yang, and Punkie Johnson) and the gay host Dan Levy. During the finale of that same season, those same three cast members (plus the host Anya Taylor-Joy, who is not an example) played a group of gay characters celebrating (and crying about) LGBT Pride Month.
  • Tennis player Billie Jean King, a lesbian, is played by Kate McKinnon, who's also a lesbian.
  • Controversial gay Congressman George Santos, is played by gay Bowen Yang.
• Reality Subtext:
  • The season 38 premiere has Fred Armisen as a speaker announcing for Barack Obama (Jay Pharoah), while quipping "wouldn't want his job, am I right?" Fred had been heavily criticized for his own portrayal of Obama, since it was akin to blackface (though Armisen was never actually put in black make-up when he played Obama. It was just that viewers complained that SNL had no black male cast members to fill the role, as they didn't hire Jordan Peele or Donald Glover, nor did they let Kenan Thompson lose enough weight for the role and had to wait until Fred Armisen's final season [season 38] just to switch him out with Jay Pharoah's take on Obama).
  • The first episode of "SNL From Home" has a music video by Pete Davidson, parodying the general music style of Drake by going on and on about a bad breakup. One has to wonder whether Pete having actually been in a high-profile breakup with Ariana Grande had something to do with it.
  • A Weekend Update segment has Cecily Strong as Goober the Clown, a clown who had an abortion the day before her 23rd birthday. The character would engage in clown antics while reluctantly sharing her abortion experience. This was actually Cecily going public about her real-life abortion story.
  • Season finales often feature cast members who are leaving the show in sketches about moving on to new things. For example, Kate McKinnon's final episode had her recurring character, the perpetually-violated alien abductee Colleen Rafferty, leave Earth to live with the aliens. She turns to the camera and says, "Well, Earth, I love ya. Thanks for letting me stay a while," with the obvious subtext being that "Earth" is code for SNL.
• Refitted for Sequel: The show lucked out with Kamala Harris wearing a white suit at the announcement of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election which looked nigh-identical to one they'd already made for Melania Trump, allowing Maya Rudolph to look perfect in it for the sketch of their acceptance speech despite the short notice.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor:
  • Nora Dunn was fired after boycotting the show following Andrew "Dice" Clay's 1990 appearance. Jon Lovitz discussed her boycott of the show in detail during an episode of the podcast The ABC's of SNL with director Kevin Smith:
    Anyway, it's the second to last episode of the season, and Nora, uh, you know, she caused a lot of trouble and she was very hard to get along with, so [SNL] wasn't going to ask her back, anyway. And it's the [second to] last show, and she goes to the press and says, I'm not doing this show. He's against women, and I'm not doing it. And this is how the press works, and I'm telling you, I'm on the inside of this. They don't know this story. They don't know she's just doing it to get press. It's her last hurrah. They're not asking her back on the show.
  • Comedy writer Katie Rich was fired from SNL in 2017 after Tweeting a joke that President Donald Trump's son Barron would become "the world's first homeschool shooter." Rich later deleted the tweet and apologized, but the backlash from Trump supporters and opposers alike forced NBC to fire her. Rich would later return to the show for the Weekend Update: Summer Edition spin-off.
  • Damon Wayans, tired of the minor roles he was getting, was fired for playing a cop as gay in one sketch without prior approval.
  • Probably the most infamous example - Charles Rocket saying "fuck" in a sketch parodying Dallas led to not only him being fired, but the entire cast and most of the writing staff, save for a select few, including Eddie Murphy.
  • Shane Gillis was fired just one week after being chosen as a new cast member for Season 45 (alongside Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang), when a clip of him making racist and sexist jokes on a podcast a few years earlier was unearthed. Gillis' attempt to defend them as being edgy made the situation worse and Lorne Michaels was ultimately forced by the network to fire him.
• Role Reprise:
  • While the TV Funhouse sketches would typically have actors voicing notable cartoon characters of pop culture (such as Disney). They were able to get Tom Kenny (Spongebob Squarepants) and Jeff Bergman (Bugs Bunny) to reprise their roles for the 2003 sketch "X Presidents".
  • When Daniel Radcliffe hosted in 2012, he reprised his role as Harry Potter for a sketch in which Harry is portrayed as a Future Loser.
  • Host William Shatner played Captain Kirk in the 1986 sketch, "Star Trek V: The Restaurant Enterprise." This was, of course, three years before the actual Star Trek V came out.
  • The Christmas episode of season 48, hosted by Steve Martin and Martin Short, not only has them both reprise their characters from Father of the Bride (1991), but brings back Kieran Culkin as well!
  • Aubrey Plaza's first hosting stint in season 48 ultimately leads up to the return of April Ludgate on Weekend Update - with the bonus surprise of Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope!
• Romance on the Set:
  • Brad Hall and Julia Louis-Dreyfus became the only cast members who married each other (though they'd actually met in college prior to SNL).
  • Gilda Radner had an affair with Bill Murray that ended so badly that they didn't speak to each other when they weren't performing. She also dated his brother Brian Doyle-Murray and Dan Aykroyd (though it was over by the time they joined the show). Her friend Judy Levy claimed that Radner found it hard to watch Ghostbusters (1984) because it starred so many of her exes (including Harold Ramis).
  • Aykroyd and Laraine Newman were an item in the show's early days. Aykroyd also had an affair with Lorne Michaels' then-wife Rosie Shuster.
  • There were also several relationships between SNL cast/crew and the show's celebrity hosts, such as Emma Stone and Dave McCary, Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost, and Ben Affleck and Lindsay Shookus.
  • Kim Kardashian began dating cast member Pete Davidson shortly after Kim hosted SNL in 2021. Amusingly, they'd kissed in one of the sketches, playing Jasmine and Aladdin.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: In 2019, then-president Donald Trump despised SNL's parodies of him and considered suing to get them off air. He grudgingly backed out when told that satires are seen as free speech under the First Amendment and that the suit itself would be considered frivolous.
• Scully Box: Leslie Jones of all people needs one, when she plays a basketball player who towers over the already imposing Idris Elba. A tall order to be sure.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Nasim Pedrad and Jenny Slate looked and sounded enough alike that viewers kept mixing them up during their one season together on the show, and they did end up playing sisters in sketches. It went to the point that it was considered to have been a factor in Slate ultimately being let go from the show after only one season.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • SNL has always been an NBC show, but confusingly and rather bizarrely in its first year (as NBC's Saturday Night and Saturday Night) it competed with a completely different show on ABC, also named Saturday Night Live and hosted by Howard Cosell, intended to be a successful Spiritual Successor to The Ed Sullivan Show. When the ABC version of Saturday Night Live became a flop, the NBC version took the show's name (and Bill Murray) for their own.
