Saturday Night Live / Tropes A to C

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#-A

• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • Kristen Wiig as Dooneese Maharelle, a regular on the Lawrence Welk show and strangely deformed and deranged, usually going for the male singers by... umm... grabbing their mikes.
    "I want your cannoli now!"
  • The various girlfriends / co-workers of Barbara DeDrew at the "Whiskers R We" pet shelter all seem to be waaaay more into her than she is into them.
  • Michelle, the reporter on the "Around the Town" beat, is clearly very attracted to the various women she interviews, but her socially awkward, desperate and inappropriate flirting style really puts them off. And it's not like they were exactly drooling over her to begin with.
  • The Running Gag of Leslie Jones hitting on Colin Jost in Weekend Update, primarily from Leslie being as subtle about it as a car crash.
• Aborted Arc: Season 44 has Michael Che explaining that he negotiated his contract to allow him to use the N-word 4 times that season, and then does it 1 time. By the end of season 44 it's never come up again.
• Absurd Brand Name: An iconic skit involved a pair of NPR hosts commenting on some confectioneries brought on by a baker. The baker's name was Pete Schweddy, and the food? Schweddy Balls.
• Absurdly-Long Limousine: This sketch has one full of so many occupants that they can all fit behind each window, as the whole vehicle slowly advances through a drivethru and brings every single one in front of the order window.
• Accidental Athlete: "Waikiki Hockey" from the Wayne Gretzky/Fine Young Cannibals episode of season 14.
• Accidental Misnaming:
  • Kate McKinnon as geriatric actress Debette Goldry, who's simply too old to learn how to pronounce names like Lupita Nyong'o (which gets mangled into Little Peter Nono).
  • When John Mulaney hosted in 2018, announcer Darrell Hammond twice pronounced his name as John Mulvaney.
  • When Saoirse Ronan hosted, her opening monologue was about how often people do this to her, with cast members calling her "Cersei," "sushi," "sore cheese," and "inertia."
  • In one Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch, a priest overseeing a talent show audition says that a boy had been singing "Sending Out a Message in a Bottle" by "The Policemen."
• Actor Allusion:
  • The writers enjoy pulling whatever material they can from the pasts of their guest hosts, such as having a The Partridge Family sketch for Susan Dey (back when she was much more well known for L.A. Law), putting Janet Jackson back in her old role in Good Times, making a backhanded reference to Bruno Mars' Hawaiian heritage, and revealing that Drake was on Degrassi: The Next Generation under his real name Aubrey Graham (which was something Drake was trying to keep under wraps for the longest time).
  • The Helen Mirren episode has a sketch about a strip club, where the announcer is about to knock off for the day — the colleague filling in for him is musical guest Dave Grohl, who walks in declaring that "this guy is the best! The best!"
  • The Lawrence Welk show at the end of season 37 has an Italian singer, played by John Hamm, becoming the first ever guy to return Doonese (Kristen Wiig)'s advances, alluding to their roles in Bridesmaids.
  • The Justin Timberlake episode of season 38 reunites Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short — yes, the ¡Three Amigos!. And Martin Short is the only one still enthusiastic about that old movie, which actually mirrors the Amigos' team dynamics.
  • Martin Freeman did a The Hobbit parody of The Office (UK), having played Tim in the latter.
  • A promo for the March 11, 2017 episode starring Scarlett Johansson featured Beck Bennett in the promos. Beck played the boyfriend of Scarlett's character in Sing who later dumped her and you can tell she's still bitter about it.
  • "Office Christmas Party" has Amy Adams as bespectacled Shrinking Violet "Becky from Payroll" who later breaks out some superhuman singing pipes. It's basically Lois Lane Clark Kenting!
  • Weekend Update in the Louis C.K. episode points out how Donald Trump was one of the few people defending Bill O'Reilly after his allegations of sexual misconduct. Naturally, the next sketch has Alec Baldwin playing Bill.
  • One season 41 episode has Brie Larson as a member of an overly subversive garage band that even dabbles in action moviemaking.
  • A rather convoluted one in the episode with Dakota Johnson, where she plays a young girl being dropped off at the station by her father, played by Taran Killiam in a flannel shirt and moustache, looking not like someone from a Dakota role, but the father from 'The Twilight Saga instead, from which Fifty Shades of Grey'' was derived.
  • When Richard Dreyfuss hosted, there was, naturally, a Jaws reference.
  • References to Kenan Thompson's time on Nickelodeon and Good Burger are practically Once a Season.
  • The episode with Chris Pratt has a sketch with Chris and Taran Killam as toys come to life, with musical guest Ariana Grande putting in an appearance as another living toy. Given that she's a Nickelodeon alumnus, this sort of outlandish environment isn't new to her.
  • One sketch from the Tiffany Haddish episode has Tiffany dressed as a literal last black unicorn (the name of her book).
  • Musical guest Miley Cyrus puts in an additional appearance in The Price Is Right sketch in season 43, as a contestant alongside celebrity contestant Alex Moffat as Chris Hemsworth. She starts hitting on him, he says that he's married, and her next question is "do you have a brother?"
  • One Weekend Update has a guest appearance by Ivana Trump, who's been milking her "relationship" with Donald even more following the election, even calling herself "the first lady". Both Ivana and actual First Lady Melania are played by Cecily Strong.
  • In the Christmas Episode in which Hugh Laurie appeared, there was a sketch about a family where all the members were extremely crabby. Hugh Laurie was very obviously doing his House voice for this sketch.
  • Sam Rockwell's Cold Open dance number reuses a few steps from the one in Iron Man 2.
  • Natalie Portman as Eleven makes more sense if you know that her own breakout role was an early but similar Creepy Child/Little Miss Badass. A more direct example would be Natalie as Jaqueline Bouvier Kennedy in the "First Ladies of Presidents Past" sketch.
  • An indirect one when Chadwick Boseman mentions that he's "played every black character in history except Rachel Dolezal — although playing a white woman playing a black woman would be prime Oscar Bait." One of Chadwick's biggest MCU co-stars is Robert Downey Jr., who did something very similar in Tropic Thunder, and got nominated to boot.
  • Debette Golddry (Kate McKinnon) brings up to Sandra Oh (Special Guest Awkwafina) that the "Rosebud" from Citizen Kane actually refers to her "wethole". Awkwafina shouldn't be that surprised considering she famously made a rap track about it.
  • Due to the #timesup movement, Jonah Hill becomes the only remaining male in the Five Timers' Club, and when he says he wants the jacket, all the remaining female members immediately think he said "to jack it", alluding to a certain scene from The Wolf of Wall Street.
  • The Matt Damon episode:
    • There's a sketch about really old Christmas tree decorations deliberately placed out of sight, and Matt is an old "For Your Consideration" freebie promoting Good Will Hunting.
    • Later on there's a slew-of-impressions sketch where Matt plays Chris Hemsworth. He's actually been in a Chris Hemsworth movie... playing Tom Hiddleston.
    • Scoring the trifecta, Matt also plays a pianist who left his ex-wife (Cecily) for a man.
  • In the James McAvoy episode, Kenan as a guy who has to help stop a plane from crashing after the pilot is downed.
  • The Don Cheadle episode has a sketch where Don gets into a fight with a drunk redneck, who tells his buddy to put on his "fightin' song" on the jukebox, mirroring a major scene from Don's MCU debut, Iron Man 2.
  • One sketch in season 45 with Jennifer Lopez is about a cheap commercial for fancy hoop earrings of all sorts — J-Lo actually made hoop earrings popular back in the day.