  • A 2014 sketch and a 2016 film are both named "Office Christmas Party". Despite the similar name and premise, the fact that both the sketch and film feature Kate McKinnon, and the film also features SNL cast member Vanessa Bayer, the film is not based on the sketch.
• Star-Making Role:
  • The show has generated many, many stars over its long run. Most of those people have DVD sets dedicated to their best performances on the show. To name a few (regular cast members only, not guest hosts): Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Phil Hartman, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Bill Hader, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Eddie Murphy, Amy Poehler, Bill Murray, and David Spade
  • Whether the public agrees or not is debatable, but Chris Rock feels that SNL is this for him.
  • Steve Martin is an exception. He was never a member of the regular cast, but hosted often enough to be quite close.
• Throw It In!: Being always live leaves a lot of things improvised on the set, often with the actors cracking up. Even though Lorne hates improv and is almost certain to fire/ban you for doing it, he's been known to let it slide in extreme cases.
  • A famous one from the 1970s — Gilda Radner and episode host Candice Bergen are in this sketch that's really a public service announcement for the Right to Stupidity. Bergen accidentally calls Radner "Fern", which is Bergen's character's name. After much cracking up, Gilda flips the sketch around so that way Bergen's character's the stupid one and not her.
  • In a sketch entitled Black History Minute, Eddie Murphy was playing an "Angry Black Man" Stereotype giving a hectoring monologue to the camera. At one point he stumbled over some words, and a couple of audience members tittered. Without breaking character, he addressed the crowd: "So I messed up. Shut up!"
  • In the infamous first Matt Foley sketch with Chris Farley, near the end Matt tumbles over and breaks the table. This was purely accidental; Farley tripped and crashed into the table, and it went from there, thankfully managing to continue the sketch uninterrupted. The moment was so memorable though that most later Foley sketches had the character crashing into walls or breaking the furniture.
  • In the "Massive Headwound Harry" sketch, a dog on the set started chewing at Dana Carvey's headwound prosthesis and trying to pull it off.
  • There's the ending to one of the Bennett Brauer (Chris Farley) Weekend Updates, where he was supposed to fly but the wires he was hooked to got caught in the lights, keeping him from being fully lifted. Chris Farley ad-libbed: "Do something, please! I have a weight problem." After a bit of fiddling with the wires, Chris finally took flight as intended.
  • A famous one was a simple costume change for the "More Cowbell" sketch. During rehearsals the cast admitted it wasn't really working out, then for the live performance Will Ferrell changed his shirt to something about two sizes too small and everything just snowballed from there.
  • During a Scorpion King sketch with The Rock, he accidentally skipped several lines. However, having made his name with his ability with a microphone on live TV, he kept his cool and somehow seamlessly linked his lines back together, then told the audience, "Don't worry, I've got this!"
  • On the episode hosted by Jason Lee, there was a "Falconer" sketch where a landowner (Lee) appears and calls Forte's character (the Falconer) a "dickhead" instead of a "dickweed". While Lee corrects himself, Forte ad-libs that he is neither a dickweed or a dickhead.
  • Bill Hader would later admit that Stefon's odd body language during the character's early appearances was actually the result of Hader having actual panic attacks onstage. In at least one sketch Seth Meyers can be clearly seen saying "Are you okay, buddy?" to Stefon, but ostensibly was also directed to Hader himself.
  • Seth Meyers ripping up Jebidiah Atkinson's (played by Taran Killam) note card on Weekend Update after the latter ended up flubbing a joke about A Christmas Carol.
  • During a "What Up With That" sketch, Sam Jackson dropped two no-no curse words (which he blamed Kenan Thompson for not cutting him off earlier), which Kenan ran with without breaking stride.
    Thompson: Well, that's all the time we have! I want to thank my guest, the incredible Samuel L. Jackson!
    Jackson: Hey, fuck y— (stops himself)
    Thompson: (as Cole) HEY!
    Jackson: That's bullshit!
    Thompson: Come on, now, Sam! (beat) That costs money!
  • In the March 11, 2017 Scarlett Johansson episode, a sketch featured a device around a (live) dog's neck that translated his thoughts, with Beck Bennett voicing the dog from off-stage. However, midway through the sketch, the dog actually took the prop off of himself, with Scarlett having to put the prop back on. It worked marvelously well, as the dog character was ranting at Scarlett, thus ripping off the device was totally in-character, and Beck rolled with it by ad-libbing the dog as saying "ugh get it off of me!"
  • Naturally a big part of every "Whiskers R We" sketch as Kate McKinnon and the host have to deal with a bunch of unpredictable cats. The biggest was a hairless cat who suddenly lunged at Tiffany Haddish, seemingly because of her saying "He shaved everything off for a gay circuit party," to which Haddish went into a boxing stance. During another part of the sketch, a kitten nearly escapes from its cage, so Haddish grabs it and remarks, "I got the pussy!" nearly cracking McKinnon up.
  • In the Season 45 premiere's Inside the Beltway sketch, a wardrobe assistant badly jumped her cue to do a quick change on Aidy Bryant, and even sheepishly looked directly into the camera as she was hurried offstage. Everyone struggled to get through their giggles about it for the rest of the sketch, and Bryant was even still cracking up during the episode's final sketch.
  • During the Science Room sketch with Jason Sudeikis in Season 47, Melissa Villasenor as the mother of the girl assisting Sudeikis mispronounced her name. Sudeikis didn't miss a beat and wrapped the fact that he'd apparently been mispronouncing her name the whole time into his mental breakdown.
  • During a backstage tour of Colin Jost's dressing room during Weekend Update in Season 47, Sarah Sherman was supposed to show the room had a picture of her face pasted over a female bodybuilder in a bikini, to which Jost would point out Sherman clearly photoshopped it. However, Sherman accidentally dropped the picture behind some furniture and was unable pick it back up. She then continued the bit by describing it as "a thing I threw", which caused Jost to start cracking up.
  • Sometimes, Lorne will even let some improv slide in auditions: Bill Hader said he was too nervous during his audition to give it his all, and started doing an impression of a random Italian man he once overheard. Lorne found it hilarious, and Hader developed it into his character Vinny Vedecci.

• Typecasting: One thing they do a lot is re-deploy an actor in a one-shot role that's similar to one of their regular ones:
  • Terry Sweeney, the first openly gay actor, always got cast doing female impersonations or gay caricatures. Sweeney called this tendency frustrating in a 2017 interview.
  • Bill Hader, and later Kenan Thompson, as a game show host.
  • Also Bill Hader as a hilariously creepy character.
  • Taran Killam as a loud and sometimes obnoxious Large Ham.
  • Vanessa Bayer often plays Genki Girls. This is especially evident in the "J-Pop America Funtime Now" sketches.
  • By the middle of season 44, Mikey Day always played the Only Sane Man.
  • Leslie Jones almost always played loud, assertive, and often man-crazy women.
  • As one of the younger members of the show, Pete Davidson tended to play ditzy millennial burnouts during his early career, though he spoke out against this.
  • Beck Bennett tends to play boisterous Bumbling Dad characters and fratbros.
  • Most of Bowen Yang's roles make him a theatrical Camp Gay character.
  • Kate McKinnon saw most of her SNL career playing either sardonic old women or impressions of male politicians, and occasionally Butch Lesbians.
• Unfinished Episode: The following episodes were scheduled, with announced hosts and musical guests, but never happened for one reason or another
  • Season 6 was troubled for many reasons, but it also had the most canceled episodes of any season. The first, the March 14, 1981 episode with host Robert Guillaume and musical guest Ian Dury and The Blockheads, was pulled from the schedule after Jean Doumanian was fired as showrunner to give new producer Dick Ebersol time to retool the show. Only one more episode was completed after that before the season ended early due to the 1981 Writers' Guide strike. This resulted in six episodes being canceled: April 18 (Al Franken and Tom Davis with the Grateful Dead), April 25 (Dan Aykroyd with Pat Benatar), May 2 (Steve Martin with Neil Young), May 9 (Brooke Shields with Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers), and May 16 (Buck Henry and REO Speedwagon). Of these, Guillaume, Aykroyd, and Martin all returned to host, while Petty went on to have seven further musical appearances. Young, who was scheduled to make his first appearance on the show, didn't appear as a musical guest until 1989. Franken and Davis, both former writers and cast members, would both return to the show often, and Franken even had another tenure in the cast, but neither ever got to host the show. The Grateful Dead had been musical guests before but would not appear on the show again. Henry, one of the most prolific hosts of the 70s, would never host again, although he did appear when Tom Hanks was inducted into the Five Timers' Club. Shields has yet to host the show, while Dury, Benatar, and REO Speedwagon never got the chance to appear as musical guests.
  • The March 9, 1985 episode was to feature hosts John Candy and Eugene Levy with musical guests Daryl Hall & John Oates. Candy and Levy even appeared during the "SNL Film Festival" Clip Show that aired the week before to promote their episode. However, the March 9 episode was canceled due to a writers' strike. Candy and Hall & Oates had already hosted and performed on the show before 1985, but Levy has never hosted on the show, and didn't even appear on the show until 2021 when he appeared during the monologue of an episode his son Dan hosted.
  • Gilda Radner was set to host the May 14, 1988 episode with musical guest U2, but the thirteenth season ended early due to a writers' strike. Radner would die of ovarian cancer the following year, before ever having hosted. If she had hosted, she would have been the first female cast member to do so, an honor that would eventually go to Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who first hosted in 2006, eighteen years later! U2 did not appear on the show again until 2000.
  • The November 10, 2007 episode was supposed to feature Dwayne Johnson as host and Amy Winehouse as musical guest, but it was also cancelled due to a writers' strike. Johnson had hosted SNL before, and would host again after the strike was settled, but Winehouse never got a chance to appear on the show before her death in 2011.
  • John Krasinski was slated to host on March 28, 2020 with Dua Lipa as musical guest, but then the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City forced the show to take a production hiatus. Krasinski would host the next season with Machine Gun Kelly as the musical guest, while Lipa also appeared that season as the music guest in the episode hosted by Kristen Wiig.
  • Pete Davidson was set to host May 6, 2023 with Lil Uzi Vert 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. Once the strike ended, Davidson would host the next season's premiere with Ice Spice as musical guest.
• Wag the Director: When Macaulay Culkin hosted in 1991, his infamous Stage Dad Kit forced the show to eschew using cue cards during the sketches because he considered the practice unprofessional.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
• Write What You Know:
  • According to Paul Mooney, the famous "Word Association" sketch was inspired by an incident that he had with NBC executives. According to Mooney, he was subjected to an intense job interview before he was allowed to write for the episode.
  • David Spade's "Dick Clark's Receptionist" sketch was based on an incident during the week Patrick Swayze hosted the show where Spade tried to meet with Swayze to discuss sketch ideas, only for Swayze's assistant to not recognize him and refuse him entry into his dressing room.
  • The "Girl with No Gaydar" sketch was based on an incident following the show's first post-9/11 episode where Rachel Dratch flirted with one of the FDNY first responders who attended the show's after party only to discover he was gay at the end of the night.
  • The "Waking Up" sketch was inspired by instances during the Last of Us shoot of Pedro Pascal breaking into a Valley Girl dialect, emulating hairstylist Coco Ullrich, when he felt the need to lighten the mood in between takes.
• Write Who You Know: A lot of SNL's recurring characters are actually based on people that either the writers or the cast members have encountered in life:
  • Jay Pharoah's Principal Frye, the wheezing high school principal of Booker T. Washington High who constantly interrupts assemblies with news of some kind of disaster happening at the school, is actually based on the principal from Pharoah's high school in Chesapeake, Virginia. The only thing that's changed is the name: the principal's name in real life is James while the character Jay Pharoah plays is named Daniel.
  • Bill Hader's Stefon character is actually based on two people: a wannabe club promoter John Mulaney (the writer behind the Stefon segments on Weekend Update) met while in New York (and the wannabe club owner's email), and a barista Bill Hader met who actually looked, dressed, and spoke like Stefon.
  • Julia Sweeney's androgynous Pat character was actually based on a woman Julia saw who looked so much like a man that Sweeney questioned her gender.
  • One of Kristen Wiig's characters was "Aunt Linda", who appeared on Weekend Update to review/complain about new movies. Kristen Wiig got the idea for the character from a woman she saw on a airplane, who was very confused by the in-flight movie (The Matrix, in case you were wondering) and very vocal about her confusion.
  • Mike Myers' recurring sketch Coffee Talk With Linda Richman was based on his mother-in-law, Linda Richman.
  • Dana Carvey based Garth Algar (from Wayne's World) on his brother Brad.

Trope Trivia

• Corpsing: Justified as it's a live TV show, so mistakes of all kinds (including actors losing it due to hammy acting or an unscripted mistake) are bound to happen. Our page here needs a whole folder of the cast losing it.