  • In the first Cold Open after Joe Biden's presidential win over Donald Trump, Jim Carrey's version of Biden declares Trump a "loser" in the same tone of voice as his character from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
  • After Mikey Day (who's subbing in for Dave Chappelle) screws up the "Black Heaven" sketch by not knowing that the phrase "Henny" refers to Hennessy cognac, Kenan Thompson exasperatedly tells Day he should know better since he was formerly a cast member on Wild n' Out.
  • Played for laughs in the episode with Austin Butler of Elvis2022 fame — there's an obligatory Elvis sketch, but it's actually Sarah Sherman as an Elvis Impersonator performing for a retirement home, while Austin is in the audience, in drag as an old woman.
• Adam Westing:
  • It's not uncommon for the host to do a sketch in which he or she exaggerates how the public views him or her (cf. Lindsay Lohan playing herself as a convict on a season 37 episode, Tom Hanks playing a moronic version of himself on Celebrity Jeopardy!, Justin Timberlake playing a fictional ancestor of himself who predicts that his future child will be a boy band singer, break out into a solo career, team up with Andy Samberg to make music videos, and, most importantly, have sex with Britney Spears and deny it up and down, Kelly Ripa attributing her perky personality to a cocaine-laced hair dye in a fake commercial from season 29, etc).
  • Tiffany Haddish got to work her goofy dances into her sketches more than once — a spoof of Mortal Kombat even has Tiffany as a character with nothing but goofy dances for special moves.
• Air Quotes:
  • Chris Farley's "Weekend Update" character Bennett Brauer uses air quotes for most of his segment. In one memorable episode he does so many air quotes he actually takes off. Then the wires holding him up get tangled.
    Bennett Brauer: Thought you'd seen the last of old Bennett, perhaps? Thought the network bigwigs would have sent Bennett and his negative "Q rating" on a slow boat China? Well.. maybe I don't "look the part." I'm not "svelte."I don't "look comfortable on camera,"I'm not "sobby". I don't "understand what's going on in the news." I'm not "likeable" I don't "get along with people," when I go to work, I don't "make eye contact." I guess I don't "fit the mold." I don't "wear the latest clothes" or, even ones that don't "reek!" I don't "change my underwear," I'm not "buff." I don't have "firm breasts" I don't "exercise." And when I do sweat, I don't "shower." I'm not "spic-and-span" I don't "clean the area between my crotch and legs.". But, for the time being, I guess the network "enforcers" are opting for my approach, until Joe Consumer tells them he'd rather get his two cents from commentators who don't "make babies cry" and don't "drink maple syrup straight from the bottle" and don't [as he makes the quotes sign with his fingers, wires pull him in the air to create the illusion that he's made the gesture enough times to make him airborne] "leave old, dried-up deodorant cakes under their arm for weeks at a time" and, uh.. I'm flying. I'm flying! I'm flying! [the wires get caught in the lights atop the Update set, as Chris Farley hangs little more than three feet above the floor] Holy Schnikes!
  • From a more recent Weekend Update, Colin Jost:
    Colin: Disney recently announced the first Latina Disney Princess. Oh, it's fine for them to say it, but when I call a girl a "Latina Princess", I'm told that it's "creepy" and I should "leave the quinceañera".
    Michael: How many quinceañeras have you been in?
• Admiring the Poster:
  • A sketch had a teenage boy's posters come to life to help him through some tough math homework. Most of the characters on his posters have good motivational advice, and he seems to be hearing them out at first, but then he gets distracted by a pin-up poster, who does nothing but talk about all the hot dogs she can eat. He ends up failing his test because he just drew a bunch of hot dogs on the paper.
  • In the music video "First Got Horny 2 U," a teenage Kate is shown making out with (and seemingly humping) a poster of Taylor Hanson because he looks like a pretty girl.
• The Alcoholic:
  • Carol (Aidy Bryant) in "Office Christmas Party".
    "Somebody control Carol from New Media!"
  • Kristen Stewart in a sketch about a college drinking support group (as in, they don't support drinking per se):
    "You ever pass out and wake up with a dog tagging chip in your neck and you're like 'whuuut?' "
  • The Drunkest Contestant on "The Bachelor". Says it all, really.
• Alien Among Us:
  • "The Coneheads", who always answered questions with "We come from France!".
• All Gays Love Theater: In the "Crucible Cast Party" sketch, one of the actresses brags about how all the boys at the high school theater cast party want to get with her... ignorant to the fact that they're all flirting with each other.
• All Just a Dream:
  • To make people forget about the disjointed lousiness of Season 11 (1985-86) and to start fresh with a new and better cast — and to spoof what Dallas had just done over at CBS to negate its badly-received 1985-86 season — SNL used this trope by having Madonna (who hosted the Season 11 premiere) announce during the cold opening of Season 12 premiere that Season 11 was all "a dream...a horrible, horrible dream." While this would be met with contempt over the writers pulling something so cliched, the fact that the first episode had a newer, funnier cast made up for it.
  • The end of the Season 20 (1994-95 season) episode hosted by Bob Newhart was revealed to be this, mimicking the ending to Newhart, complete with Suzanne Pleshette.
• All Men Are Perverts:
  • The Lara Flynn Boyle sketch that sent up The Scarlet Letter, where, just as the men are reprimanding Hester Prynne for her scarlet "A", Boyle's character wanders in with a scarlet "BJ" sewn into her clothing. The men become delighted.
  • On Weekend Update, Amy Poehler delivers a lengthy and hilarious editorial against the then current fad of female celebrities flashing their genitals during publicity events. At the end she asks Seth Meyers if he has anything to add. His only comment is "Keep up the good work, ladies."
  • Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery on Celebrity Jeopardy. Hammond's Connery loves to antagonize Will Ferrell's Trebek with increasingly bawdy tales of his exploits with the latter's mother.
    Ferrell/Trebek: For your information, my mother is in a nursing home in Alberta, Canada.
    Hammond/Connery: Oh, she was nursing it alright!
• All Myths Are True: One recurring constant of the SNL sketchverse — of special note, the premise of Kenan's "Sumpn' Claus" relies on Santa Claus being real, while Kenan's also played a mall Santa and the real Santa!
• All Periods Are PMS: There's a fake commercial for a drug that helps women through the downsides of the menstrual cycle by forcibly constraining them from 12 times a year to just one day. Unfortunately the end result has the patients going literally Ax-Crazy (as in, Tina Fey going after all her colleagues with an axe!)
• All Women Are Lustful:
  • One iconic moment from Weekend Update involved Kristen Wiig as a "flirting expert", leading up to a moment that spawned a famous animated gif as she hiked up both legs and started shuffling towards Seth Meyers.
  • From a more recent Weekend Update:
    Cecily Strong: A man in Ireland fell off his bike in an accident and became erect for five weeks. I know what I'm getting my boyfriend for Valentine's day. (inset shows a mountain bike)
• Ambiguous Gender: The "It's Pat" sketches revolved around characters trying to guess at Pat's gender.
• Amicable Exes: Season 44 has Cecily and Special Guest Matt Damon as an old-school lounge act (Cecily in particular sounds like Liza Minnelli), who claim to have broken up a while back, but still deliver an airtight performance in between their Snark-to-Snark Combat.
• Amusing Injuries:
  • Dana Carvey's "Massive Headwound Harry" (until a dog was shown chewing off the head wound prosthetic on Carvey's head) and the recurring sketch, "Appalachian Emergency Room" (where rednecks come into a backwoods doctor's office and tell the receptionist how they got injured).
  • "Basketball Scene" has two background actors (Jimmy Fallon and Mikey Day) try to play basketball, and during multiple takes, they hit themselves in the face with the ball, fail to dunk the ball and face-plant the ground, and accidentally hit one of the film crew off-camera.
• Amusingly Short List:
  • There was a Running Gag on the Colin Jost/Michael Che era of Weekend Update where they present a list that's implied to be lengthy, only to have a small number of items on it. We then cut back to them to find them in the middle of something that should have been finished before the list was supposed to end.
  • In the Mike Pence Impeachment Strategy cold open, Mike Pompeo says that fleeing the country is an option. There's a "whole list" of countries that would be happy to have them: "North Korea, Saudi Arabia, end of list".
• Anachronism Stew: Kristen Wiig's opening monologue about the first few Thanksgivings is a mishmash of American cultural icons, from Columbus (who's apparently Korean) to Betsy Ross sewing the first napkin for FDR.
• An Arm and a Leg: Anderson Cooper (Alex Moffat) at the hands (and teeth!) of Kellyanne Conway (Kate McKinnon), referencing the fate of Georgie.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: "Office Christmas Party":
  "This is getting out of hand / We love that people are having fun / But do us a favor and just be safe, guys."
• Animal Is the New Man: The show had a series of sketches called "Bear City" in which a meteor strikes an American city, driving the human population underground and allowing the bears to rise up and fill the roles formerly filled by humans. The sketches are notable in that the humor is driven entirely through action as the bears cannot talk.
• The Announcer:
  • Don Pardo, who announced the first season back in 1975 and had been holding the job well into his 90s. Up until his death in 2014, his announcements had been prerecorded from his home.
  • For Season 7, Pardo was replaced by Mel Brandt, reportedly at the insistence of Michael O'Donoghue, who'd been re-hired as a writer/producer for the show by incoming producer Dick Ebersol. By the end of the season, O'Donoghue had been fired, and Pardo was brought back. For the December 1981 episodes hosted by Tim Curry and Bill Murray, however, Brandt was replaced with Bill Hanrahan.
  • With Don Pardo's death, former cast member Darrell Hammond is now hired as Pardo's replacement.
• Anthropomorphic Food: The Baking Championship series of sketches has the host’s cake turn out so poorly that it somehow comes to life.
• Apathetic Teacher: One sketch has a bunch of high school students seemingly trick their teacher (David Hyde Pierce) into thinking the lyrics to various popular rock songs are original poems they wrote for an assignment. After they are dismissed, it's revealed he knew all along and he leaves to smoke marijuana with another teacher.
• Are We Getting This?:
  • A Running Gag on the recurring "Boston Teens" skit involved someone making an innuendo, at which point Sully (one of the teens in question) would turn to the camera and say, "Tommy (the unseen teen holding the recorder), please tell me you got that!"
  • In one of the Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches, Alex Trebek has this response to a Final Jeopardy! response that could actually be interpreted as correct. ("Where are you?" "Indoors.")
• Argentina Is Nazi-Land: Season 44 covers Donald Trump attending the G20 summit in Argentina:
  "I love Argentina! There's a lot of old German guys who really get what I'm saying there!"
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • The categories on Sprockets' Das Ist Jeopardy are "Pain", "Fear", "Art", "Inert Gasses", "Countries That Are Weak", and "Things That Begin With 'P'"
  • In The Godfather in group therapy sketch, Vito Corleone talks of all the bad things that have happened to him: Mob War, Hauled Before a Senate Subcommittee, the death of his son Sonny, and the ASPCA is still after him for that horse's head stunt.
  • In one sketch from the Dec. 17, 2016 episode, when Hillary Clinton shows a list of reasons to a member of the Electoral College to not vote for Trump, the last reason is "He met with Kanye West this week."
  • Kate McKinnon as Debette Goldry, screen starlet from the black and white days, on the Harvey Weinstein scandal:
    "Everything old is new again. Producers are abusing starlets, there's Nazis marching in the streets; suddenly nude pantyhose is on trend. I've never been more at home! When's polio coming back, this'll be fun!"
  • In "The Rock Obama" cold opening, the Republican senators and speaker face the wrath of the Rock Obama after the trio wanted to "meet a world leader whose people actually respect him," accuse him of botching the situation in the Middle East, claim they understand foreign policy better than him, and note his March Madness bracket got totally busted.
• The Artifact:
  • "Live from New York, It's Saturday Night!" comes from the fact that the show was actually called NBC's Saturday Night and not Saturday Night Live during its first season, because of that aforementioned short lived Howard Cosell show on ABC.
  • The show's 90-minute running time. Originally, SNL was a replacement for Tonight Show reruns, which was a 90-minute show at the time. If the show were to premiere today, it would probably be limited to around an hour like NBC's other late night offerings.
• Artistic License – Sports: Guilty of this in a 2013 sketch featuring host Melissa McCarthy as Sheila Kelly, the aggressively abusive womens' basketball coach at fictional NCAA Division III school Middle Delaware State (parodying former Rutgers mens' coach Mike Rice). In an interview clip, the school's athletic director (played by cast member-at-the-time Tim Robinson^note Tim Robinson is now a writer for the show) tries to defend her behavior by pointing out that the players are receiving a free education via athletic scholarships. Division III institutions are prohibited from giving out athletic scholarships (in fact, that's the main distinction between Division III and the other two divisions.)
• Ascended Meme:
  • invokedThe whole point of the 100th Digital Short is cramming in every Memetic Mutation permeated by previous The Lonely Island digital shorts (and cramming the ascended memes of Will Ferrell's most popular sketches and plugging his three "Best Of" DVDs).
  • There have been several cases where a Real Life political figure was so reminiscent of a comedian, there was a groundswell of demand that the person needed to play the figure in an SNL sketch. In 2008, everyone compared Sarah Palin to Tina Fey, so she returned to the show for the role. After countless jokes likening Bernie Sanders to Larry David in 2016, David made a surprise appearance as Sanders and played the role several more times. In 2020, during the post-election controversy, a voting machine IT contractor named Melissa Carone made wild, unsubstantiated claims about vote fraud and testified in front of a committee in the Michigan state House of Representatives. Carone's overly-exaggerated, theatrical mannerisms and Valley Girl-type voice made the video go viral. Most people commented that at the very least she seemed like an SNL character, and many specifically noted a heavy similarity to Cecily Strong's Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation With at a Party, so on the next show Strong did an impression of Carone.
• Asian Cleaver Fever: Exaggerated and parodied in the "Samurai Delicatessen" sketches, which feature John Belushi as a samurai running the counter of a New York deli. Sketches feature the samurai angrily chopping up meat for sandwiches using his katana.
• Asians Eat Pets: When Lucy Liu hosted, her monologue took a crack at several Asian stereotypes. At one point, she serves the cast members her recipe for cocker spaniel. The cast members are disgusted...except for Horatio Sanz.
• Aside Glance: The look Kristen Wiig gives the camera in 2020's Christmas Morning is telling and devastating.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The Japanese-sounding gibberish that John Belushi would spout during his "samurai" sketches.
• Ass Shove:
  • Season 39 starts with a sketch about Barack Obama (Jay Pharaoh) bringing in some members of the public to better explain Obamacare, except none of them have any idea how it works, and an actual doctor (Kate McKinnon) is clearly going through a mental breakdown — not over Obamacare but over having to remove one too many things from people's rectums.
    "Thank you, doctor. Something we should keep in our minds... or butts..."