  • Prevalent when Jimmy Fallon became a Weekend Update anchor (which most fans declared was distracting).
  • It also happens every time Bill Hader appears as Stefon on Weekend Update (That Other Wiki and most late-night talk show interviews even claim that Bill Hader has never got through a Stefon segment — both in dress rehearsal and on the live show — without cracking up ^note Though this is an exaggeration, as there are actually four segments in which Bill Hader has played Stefon and not cracked up once — the first sketch that introduced Stefon as the estranged brother of a Disney screenwriter, a Weekend Update segment that had Stefon, Bobby Moynihan as Snooki from Jersey Shore, and Fred Armisen as Governor David Paterson singing "O, Christmas Tree," another Weekend Update segment with Seth Meyers announcing to the audience that he's going on summer vacation with Stefon, and in the monologue of the Maya Rudolph episode, where Stefon appears as a background singer for Maya Rudolph. Still, the four times Hader hasn't cracked up compared to the 13 times he did, as of his final appearance on May 18, 2013, is not a good track record), though, unlike Jimmy Fallon's cracking up ^note  which is usually blamed on Fallon's lack of professionalism, according to his detractors, there's a reason why it happens to Bill Hader. According to That Other Wiki and an interview on The Late Show with David Letterman, John Mulaney (one of the show writers) changes some of the lines without Bill Hader's knowledge and Hader is actually reacting to what he's reading.
  • An example from the fourth season: During one "Weekend Update" segment, Bill Murray reported the death of the horse who played Mister Ed. He followed that up with a live interview with Ed's "widow": a live, rather uncooperative horse (voiced by Gilda Radner). Right after this hilarious moment, the camera cut to Jane Curtin, who immediately burst out laughing and was barely able to say the segment's closing line.
  • The first "Debbie Downer" sketch, in early 2004 with Lindsay Lohan, was arguably made memorable by the corpsing. A flubbed line by Rachel Dratch and the sketch's constant use of the "wah-wah" as the camera zooms in on her steadily crumbling face was enough to send every member of the sketch into hysterics (except for Fred Armisen who was still clearly struggling), with the worst culprit being Horatio Sanz, who was eventually doing nothing but laughing hysterically by the end of the sketch and at one point uses the Mickey Mouse waffle on his plate to wipe the tears of laughter from his eyes.
  • One of the few times Phil Hartman lost it was as Frankenstein, disagreeing with Tarzan and Tonto on whether "fire - bad!"
  • It still happened on occasion, but corpsing was seriously frowned on in the early years of the show. It was seen as part of the "old-fashioned" comedy exemplified by The Carol Burnett Show that the early creators wanted to avoid.
  • Perhaps one of the more obvious examples was in the "Dr. Beaman's Office" sketch where, sometime around the moment when Dr. Poop came in, Molly Shannon (playing the baby's mother) had a hard time keeping a straight face, and this spread to Will Ferrell (playing Dr. Beaman), who had to put his hands over his face to compose himself when he delivered the line, "The truth is... we misplaced your baby." In the next cut, Molly Shannon is smiling wide instead of being horrified, and Chris Parnell (the baby's father) doesn't look too upset either.
  • Chris Farley loved to cause this on the other actors, sometimes by throwing himself on the scenery! One outstanding case is the original Matt Foley sketch, it's clear both David Spade and host Christina Applegate are badly hiding their laughter.
    • Jay Mohr has stated that Farley would essentially make a game out of getting his co-stars to crack, to the point that if he was in a sketch and knew the camera wasn't on him he would simply cross his eyes while looking directly at the person the scene was focused on, which was enough to do it in most circumstances.
  • Another example is Taran Killam's character Jebidiah Atkinson who reviews speeches(along with Christmas specials.) Both times he has appeared Seth Meyers tries to keep a straight face but he fails. In his first appearance he flubbed a Pearl Harbor speech joke. He along with Seth failed at keeping smiles off their faces. In his second appearance he missed a sentence for a joke about A Christmas Carol, and Seth ended up dying of laughter.
  • In a DeMarco Brothers sketch with Bon Jovi, both Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora are struggling to keep a straight face the whole way, culminating in Bon Jovi erupting into laughter when Chris Parnell and Chris Kattan break out '80s Hair wigs to imitate the band.
  • In the classic "Space: The Infinity Frontier with Harry Caray" sketch with Will Ferrell and Jeff Goldblum, Goldblum increasingly starts to break as Ferrell/Caray gets more loopy ("It's a simple question, would you eat the moon if it were made of ribs?!...Just say yes and we'll move on!"). Finally Goldblum cracks up as Ferrell!Caray remarks about not getting Mad Cow Disease; the camera stays focused on Ferrell while Goldblum comes unglued to applause.
  • Acknowledged in a Digital Short that debuted during the 40th Anniversary special. Andy Samburg and Adam Sandler sing about the numerous times the SNL cast broke character. Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz got the most mentions.
  • It's particularly evident whenever Ryan Gosling 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 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), while Gosling finally broke toward the end of the sketch.
  • The rather famous "Love-ahs" sketch with Will Ferrell, Rachel Dratch, Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore had everyone barely holding it together throughout. The sheer awkwardness of the premise made the character breaking that much funnier, and Farrel admitted that in the hot tub he would occasionally caress Fallon's leg under the water, only exacerbating the situation. At several points the audience openly applauds with laughter.
  • In the "Career Day" sketch, Pete Davidson begins laughing almost immediately after Adam Driver (as Abraham H. Parnassus) begins talking to him and can barely hold it together through the rest of the sketch. Melissa Villaseñor mostly stays in character but breaks on her final line. Adam Driver plays it completely straight without a single flinch.
  • Adele appears in the 2020 season, in a sketch about an ad for tourism in Africa, revealed eventually to be touting the potential of hooking up with black guys. It's really the audience reaction rather than the punchline that causes Adele to melt down uncontrollably.

  • Farley's co-stars would often be in stitches whenever he was in character. On the first Matt Foley sketch, David Spade spent most of the time with his hand over his mouth.
  • A constant feature of Rachel Dratch's sketches is that nobody, not even her, can keep a straight face around Debbie.
  • A big part of Stefon's act is laughing out of character, made all the more hilarious by his generally oblivious in-character personality. ^note  Parts of the corpsing seem to be due to the teleprompter being different than what he rehearsed — something that John Mulaney revealed that he did on purpose due to how funny it usually is when someone breaks character.