  • There's a Take That! on the whole selfie stick thing, the Hands Free Selfie Stick. Says it all, really.
    "When you're ready to take a picture, just clench!"
  • From Season 43, Razz P Berry (Donald Glover) gets back at his girlfriend for cheating on him by stuffing all the jewellery he bought for her up his own butt. That's not even the weirdest thing he did. Oh, and he followed the wrong woman.
  • In "Celebrity Jeopardy!" Rock 'N Roll edition, Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond) snuck a magic marker on the set by keeping it up his butt so it wouldn't be found when he was frisked, and used it to deface "I Have a Chardonnay" into "I Have a hardon" when Trebek (Will Ferrell) wasn't looking.
• Atomic F-Bomb: When Adele got to host, she owned up to being a Sir Swears-a-Lot in the monologue, but one sketch goes instead in this direction when she plays a vengeful ghost who needs someone to settle her Unfinished Business — and ends up with Pete Davidson's Chad. Not because of his general incompetence — but because he ends up Killed Off for Real.
  Adele: Oh for F**K'S SAKE!!
• Attack of the Political Ad: Most of their political sketches are exaggerated versions of common attack ads that appear during elections.
• Attentive Shade Lowering: The 1991 skit "Schmitt's Gay Beer" has a variation; Chris Farley flips up the lenses on his sunglasses with a dazed expression to gawk at a pool-going man.

B

• The Backstage Sketch: These happen occasionally, and tend to show the host preparing in his/her dressing room, cast members interacting with each other or Lorne Michaels, etc. Usually these are used as cold openings.
• Bad Boss: One sketch involved guest star Pierce Brosnan as a prospective employee who has second thoughts when his potential boss, Mr. Tarkanian (played by Will Ferrell), is a complete monster to his underlings. Mr. Tarkanian even murders an employee right in front of him.
• Bad Future: When Alec Baldwin is shown the future of 2011, he finds the term Baldwin is synonymous with crap, after his hosting sucked so bad. Realizing what an important responsibility hosting is, Alec asks to be taken back to the present, but discovers he is still in the present.
• Bad Santa:
  • Kenan as "Sumpn' Claus", who knows if you've been naughty enough to get yourself in trouble and does the nice thing by bailing you out with cash. Apparently he'd been booted from the North Pole due to... indiscretions with Mrs Claus. As for where the cash really comes from? Well we don't need to be talkin' about that...
  You sweatin' Santa's mad at you? What, you thought you were friends? He sees you when you're sleeping! That's weird!
  • The episode with the return of Eddie Murphy is about a polar bear attack on Santa's workshop, linked directly to land development forcing said bears out of their natural habitat as well as shoddy fencing, all pinned on the big man himself.
  Hashtag #santaknew!
  • In 2020, a sketch has Santa receive letters from a manic fan who's a parody of "Stan" by Eminem, down to driving in the rain with his girlfriend in the trunk. Santa just brushes him off.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • One Weekend Update pays tribute to Barbara Walters as she retires from daytime tv by showing her iconic moments from tv, which are all really from past SNL sketches where Barbara was played by Gilda Radner, Rachel Dratch, Nasim Pedrad etc. Then Cecily announces Barbara Walters as a Weekend Update guest for that week... and it's the real Barbara Walters!
  • One sketch is about an elderly black inmate played by Kenan at his parole hearing — you half expect him to be wrongfully incarcerated for all of the 40 years he's been in there, but it turns out the hearing is to move him to death row for killing and eating another inmate.
  • A subtle case in the Weekend Update Summer Edition of 2017:
    Michael: "The opioid crisis began when doctors were allowed to prescribe more than they were required to. I had trouble sleeping once — the doctor gave me a bottle of 100 Vicodins even though I only required 3. It was because of this that I became addicted to selling Vicodin."
  • Mikey Day plays a man just extradited out of North Korea, and the US military puts him up at a hotel where the receptionist (Special Guest Kumail Nanjani) keeps bringing up the Stargazer Lounge in every other line. Considering the situation you half expect it to be Spy Speak, or even a trap with North K agents already in the place... it's really because the receptionist does double duty as lounge singer.
  • There's a sketch about a Wild Teen Party in season 45, with all the potential for shenanigans like someone rolling a blunt, the presence of beer and this girl telling the guy "let's chill in your room"... but the real joke is a teacher (host Will Ferrell) who invited himself to the party, just because he really, really didn't want to drink alone.
• Bait-and-Switch Comparison: From one Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch:
  Sean Connery: "What's the difference between you and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck... I can't remember how it ends but your mother's a whore."
• "Balls" Gag: One of "The Delicious Dish" sketches has a guest named Pete Schweddy, who specializes in things like rum balls, popcorn balls, etc. It consists entirely of lines about "Schweddy balls," balls in mouths, and every other innuendo the writers could think of.
• "Basic Instinct" Legs-Crossing Parody:
  • Sharon Stone hosted around the time Basic Instinct was released and parodied her leg crossing in her opening monologue and we see the reactions of Chris Farley, Lorne Michaels and the SNL writers. From the same episode, there was a parody of the interrogation scene with Pat in the seat and did the leg crossing.
  • When Basic Instinct 2 was released, SNL also did a mock trailer sketch that revolved entirely around the interrogation scene, hyping "more hair pie", and subtitling it The Return of the Beaver.
• Batter Up!: In "The Joe Pesci Show" sketches, Pesci regularly finds some little thing to get angry about (in parody of GoodFellas) that ends with him pulling a baseball bat out from behind his desk and attacking his guest with it.
• Beat Without a "But":
  • During a Weekend Update bit, Michael Che seemingly begins to defend Vin Diesel's poorly-received music career: "And look, I know a lot of people are making fun of him, and saying it's terrible, and he should stick to acting..." He stops there and goes on to the next joke.
  • In the Season 47 Billie Eilish episode, a commercial for a Hell Hotel ends with the spokeswomen reciting the slogan, "We may not be the Ritz-Carlton..." and then just waving.
• Berserk Button: From "Natalie's Rap 2":
  Beck: I have to ask, have you seen the new Star Wars movies?
  Natalie: No...
  Beck: Oh, they're really good. They're better than...
  Natalie: (Tranquil Fury on) Better than what?
  Beck: ...sh*t.
• Beyond the Impossible: The celebrities who play Celebrity Jeopardy! are so bad that by the end of the first round, five-digit negative scores are the norm. Keep in mind, the sketches were mostly done before the clue values were doubled on the actual show at a time when such a feat could not be done.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • In Season 20's "Japanese Game Show" sketch, Mike Myers and the other actors playing the Japanese characters (host Alec Baldwin, Janeane Garofalo, and Laura Kightlinger) are actually speaking Japanese (albeit with some of the pronunciation off due to them not being native speakers). The game's first question is "How many keys are on a piano?" with Chris Farley's character correctly guessing "88" in Japanese.
  • One sketch is set in an airport, where the boarding staff calls specifically for "Brazilian and Italian travelers pushing and shoving while understanding intermittent English". Among the gaggle of noisy boarders is Nasim Pedrad, who's actually yelling in Persian.
  • According to Laura Ingraham (Kate McKinnon), The Ingraham Angle is rerun on Telemundo (a South American network) as "La Madre del Diablo".
  • Several of Marcello Hernandez's sketches feature his and other characters speaking in unsubtitled Spanish.
• Bilingual Dialogue: The episode with Jason Momoa has a sketch spoofing Game of Thrones, where Jason as Khal Drogo gets several lines in Dothraki. Even Brienne of Tarth (Heidi Gardner) can somehow understand him.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor:
  • It seems like Weekend Update is the only segment with any license to do this:
    Vanessa Bayer: Billy Bush said some very naughty things and he's getting a few million dollars from this network!
    Colin Jost: Trump will serve as executive producer of Celebrity Apprentice while remaining in office as President. It's a potential conflict of interests and highly illegal move — only on NBC!
  • From 1979 to 1981, the slogan for NBC was "Proud as a Peacock", used to put a positive spin on the network's dismal third place in the Nielsen ratings. But none of the shows that were produced during that time period succeeded, and NBC's problems continued. In response, there was a feeling of embarrassment as it was clear that NBC was not as proud as the slogan suggested, and in true Saturday Night Live fashion, the crew of SNL lampooned the network's slogan as "We're Loud" to vent their frustration, which did not sit well with network head Fred Silverman, who was responsible for the network's problems and demanded that the parody be purged, which it never was (the quality was not that great anyway).
  • The very same thing happened again for the 1981-82 season, the network's slogan was changed to "Our Pride is Showing", but problems persisted, and again, it was parodied on SNL, this time as "Our Age is Showing".
• Black Comedy Burst:
  • For a show like SNL that prides itself in being funny without being mean, sometimes they will delve into dark humor to make their point (or to get a rise out of the audience). On a documentary special about SNL in the 2000s, Horatio Sanz has said that if a joke in a sketch made the audience groan in disgust, then the writers did a good job.
  • The Couples Quiz sketch piles on the Toilet Humor with host Jonah Hill accused of clogging the toilet — the real reason the host is so irate is because the building is a historical landmark, and any plumbing work has to be cleared with a preservation board. The reason the building is landmarked? The Black Dahlia was found in the parking lot.
• Blackmail:
  • The ending of "Teacher Snow Day".
    Student: Oh I'm totally passing chemistry now. (takes out his camera phone and starts snapping)
  • The Alec Baldwin episode in 2017 has Alec implying that he got the recurring Donald Trump role by being "in the back seat of a car when Lorne Michaels ran over an orange stand".
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Dundee sisters (Kate, Cecily and host Amy Adams). Likely justified as they're really three raccoons in human form, working with a general outline of what humans are like.
• Bloody Hilarious:
  • In a Season 4 sketch, Dan Aykroyd plays famous TV chef Julia Child — who accidentally cuts "the dickens out of my finger!" and proceeds to bleed to death.
  • The season 38 sketch on the episode hosted by Kristen Wiig about an acupuncture session gone horribly wrong used this to particularly chilling effect.
  • From the season 41 finale, a parody of Dead Poets Society where the part where everyone stands on their tables has one guy who stands up under the ceiling fan...
  • The Season 43 episode hosted by James Franco has a sketch about a gift wrapper who slices his finger and gets blood everywhere while further mutilating himself.
• Body Horror:
  • Kate McKinnon as Debette Goldry, a now-geriatric movie star from older, harsher times, reveals that she once had to make ends meet by selling her ribs.
    (hefting her actual breasts) "These are my lungs!"
• Book Ends: The episode after Donald Trump won the 2016 election opened with Kate McKinnon's Hillary Clinton singing and playing "Hallelujah" on a piano in an uncharacteristically somber moment for the show. After Trump lost the 2020 election, the cold open included Alec Baldwin's Trump comically singing a funeral dirge version of "Macho Man", again on a piano.
• Boring Broadcaster: The "Delicious Dish" sketches, a send-up of dull public radio shows.
• Bottomless Magazines: The dueling pistols from "The Duel" which misfire and keep going off way more times than flintlock pistols logically should.
• Bouncer: In the penultimate Season 46 episode Kenan Thompson and Keegan-Michael Key play bouncers for the theater on The Muppet Show who beat up Statler and Waldorf for heckling.
• Brain Bleach: From Weekend Update Summer Edition:
  Colin: A 10-year-old boy in Louisiana is being honored for saving his mother's life when she prematurely went into labor and he helped to deliver his baby brother. Doctors say the baby is healthy, but it is unlikely the son and his mother will ever make eye contact again.
• Brainless Beauty:
  • A Cecily character, a former porn star who does commercials with a friend (played by Vanessa Bayer) after her career in the industry. Initially, she just can't remember her name. In a later skit, she seems to have forgotten the very concept of names.
    Vanessa's character: Hi, I'm Brookie.
    Cecily's character: And you can, too.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: A spoof MTV bumper from the broadcast with John Cena:
  "At 6, it's Teen Mom. At 7, it's Teen Wolf. And at 8, it's Teen Wolf Mom.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • The Lawrence Welk sketch at the end of season 37 has surprise guest Jon Hamm as an Italian singer, attempting the accent and heaping all the stereotypes about what he's been eating like cannolis, before briefly dropping it and going "you all get that I'm Italian, right?"
  • In a Stranger Things sketch from the Natalie Portman/Dua Lipa episode, several other creations like Eleven show off their powers and drawbacks. Kenan plays the last one, who always knows the perfect way to end a sketch.
  • During the 2020-21 season, Kate McKinnon debuted a new character on Weekend Update, "Dr. Weknowdis." The segment inevitably ends with Colin addressing Kate directly and her popping out of character.
• Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Parodied during the Baseball Strike of 1994 and 1995. They had a series of shorts shot as a documentary on Replacement Baseball. (To those who don't remember, that was when the teams brought in new players to replace the striking ones.) One short shows the breaking of the color barrier... a few minutes after they started hiring players. The gender barrier fell a few minutes later.
• Breast Attack: Jennifer Aniston's opening monologue involves her and Molly Shannon starting a fight by attacking each other's boobs, in a promotion/lampooning of Fight Club, which Brad Pitt, Aniston's boyfriend at the time, had the lead role in.
• Brick Joke:
  • The first episode had as part of "Weekend Update" a joke-free segment in which Laraine Newman reports to Chevy Chase about a series of 38 serial murders at the Blaine Hotel. At the end of "Weekend Update", announcer Don Pardo says "Guests of 'Saturday Night' stay at the fabulous Blaine Hotel!"
  • The Season 37 finale was hosted by none other than Mick Jagger, who mentions that he'd been in contact with a restaurant that named itself after a Stones classic, Ruby Tuesday. It's also Kristen Wiig's last week on the show, so they end the episode by serenading her with — you guessed it — Ruby Tuesday.
  • The cold open of Season 42's Alec Baldwin episode has Press Secretary Sean Spicer (Melissa McCarthy) tell the press that President Donald Trump will take the appeals court that stopped his travel ban to The People's Court. A later sketch has Trump (Baldwin) on The People's Court doing just that.
  • Also from season 42, the Running Gag of Leslie Jones and Kyle Mooney's "blossoming relationship" led to Leslie spending too much time at work with Colin Jost, causing Kyle to descend into depression and jealousy and shooting Colin in both legs. At the end of the episode, Colin appears on crutches.
  • When The Weeknd appeared in season 41, Weekend Update did a deliberate Cutaway Gag titled "The Weeknd Update", just showing what The Weeknd is doing in the green room and that's it. When he comes back for the premiere of season 42, they do it again. Then he returned again for season 45, airing during the coronavirus outbreak... and they do it again!
    The Weeknd: I feel good. (Beat, then suddenly coughs)
  • Season 42 made a Running Gag out of casting a Grim Reaper type as Steve Bannon — one Cold Open in season 43 spoofs A Christmas Carol, and when the ghost of Christmas yet to Come appears, Donald Trump assumes it's Steve Bannon. It's Hilary Clinton under the hood.