  • When Pedro Pascal hosted in Season 48, he broke during two different sketches: One in which a coma leaves him mumbling like an "LA Mushmouth," to quote Kenan Thompson's character, and one which stars Ego Nwodim as Lisa from Temecula, a smart-mouthed lawyer who loves eating "extra, extra well-done" steaks. None of the actors in the latter sketch could contain themselves, thanks to Lisa's sass and her messy meat-cutting techniques.
• Trope Maker: SNL had one of the first and most memorable examples of the 900 Number, "Larry the Lobster".

Casting Trivia

• Tina Fey: the first female head writer on SNL. She holds the record for the longest running Weekend Update anchorwoman on SNL (though Seth Meyers broke the overall record held by Dennis Miller and Fey was on maternity leave for a few episodes, she is still considered the longest-running female Weekend Update anchor).
• Harry Shearer: the only cast member to be such for two non-consecutive seasons (1979-80 ^note  season 5 and 1984-85 ^note  season 10), making him the Grover Cleveland of SNL. Also the only cast member to be a regular cast member on another long-running American comedy show that heavily influenced modern pop culture, is considered a goldmine of modern satire and memorable catchphrases, memes, and comic moments, and whose humor and quality has been called into question in every year it's run (specifically the recent episodes vs. the older ones) — The Simpsons^note (Phil Hartman, while a memorable and endearing cast member of both SNL and The Simpsons, doesn't count since he wasn't credited as a regular on The Simpsons.)
• Seth Meyers, the only cast member to have a family member who was on a rival show (Josh Meyers, his younger brother, was on MADtv (1995) for the show's eighth and ninth seasons). Meyers is now the longest-running male cast member on the show following Darrell Hammond's departure in 2009 (Meyers has been on the show since 2001, but he didn't become popular until he replaced Tina Fey as Weekend Update anchor). Meyers has beaten Dennis Miller as longest-running Weekend Update anchor (and is the second Weekend Update anchor after Charles Rocket to alternate between having a female co-anchor and doing the segment by himself), though his record was later surpassed by Colin Jost.
• Eddie Murphy, the first black SNL cast member to be famous, the youngest black male cast member to be hired (Murphy was only 19 when he joined the 1980-1981 cast) and the only host to host an episode while still a cast member — specifically the December 11, 1982 show that was supposed to be helmed by Nick Nolte, but Nolte was too hungover from partying to make it to rehearsals, so Murphy took over...much to the shock and anger of the cast, who felt that Eddie Murphy was overtaking the show (even his overexposed-on-the-show partner-in-crime Joe Piscopo thought Eddie was hogging the spotlight too much).^note When Chris Farley hosted on October 25, 1997, Tim Meadows jokingly suggested that he should host the show, instead. Given the poor state of Farley's health at that time (he died 2 months later), they probably should've let Meadows fill in as host. Murphy's star power was obvious enough that he survived the 1981 purge of the Jean Doumanian cast (along with Joe Piscopo^note Denny Dillon and Gail Matthius also survived, but they only appeared in the season six finale, which was also the first episode Dick Ebersol produced before the show was temporarily canceled due to a Writers' Guild strike and NBC trying to salvage the show. There was no set host, but there were appearances by Chevy Chase, Al Franken, Christopher Reeve, and Robin Williams, and the musical guest was Jr. Walker and the All-Stars), and he quickly became probably the biggest star the show has ever created. Murphy left the show in 1984 for a wildly successful film career. He boycotted SNL after David Spade made an unflattering joke about him during a "Weekend Update" segment in 1995, but returned for the show's 40th anniversary special... although even then, he didn't do any skits or comedy bits and some observers thought he looked a bit disinterested^note Norm Macdonald later explained Murphy was originally supposed to play Bill Cosby during the Celebrity Jeopardy sketch, but felt uncomfortable mocking Cosby and backed out close to airtime, which left him with nothing to do except for a brief, off-the-cuff monologue praising the show. Kenan Thompson wound up doing Murphy's role in the sketch. Though by the time Murphy would host in 2019, Cosby had been convicted of sexual assault, so Murphy gladly took a potshot at him in his opening monologue.. Murphy also has the longest gap between hosting episodes at 35 years (and, technically, the shortest gap between being a cast member and hosting an episode as he hosted while still an active cast member in 1982); Murphy hosted a season 10 Christmas episode in 1984 and didn't come back to host again until 2019 (which, coincidentally, was a Christmas episode).
• Darrell Hammond, the cast member with the most celebrity impersonations (107, with Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump, most of George W. Bush's Cabinet [particularly Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney], Hardball host Chris Matthews, and Sean Connery as his most frequent and most popular)^note As of 2013, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, and Kenan Thompson have the highest number of celebrity impressions — Armisen has 102, Kenan has 140 and counting, Bill Hader has 84, and Jason Sudeikis has 79, though now it's just Kenan Thompson following the departures of Sudeikis, Armisen, and Hader, the last cast member hired in the 1990s to leave the show (Hammond left at the end of Season 34), the oldest cast member to leave the show (Hammond was 55 when he left the show), and the longest-running white male cast member at 14 seasons. With the death of Don Pardo in August 2014, Darrell Hammond has been hired back to the show, this time, as the new announcer (appropriately, considering that he sometimes filled in for Pardo whenever he was sick or otherwise unavailable and Hammond's Pardo impression is almost like the real thing. Ironically, Darrell Hammond decided not to do a Pardo impersonation for his role as announcer, both out of respect and the fact that SNL is always trying to reinvent itself).
• Joan Cusack (from the 1985-1986 season) and Kristen Wiig (who was on show from 2005 to 2012) are the only female cast members to be nominated for Academy Awards; Cusack, twice (for Best Supporting Actress in Working Girl and In & Out), and Wiig, once (for Best Original Screenplay, as the co-writer of Bridesmaids).
• Jason Sudeikis (2005-2013) and Paul Brittain (2010-2012): Both are nephews to two sitcom actors who have hosted the show more than once. Jason Sudeikis's uncle is George Wendt (Norm from Cheers), who first hosted during the 1985-1986 season ^note on a bizarre, fourth wall-breaking episode that had Francis Ford Coppola trying to fix the show and a musical performance by Phillip Glass and made frequent appearances in the 1990s as one of Bob Swerski's "Super Fans"; Paul Brittain is the nephew of Bob Newhart, who first hosted during the 1979-1980 season ^note The fifth season and the last season featuring the remnants of the original cast — and Harry Shearer before he became a cast member on The Simpsons and hosted again during the notoriously awful 20th season. Sudeikis would later return to host for the first time in Season 47.
• Al Franken: The first — and so far only — SNL cast member to be elected U.S. Senator (and, like most Senators that the show has mocked during its tenure, had to resign in disgrace over sexual misconduct allegations).
• John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Michael O Donoghue, Laraine Newman, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin,Garrett Morris and George Coe: The original Not Ready For Prime Time Players, a.k.a. the debut cast on October 11, 1975. When the show premiered the sketch comedy was only one part of the larger whole, and the cast was billed all at once as a group in the opening credits. They would soon be regarded as a unique collection of comic talent and today are still looked at as one of the best casts (the Hartman-Carvey era from roughly 1986-1993 is another contender). After Chase became the first departure early in the 1976-77 season, he was replaced by Bill Murray, who became one of the biggest stars the show has ever created.
• Michael McKean, the oldest male to be hired as a regular cast member (he was 46 years old when he first joined the cast near the end of the 19th season). While George Coe was technically older by a few days, he only appeared in two episodes and was forced upon the show by NBC rather than actually hired by Lorne Michaels. McKean is also the only Saturday Night Live cast member to host and be a musical guest before joining the show.
• Bill Murray and Brian Doyle-Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Peter Aykroyd, and John Belushi and James Belushi are the only three sets of brothers to both be in the cast. In the case of the Murray brothers, the younger of the two was hired first. Brian Doyle-Murray originally was only hired as a writer, but became a featured player during the fifth season, making he and Bill the only brothers who were cast members at the same time. He then went back to being a writer only for the sixth season, but rejoined the cast (again as a featured player) for the seventh season. John and Jim Belushi were the only two brothers who were both repertory players, but in fairness, during the time Jim Belushi joined the show, there were no featured players. He joined the cast a couple of years after his older brother's death.
• Anthony Michael Hall (no relation to Brad Hall or Rich Hall): the youngest cast member ever hired, at only 17 when he joined the 1985-1986 cast, and the only one to have been under the age of 18 when hired (SNL has had cast members who were over 18, but under 21, such as Robert Downey, Jr., Eddie Murphy, and Pete Davidson).
• Abby Elliott, the first (and so far only) cast member who is the child of another cast member (her father is Chris Elliott, who was on Saturday Night Live during its 20th season [1994-1995]). Chris' own father was Bob Elliott of Bob & Ray (who appeared on a Christmas episode of SNL in 1978), making it three generations of Elliotts who have appeared on the show in some capacity. Elliott was also the youngest female cast member in the show's history (21 and five months when she first appeared as a cast member in 2009), beating out Julia Louis-Dreyfus (21 and eight months when she first came on the show in 1982). Her departure from the show in 2012 makes her the member of the Elliott family who has been on SNL the longest (her grandfather cameoed in one episode and her father was on the show for a season^note and the season he was on was deemed by many to be a major low point that hasn't been reached on the show since season six), with four years (2008 to 2012) under her belt.
• Jeff Richards, the first cast member who was also a MADtv cast member (Richards was on MADtv from 2000-01, then left for SNL and stayed on there from 2001 to the middle of the 2003-04 season).
  • As of 2010, another former MADtv cast member has been hired on SNL — Taran Killam, one in a long string of feature players who were on MADtv for one to two seasons and ended up getting fired by the FOX Network for "not working out," never mind that Killam was brought in mid-season, only appeared in four episodes out of 25 (but was credited for 13), and barely had any memorable moments, except for that one music video sketch where he plays Alex Band from The Calling being accused of sounding like Scott Stapp (Will Sasso) and Eddie Vedder (Michael MacDonald).
    • Killam is also the second SNL cast member who got his start on a Nickelodeon sketch show (for Killam, that would be All That's spin-off, The Amanda Show).
• Billy Crystal, one of two cast members who hosted prior to being cast on the show (the other was McKean, who also holds the distinction of being the only cast member to host and be a musical guest before becoming a cast member).
• Rob Riggle, the only member of the U.S. Marine Corps to be a cast member. Also the third former cast member to later become a correspondent on The Daily Show, joining A. Whitney Brown ^note A feature player who first appeared on the 1985-1986 season; he rarely appeared in sketches, but often appeared with Dennis Miller on Weekend Update to do a segment called "The Big Picture" and Nancy Walls ^note Nancy Walls was on the show during the 21st season — 1995-1996, and was let go in favor of Ana Gasteyer. Is married to Steve Carell, who joked when hosting that he auditioned to be on SNL. He had not actually p auditioned..
  • On the other side, Michael Che is the only cast member so far who had previously served as a correspondent on The Daily Show. In fact, he left The Daily Show to join SNL no long after having joined the former show, making him have one of the shortest tenures for a correspondent.
• Tony Rosato, Pamela Stephenson, Morwenna Banks, Horatio Sanz, Nasim Pedrad, Sasheer Zamata, and Bowen Yang are the only cast members to be born outside of North America^note "North America" meaning the United States, Canada, and Mexico. SNL has had a lot of American- and Canadian-born cast members. Noël Wells from the season 39 cast has Mexican heritage, but she's American-born, as opposed to being originally from Mexico and moving to America (Rosato was born in Italy before his parents emigrated to Canada, Stephenson was born in New Zealand and is now an Australian citizen, Banks was originally from England and moved back there after getting fired from SNL, Sanz was born in Chile, Nasim Pedrad is Iranian-born, Sasheer Zamata was born to African-American parents in Okinawa, Japan^note her father was in the military and her family moved around a lot, and Bowen Yang was born in Queensland, Australia to Chinese immigrants who then moved to Quebec and then to Colorado).
  • Tony Rosato and Robin Duke are also the first former cast members of SCTV to be on Saturday Night Live^note it would have been Catherine O'Hara, but there is a long-standing rumor that she quit after Michael O'Donoghue lambasted the season six cast and writers for running the show into the ground, when really she quit because she felt more at home on SCTV, though the SCTV cast member who crossed over to SNL most people would remember is Martin Short, as he brought his Ed Grimley character from SCTV to SNL. Short is also the only cast member whose recurring character has his own Saturday morning cartoon: The Completely Mental Misadventures Of Ed Grimley^note which ran from October to December of 1988. It was one of many scripted shows that was affected by the 1988 Writers' Guild strike and, as of December 2012, is the only Dick Ebersol-era cast member to host three times.
• Leslie Jones is the oldest cast member ever hired at 47 years old^note even though she looks younger than that, beating out Michael McKean (who was 46 when he was hired almost 20 years ago) and the last cast member to be born before Saturday Night Live premiered on television (Leslie Jones was born in September 1967) and the oldest black female cast member ever hired.
• Christopher Guest (from the 1984-1985 season — season 10): Is the only SNL cast member who is a member of British nobility (his real title is, "Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest," or "Lord Haden-Guest" for short).