  • John Mulaney's monologue in season 43 has him mentioning one of his primary inspirations, Patrick Stewart, who got to host once and inexplicably went all Shakespearan when announcing the musical guest — Salt-N-Pepa — as "Salt 'n' PEPA!!" Later in that episode, John introduces the musical guest Jack White in the exact same fashion.
  • The episode with Jennifer Lopez has a sketch about a cheap commercial for hoop earrings, which J-Lo mentions that you have to take off before you get into a fight. One week later, the Cold Open covers the Democratic candidates' debate and ends with a surprise appearance from Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump, who'd been backstage hearing them badmouthing him like it was a reality show — cue Donald storming on stage while taking his hoop earrings off.
• Bridal Carry:
• British Stuffiness: Parodied in the Season 45 sketch "The War in Words: William and Lydia", where a WW2 RAF fighter pilot (Mikey Day) writes heartfelt letters to his wife at home (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), and she replies with letters that consist of one word. It gets more and more surreal as she cuts off most of her hair and shows up in the background of a newsreel featuring Hitler.
  Lydia: [writing] Dear William. Oh, I see? So when you talk to some French whore, it's "It was nothing, move on." But when I go to a party where there happens to be a man, it's "I demand an explanation"?
  William: [reading her letter] YES BECAUSE IT'S HITLER!
  Lydia: [writing] I am only glad your father is not alive to see what a hypocrite you've become. Love, Lydia.
  William: [writing] Darling Lydia, Has my father passed away?! This is the first I'm hearing of this! How did he go? Also, still rabidly curious about the Hitler of it all. Answers, please, William.
• Broadcast Live: From New York. Through the April 8, 2017 show, only the Eastern and Central time zones actually see it live; other U.S. time zones get it on tape delay. Starting April 15, the Mountain and Pacific time zones will get it live as well.
• Broken Record: Will Ferrell's character in the "Wake Up and Smile" sketch undergoes this when the teleprompter is on the fritz. "I understand you've got some cooking tips for us, Diane. I understand you've got some cooking tips for us, Diane. I understand you've got some cooking tips for us, Diane." (etc)
• The Bus Came Back: In the Season 47 episode hosted by Paul Rudd near the end of 2021, Tina Fey returned as an anchor for Weekend Update for the first time since 2006, filling in for Colin Jost who was absent for the episode.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Mr. Bill, the adorable little Claymation man who always dies a horrible death.
  • The Colin Jost/Michael Che era of Weekend Update has Jost filling this role, thanks to Che frequently doing jokes that make Jost look bad as well as guests frequently causing him to suffer some kind of embarrassment, such as Jeanine Pirro vomiting wine on him.

C

• Call-Back:
  • In the Don Rickles episode, the character he was playing chewed out Joe Piscopo for slapping him in an earlier sketch.
  • In the Kevin Hart episode there's a filmed Parody Commercial for the Z-Shirt. Hart's character asks "Is it an A-Shirt? Is it a B-Shirt?" etc., much to the annoyance of his on-air friend played by Tim Robinson. Later in the episode Robinson is playing a mourner at his mother's funeral who is saying a few words about the departed when Hart jumps in: "Is it an X-Shirt? Is it a Y-Shirt?"
  • The "Leslie Wants to Play Trump" sketch from Season 42's Alec Baldwin episode continues with the Leslie Jones/Kyle Mooney relationship from the "Love and Leslie" sketch in the Dave Chappelle episode earlier that season.
  • Natalie Portman's appearance in season 43 includes a followup to the popular "Natalie's Rap" from her previous appearance 12 years ago. Complete with surprise appearance by Andy Samberg!
    Beck: So, basically the same, but with updated references.
  • Bobby Moynihan plays an overdramatic dancing cat from Cats in the Season 34 "Save Broadway" sketch, and in a Season 42 "Whiskers R We" sketch, he wears the same costume and keeps spinning (though in this case, he isn't an actual actor or cat, just a "crazy person").
  • Weekend Update in season 47 referenced the case of missing white women getting way more attention than others, with Ego Nwodim as a black woman who's been missing for 10 years. Apparently the media back then deliberately used a less flattering photo of her — which just happened to be Ego as a Tethered from a past sketch.
  • During the ending credits of Macaulay Culkin's hosting gig in Season 17, he and his brother Kieran were both lifted up in the air by the cast members. When Kieran hosted the show himself 30 years later, he was once again lifted up by the cast members when the credits started rolling.
  • One unique to season 48 involves Pedro Pascal as a teacher complaining that the students are making fancam content about him online, and he shows an example with him in a music video without his consent. The song used is "Big Boy" with Keke Palmer and SZA, from an episode before the midseason break.
  • Season 49 brings back Dakota Johnson for the second time, and one sketch has her trying to claim her luggage when the baggage guy suspects it of being an "ISIS bag". The first time Dakota hosted involved a sketch where she joined ISIS.
• Camera Abuse: Occurs in a several sketches (not always intentionally). During Jim Breuer's tenure, The Joe Pesci Show segments would always conclude with Joe or one of his guests confronting the cameraman and "breaking" the camera lens.
• Cannot Convey Sarcasm: Angela Merkel, on one of the Weekend Updates, tries a little too hard.
  Jost: I have to ask: are you worried at all about the rise of nationalism in America and Europe?
  Merkel: (rolling eyes) NaaaaAAAOOooo! Nationalism in Europe? (snort) What could go wro-o-ong? (Beat) Sorry, that was ze first German attempt at sarcasm. I'll work on it.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: Kristen Wiig as the Surprise Lady. She will resort to self harm.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • The recurring "talking posters" sketch headlined by Pete Davidson and guest Emma Stone involves posters with characters that are bootlegs of known ones, like Kenan and newcomer Ego Nwodim as not-Black Panther and Okoye.
  • Bowen Yang is actually Straight Gay, but gets saddled with Always Camp roles that combined with his nasal voice make him look like SNL's Ken Jeong.
  • The game show sketch from the episode with Jenna Ortega involves a regular teacher and students pitted against the not-X-Men, with Mikey Day as "Professor Xander", and their school crest being part of a double helix that just happens to look like an X.
• Cardboard Box of Unemployment:
  • This skit that first aired during the January 27, 2018 show featured Will Ferrell as an office worker advertising a deodorant for men "who are feeling the heat because their time's up" (i.e. men who have been outed as harassers and abusers by the "Me Too" movement). As the fake commercial comes to a close, Ferrell's character marches into the office elevator with a bankers box (laden with a plant, a cup of pencils, and various other office paraphernalia) in his arms and announces that he's been fired.
    Office Woman: You're disgusting.
    Office Man: But my pits aren't!
    Office Man (to another elevator passenger): I got fired.
  • The following season covers the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Kate McKinnon as Jeff revealing that he already has a box prepared for it.
    "It's the same one I was born in!"
• Casanova Wannabe: A good amount of recurring characters are sleazy men trying to get laid and failing. Some examples include: Chris Parnell's "Merv the Perv" (and his brother, Irv, played by episode host Johnny Knoxville), Christopher Walken's "The Continental" (mixed in with Handsome Lech), The Roxbury Guys (Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan), and The Wild and Crazy Guys (Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin).
• Casting Gag:
  • The cold open from the 2018 John Mulaney episode had Robert De Niro as Robert Mueller interrogating Ben Stiller as Michael Cohen in a take-off on their 2000 film Meet the Parents.