• Brad Hall and Julia Louis-Dreyfus: The only SNL cast members to be married to each other. Hall was on the show from 1982 to 1984 (spanning seasons eight and nine, though he was fired from his stint as Weekend Update anchor and replaced with whoever was the episode host at the time^note originally, it was going to be Tim Kazurinsky, but Kazurinsky was friends with Hall and didn't want to betray him) while his wife stayed on until season ten, when everyone was fired and NBC had plans to cancel the show until Lorne Michaels decided to return.
• Rich Hall (no relation to Brad or Anthony Michael): The only cast member from Fridays ^note  ABC's answer to Saturday Night Live that lasted from 1980 to 1982 to be a cast member on SNL, though Rich Hall wasn't credited as a cast member on Fridays. He, like Michael O'Donoghue on SNL, was a writer who often appeared on-camera performing bits that he wrote himself.
• Noël Wells: Was the first Hispanic female cast member (Cecily Strong was thought to be the first Hispanic cast member due to her slightly brown complexion and exotic looks), the third Hispanic cast member overall (after Horatio Sanz and Fred Armisen), the second one after Fred Armisen to not be a full-blooded Hispanic, and the second cast member to have ancestry from a Middle Eastern country (Wells is part Tunisian^note Tunisia is a North African country and most world maps include North African countries like Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt as part of the Middle East along with the central Asian countries that you always hear about on the news, like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates and Nasim Pedrad is Iranian).
• Kenan Thompson (2003-present): From Nickelodeon in his youth (All That and Kenan & Kel), he is the first cast member to be born after the show debuted (Thompson was born in 1978; SNL first came on in 1975), the first cast member to get his start on a Nickelodeon kids' show, and has surpassed Tim Meadows^note who was on the show from 1990 to 2000, but became prominent between 1995 and 2000 as the longest-tenured black male cast member, as well as the longest-tenured cast member in the show's history.
• Cecily Strong (2012-2022): The longest-running female cast member in the show's history at 212 episodes, having surpassed her fellow castmate Kate McKinnon, with said episode being her last as a cast member. She had briefly been an anchor on Weekend Update, but was replaced by Michael Che, partly to focus on doing sketches.
• Pete Davidson (2014-2022): Davidson^note a stand-up comic from Staten Island whose father, Scott Davidson, was one of the firefighters who died in the line of duty during the 9/11 attacks. Davidson was a little under eight years old when his father died, and his father's death is said to be the source of a lot of his mental problems is the first SNL cast member to be born in the 1990s (Davidson was born in November of 1993).
  • Other 1990s-born cast members include one-season wonders, Luke Null and Lauren Holt, and current (as of the 2021-2022 season) cast member, Bowen Yang. As of the 2021-2022 season, the show's newest 1990s born cast members are Andrew Dismukes (who was one of the show's writers) and Sarah Sherman. Dismukes has now beaten Pete Davidson as the youngest male current cast member (Dismukes was born in 1995, making him two years younger than Pete) while Sherman (born in 1992/1993) has beaten Chloe Fineman, Ego Nwodim, and Lauren Holt (along with Aidy Bryant and Melissa Villaseñor) as the youngest female current cast member, though Nwodim is still the youngest African-American cast member and Villaseñor is the youngest Latina cast member).
• Denny Dillon, Terry Sweeney, Danitra Vance, Janeane Garofalo, Kate McKinnon, John Milhiser, Bowen Yang, Punkie Johnson and Molly Kearney: These nine are, so far, the only Saturday Night Live cast members who are on the LGBTQ+ spectrum ^note though it's mostly homosexual men and lesbians. SNL hasn't hired a bisexual or a transsexual person, though Kearney ended up being the first non-binary cast member and Garofalo came out as asexual decades later, but, due to the show being a Long Runner always looking for up-and-coming talent and many former cast members are still alive, that can change:
  • Denny Dillon, from the show's notoriously awful sixth season (from 1980 to 1981), is the show's first LGBTQ+ cast member overall and the first lesbian cast member^note though she wasn't fully out of the closet when she was hired. Her friends and some cast members knew of her sexual preference, but she didn't come out until years after her time on the show. Dillon is also the show's shortest female cast member at 4'11", the only lesbian cast member who never worked under Lorne Michaels as a cast member, and is one in a handful of cast members who have appeared on Saturday Night Live in some capacity under all three showrunners^note (Dillon cameoed in a few of Lorne Michaels' earlier episodes, was a cast member for Jean Doumanian and was kept on the show when Dick Ebersol was called in to produce the season six finale episode), joining Eddie Murphy (who started out as a Jean Doumanian cast member, became a major star in the Dick Ebersol episodes^note even going as far as hosting an episode while still an active cast member, and appeared on two Lorne Michaels-produced episodes: the 40th anniversary special and the season 45 Christmas episode with Lizzo as musical guest), Yvonne Hudson (was an uncredited bit player during Lorne Michaels' fifth season, was a feature player for Jean Doumanian^note the first African-American female to do so, and then was relegated back to bit roles for Dick Ebersol before disappearing completely from the public eye), and Bill Murray (was cast by Lorne Michaels when Chevy Chase left the show, hosted a Jean Doumanian episode^note where he visibly shunned all of Jean's cast members, except for Eddie Murphy, hosted a Dick Ebersol episode (the season seven Christmas episode), and hosted some Lorne Michaels-produced episodes (one in 1987, one in 1993, and one in 1999, with some cameo appearances in 1994, 2008, 2016, and 2018).
  • Terry Sweeney, from the 1985-1986 season^note which was bad because of the cast and writing, but, unlike Jean Doumanian's cast, there was some humor to be had and its Weekend Update was considered that season's saving grace (though Terry Sweeney got his start as a writer for Jean Doumanian back in the early 1980s) is the first openly gay cast member hired, as well as the show's first homosexual male cast member, and the first openly gay actor to ever appear on American television^note this was back in the 1980s, when, if you were a man, being open about your homosexuality was considered a career killer — especially since the mid-1980s was when everyone worried about the AIDS epidemic and the political climate was more conservative. Sweeney's lover was another SNL writer named Lanier Laney, and the two are the show's first (and, so far, only) known same-sex couple and the only SNL writer to cross over to MADtv (Sweeney and Laney wrote for MADtv during its third season, then went on to create the short-lived WB sketch show Hype)^note It should be noted that, despite the same surname, Terry Sweeney is not related to 1990s cast member Julia Sweeney.
  • Danitra Vance, also from the 1985-1986 season, was the show's only lesbian of color, not to mention the show's first female African-American repertory player (as opposed to being a feature player and never being promoted, like Yvonne Hudson), the only SNL cast member with a learning disability (Vance was dyslexic, though Vance's acting and ad-libbing covered it up for the most part), and the only deceased African-American cast member as of 2020 (Vance died of breast cancer in 1994). It should also be noted that Terry Sweeney and Danitra Vance being put in the same cast was the first time Saturday Night Live had two LGBTQ+ cast members in the same cast (and the first time they would be interracial. There wouldn't be another case of this until 2019 with Kate McKinnon and Bowen Yang [white lesbian and Chinese gay male], and again in late 2020 with Kate McKinnon, Bowen Yang, and Punkie Johnson [white lesbian, Chinese gay male, and black lesbian], the latter of which is also the first time in SNL history to have more than one or two LGBTQ+ cast members)
  • Janeane Garofalo came out as asexual in 2019, 24 years after her departure from SNL. During her brief tenure on the series, she played the sort of female roles of the kind that would have been given to Jan Hooks or Nora Dunn in previous years.
  • In April 2012, SNL, for the first time in 27 years, hired Kate McKinnon, a cast member who, like Terry Sweeney, is openly gay and often cross-cast as the opposite sex; and, like Denny Dillon, is a white lesbian with blond hair and a penchant for playing strange characters. Like Erica Ash on MADtv (1995)'s 14th season, McKinnon got her sketch comedy start on Logo's The Big Gay Sketch Show. McKinnon is also the first lesbian cast member to actually be popular (much like how Eddie Murphy became the show's first popular black cast member in the early 1980s) and the first cast member to win the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress (though several cast members were nominated before) and only the third overall actually win one (after Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner, from the original "Not Ready for Primetime" cast). She had held the title for the longest-tenured female cast member until she was surpassed by Cecily Strong by one episode, who joined the cast months after she did.
  • John Milhiser: SNL's second openly gay white male cast member, who, like Terry Sweeney before him, only lasted a season (and, unlike Terry Sweeney, wasn't cross-dressed in any of his roles^note in fact, Milhiser didn't have that much screen time at all, due to the big cast the show had in its 39th season and fans complaining that SNL did not hire a black female cast member and didn't notice or care that they also hired an openly gay male for the first time since 1985 and a Latina and Tunisian cast member in Noel Wells).
  • The most recent gay male cast member the show hired is Bowen Yang, who was initially hired as a writer on the show in season 44 (2018-2019 season). Yang is the first non-white gay male cast member (and one of only two LGBTQ+ cast members who isn't a white person, joining Danitra Vance) and the show's first Chinese-American cast member (though not the first Asian-American cast member, as Rob Schneider^note who is half-Filipino, Fred Armisen^note who is a quarter Korean on his father's side, though he mistakenly thought he was Japanese until he appeared on the PBS show, Finding Your Roots and discovered that his paternal grandfather hid his true ethnicity to escape persecution and discrimination against Koreans when the Japanese annexed South Korea, and even Nasim Pedrad^note though that may be debatable, as Pedrad is from Iran and most people don't know or care to count Middle Eastern countries as part of Asia, even though it is geographically correct have come before him).
  • Punkie Johnson, a stand-up comedian, is the latest LGBTQ cast member hired for the 2020-2021 season. Not only is she the seventh LGBTQ+ cast member on the show, she's also the first one since 1985 to be a black lesbian after Danitra Vance, the third non-white LGBTQ+ cast member (after Danitra Vance and Bowen Yang), and the first black lesbian to be open (Vance, much like Denny Dillon, was a lesbian, but it wasn't made public until her 1994 obituary stated that she was survived by a widow named Jones Miller).
  • Molly Kearney, hired at the start of the 48th season, is non-binary, and the first non-binary cast member ever. They have portrayed male and female characters and when playing themselves, spoken up about being non-binary on camera.
• Michael Che: The first African-American Weekend Update anchor as of 2014. His pairing with Colin Jost will make this the second time SNL has had a same-sex Weekend Update team (after Tina Fey and Amy Poehler), the second time SNL has had an interracial Weekend Update team (the first was the temporary hiring of Horatio Sanz with Amy Poehler while Tina Fey was on maternity leave for most of the 2005-2006 season), and the first time the Weekend Update team consisted of two male castmembers instead of one man^note  As seen with Chevy Chase, Charles Rocket, Brad Hall, Christopher Guest, Dennis Miller, Kevin Nealon, Norm Macdonald, Colin Quinn, or Seth Meyers. or one man and one woman ^note  As seen with Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd/Bill Murray, Charles Rocket and Gail Matthius, Brian Doyle-Murray with Christine Ebersole/Mary Gross, Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler and Horatio Sanz/Seth Meyers, and Cecily Strong and Seth Meyers/Colin Jost..

• The "Five-Timers Club" is a distinction attributed to celebrity guests who have hosted the show a minimum of five times, first recognized by Tom Hanks during his fifth episode as host in 1990. (His fellow Five-Timers at that point were Steve Martin and Elliott Gould. ^note Paul Simon is also often included in sketches on the topic, but he's not technically a full member as he's only hosted four times.) For club members who have exceeded twelve or more hosting appearances, there is also the more exclusive "Platinum Lounge", as introduced in Alec Baldwin's twelfth episode. (As of 2020, Baldwin has racked up the episodes with a staggering seventeen.) A handful of Five-Timers are also former cast members.
  • Alec Baldwin (17)
  • Steve Martin (16)
  • John Goodman (13)
  • Buck Henry (10)^note Died in 2020, with his last hosting appearance being on May 24, 1980.
  • Tom Hanks (10)
  • Chevy Chase (8)^note After his last hosting appearance on February 15, 1997, he's been banned from hosting again due to his abrasive behavior towards the cast and crew.
  • Christopher Walken (7)
  • Drew Barrymore (6)
  • Danny DeVito (6)
  • Elliott Gould (6)
  • Tina Fey (6)
  • Scarlett Johansson (6)
  • Justin Timberlake (6)
  • Sting (6)
  • Ben Affleck (5)
  • Candice Bergen (5)
  • Will Ferrell (5)
  • Jonah Hill (5)
  • Dwayne Johnson (5)
  • Melissa McCarthy (5)
  • John Mulaney (5)
  • Bill Murray (5)
  • Paul Rudd (5)
  • Woody Harrelson (5)

• The youngest person to host SNL is Drew Barrymore, who was 7 years old when she hosted the November 20, 1982 show. The oldest person to host SNL was Betty White, who was 88 years old when she hosted the May 8, 2010 show.

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