  • The first surprise guest of 2020 is Jon Lovitz in the role of Alan Dershowitz, who goes into a seizure and is briefly clinically dead, whereupon he goes to hell and meets Satan, who's played by Kate McKinnon here. It's also one of Jon's recurring roles during his tenure.
• Cat-apult: The laser cats from... "Laser Cats" are a variant. While the cats aren't being launched, they are themselves guns.
• Catchphrase: The most enduring one is, of course, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!", but it was the biggest single meme generator in the pre-Internet days of entertainment. Even today in the age of the Internet, it still generates memes and catchphrases and has adapted well to the era where most people find their humor online rather than on TV.
• Celebrities Hang Out in Heaven: The Behind the Music on Rock and Roll Heaven. Val Kilmer even reprises his role as Jim Morrison in The Doors.
• Celebrity Paradox: A lot of sketches have the celebrity host, musical guest, or special guest star meeting a cast member's take on that celebrity.
  • Jimmy Fallon playing Mick Jagger's reflection on the Hugh Jackman episode from Season 27.
  • The real Governor David Paterson confronted Fred Armisen's take on him in one sketch to speak out against the cheap shots about him being legally blind.
  • Steve Forbes participated in "Forbes on Forbes" (with Mark McKinney as Steve Forbes) whose lampshade was so thin it falls just short of Better than a Bare Bulb.
  • The short-lived but still funny "Joe Pesci Show" ended with the real Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro beating the snot out of Jim Breuer and Colin Quinn respectively for their parodies of them.
  • Another "Pesci" skit had Jim Carrey playing Jimmy Stewart, while Mark McKinney played … Jim Carrey. Sure enough, Jimmy Stewart was nothing but disgusted and irritated with Jim Carrey's antics.
  • The Miley Cyrus Show sketches where Miley Cyrus herself (the week's host) played Justin Bieber to Vanessa Bayer's Miley, then the episode with Bieber as host playing a Miley Cyrus fan club runner who takes potshots at Justin as he's being "interviewed" by Bayer as Miley. In a 2013 episode featuring Miley as host, filmed not long after her controversial performance at that year's MTV Video Music Awards, the episode would begin with a sketch where "old Miley" (played by Bayer) time travels backstage at the VMA's to warn Cyrus not to perform. The duo would sing a verse from "I Miss You" from Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus at the end of the sketch.
  • In a recurring Weekend Update segment called "In the Cage with Nicolas Cage", in which Nicolas Cage (Andy Samberg) discusses new movies with their stars, he ends up talking to... Nicolas Cage.
  • In the early '90's, the show sometimes imitated the political talk show The McLaughlin Group. For Halloween 1991, Dana Carvey as usual was playing John, when he gets "killed" and replaced by the real John McLaughlin.
  • In one musical performance in The '70s, John Belushi impersonated Joe Cocker singing "Feelin' Alright" next to the real Joe Cocker.
  • There was an early 90s sketch about former child starts gone wrong that featured, among others, David Spade as Michael J. Fox … and Michael J. Fox (who was the episode's host) as Danny Bonaduce.
  • The last time Will Ferrell played Alex Trebek on a "Celebrity Jeopardy!" sketch as a regular cast member, the real Alex comes out and stands next to him.
  • For the "What Up With That?" sketches, one of the recurring guests is Bill Hader as Lindsey Buckingham. During one sketch, Paul Simon brings the real Lindsey Buckingham on set with him, to which the show host exclaims, "I didn't know there was TWO Lindsey Buckinghams!"
  • After Tina Fey returned to the show for what would be her famous portrayal of Sarah Palin, it didn't take long for the real Palin to appear alongside her in an episode … and Fey's 30 Rock co-star Alec Baldwin confuses Palin for Fey.^note Though Fey made a conscious decision to beat a hasty retreat when Palin appeared onstage, as Fey actually wanted to avoid the "celebrity appears next to his impersonator" trope. There was also a previous example regarding Fey as Palin that wasn't the usual "celebrity appears next to his impersonator" when Fey's Palin appeared alongside Hillary Clinton (Amy Poehler); when Clinton starts to complain that she scratched and crawled for her political career while Palin being handpicked to be the Republican vice-presidential nominee instantly shot her into national stardom, she also scolds Palin being found charming with "your Tina Fey glasses!"
• Characterization Marches On: In the first "Celebrity Jeopardy!" sketch, Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond) is portrayed as being just as ignorant and idiotic as the other contestants. In later sketches, Connery is considerably more lucid and is purposefully answering incorrectly to set up digs in on Trebek and get under his skin.
• Cheek Copy: A fake commercial advertises the Xerox 790 Assjet, a copier designed exclusively to solve the problems resulting from copying your ass with a normal machine.
• Classically-Trained Extra: One sketch about the making of an episode of Riverdale has Pete Davidson as a British thespian who's saddled with the role of cadaver in a morgue — and insists on not remaining still, either letting out weird whale sounds or just convulsing as the dead body is supposedly expelling gases at the time.
  Pete: I lived in a morgue for three months...
  Director: Why?!
• Character as Himself: Featured cast member Don Novello would often be introduced in the opening as Father Guido Sarducci.
• Characterizing Sitting Pose: In one sketch in season 1 episode 8 (host Candice Bergen), Chevy Chase plays an elf. During the sketch, he repeatedly crouches on a sofa and a table in an odd manner to show his elf nature. After his father is revealed to also be an elf, the father crouches on the couch too.
• Church of Happyology: A Season 40 sketch parodied Scientology's 1990 "We Stand Tall" music video by producing a music video by the fictional church of Neurotology, which believes aliens live inside people's minds and charges $20,000 to scan people's minds. Said video was supposedly filmed in 1990, but has been updated to note how many of the people singing in the video have since left the church, gone missing, gone insane, died, or otherwise suffered under the church. Most audaciously, one of the members left Neurotology to join Scientology!
• Clip Show: Because the positive COVID-19 cases within the show's cast and crew threw things for a loop, the Paul Rudd-hosted episode in Season 47 was this. The only live sketch was the episode's edition on wekend Update, but with Tina Fey filling in for Colin Jost.
• Cliffhanger: Season 11 ended with a sketch in which Yankees manager Billy Martin set fire to the studio while onscreen titles wondered which cast members would return. Originally, the cliffhanger was never going to be resolved, as NBC pushed Lorne Michaels to cancel SNL due to low ratings. When Lorne convinced the higher-ups that he could do better with a better cast (including some cast members from Season 11 who proved to be stand-outs in a mediocre season), the cliffhanger — and everything about Season 11 — was written off as a bad dream during the Season 12 premiere, parodying what Dallas did to undo an unpopular season just weeks before.
• Clothes for Christmas Cringe: One sketch features a family on Christmas morning and the father, son, and daughter excitedly showing off all their new, expensive gifts. Meanwhile, the mother (host Kristen Wiig), who obviously bought all of those gifts herself, miserably reveals she received a bathrobe and nothing else, not even any stocking stuffers.
• Clumsy Copyright Censorship: When Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches are uploaded to the show's official YouTube account, all instances the "Think!" music are replaced with generic cues. It's especially grating during Final Jeopardy! due to Alex's commentary being silenced or jumbled.
• Cold Open: Nearly every episode (including anniversary specials and clip shows) have these. Most are political (usually a special message from the U.S. President or a government official/leader from another country, or a special press conference as aired on a cable news network), some focus on recurring characters, few are one-shots that have to do with a current event, and a handful of them take place backstage before the show starts.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Jonah Hill episode in 2016 has one sketch about a murder mystery that basically homages Cluedo, with exactly six suspects, half male half female, all wearing different colors.
• Comically Inept Healing: The sketches about "Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber'' (played by Steve Martin). He would order his patients to undergo bloodletting or some other medieval quackery, usually resulting in their disability or death.
• The Comically Serious: Lorne Michaels' on-air personality is not only famous for how dry he acts, but also for the fact he has almost never lost his composure (he only did once, on the first time Hugh Laurie hosted on season 32, and that was because of a botched cue that happened off-screen).
• Comically Small Bribe: In one early episode, Lorne Michaels came on to offer The Beatles a check for $3,000 to reunite on the show (a few episodes later, he offers to "sweeten the pot" to $3200). John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who both happened to be in New York that night and saw the bit on TV, nearly went down to the studio for a surprise visit. Turned into a Running Gag — whenever an ex-Beatles member later appeared on the show as a musical guest, they would usually be shown trying to extract the promised cash from Lorne. (George Harrison: "$750 is pretty chintzy.")
  Michaels: If you want to give Ringo less, it's up to you.
• Commercial Break Cliffhanger: Parodied in the "Super Showcase" sketch, which starts off with the host (Bill Hader) saying that the contestant (Vanessa Bayer) answered "beef" before commercials, and reveals the right answer — "nine". We never learn just what the question could have been.
• Commuting on a Bus: Numerous former cast members have returned to the show, either to host or to guest star in sketches.
• Compensating for Something:
  • The "guy who just bought a boat" that Colin Jost interviews on a Weekend Update explicitly says between ridiculous Connecticut slang that he has a small penis.
  • Also from Weekend Update:
    Cecily: Plans were announced this week for the world's first Ferrari hotel to open in Spain in 2016, in the new FerrariLand theme park. It's the only theme park where your penis must be this small to ride the rides.
• Competing Product Potshot:
  • The show ran a sketch during Toyota's unintended acceleration controversy showing a couple getting into their Prius...and then hurtling down the road uncontrollably. The commercial ends with the Ford logo and the announcer saying "Ford. We make hybrids too."
  • Another sketch parodied a Pizza Hut ad in which the high-end Italian spaghetti the customers were eating turns out to be from Pizza Hut. In the sketch, the customers freak out over being lied to, and in the end, it turns out to be an ad for Domino's, with the tagline "At least we're not liars."
• Completely Off-Topic Report: Gilda Radner had two characters for whom this was their entire schtick, both commentators on "Weekend Update". One was Emily Litella, who, being hard of hearing as well as a bit naive, always misunderstood the topic she was supposed to be speaking about (too much violence on television, for instance) and ends up discussing a different topic (too much violins on television). When told of her mistake, she would the drop the topic entirely, ending with her Catchphrase "Never mind." The other character, Roseanne Roseannadana, would always veer from the original subject and into some embarrassing, graphically disgusting personal anecdote. When told what that had to do with the original topic, she responded with her own Catchphrase, "It's always something."
• Continuity Nod: Bill Hader's Stefon character first appeared in 2008 in skit where he and his brother (played by Ben Affleck) try to pitch a movie. Fast forward to a 2013 Weekend Update sketch where Seth Meyers breaks up Stefon's marriage to Anderson Cooper and convinces Stefon to run away with him. Affleck returns as Stefon's brother encouraging him to follow his heart.
• Continuity Porn: The 100th SNL Digital Short is wall-to-wall references from previous Digital Shorts.
• Contraception Deception: Discussed. Back when Pete Davidson was dating Ariana Grande, he joked about replacing her birth control with sugar pills because he was so afraid she would leave him.
• Control Freak: Jimmy Fallon as Barry "Effing" Gibb, who is both this and a Hair-Trigger Temper who gets enraged at everything, including his guests. Well, except for his brother Robin.
• Country Matters: The most glaring example to date would be Fred Armisen as British punk rocker Ian Rubbish, responsible for the rebellious punk hit "C**t in a Crown".
• Courteous Canadian: A sketch from early 2011 depicts "Celebrity Scoop", a fictional Canadian entertainment news show based in Winnipeg. The hosts are so nice that they miss the entire point of this kind of show.
  Edna Ledouf: First up in the gossip world, Celebrity Scoop has received some red-hot photos of Ryan Phillippe and Amanda Seyfried canoodling.
  Thomas: Yeah, yeah, that's right, you know. But we're not gonna show 'em, you know, 'cause that's private.
• Covered in Gunge: Considering that everyone has to get cleaned up by the next sketch, they do this way too often.
  • The episode with Charlize Theron had a spoof of 60s beach movies, Bikini Beach Party, which involved a beached whale that's slowly inflating with methane gas. No prizes for guessing what happens to the two "teens" hoping to use it as Makeout Point.
  • The game show "Just Desserts" is blatantly rigged to ensure that every Pie in the Face goes into just one person's face — Melissa McCarthy.
  • James Franco in the "Gift Wrapping" sketch not only 'cuts' himself way too many times, but gushes gallons of fake blood all over Leslie Jones.
  • One sketch in 2022 was about how the use of slime on Nickelodeon (via You Can't Do That on Television) got started, so obviously this was going to happen eventually — after showing how failed versions of sliming went, from huge green lumps being dropped on the actors to shotgun blasts of slime in their faces.
• Crazy-Prepared: The point of the Tom Brokaw pre-tapes sketch. Brokaw is recording death notices for President Gerald Ford for every possible cause of death, including zombie Richard Nixon strangling him!
• Creepy Uncle: Buck Henry's "Uncle Roy" character from the earliest seasons.
• Crossover: A minor case with the season 39 premiere, which starts with Barack Obama bringing in some civilians to better explain Obamacare — one of them is unannounced Special Guest Aaron Paul, fully in character as Jesse Pinkman, explaining how the lack of Obamacare led to the very premise of Breaking Bad.
• Cue Card Pause:
  • Recurring Character Tim Calhoun, a senator who runs for president. He's got his speeches on index cards but for some reason only part of a sentence is on a given card. For example (during the Mark Foley sex scandal, where Foley had sent sexually explicit text messages to underage congressional pages):
    Tim Calhoun: I have touched many pages in my life... because I am a voracious reader... of child pornography... studies. Illustrated studies.
  • During Weekend Updates in the Colin Jost/Michael Che era, they've had "Supercentenarian Mort Fallen" (Mikey Day) on as a guest. He reads what sounds like upbeat news about what his cohorts are up to, only to turn it into bad news, usually about the person's death.
    Colin: Are there any headlines you got there about living supercentenarians?
    Mort: Oh yeah. Lifelong bachelor 111-year-old Mel Thomas became the country's oldest newlywed last week when he married 99-year-old Ethel Birmingham...
    Colin: Cradle-robber, right?
    Mort: ...on her deathbed.
    Colin: Don't pause.
• Curse Cut Short: When Seann William Scott hosted, the host on stage sketch was talking about the semen in the beer joke in American Pie. Seann claims to have a lot of family who have been actors and shows fake old movie clips all based on that same joke. One of the pieces is a silent movie where Horatio Sanz's character ruined the beer. Seann dry heaves and clearly mouths "motherfu-" before a word card claims he's saying "darn you!"
• Curtain Call: Each individual episode ends like a theatre show with the entire cast and any guest stars (and musicians in the guest band) gathering on the stage, with the ending theme music playing.
• Custody Battle: The sketch Samurai Divorce Lawyer had the titular character resolve every dispute over which half of the couple gets a certain item by slicing it in half and giving one half to each. The sketch ends as they start arguing over who gets custody of the kid.